Stock market not treating you well? Spending a little too much lately and won't make your June budget goals? Didn't win the lottery? Well cheer up, at least this didn't happen to you:
...a bird had pooped straight into my open wallet while I was at the ATM...
The other night, a small group of us managed to meet up at an undisclosed location in Manhattan. It was great fun to have some food and a few drinks and get to know fellow finance bloggers Moom, Millionaire Artist, and Frugal Zeitgeist in person. As Millionaire Artist has mentioned, we are all cagey types who carefully conceal our secret identities... but little did everyone else know that I got to the restaurant early and arranged for a waitress to surreptitiously photograph us! Sorry guys, I know you're really protective of your privacy, but I want to show my readers how much fun we all had!
Obviously it's easy to pick out Moom as the only male... but I'll let everyone guess who's who among the ladies...
P.S. We all agreed that it would be fun to do this again, with more people than we were able to get together for the first gathering, so if you are a NY-area personal finance blogger who'd like to attend next time, let me know.
A tip o' the pixel to some friends in Melbourne!
Caution when using the new Blogger templates. You may think you've backed up your entire template, via saving the "widgets expanded" template as .txt or saving an XML file... but I guess you have to back up whatever you entered in all those individual page elements too, or else you lose them. As I just did. And other customizations I've made are lost too. I am really pissed right now!!!
Labels:
blogging
I have been a fan of the cartoonist Roz Chast for more than 20 years now, since first discovering her in my father's copies of the New Yorker magazine back when I was in high school. Now that I am a grown-up (well kind of) and living in New York, I find many of her drawings funny on a different level-- perhaps it is some kind of rite of passage, that you know you've truly become a New Yorker when you see your life in a Roz Chast cartoon!
Back in February of 2006, I wrote a post called "The Ick Factor," about the money I waste when I let food go bad, or at least when I smell it and suspect it may have gone bad, even if I'm not 100% sure. So when I saw Roz Chast's cartoon in the June 25th issue of the New Yorker, called "Old Family Recipes," I had to laugh at the cartoon, and at myself too.
I'd love to just reproduce the cartoon here, but to do so legally, I'd have to pay the Cartoon Bank $250, or since I give my ad revenue to charity, maybe I could get their non-profit rate of $200. Sorry everyone, but I'm not going for it! You can click through the link to the Cartoon Bank site to see it, or read the exciting description below:
Old Family Recipes
"Questionable Chicken: Find some chicken at the back of the refrigerator. Smell it. Then ask somebody else to smell it. Throw it in the garbage." [Man and woman look very disturbed while examining obviously odorous pan of chicken.]
"Leftovers à la Ugh: Take out all your leftovers and gaze at them. Get really depressed. Dispose of them immediately." [Bouffant-haired woman surveys table full of reeking takeout containers and tupperware.]
"Hot Dogs in Reality Sauce: Locate package of hot dogs. Throw away the ones that look like Lincoln Logs. Then toss the rest." [Man frowns while holding smelly-looking half-package of hotdogs above a trashcan.]
This one is definitely going on my fridge-- the perfect place for it!
For a long time now, I've been wanting to write about the similarities between managing one's money and managing one's waistline. The kind of self-discipline involved in saving money and reducing debt is very much paralleled by what it takes to lose weight and eat healthily. I'm certainly not the first blogger to notice this (see Sitting Pretty, Frugal for Life, Kate Spills the Beans, and this great chart showing how American house sizes correlate to obesity rates!)
With that in mind, I started to wonder about how weight loss and finance compare in the book publishing world. At any given time, there always seem to be at least a couple of diet and personal finance books on the bestseller list. So do they offer similar advice? Or can the lessons in one type of book be applied to the other?
A couple of weeks ago, I attended the BookExpo convention in New York. I didn't have a chance to take photos of all the upcoming finance books as I did last year, but one day I noticed that signed copies were being given away of a recent diet book that has gotten a lot of attention, so I snagged one.
The Beck Diet Solution
In The Beck Diet Solution, Chapter 3 is titled "How Thin People Think." The author lists 8 characteristics that make it difficult for many people to diet, and claims that thin people don't have these characteristics. They make a lot of sense, I think, and can easily be translated into traits that might be common among people who find it hard to save money:
#1: You Confuse Hunger with the Desire to Eat
Translates to: You confuse need with want.
You need to learn to differentiate between what is really a necessity, and what is not, and practice depriving yourself a bit so you can experience what true need is really like.
#2: You Have a Low Tolerance for Hunger and Cravings
Translates to: You have a hard time not acting on your desire to buy things.
