One of the freelance writer’s (and editor’s!) mottoes is “A$k and ye shall re¢eive.” It was coined (as it were) by the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the best of the few truly useful writer’s groups in existence. The gist of this bon mot is that you should not accept just any lowball offer a publisher tries to inflict on you, but instead should insist on being paid fairly for professional work.
Well, I just landed a client that pays a moderate but more or less acceptable rate. Only problem is, this company expects contractors to sign a nondisclosure agreement that contains not one, not two, but three onerous indemnity clauses. In a nutshell, the contract proposes that the penniless freelancer will pay all the legal bills for any claim even vaguely related to her or his work that is brought against this international corporation by any wretch who thinks he or she should feel aggrieved.
I’ve been going back and forth with the company’s rep for the past ten days or two weeks over this, they offering one modification or another and me repeating that I’m not signing any agreement to indemnify.
Amazingly, they sat down and rewrote their contract to delete the offending clauses! The thing arrived in the e-mail this morning. So… I guess we’re on.
This is the second time I’ve stood my ground on indemnity clauses, expected to be told to take a hike, but prevailed.
The take-home message here is that if you own a small enterprise, you should stand firm on negotiating your terms and your price, and never accept a deal that puts you at a disadvantage.
Leslie’s Pools had an in-store special offer of 50 percent off any pool service, including the routine filter cleaning. Naturally, I couldn’t resist that one, and so this morning Bob the Wonderful Leslie’s Guy showed up to do the job.
You may recall that last April, I got peeved at Leslie’s because they’d jacked up their price on DE filter service and tacked on a “trip charge,” a gratuitous insult when gasoline prices were lower than they’d been in the past two years. So I called on Adam, a neighbor who advertises that he’s in the pool servicing business, to come over and clean out the diatomaceous-earth filter. He did the job for Leslie’s pre-hike price, and since he could walk to my house there was no absurd trip charge. Not only that, but he used his own DE instead of dumping mine in there.
Ohhhkayyyy…. That looked, on the surface, like a positive development.
A few weeks later I had to have the pressure gauge replaced. Adam had jammed it back onto the pump cattywampus, and with the action of opening and closing the relief valve during the almost daily debris-cleaning activities, it had cracked. That cost $133.31.
Dumb tax!
And that’s not all. Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner has been sluggish to the point of torpor. He barely crawls around the bottom; normally he zips around like some sort of berserk ferret in there, and often climbs up the walls and tries to get out. The swimming-through-molasses act has been going on for a very long time (like…since last April, maybe?), and no amount of backwashing and trips to the Leslie’s pool-cleaner vet have helped.
Well, so Bob the WLG, having already complained that it wasn’t very long ago that I had the thing cleaned out so he didn’t see why it should need to be cleaned again, hauls the filter innards out to the alley and takes the thing apart.
It was totally clogged. Bob speculated that Adam hadn’t bothered to disassemble and clean the parts individually, but had simply set the whole lash-up in the alley and sprayed it off with the hose. Since it didn’t take Adam long to do the job, that’s probably a fair guess.
Dumb tax surcharge? Hours of physical work for the Happy Homeowner. I’ve been out there for a good hour almost every morning through this godforsaken record-breaking hot summer, just trying to keep the pool from turning green. I’ve had to clean up dust and debris manually, day in and 115-degree day out, because Harvey was effectively nonfunctional.
So that’s what happens when you get cheap and hire an unknown quantity instead of a provider with a known track record, just to save five or ten bucks.
one of these
=
a bunch of these
£££££
Image: Proof-quality Lincoln penny, public domain, Wikipedia Commons
Gawdlmighty! The 90,000-mile service on my aging Toyota Sienna is gunna cost $1,200!
It’s enough to make a strong woman faint. Well, luckily I knew about this and set the money aside. But that doesn’t make me any happier about having to sink 12 C-notes into a nine-year-old vehicle.
For the money, Chuck the Mechanic Par Excellence proposes to do the regular 90,000-mile service, change the timing belt, and replace the water pump, it being an opportune moment to do that—while the front end of the motor is off, anyway. I happen to know, too, that he’ll lubricate the squeaking steering wheel, probably for not much, and that he’ll check the brake pads, rotate the tires, and change all the hoses.
Suspecting that Chuck’s estimate was a little high, I called a couple of Toyota dealers. One proposed to charge me $350 for the basic 90,000 service; another wanted $300 for the same thing, claiming it was a “special” markdown from the usual price of $360. Uh huh. Then it’s another $300 for the water pump plus another $300 for three seals that may or may not need to be changed plus $65 for “outside belts.” Plus $335 for the timing belt. If I’m not mistaken, that would be $1,300 to $1,350, depending on which stalwart Toyota dealer one chooses to do business with.
Makes Chuck’s fee look like a bargain. And I know he’s not going to cheat me. Past experience suggests that is not always a given with automobile dealerships.
