Coffee heat rising

Another little roommate

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{sigh} A new little rat has moved in behind the washer and dryer, out in the garage. She (I’ve decided it’s a girl, for no good reason) was wooed by the garbage, which I keep in the garage, just on the other side of the kitchen door. She’d carried various delicacies to her dining table behind the dryer, where she evidently enjoyed them with gusto.

The last roof rat who lived out there came in to eat the dog food. That was when the German shepherd and the greyhound were consuming about 20 pounds of kibble a week. I murdered him—the rat, I mean, not one of the dogs. Pizzened the little guy. He croaked over under the dryer. I had to drag the machine out from the wall in order to retrieve his ripening remains and inter him in the garbage can.

Anyway, the neighborhood is enjoying quite the roof rat infestation just now. On the phone yesterday, La Bethulia said she’d found not one but two of the little charmers…inside the house!!! One of them was after the dog food—her house has an indoor utility room, not a washer-dryer hook-up the garage. And the other was, hevvin help us, nestling in the linen closet.

Augh!

Another neighbor e-mailed to say he’d found rat signs around his house.

Well, what to do with Our Rattie? She was out at the time I discovered her dwelling behind the washer and dryer. I’d had to move my car out of the garage, because the tree guys’ equipment and debris blocked the driveway. This provided an opportunity to break out the shop vac and thoroughly clean the garage. That was when I discovered her pellets and the remains of her lunch.

She must have been utterly terrorized, between the unholy racket the men made cutting down the huge tree outside the garage, the banging and thumping of the washer and dryer running (it was a multitasking day), and the roar of the shop vac. She ran off. One of the men pulled the washer and dryer out so I could clean up the mess behind them, and there was no sign of her underneath the machines.

So I hauled the garbage to the alley and determined to keep each day’s kitchen trash in the kitchen and trot it out to the alley each evening. I really don’t like to go out there after dark—don’t know which I’d less rather encounter: a four-legged rat or a two-legged one. But obviously nothing even vaguely edible can be left in the garage.

Poisoning rats is not the ideal strategy. If one of the little guys passes not through the Veil but through a hole in your wall, you’ve got a major stench that you can’t easily get rid of. Rat traps are supposed to be effective, but I can’t set a mouse trap without slamming my fingers…just imagine what a rat trap would do to a finger! I picked up a pair of glue traps at Home Depot, but they seem inhumane, to say the least.

But I had an idea.

This is gross. If you’re already grossed out by this conversation, by all means avert your eyes here!

It occurred to me that a dog is a predator. A rat, which is much like a rabbit with short ears, is prey. No prey animal with will sleep in a den decorated with fresh predator markings. Dogs mark their territory not just with urine but also with feces—the glands around the anus dispense pheromones that say “I was here.” Or, more precisely, “Get off my property!” Cassie’s little mounds, in contrast to those of a 90-pound shepherd or hound, are so small they’re fairly inoffensive. To the human nose, that is. But what if…

Next time I took Cassie for a walk and gathered one of her gifts off the neighbor’s yard, instead of tossing it in the nearest garbage can, I brought it home and deposited it in a disposable paper bowl. Slipped this into the nest area behind the washer and dryer, and then snuck away to wait.

I think Rattie may have been back once or twice—a few more of her pellets showed up around the washer. But they could have been old ones. She certainly isn’t hanging around, because there’s nothing to eat.

Gerardo blowered out the garage when he came by to clean up the yard, removing those last few pellets from sight, and I deposited a fresh dose of predator pheromone behind the washer. So now we shall see if this scheme works!

Neighborly Hallowe’en

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This Hallowe’en Cassie and I will hang out in the neighborhood just to the south of us, where a nifty thing goes on.

The neighbors decorate their yards with orange lights and weird hoo-dahs. Then they bring tables and chairs out to the driveway or yard, stack the candy on the tables, and sit outside to greet the trick-or-treaters. This strategy serves all sorts of excellent purposes:

♦ They have an impromptu, loosely organized block party. Neighbors get to know each other and each others’ kids, and a good time is had by all.

♦ Everybody gets to enjoy all the kids frolicking around in their costumes.