You need to learn that desires don't have to be acted on right away, and that if you don't buy something you want at that moment, you won't necessarily be haunted by it for the rest of your life.
#3: You Like the Feeling of Being Full
Translates to: You like being surrounded by possessions that make you feel prosperous, or spending money makes you feel prosperous.
Just as there is a difference between eating until you are full, and over-eating to the point where you feel stuffed, you need to recognize the difference between enjoying some of the rewards your money can buy, and over-doing it. You have to train yourself to appreciate what you can reasonably spend, and not feel deprived because you can't spend more.
#4: You Fool Yourself About How Much You Eat
Translates to: You fool yourself about how much you spend.
If you know how much you spend, it's easier to control. You might overspend a little one day, and then know you should compensate by cutting back on another day.
#5: You Comfort Yourself With Food
Translates to: You comfort yourself by spending money.
If emotional distress makes you want to run out and go shopping, you need to learn other ways of comforting and distracting yourself, and try to solve the problems that are upsetting you.
#6: You Feel Helpless and Hopeless When You Gain Weight
Translates to: You feel helpless and hopeless when you get into debt.
You need to learn to have faith in your own decisions and ability to act on them. If you overspend and get into debt, make a plan about how to solve your problem, and stick to it, rather than feeling like you're a failure and demoralizing yourself.
#7: You Focus on Issues of Unfairness
Translation: none needed.
Yes, some people are genetically thin, and some people are born rich. That said, just as many people look effortlessly thin but actually work quite hard to stay that way, many rich people did not have their wealth handed to them on a silver platter, and worked very hard to get it. In any case, how other people got their money isn't really something you should be worrying about when you're trying to get your own financial house in order.
Of course, unlike your weight, your finances may be affected by government policies you feel are unfair-- if you want to change them, get involved and take action to do so, but in the meantime, you're stuck in the world you live in and ultimately, you and only you are responsible for how you spend your money. You have to accept the fact that getting rich isn't going to be easy for you.
#8: You Stop Dieting Once You Lose Weight
Translation: You stop watching your spending once you get out of debt, or reach a certain savings goal.
If you've really buckled down and reached a financial goal, that's great, but you should look at your financial habits in terms of long term goals, not just immediate ones. You have to change your attitude towards money for life, or you'll find yourself in trouble again in the future.
So, a thin person knows why they are eating, knows how much they are eating, is willing to feel hungry, doesn't use food as a distraction, doesn't think gaining a few pounds is an irreversible catastrophe, accepts that staying thin takes some work, and sticks with this attitude for life. A rich person knows how much they are spending, whether it's truly important, knows they will sometimes have to say "I can't afford it," feels satisfied with moderate possessions, doesn't shop as a distraction, doesn't stress out if they go a little over budget now and then, doesn't resent other people's money, and sticks with this attitude for life. That all sounds pretty good to me! Maybe author Dr. Judith Beck should write "The Beck Budget Solution!"
I'm looking forward to trying this with some other diet books, though I'm not sure all of them will prove as useful: French Women Don't Get Poor? The South Beach Savings Plan? YOU: On a Budget? We shall see!
As I wrote in the previous post, I'd been listening to Björk a lot this weekend. I've been wanting to do another "money music" post, and I thought it would be pretty cool if I could somehow discover financial lessons in the lyrics of Björk. Well, I will try to tackle that, after I finish extracting money secrets from the lyrics of early Cocteau Twins albums.
In the meantime, I found it very interesting that the first thing that popped up when I googled "Björk money" was this:
I thought this was funny because when I saw Dancer in the Dark a few years ago, I HATED it, with the exception of the goofy song and dance routines with Catherine Deneuve cavorting around the factory, which were at least kind of fun. I am not usually that hard to please with movies-- I can't think of anything else I've seen in the last few years that I would say I hated. Perhaps the surroundings in which I watched the movie didn't help-- I was visiting my parents and rented it to watch with them. From the minute the opening credits began, my mother started asking "What is this? What are we looking at? What's happening?" as she often does with movies, which always makes me want to snap at her "how the hell do you think I'm supposed to know? I just got here too!" And my father just kind of snorted and gave up watching the movie after about 45 minutes at the most.
So I wish the British money-back guarantee had applied to US video rentals, as I certainly would have tried to take advantage of it!
On Saturday, I was pleased to realize that I'd had a no-spend day. At least, sort of. I spent the morning doing household stuff, then went to the gym and strolled along the river in Manhattan all afternoon. I didn't spend a penny of cash, and I didn't use my credit card, as I brought water and snacks with me and had the rest of my meals at home, with groceries I'd already bought.
