OMG. If the possible-probable-maybe-definitely layoffs weren’t bad enough, here comes a new curve. La Maya discovered that the famous sick leave payoff we’re supposed to get disappears if you’re laid off. You get it only if you retire.
Yes. If they decide to can you, they give you an extra kick in the shins by taking away the benefit tied to the hundreds of hours of sick leave most of us have accrued—in my case, it’s over 1,100 hours, worth more than $17,500. That is tens of thousands of dollars more than the piddling unemployment insurance Arizona pays its workers. And it’s money I planned into my financial strategy for layoff. For that matter, even if I weren’t laid off, it’s money planned into my retirement finances.
There are only two ways to hang on to this fund in the face of a likely layoff:
1. Retire right now.
2. Declare that I will retire in the near future and then hope, if I don’t get laid off, that the dean will allow me to push the retirement date back a few months.
If you state that you are going to retire (says HR—who knows how accurate this is!) and the university then lays you off or otherwise cans you, the state still has to pay the benefit.
So, if I formally announced that I intend to retire just before my contract runs out, I could lay claim to something in excess of $17,600. And if I can engineer it with the dean’s office, when “retirement” time draws nigh, I “decide” that I’ve changed my mind and push it back another three months. This could, in theory, get me through the crisis: if I’m laid off, I walk with all my benefits; if I’m not, I still have the job that I need to hang onto until I reach age 70.
Yesterday M’hijito and I went in search of a small but reasonably easy-to-use harness for Cassie the Corgi. Her collar is loose enough that she can easily slip it, and I realized that if our coyote friend had noticed her instead of being intent on some other prey, she might have wriggled loose during a confrontation and tried to run off. That would have been the end of her.
Well, we went into PetSmart, not one of my favorite emporiums, and there we tried on a nylon harness. The part that slips over the dog’s head and is supposed to encircle the chest and shoulders needed to be adjusted. In our efforts to do that, we ended up making it tighter around her neck. So tight, in fact, that I could barely fit my finger under it. Try as we might, we could not loosen it! I finally had to take my jackknife out of my purse (alarming my son, who thought we’d be arrested) (all right, all right, it does look a little fierce and you could think it’s a Mexican switchblade) (but it’s not!)and cut the dog out of the stupid thing. So that was $9.50 for nothing, and a customer lost permanently to PetSmart.
So, to the Internet. The harnesses that operate simply are training devices. Cassie doesn’t really need a training device. She just needs something that won’t slip off her head.
Greyhounds, I recalled belatedly, have bullet-shaped heads that moot the value of a regular buckle collar. To get around that, you use a martingale: a collar with two loops, one of which slides, so that when the dog exerts pressure on it, the collar tightens. Because the martingale is made of nylon or fabric ribbon, it doesn’t jerk or pinch the dog the way a chain collar does. It does, however, work effectively to keep a sighthound from dragging you down the street in chase of cats, birds, and flying plastic bags. Works on a German shepherd, too… And, BTW, if you have a clue how to train a dog, it’s far more humane than chains and pinch collars.
Duh! Sighthounds come in many sizes. Italian greyhounds are chihuahua-sized, and whippets are the size of Cassie: around 25 pounds. Somebody, somewhere, must be making martingales for smaller dogs.
Yea, verily! Google “martingale collar” and up comes a raft of sites, many of them by people who are hand-crafting the things. You can get them much cheaper at Petco (Petsmart doesn’t seem to carry them), but the ones in the chain brick-and-mortars are just plain, ugly nylon things. Greyhound lovers really get into crafts for their dogs, and some of them make gorgeous collars.This outfit, so far, is my favorite. Problem is, I can’t make up my mind! Check these out, if you will, and tell me which would be your preference.
A few days ago, JD posted posted a request at Get Rich Slowly as he was coping with the unexpected passing of a dear friend:
Finally, please stop sending me anti-Obama links. I’m not going to post them. I don’t post pro-Obama links, either. Nor did I post links in opposition to or in favor of President Bush. Get Rich Slowly is not a political blog, and it’s not about to become one. The political divisiveness in the U.S. makes me tense, and I refuse to contribute to it.
This elicited some conversation, among which was a comment from Steve of Brip Blap:
I hear what you’re saying, and I wouldn’t want to see you start launching into political polemics on GRS…but unfortunately politics have a huge impact on personal finances (taxes, retirement savings laws, and on and on). The divisiveness is there for a reason – politicians have drastically different ideas about how we should be able to handle our own money.