♦ The kids are safer, because a lot of grown-ups are outside watching.

♦ The grown-ups are safer, because no one is opening their doors to strangers.

♦ The obligatory vandalism goes someplace else, where fewer eyes are upon the perps.

It really is a great idea. It combines the fun of door-to-door trick-or-treating with the relative safety of an organized party. As a single woman, I never open my door to anyone I don’t know, and so on Hallowe’en I  turn off the lights and hole up in a back room. But I love to see the children showing off their costumes. This is a fine opportunity to do that.

Image: Toby Ord. A Jack o’ Lantern made for the Holywell Manor Halloween celebrations in 2003. Creative Commons.

How dumping your credit cards can keep you on budget…

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…even if you’re a credit-card “deadbeat” who pays off all charges in full every month.

As I was saying yesterday, if and when my credit-card issuers try to sock me with annual fees just for carrying their plastic around in my purse, the cards will go away. Substituting cash, purchasing cards, and checks for credit cards will, on the surface, add an extra layer of complication to my bookkeeping: I’ll have to go to Costco and Safeway to buy the purchasing cards, and I’ll have to keep track of amounts spent with each of these spending tools.

Or so it seems.

In fact, though, I think a credit-card-free system might be no less involved to track than what I’m doing now: budgeting $1,200 (down from $1,500 after the furlough; an amount that will drop to $1,000 when my job ends) for all expenses other than monthly recurring charges (such as utilities), and staying on budget by trying to spend no more than 25% of that amount in any given week. To make this work, I have to enter each week’s bills against the week’s microbudget, a recurring Excel tedium.

Allocating a specific amount of monthly income to each of the three tools would work much like the “cash envelope” system favored by many frugalists. The idea is that you set aside a specific amount for each category in your budget—in cash, physically in an envelope—and when an envelope runs out of dollars, you have to stop spending on that category until you get more money. The psychological message is You’re out of money!!! Stop spending!

Well. A purchasing card with X amount of money on it is effectively the same thing as an envelope of cash. Run out of money—quit spending until you have more money. You could, in theory, regard the other two tools in exactly the same light: cash is easy; checks would be simple if you kept only enough money in your checking account to cover your monthly check-writing budget.

My plan is to have one purchasing card from Costco and one from Safeway, the merchants where I buy most of my food and household goods. Then to pay in cash for meals out, entertainment, and small incidentals, and to cover all other more-or-less discretionary expenses (such as house and pool maintenance, clothing, etc.) with checks.

In a way, this plan would be simpler than my present scheme. Instead of balancing all these expenses out of one “envelope” (the credit-card budget), each category would be strictly finite, and spending would have to stop when a given month’s limit was reached.

Right now I spend about $425 a month at Costco, about $68 a month for Costco gas (by far the cheapest source of gas in town), and about $80 a month at Safeway. Averaged out over the past nine months, I’ve spent about $48 a month on clothes at emporia other than Costco, my favorite purveyor of jeans and knit shirts; about $20 a month on haircuts; and about $68 a month on all pool care, including repair bills. Some of those costs aren’t going away after the job ends: I have to buy gas, for example. Others don’t happen every month—I get my hair styled about once every two months, and repairs on the pool happen only a couple times a year. Money set aside monthly for those categories would accrue until a need arose.

Regarded in this way, my base costs actually come to less than $1,000 a month:

Current predictable expenditures come to almost $870 a month. In the new, ascetic regime, regular expenditures (above and beyond monthly recurring costs such as utilities) will drop to around $815 or $820. Distributing these expenses among several payment tools, some of which (such as payment cards) are finite, might force me to stay within this restricted budget.

As a practical matter, of course other expenses will arise: veterinary bills and medical copays, for example, and the unending repair bills on the house. But those will just have to be paid from emergency savings, since Social Security plus teaching income won’t provide enough cash flow to cover such costs.

And also as a practical matter, some of these costs don’t happen every month: I rarely go out to eat, and when I do I certainly don’t spend fifty bucks. I don’t buy clothes often, and in any event, I obviously will have to cut expenditures there—I can’t afford to spend $600 a year on clothing.