Of course, in some sense, it still wasn't a "free" day. Just because I didn't pay for certain things on Saturday doesn't mean they didn't cost me any money. So I tried to figure out the base cost of a day in my life.
Housing and utilities: a day's worth of living in my condo (including my mortgage, common charges, and property taxes) and using a little gas and electricity is probably about $60.00
Telephone basic service: about $1.00 a day
Gym membership: about $3.25
Newspaper/magazine subscriptions: about $1.33
Health and property insurance: about $3.32
Netflix: about $0.18
Internet access: about $0.66
Monthly unlimited Metrocard : about $2.50
That all comes to $72.24 as the cost of a day during which I "spent nothing."
Of course, there are a few things I didn't take into account:
Taxes: I covered property taxes above. Then there are income taxes, but since I didn't work on Saturday, I'm not going to count those. (I did the math anyway, and figured that it would come to about $65 a day.) But I also pay some taxes on interest and capital gains from my savings and investments. But I only have about $50,000 whose earnings are taxable, and this tends to be in lower-interest conservative investments. If I earned $2000 in interest and dividends, and that was taxed at 25%, that would be about $1.37 a day. That actually seems like kind of a lot-- I was about to dismiss it as being something that could only be "pennies a day!"
Food consumed that was already paid for: so far, my year-to-date spending on food/liquor averages out to about $19.44 a day. But I'd estimate what I actually consumed Saturday to be worth about $12 at most, of which about $5 was wine!
Clothes worn: year-to-date average is about $7.14 a day. But if I itemize the cost of the articles of clothing I actually wore on Saturday, it would be about $176, which includes an expensive hat. Other than a relatively new pair of shorts, I've worn all these clothes many times over the last few years, so their "real" daily cost would probably be under a dollar.
Music listened to: for some reason, I've been on a kick of listening to Bjork lately, and listened to Vespertine
Other "stuff" used-- this gets really hard to quantify. I slept in my bed, and sat on various other pieces of furniture. I used my computer, and my desk. I read a book, wrote in a notebook, cooked with pots and pans, used toilet paper, etc. etc. Since most of the furniture is quite recently purchased, the cost per day of use would still be quite high. Some of my pots and pans were gifts, so cost me nothing. I suppose I could do some kind of calculation to take my total spending over the past few years, subtract gifts and the other items already mentioned, subtract "experience" spending like travel, and figure some portion of the rest must be the cost of the stuff I currently possess and use, which I could then divide by some average number of days that I've owned it. I am finding that a rather daunting prospect, so I think I'll just let it remain an unknown for now!
So I guess the conclusion here is that it is just expensive to be me! Fortunately, if I calculate how much money I have coming in every day, counting salary, bonus, interest & dividends, but not my employer's contribution to my 401k, it's about $280, and if I succeed in meeting my budget for the year, somewhere between $40-50 a day will go into savings. Now that is a day well-spent!
The Digerati Life presents a beast of a Carnival today-- complete with illustrations of mythical beasts! Among the Editor's Choice posts, I enjoyed MoneyNing's photoessay of price signs in Japan, CashMoneyLife's 10 Commandments of Money, and Retire to India on how to calculate how inflation will affect your withdrawals from your retirement savings.
You can learn more about the Carnival of Personal Finance here.
Labels:
carnivals
As always, I like to bring you a variety of links to interesting money stories from all over (all over the New York Times), keeping you up to date on what is going on (or was a few days ago).
First of all there was Friday's article about Freegans-- see commentary at Millionaire Artist and Frugal for Life. I'm all for getting used stuff for free, but I'm pretty selective about what I'll pick out of the garbage. And I will definitely not be eating any dumpster-dived food.
Friday's paper also had an article about the decline in smoking in New York City. Unfortunately the online version doesn't reproduce the graphic that showed the dips when higher taxes and the ban in restaurants and bars went into effect, but take my word for it that they were pretty dramatic. Smoking is such a deeply addictive habit for many people, I was kind of surprised that a financial incentive to quit would be so effective. (The tax raised the average price of a pack from $5.20 to $6.85.) It would be interesting to know if the people who quit for that reason had been truly heavy smokers or just the kind of social smokers who might have one or two when they're out in a bar... I also wonder if anyone has kept any stats on the average income level of smokers. If people who couldn't afford the higher cost were the ones who quit, you'd think smokers' average income has gone up. Do you think that's been the case?