{sigh} So I made an appointment for a week from Friday.
Well, it’s a heckuva lot cheaper than buying a new car. Normally, I’d trade in a vehicle at ten years. But now that I’m about to be canned, with no hope (or desire…) of getting another job, this car is going to have to run until it falls apart. Chuck thinks it will easily get 150,000 miles, which should carry it another six years. And it could, in theory, run to 180,000 miles, or another nine years. Barring an accident, of course.
A crash that results in the insurance company totaling it (which right now would probably be a fender-bender) will leave me up the creek, since I do not and will not ever have enough cash to buy another car. Nor will I ever again have enough cash flow to make car payments. Every penny in savings, including the $18,000 I had set aside for the next vehicle, now will have to be rolled into the funds intended to support me in my dotage. If I can get this car to run ten more years, it will be the last car I’ll ever own.
Really, in ten years I’ll only be 74, and so I may still be competent to drive. What’s $18,000 now will likely be $36,000 then…hmmm… With no steady job, I’d have to set aside $3,600 a year to collect enough extra money to buy a car in 2019. {snark!} Now there’s a realistic goal!
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
Oh well. Thirty-six hundred bucks would buy 180 twenty-dollar cab rides. That’s a trip to the grocery store about every two days.
Too bad we don’t have decent public transportation here. Thirty-six hundred bucks—just one year of car savings—would buy 2,057 all-day bus or train tickets. That would be unlimited rides every single day for 5 years and 7 months! Alas, in these parts a single trip to the grocery store and home on the buses would consume a whole day. I could fill the entire remainder of my life with waiting at bus stops and then waiting for buses to get where I want to go.
Kelly at Amost Frugal has kindly published an interview of Funny, one of the “This Is Frugal” series. Be sure to go on over to Almost Frugal, and, if you haven’t visited before, explore this interesting, fun, and commonsensical site.
Every now and again, a blogger agonizes over whether frugal habits lead to cheapness—or worse, will be perceived by friends and relatives as miserliness. Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck ruminates, to entertaining effect, on the wacky ideas people have about personal finance and frugality. True frugality, IMHO, does not mean asceticism, tightness, or pathological self-deprivation. So, what really is a healthy, productive frugality?
Frugality is. . .
• Independence
The frugalist knows better than to jump off a cliff just because all the other sheep do it.
• Freedom
Not until you’ve paid off your last penny of debt are you truly free to work where you please, to choose an occupation that remunerates you in something more meaningful than cash, or not to work at all.
• Common sense
True frugality recognizes the difference between penny-wise and pound-foolish.
• Charity
What goes around comes around. Over at Gather Little by Little, GLBL has been trying to explain the importance of giving for a while.
• Living light on the land
Frugality by its nature is “green.” Frugalists neither waste nor want…nor do they accumulate junk. So frugal habits tend to preserve resources of all kinds.
• Goal-setting
Pinching pennies for no other purpose than to pile up pennies is a miser’s habit. Frugal people save money for specific reasons: to get out of debt and stay out of it; to send the kids to college; to take a dream vacation; to buy a house; to accrue an emergency fund; to finance a secure retirement.
• Self-discipline
The frugal person stays on track toward the goal.
• Organization
Frugal people keep track of their finances and other aspects of their lives.
• Ambition
Frugality is self-motivation to do better in life as well as in personal finances.
• Minimalism
Frugal people furnish their lives with only what they need or truly appreciate.
• Love
Frugalists work to build a better life for those they care about: born or unborn, found or yet to be found.
• Faith
. . . in a better future.
Jamaica Sunrise, Adam L. Clevenger, Wikipedia Commons
During the last Costco expedition, I noticed they were offering organic quinoa, a grain I’ve long been curious about. The package suggested preparing it like tabbouleh, something I happen to favor.
First time I fixed it, though, it was breakfast time and things were a bit too rushed to fiddle with slicing garlic and onions and with harvesting herbs and making vinaigrette. One of my eccentricities is that I don’t like milk, and so I don’t at all care for hot (or cold) cereals splashed with the stuff. Oatmeal’s OK, if it’s prepared like pasta as a savory dish, instead of gooped up with milk and sugar.
So… I decided to try something along those lines with the quinoa.
It’s easy to cook, much like regular oatmeal or converted rice: just dump a cup of it into two cups of boiling water, turn down the heat, and let it simmer 20 minutes or so, till the water is absorbed. The result is a nice, fluffy product, light and pretty, with an interesting texture.
I had some sausage that I’d cooked and frozen. While the quinoa was steeping, I reheated that and sliced it into bite-sized pieces. Cut up a ripe tomato. sliced a green onion, chopped some parsley.
When the cereal was finished cooking, I served it up in a bowl with a big dollop of butter on it, and then topped it with all of the above, with a sprinkle of Parmesan. It turned out very tasty! And it really filled me up: I didn’t get the slightest bit hungry until past lunchtime.