I suppose I could take out the $190 a month—the amount to be spent by checks—for a total finite cash budget of $260. But I really dislike carrying cash around. It only took one theft from my purse to demonstrate that carrying cash is a fair way to lose it. That and the fact that cash runs through my fingers like water have always been my objection to the much-ballyhooed envelope system.

It’s an obvious idea: abandon the single, amorphous monthly credit-card budget and allocate costs to finite, tightly defined “envelopes” to be used for specific costs might limit total expenditures. The question is, with less flexibility can one stick to these straitened categories over time?

Time to dump the credit cards?

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Credit-card lenders, as predicted, are using the new credit-card consumer protection law to upgrade their profits. For a round-up of the latest “improvements,” take a look at Karen’s post at Smart Spending. Some of them are enough to make you consider canceling your credit cards altogether.

Citibank, for example, has raised its interest rates to almost 30 percent! Think of that. And especially think of the tricky ways credit-card interest is applied, so as to soak you on new charges made after the interest kicks in.

Karen reports that Citi proposes to gouge an annual fee of $30 to $90 from customers who have the temerity to charge less than $2,400 a year.

It’ll be interesting to see what else develops on this front. Personally, I never carry cash. I charge most purchases on Costco’s American Express card because AMEX gives a nice cash kickback; the very few merchants who won’t accept American Express get paid with a Visa from Chase. Every month I pay off the charges in full. Neither of these worthy organizations charges a fee.

Yet.

The minute one of them does, though, the card gets canceled. IMHO, credit-card lenders already earn plenty of cash from my purchases, even though I never pay a penny of interest. For every card transaction, the merchant pays the card issuer a fee. The truth is, you and I and everyone else pay the fee: of course, the merchant’s cost is passed along to the customers. The card issuer’s contract forbids the merchant from offering a discount for cash purchases. This means that everyone, even people who never charge anything on a card, has to pay extra for every item in the store. In other words, Dear Reader, we’re all already paying for the privilege of living in a credit-card culture. Card issuers earn quite enough from usurious interest rates and nicking merchants—they don’t need to zing you’n’me with annual fees to make a nice profit.

Evidently I’m not alone in that opinion. Karen’s Smart Spending article notes that a third of credit card customers have canceled their cards, half of them specifically because of changes such as higher interest rates or new fees.

Ever ask yourself how you would get by without a credit card?

If you travel a lot, it could be a challenge: you really need a credit card to make plane and hotel reservations. But they’ll probably take a debit card. You lose some of the advantages of a credit card: deferral of the payment date and some element of recourse if the purchase doesn’t work out for one reason or another. Still, if you were determined not to pay the additional rip of an annual fee, it might be worth the inconvenience.

But otherwise, it’s not horribly difficult. You have four fine alternatives to the credit card, at least one of them guaranteed to keep your budget running in the black:

• Cash
• Checks
• Debit cards
• Prepaid merchant purchasing cards

Each has its pros and cons. Videlicet:

Cash: The Good

🙂 Fast
🙂 Universally accepted
🙂 No need to memorize PIN numbers
🙂 No paper trail: protects your privacy
🙂 Hassle-free: no fights with banks or credit-card issuers
🙂 Built-in spending limit: keeps you on budget

Cash: The Bad and the Ugly

🙁 Too easy to spend
🙁 No paper trail: hard to track spending, no proof of tax-deductible purchases
🙁 No recourse in dispute with merchant
🙁 Easy to lose or steal; no recourse to insurance if stolen
🙁 No good for Internet shopping or phone transactions
🙁 Bulky to carry around
🙁 Unsanitary

Checks: The Good

🙂 Relatively easy to use: no PIN needed
🙂 Most merchants accept them
🙂 Check register: easy to track spending
🙂 Hard to use if stolen; no $50 liability limit for ID theft
🙂 ID checks at register: added theft protection
🙂 Paper trail; unarguable proof of payment

Checks: The Bad and the Ugly

🙁 Easy to overdraw account: stiff overdraft fees
🙁 Checking account fees: Need to use credit union to avoid bank gouges
🙁 Time-consuming hassle at check-out
🙁 Bulky and heavy to carry around
🙁 No good for Internet or phone transactions
🙁 Paper trail: accessible to those you’d just as soon not have knowing your business
🙁 Can be forged by thieves who know what they’re doing