I was also fascinated by this story about some leadership squabbles in the Pequot tribe, the ones who own the Foxwoods casino:
Even with its disputes, life on the Pequot reservation resembles the Magic Kingdom compared with the grinding poverty that afflicts many Native Americans. They typically confront unemployment rates of about 40 percent and per capita incomes of less than $13,000, a fraction of what a Pequot might spend on a car.Just as it's possible to be too thin, sometimes people can be too rich.
The gated community here, near the tribe’s $18 million golf course, features rambling homes, manicured lawns and driveways filled with luxury cars. Under the tribe’s profit-sharing system, each member 18 and older, working or not, receives a monthly payment that averages about $100,000 a year, tribal members say.
Tribal leaders make more. One tribal council member, in a court filing several years ago, said she had made as much as $1.5 million in a year. Each Pequot is also guaranteed a job, free medical care, day care and tuition at any private school or college.
Some tribal members say it has been too much too fast.
“My own nieces and nephews are ruined,” said Robert Hayward, Richard’s brother. Two of his sisters said their children were refusing to work or go to school. Tribal officials have acknowledged that some Pequots have also struggled with drugs....
“I wish I could get him to work,” Ms. McKeon said of her 19-year-old son, who she said had dropped out of high school. He receives $8,000 monthly from the tribe, she said, and has bought three cars in the last six months, including one that has already been repossessed.
I couldn't go to the latest baby shower I was invited to, and I'm kind of glad. I did mail a gift, but I think I would have felt pressured to give something fancier if I'd actually gone to this big sit-down lunch at a country club!What began as an informal gathering for close friends and family has become a major event — and often several events — for expectant parents.
“People love to celebrate the different stages of life,” said Peggy Post, the etiquette expert. “Traditionally, baby showers were small and intimate, just the way wedding showers used to be. But we live in a consumer society and people just love to shop.”
For those in the baby gear business, the growth in showers and registries has been a boon. The concept began about 12 years ago, Ms. Post says, and since then, the number of people using baby registries has mushroomed. It was a $240 million business in 2006, up 9.6 percent from 2004, according to Mintel International Group, a research firm based in Chicago.
Blog-friend The Travelin' Man has asked a number of people to start a wave of information on how to think about finances when you may be faced with a serious illness, as he is right now. Boy, is that a tough question to deal with, and one I felt quite unprepared to face. But as usual, my first impulse was to look for books with answers. One that might help is Aftershock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You-- or Someone You Love-- a Devastating Diagnosis
For many people , money might be the last thing on their mind if they are suddenly faced with a life-threatening diagnosis. But finances are something you should think about, and a chapter in this book is devoted to money issues.
In Chapter 8: Pay for Care, the author tells you what you need to know right away when you've received a serious diagnosis, for example:
Whether or not you have health insurance, this diagnosis is likely to pose a threat-- the size of which is as yet unknown-- to your financial stability.The chapter includes the following advice:
Taking care of this business is hard. You are forced to imagine your death and its impact on your friends and family. But as painful as it is to think about this and take these actions, these legal protections are acts of generosity. They lift the burden of difficult decisions from those you love.
Act now.
Please be sure to visit the Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance hosted by Penny Nickel at Money and Values. This is always a carnival well worth reading, as the number of posts tends to be manageable, and the topics are interesting questions we all grapple with in different ways, rather than repeating personal finance how-to tips we may have heard before. In this edition, I particularly enjoyed Rich Minx's post on "What Would You Do for Money," as well as "Happy Birthday from Hub Cap Heaven," by Money Changes Things. My post "Deep, Weighty Money Decisions" was also included.
Labels:
carnivals
I was eating lunch yesterday and went off into a little money meditation space-out... I was having a slice of pizza with chicken and bacon on it. Normally I get a plain slice, and find myself thinking I shouldn't always be so boring. But whenever I get some fancy slice with toppings on it, it's never all that satisfying, and I find myself missing the cheesy goodness of the plain slice I could have gotten for about $1.50 less.
So I'm not sure it really relates, but from thinking about pizza, I made some kind of mental leap into thinking about my job. My company pays me quite a good amount of money. What are they paying me for? Are they paying me for my skills at what I'm good at? Or are they paying me to do things that I'm not especially good at?
I've taken those Meyers-Briggs personality tests in the past, and found them annoying, but I was always fascinated, if somewhat perturbed by the results. My personality type is supposedly that of a person who should basically be sitting in a room alone all day, making numbers balance on a spreadsheet. But am I an accountant? No-- instead, a lot of my job involves managing people, going to meetings, making presentations. Does that mean I'm in the wrong job? I don't think so.