So I understand completely where you’re coming from in regards to the blog – no sense in going there – but it’s a huge part of what’s going to happen with our money in the future. We will all need to contribute to whichever side we think is right.
I have to agree with Steve: although I wouldn’t ask JD (or anyone else) to hold forth on topics that make him uncomfortable, the fact is that politics and personal finance are so tightly intertwined, there’s no separating them. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that personal finance and politics are aspects of the same thing.
We are all suffering today because a decade ago (much longer, really, looking back to the Reagan years) we elected a party whose dogma was largely based on some misguided theories. Among these was the idea that the market will keep itself healthy and on track if left to its own accord. This theory has given us unbridled greed and irresponsibility, eleven million people out of work, depressed salaries for those of us who have managed to hold onto our jobs, a plague of foreclosures that is casting millions of Americans out of their homes, astronomical gas price spikes, a failing healthcare system, collapsing banks, and the prospect of another Great Depression. The fix for this mess will saddle our kids and our grandkids with national debt, high taxes, and a lowered standard of living, and you can be sure the politics that will come out of that circumstance will be interesting, indeed.
Bill Clinton’s byword, “It’s the economy, stupid,” put this fact in a nutshell: politics and money are the same thing. Free-market economics is a political theory every bit as much as it is an economic theory, and it was imposed, in an extreme form, on our nation through the workings of politics.
That’s why it’s so urgently important for Americans to be well educated in the history of their country and in the history of the world: votes made in ignorance lead to disaster, such as the one we’re seeing today. It’s why we need a free press, and why the collapse of the Fourth Estate poses an enormous threat to America’s republic. We need to understand the workings of our government’s leadership, and the easiest way to spread that understanding to the largest number of people is through a free press that focuses on something other than celebrity antics.
And it’s why as Americans we need to return to honest, forthright discussion and quit sniping at each other. The bitter conflicts, the nasty behavior, the substitution of crass rudeness for “debate” that have been fomented in certain quarters for the purpose of putting a specific party in the dominant position it has held for the past decade need to come to an end. If we are to escape the quicksand that’s fast sucking us to our economic doom, we must work together in a political and a politick way to make things as right as we can make them.
Funny about Money will continue to refer to political topics, and incivility will not be tolerated here. I make no secret of my opinion of the Bush Administration and its controllers. And I respect the right of others to disagree: politely.
Some months ago, a commenter on someone’s blog (don’t recall who on whose: sorry!) remarked that she had filled in the cracks between her patio flagstones with (expensive!) black stones, to good effect. At the time, I thought there’s an interesting idea! Filed the thought away but did nothing about it.
Over the summer I cast wildflower seeds between the flags in the front courtyard. This worked to interesting effect…lots of bright, strange-looking, probably invasive blossoms. All very sweet. But the truth is, one person’s wildflower is the next person’s…well, weed. What I had left after the wildflowers had blown was a rangy tangle of straw with tap roots headed for the center of the earth. This, I realized, was not a practical idea.
When Richard the Landscaper installed the flagstones on dirt, the plan was to cultivate dichondra in the cracks between the pavers. Great plan. Except that in Arizona, two other varieties of groundcover are endemic: burr clover and bermudagrass (known in some parts of the country as “crabgrass” and in others as “devilgrass”). Burr clover has a certain charm: it makes pretty little yellow blossoms, and it doesn’t seem to grow burrs. But bermudagrass is as horrid an invader as you can imagine: steel wire with ugly scrawny leaves attached. Left to its own devices, it will grow as high as your hind end. People cultivate it as lawn grass here, because it’s about the only grass that will survive a 115-degree summer. All you need to make it grow is water. It loves heat and water. The more water you dump on it, the thicker it will grow. It has, however, a somewhat contrary personality: this is a plant that thrives wherever you don’t want it and dies wherever you do want it.
Where I did not want it was between the flagstones. Consequently, that’s where I had a fine stand of the stuff. Between the bermudagrass and the burr clover, the dichondra was snuffed out and the whole place looked pretty grungy.