Debit Cards: The Good

🙂 Lightweight, easy to carry
🙂 Fast
🙂 Widely accepted
🙂 Good for Internet shopping, phone transactions
🙂 Paper trail: statements show purchasing record

Debit Cards: The Bad and the Ugly

🙁 Many nicks and gouges from bank fees
🙁 Also some merchants’ gouges
🙁 Merchant-instigated holds on bank accounts
🙁 Vulnerability to ID theft, armed robbery
🙁 Paper trail: little privacy from intrusive merchandisers and other uninvited observers

Merchant Purchasing Cards: The Good

🙂 Budgeting device: Limit monthly expenditures by limiting amounts on card
🙂 Fast
🙂 Easy
🙂 Lightweight, easy to carry
🙂 No fees
🙂 Relatively little hassle

Merchant Purchasing Cards: The Bad and the Ugly

🙁 Recurring inconvenience: Recharge as money runs out
🙁 Limited to specific merchants
🙁 Stealable: great windfall for thieves
🙁 Little use for Internet or phone shopping
🙁 Hard to track purchases
🙁 But easy for merchant to track your behavior: privacy issue
🙁 Various merchant scams and limitations

Each of these devices has its uses. Personally, I distrust debit cards—too many opportunities for banks and merchants to zing you with incomprehensible fees, too vulnerable to identity theft. If things come to such a pass that I decide to get rid of my credit cards, I think I’ll use merchant purchasing cards as “cash envelopes” for certain kinds of recurring purchases and then use real cash or checks for everything else:

Purchasing Cards:

Costco

• gasoline
• lifetime supplies of household goods
• bulk food purchases
• wine and beer
• casual clothing
• office supplies
• books

Safeway

• fresh food purchases
• bargain meats
• small incidentals

Cash:

• eating out
• entertainment
• very small incidentals

Checks:

• workmen
• veterinarian
• doctors’ copays
• all goods not purchased at Costco or Safeway (such as clothing, linens, decorating items, prescriptions, etc.)

It’s interesting to contemplate, because abandoning credit cards would force me to rejigger my budget. Right now I budget a certain amount (it’s been $1,200; is about to drop to $1,000) for spending on all costs other than regular recurring monthly bills. Those costs are all put on the card. So, I use two debiting tools: automatic bill-paying and the credit card, each of which has its own sub-budget ($840 for monthly bills and monthly savings; $1,000 for all other spending).

If I dropped the cards, I’d have to budget for not two but four spending tools: automatic bill-paying, purchasing cards, cash, and checks. Drawback is an added layer of complication. However, the trade-off is that such a system mimics the cash “envelope” budgeting strategy, and it might be a great deal more effective at keeping one on budget.

More on that topic tomorrow!

Real estate prices gone nuts

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Amusing myself in the wee hours by cruising real estate listings in my zip code, I came across one of the neighbor’s houses, comparable to mine, on the market for $199,000, some $36,000 less than I paid for my place.  The sales pitch shouts,

UPGRADED CABINETS, JENN-AIR APPLIANCES, ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORS, NEW LUSH LANDSCAPING WITH 12 ZONE IRRIGATION SYSTEM. NOTE**SQ FT INCLUDES 300+ BONUS ROOM OFF KITCHEN**COULD BE FAMILY ROOM,DEN/OFFICE,KIDS PLAYROOM OR???**THIS KNOELL HOME SITS ON A LARGE LOT(OVER 11,000 SQ.FT)LOTS OF YARD FOR THE KIDS TO PLAY**SEPERATELY FENCED SPARKLING DIVING POOL OFF COVERED PATIO**LONG DRIVEWAY W/ROOM TO PARK AT LEAST 4 VEHICLES

Gee, thanks, guys: Let’s invite some more chuckleheads to turn their houses into used-car lots!

It’s not an especially pretty model, and it’s a bit too close to the light-rail construction on 19th Avenue. But still…it has most or all of the amenities my house has, and they’ve set the price in the basement.