I think I am pretty good at some of the things I do in my job. I can make presentations confidently. I have good ideas sometimes and am not afraid to speak out with them in meetings. I am kind of naturally introverted, but it doesn't mean I can't present myself well in business situations. I can be outgoing and charming and diplomatic-- it's not like I'm some troll they need to hide in the back room! But my job also does involve a lot of numbers and analysis, and that is one of my strengths.
As for managing people? I'm not sure I'm all that great at it. I compare myself to others and think I may be too hands-off. I work with adults and expect them to behave like adults, so I tend to feel confident that they can work independently. I don't like to micro-manage, and perhaps sometimes that is a good thing. But there are times when I should micro-manage a little more than I do. I wonder if it has something to do with my not being a parent-- I've noticed my co-workers who are parents, particularly moms, seem to be very hands-on managers. I doubt that having kids would change my management style-- it's more that my personality is ill-suited to managing employees for the same reason it's ill-suited to managing children!
How about you? What is your employer paying you for?
One year ago today, I posted about the costs of getting a tattoo. Just a few days ago, there was an article in the NY Times about tattoo removal:
A tattoo that cost several hundred dollars could require several thousand dollars and many laser sessions to remove.As with many financial issues, you'd better make the right decision the first time around, as a mistake will cost you more in the long run!
Mary is on the Amtrak Acela train. She goes to the cafe car and buys the cheese & cracker plate and some wine, for a total of $8.50. She gets 4 pieces of cheese, and 4 packages of crackers. 2 of the packs of crackers have 3 crackers each, and the other 2 packs have 2 crackers each.
Questions:
1) Into how many pieces must Mary cut the cheese in order to have an equal amount for each cracker?*
2) Can you think of a good joke to make about "cutting the cheese?"
3) How much wine did Mary get? It must have been cheap. Should she go get a couple more?
, Everyday Math for Dummies
, All the Math You'll Ever Need, or Secrets of Mental Math, for tips and tricks and explanations of solutions to math problems.Yesterday was this year's first time I observed one of my favorite summer rituals: a trip to the beach at Coney Island. Over the years that I have been going there, I've observed a variety of gradual changes: the renovation of the subway station, the addition of little wooden gazebos along the boardwalk, the birth of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the disappearance of Tiny Tasha (the world's smallest woman).
This year I was disappointed to discover that the fruit smoothie that cost $5 last year is now $6. I couldn't help but see that as a sign of things ahead. Of course there were far more obvious signs of what is ahead, namely two enormous empty lots fenced in by plywood, where there used to be mini-golf, go-karts, a water ride and batting cages. Thank you, Mr. Developer who is bringing us the "future of Coney Island!" It's loads more fun already!
You can read about the evolving development plans in this article in today's Times. These kinds of things are always a tough issue. If the developer's plans are carried out, it will certainly bring more jobs to neighbors that need them, and it will spiff up an area that can only be called "seedy." But is that enough? Will it still benefit all the people who go there now, in search of cheap fun and a free way to cool off? Will the city pour millions into subsidizing the profits of a developer, and during the years it takes to build all these new hotels and things, will the area be a blighted construction site?
My main worry is that they'll tear down a lot of stuff, and then the economy will go south, the funding will dry up, and we'll be left with a big empty scar where there used to be a fun, funky, vibrant amusement zone. At least there will always be a beach, but I think right now Coney Island works really well because it is so democratic. Anyone who can afford at least a subway fare can get there, so all kinds of people go. There's music, food, entertainment, and everyone can just relax and have a good time. The worst thing I've ever heard of happening to anyone was something that actually happened to me: a crazy homeless person knocked my beer into my lap after I truthfully said "No, sorry," to the question "Do you have a quarter?" (Yes, ok, I did have a dollar, if not any coins... yet another thing to consider about whether to give money to panhandlers.)
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens, and at least they're not planning to stuff the whole place full of luxury high-rise condos anymore. But it will never quite be the same place I fell in love with. If you've never been to Coney Island, I highly recommend going there soon. Don't just stay near the amusement park-- try walking the entire boardwalk, up towards Sea Gate and down through Brighton Beach. You'll see a fascinating mix of old and new, lively and moribund, shiny new condos reputedly occupied by Russian mobsters, and empty, overgrown lots acting as garbage dumps, all along a couple of miles of wide, sandy beach. And then ask yourself what you would do to make it better.
Labels:
new york,
news,
real estate
The 2nd anniversary edition of the Carnival is posted at Get Rich Slowly-- everyone who submitted was asked to choose their very best post of the past two years, so it's really a great collection. It's hard to pick one favorite post out of almost two years of blogging, but my Rule #16 was my submission. Now I have to go back to reading the other posts, and watching the money-related music videos that DJ-JD threw in as an added bonus!