So, last fall I decided to dig all the tired, wiry, failed ground cover out from between the flagstones and fill the spaces with stones. A few trips to nurseries and warehouse stores confirmed that black rocks were well beyond the price range, and besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted black. It’s plenty hot in that brick oven during the summer without paving the ground in black stone. Another discovery: occasionally, Michael’s sells decorative polished stones at incredible markdowns. But even on sale, these would cost way too much to fill in an entire patio’s worth of flagstones. And contemplating the number of little mesh bags of such stones that would be required boggled the brain.
However, this neighborhood is full of river rocks: polished multicolored stones used as decorative landscaping accents. People buy too many of them or get tired of them and dump them in the alleys behind their houses. When I pulled a bunch out of my old yard, two blocks to the north, that was exactly what I did with them: tossed them on the ground in the alley. Lo! A quick reconnoiter confirmed the things were still there.
And they’re scattered all over the other alleys throughout the neighborhood. Free for the taking!
So: for the past many weeks, I’ve been slowly digging out the weeds and roots from between the flagstones, collecting stones from points far-flung, and redecorating the front courtyard. A week or so ago, I got tired of hauling bagsful of stone around the neighborhood (I’ve burned off eight pounds in this endeavor!) and capitulated: drove up to a quarry not far from my neighborhood and bought two big plastic binsful of stone for all of five bucks.
As of this weekend all but one corner of the patio was done. Today I dug out all the rest of the weeds and sand between the stones, and also dug out the burr clover growing under the olive tree on the patio. Around that tree, I planted about a zillion anemone bulbs. Love anemones. A couple of other unknown bulbs had managed to push their way though the clover, and so I’m hoping that with some cultivation these will join the anemones and fill in the basin under the tree with lots of color.
At this point, it should only take another four or five bags of stones quarried from the alleys to fill between the rest of the flagstones. I should be able to gather those in another week or two.
Meanwhile, I think the overall effect is pretty nice, especially considering what I paid for it. Sprinkling on a few polished stones from the craft store really zings up the river stones, and when they’re wet after a rainfall, they all look like they’ve been through a polisher. It will take some doing to beat back the bermudagrass and burr clover until they give up, but a weekly application of Roundup to each new sprig should do the trick, after a summer or so. And no, I don’t like Roundup…but it is biodegradable, it can be applied with a dropper (I use an old Spray & Wash bottle with one of those squirter nipples) to the target’s leaves only, and it’s better than any of the alternatives. Including a yardful of weeds.
So far this project cost me about $15 or $20 plus four months of sporadic work, not a bad price! And it should save on water, because I won’t be trying to cultivate dichondra, wildflowers, or clover.
Cassie the Corgi is not quite as large as a grown jackrabbit in a good foraging year. In the eyes of some, she is small, tender, fuzzy, and juicy-looking.
This evening we had a close encounter with a pair of those eyes. We were ambling up the backside of our block, taking in the balmy evening air, when who should come flying across the perpendicular street but a fine, muscular young coyote!
What (from any point of view other than a rabbit’s) an amazing and fantastic animal! It moved like a shadow, soundless and illusory. To come up to that pace, a German shepherd would have to launch into a gallop, but this wild dog’s gait was a smooth, even trot.
Coyotes inhabit our neighborhood. Unknown to most urbanites, they dwell in most districts of the city, and these days they’ve moved into most parts of the United States. A couple of years ago, neighbors were up in arms because we had a denning pair with a litter of pups, making them marginally dangerous. Coyotes who are in the business of raising young do not like to be interfered with by, say, your dog, and so they will ghost over a six-foot fence (easily!) and come after even a large dog.
As for the likes of Cassie the Corgi: dinnertime! Given enough hungry cubs to feed, a coyote will try to grab Fifi right off the end of your leash. Some reports have claimed coyotes have actually tried to snatch little dogs out of the arms of their doting owners. They also, on occasion, will go after small children, but those occasions are extremely rare.
The coyote was so focused on whatever it was chasing (cat?) or whatever it was running from (human?) that I don’t think it noticed us. Nevertheless, I picked up the Corgi and carried her the half-block back to our house. Tomorrow: remember to bring the pit-bull shilelagh! Gotta quit leaving that thing at home.
I have to agree with Steve: although I wouldn’t ask JD (or anyone else) to hold forth on topics that make him uncomfortable, the fact is that politics and personal finance are so tightly intertwined, there’s no separating them. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that personal finance and politics are aspects of the same thing.