Ah, yes: the light-rail construction. Make that nonconstruction: the City has changed its mind, after having ripped out the better part of an entire row of homes in our neighborhood and spread hideous cement-gray gravel over the resulting scars. The SOBs came in here, wrecked our neighborhood, and then walked away! They’re now considering other routes to serve the west side (read “the multimillionaire developers who own the new stadium out there, not to mention the occasional politico and city official”). It’s pretty clear the proposed line past our area will be abandoned, leaving us with devalued homes and enhancing 19th Avenue’s premier characteristic as a conduit of blight.

That would explain the cut-rate price on this house, which is owned by a couple who have lived there for many years.

Not the cuttest of all possible rates, though: a house on the street just to the south of me, which was wildly improved by a speculator who bought on the deflationary edge of the bubble, is offered as a short sale at $130,000.

Meanwhile, about 100 steps down the street from the first house, another neighbor is trying to unload a bland little house, “as is” with no photos at the Realtor’s website, for $229,000. That place has been on the market for quite a while. It’s not a short sale or foreclosure, but between the lackadaisical sales effort and the unexceptional front elevation, one could easily think it is. The house doesn’t look all that bad, but it’s nothing special, either. Houses around it, though, are badly run down: the Rental Baron’s slum property was bought by a woman and her son who put way too much money into fixing up but succeeded in selling at the height of the bubble to Adam the Pool Guy, not the brightest decorative light hanging in the backyard gazebo. Adam now owes over $325,000 on a house that he has allowed to go right straight back to pot. The kids across the street from Adam inherited their house from his mother, and they also are letting the place crumble away.

It costs a lot to water a lawn around here. So people who can’t afford the water bills will just let the grass die. Xeriscape it? That costs a chunk of change, too…if you can’t afford a $300 water bill,  you sure can’t afford to have someone come and convert your bermuda grass to imitation desert.

“SEPERATELY FENCED.” Heee! Well, I guess you can’t expect much better than a pitch to people who use the front yard as a parking lot from sellers who can’t run a spellchecker and haven’t heard much about periods. Another house around here is described as having an “UP GRATED KITCHEN.”

😀

Someone wants $239,900 for a very pretty little house that has been massively overimproved in the seedy neighborhood just to the north of us. What could they have been thinking? Our friends who moved out of that tract several years ago finally had to default on the house that backed on to the grocery store. The bank wants $129,000 for it.

A bank is trying to sell a house that fronts on the seven-lane main drag that forms our neighborhood’s southernmost border: $251,500, rather more than anyone should pay to live on a feeder street for Interstate 17.

"Must be seen to be believed!!"
"Must be seen to be believed!!"

Next street to the north of me, a neighbor wants $264,000 for a place that has been “upgraded” in fun-house style: red kitchen cabinets, black countertops, blue carpets. While the price is what you’d think of as about right for this area, it would take a special buyer to fall in love with this place. The present owners so loved the eyeball-popping scarlet cabinetry that they put it in the bathrooms, too.

The folks who want $289,900 for the house with the view of the 19th-Avenue nonconstruction site are still waiting for their dream buyer to come along. That place has been on the market for months. Many months.

And in the what were they thinking department, a house on my  old street, about two blocks to the north of the present manse, recently came on the market for $294,900. It has some recent upgrades (2008), but it has no pool and its exterior is so undistinguished I can’t even picture which house it is—and I walk or drive by there every couple of weeks.

The $199,000 model is the same or a similar model, and it does have a pool. That’s a $95,000 range for identical houses in the same six-square-block neighborhood!

Add the slightly more decrepit tract just to the north of us into the mix, and you get a spread of $160,000, for housing that’s all pretty much cut out of the same cloth.

Think of that.

Chuck roasts, cheap: Safeway

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Hey! Check your local Safeway today for its meat prices. Here in the arid Southwest, I just bought a ton of beautiful chuck roast for 99 cents a pound.

Two of the roasts got ground into deee-licious hamburger. Another gigantic beauty will soon be basking in the crock pot with onions, carrots, celery, wine, and spices. Hot diggety!