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carnivals
A while back, I wrote a post called "We Want to Be Alone, about how a lot of our spending these days is driven by the desire to isolate ourselves from others. Well, here's a great example of that: Headphones to Shut Out the World. In his New York Times column from yesterday, David Pogue writes about what has become a de rigeur accessory for many travelers: expensive headphones that provide a true luxury: quiet on an airplane, or wherever you might want it.
These have been around for a few years, starting with the original Bose models priced at about $350. That is a lot to pay for peace and quiet! So Pogue takes a look at some of the competing headphones that have since been introduced, to try to find the best bang for the buck. Or perhaps that should be the least audible bang for the buck.
His conclusion: the cheapest headphones, the $40 JVC HA-NC100
But the next lowest priced models, the Panasonic RP-HC500 T at $100 (Yahoo shopping's lowest price is $114), and the Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7
I'm not planning to buy noise-reducing headphones for myself, but I've considered getting them as a gift for a good friend of mine who is a writer and finds noise really distracting when she's trying to work. $300 was too much for me to spend on such a present, but at $100 or so, I might just do it.
Labels:
bargains,
price comparison,
shopping,
technology
Bada-Bing Budgeting was featured in the Carnival of Satire this week, along with many other amusing reads, none of which seem to remotely relate to personal finance except this one: Hillary Announces "Single-Payer Everything" Plan . But check it out anyway!
One of the neat things about blogging is to see how people have found my site. I get a lot of visits from random Google searches, and it just fascinates me that I am in the top 10 results for a wide variety of weird things (as well as some relevant financial things). I previously posted a selection of them, but here are some more recent bizarre search terms:
James Brown net worth (I was actually really excited to hit #2 for this one!)
witty comments to write on wedding cards
Maurice Villency lawsuit
hairy man shower jealous
mouse poop in the walls toxic
hear no evil see no evil feel no evil (uh, what part of its body is that 3rd monkey covering?)
my Ghanian wedding
dancing black in web mortgage ad
mobster wear pinky rings
evil dominatrix
Of course the last one is my favorite, as it relates to one of my favorite posts, Rule #11!
This is a classic New York money issue: how do you react to subway panhandlers? The other night, I was on the train and saw a regular panhandler who sings in the hope of a few coins. He's actually pretty good, I think, and does a snazzy rendition of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" while tapping out the beat with his cane. But the other night, he abruptly switched from one of his standards into this gem:
If you want my bodyHe altered the melody slightly in a way that made the song sound plaintive, and almost wholesome, but regardless of that, there was no getting around the fact that those words were being sung by a scrawny, almost toothless, at least pretending to be blind, kinda dirty, probably homeless old guy on the subway. As he made his cane-tapping way down the car, I couldn't wipe a big smile off my face, though I kept looking down at my book. When I dared to peek at others around me, I realized another young woman sitting across from me was hiding her face and trying not to crack up, and other people nearby were having the same reaction.
And you think I'm sexy,
Come on sugar, let me know.
If you really want me
Just reach out and touch me
Come on honey, tell me so...
The latest Carnival is up at Getting Green. Next week is the 2nd anniversary edition, hosted at Get Rich Slowly-- learn more here.
Labels:
carnivals
This past Sunday's NY Times Magazine Money issue was full of great stuff. An article called The Class-Consciousness Raiser particularly interested me:
She had already explained why rich people don’t eat casseroles, why poor people hang their pictures high up on the wall, why middle-class people pretend to like people they can’t stand. She had gone through the difference between generational poverty and situational poverty and the difference between new money and old money, and she had done a riff on how middle-class people are so self-satisfied that they think everyone wants to be middle class.Interesting... why DO poor people hang their pictures high up on the wall? But more importantly, how will knowing the answer to that question help anyone?
, has been in the top 50 on Amazon for the last couple of days. Payne has made millions by doing seminars for teachers (and selling related products) to help them understand students who come from poverty. Her fans think she is doing great things. Her detractors say that her work is anecdotal, not researched, and that she is just perpetuating harmful class stereotypes.
, some of which focus on class/money differences at the office, and in relationships. I have always had a pet peeve about pictures hung at inappropriate heights, and when I moved in with a long-ago ex-, whose family background was a notch down the income/education scale from mine, I got really bossy about deciding where things should be hung, and always found myself insisting that they be lower! So for all that that detail seemed a little ridiculous, it definitely caught my interest! Perhaps there is a grain of truth in these stereotypes...You have to be popular, you have to be in style-- in order to be popular you have to be in style, so to achieve popularity, you have to have a lot of clothes, a lot of shoes. My parents used to give me the money, but they saw how I got out of hand with my spending, so I had to get a job and pay for everything myself. Sometimes it can go close to $700, $800 a month, just on clothes.Perhaps I am just over the hill and naive, but I thought most teens would at least give some lip-service to the idea that popularity isn't everything, or at least that popularity can be determined by factors other than one's clothes! But I guess this kid was just being honest about it. Unfortunately, ever since the story came out, the guy has probably been ridiculed by all his classmates for breaking the rule of cool by being too nakedly ambitious in his quest for popularity, while the other popular kids suddenly insist that insouciance and panache are all that really matter...
Labels:
news,
poverty,
social class
No-spoiler alert: This post is NOT about the final episode of the Sopranos.
I'd never heard the term "Brokester" until several months ago, when I read a New York Times article titled Some Made Men Struggle to Make Ends Meet:
Some mobsters reap millions from rackets, and in some cases from legitimate enterprises, but many struggle to maintain a middle-class existence, and some are routinely broke....
The archetypal Hollywood image of a wiseguy with prodigious appetites, swaggering in a finely tailored suit with a diamond pinkie ring and a fat roll of 50s, conceals the more nuanced reality of mob economics, according to some prosecutors, federal agents, organized-crime experts and a few mobsters. Crime figures are not immune to ordinary financial burdens and woes, like struggling to make car payments and finding money for groceries.
No self-respecting mobster wants to be seen as a brokester -- nor would he want his peers to think he struggles to keep up with his middle-class suburban neighbors. But the pressure is great as well to keep up appearances as a successful criminal. Mobsters have even been known to borrow money from loan sharks to throw it around on the street -- and to pass it up as tribute to superiors -- while at the same time scrimping in the privacy of their home.
Labels:
fun
What is the "Hispanic Package?" Hint: it has nothing to do with Marc Anthony in tight pants.
It's actually a special program offered for around $3,000 and up by Brown's Christian Funeral Services, in Arkansas, which to me illustrates one of the fascinating things about the business world in America: its ability to find niche markets and make money out of them. As explained in this NY Times story, thousands of Mexican immigrants (legal and illegal) die in the USA each year and repatriating their bodies has turned into a new specialty within the funeral industry.
“For Mexicans, the bonds of the family unit are very strong,” said the Rev. John Brown, who ministers to Hispanics at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Conway.... “The bond is broken when they go to work in the United States. It is restored in death.”
In Mexican immigrant neighborhoods throughout the United States, collection boxes to help pay for the repatriation of a body are placed in grocery store windows....Mexican consulates negotiate discounts with funeral homes, and help in other ways. There is a clear benefit for Mexican politicians to be seen helping migrants in their final homecoming, spurring some Mexican state governments to help, too. The government in the state of Michoacán promises to pay for the transport of returning bodies from any point in Mexico to the deceased’s hometown in Michoacán.
Inevitably, haggling arises. The Mexican foreign ministry authorized the consulate in Little Rock to pay some $20,000, nearly half of the consulate’s budget this year for body transfers, to cover the full cost of transporting to Mexico City the bodies of seven illegal immigrants from Oaxaca who died last month in a highway accident in Oklahoma....
Agustín García, who runs Funerales García in Mexico City, has a large share of the mortuary trade from the United States by visiting funeral home conventions there to pick up business on the receiving end.
“I have arrangements with 150 funeral homes all over the United States,” Mr. García said. “I receive about 2,500 bodies a year. I receive them in Mexico City and take them anywhere in Mexico....”
For illegal immigrants, some of whom pay $2,000 to $3,000 to be smuggled across the border through the Arizona desert, the return trip in a coffin can be more expensive than the journey into the United States.Typically, the cheapest “Hispanic Package” at Brown Christian Funeral Services in Little Rock, which includes pickup, embalming, dressing, a $660 coffin, the shipping container and airfare, costs $3,444. The funeral home offers a discounted package for those who are subsidized by the consulate. But during holidays, when the airlines are full, it costs an additional $688 for airfare.
Labels:
news
If you do, check out Make Your Nut's Personal Finance Haiku Challenge. Anyone can submit a haiku on any personal finance topic, and they'll be judged by readers of the site. Entries are being accepted until midnight on Friday June 15th and the winner will receive a $20 cash prize.
I just love contests, so I'm going to submit one of these:
Sad, lonely checkbook:
Blue pages, rarely torn out.
I pay online now.
No one saves money,
All so people can keep up
With someone named Jones.
Live within your means:
Sounds so simple, but try it
On minimum wage.
A reader emailed me a link to a fascinating photo-essay called "What the World Eats," in which 16 families from around the world are shown at home with a week's worth of food, and the amount of money they spent on it. Take a look!
You might be surprised at some of the photos, which were taken from a book called Hungry Planet
They seem to drink a lot of beer! Ok, so that is not the surprising part of the series. What surprised me was that families in a lot of countries seemed to be spending between US$150-200 a week, in the U.S., Poland, and even in Mexico and China. Of course, what we don't know is how each family compares to the median income in that country. Most of the families in the photos would probably look more or less "middle class" to American eyes, but some are probably quite wealthy compared to others in their countries.
What I also found interesting was the different kinds of food each family ate. The Mexican family apparently drinks about a dozen two-liter bottles of Coke in a week. But they eat loads of fruits and vegetables. The Americans and Brits, on the other hand, have a much lower proportion of fresh produce, and more meat and carbs. In all but the poorest countries, there is at least some evidence of Coke, McDonald's, KFC, or Burger King within the week's eating.
Who were those poorest countries? Bhutan at about $5 a week and Chad at $1.23 were the bottom of the list. The difference in money spent is not nearly as striking as that in the actual volume of food when you look at the photos.
I will certainly look at my kitchen a bit differently when I go in there to cook dinner after finishing this post. I have spent an average of about $131 per week on food year to date, but aside from my mother's 3-week visit when I was doing a lot of entertaining, that was all pretty much for one person. And I think I spend less than most people at my income level in this city. I'd love to see a version of this photo essay comparing a variety of New Yorkers... but it would be harder to photograph them with their groceries, since people here eat in restaurants so much!
Thanks again to Katrina for sharing the link!
Oh, life is so fraught with anxieties and dilemmas that have to do with money. Here's a story illustrating the kinds of decision-making that keep the little cogs in my brain turning, turning, turning...
This past Wednesday, as I usually do, I bought a banana from a street vendor who is usually set up near my office. I always think of him as "The Bananaman." The way things usually go is that I've just bought my bagel and coffee from a nearby deli, and while paying for that, I set aside 25 cents to pay for my banana. But on Wednesday, I didn't have enough coins to make it work. I had over a dollar in change, but the thing is, I had a few quarters, and now that I do my own laundry in coin operated machines, I am always desperately collecting quarters wherever I can find them since I never seem to manage to get to the bank to buy a whole roll. So as I'm counting my change, I'm thinking that I really need to do laundry, and that if I give the Bananaman one of these quarters, I won't have enough. Setting aside the quarters, my nickels, dimes, and pennies amount to 24 cents. How frustrating!
As I approach the bananaman's stand, which I suppose I should call The Bananastand, I go back and forth as to whether I should just give him a quarter or ask him to accept 24 cents. I mean, people are always doing the take a penny/leave a penny thing, and of course the value of a penny is negligible these days, and they should just be abolished anyway. But I can't help feeling that it is presumptuous of me to just think I can pay the Bananaman less than his stated price. But I really want to do laundry!
So I decide to just go for it, with a little white lie: "I only have 24 cents today, can I owe you a penny til tomorrow?" The Bananaman knows me, so of course he says not to worry about it. I thank him, head to my office, and record my breakfast spending in Quicken as $2.84 instead of the usual $2.85.
On Thursday, I repeat the whole process, but while I'm sorting through my change at the deli, digging through the quarters that are in there because I never did end up doing laundry, I discover that I don't have a penny to repay my debt to the Bananaman. I hate owing people money, no matter what amount! I don't want the guy to think I'm taking advantage of his generosity and kindness and just forgetting my promise to pay him back. I buy a banana with a quarter, and don't mention the penny. I doubt he thinks of it at all, but I slink away, feeling dirty.
This morning, just a short while ago, I dug through my wallet, which is now bulging with quarters and assorted other coins that I really, really should have used to do laundry last night. Happily, I found 3 nickels, a dime, and a penny. I said good morning to the Bananaman, carefully selected a banana from the Bananastand, hummed a tune by Bananarama, wished my name was Roseanne Rosannadanna, and then handed the guy 26 cents. I didn't remind him about the penny I owed him, but I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
But just thinking about it how, I am wondering if maybe I should have pointed out that there was a penny in there-- what if he threw it all in his coin jar without noticing? What if he later remembers that I stiffed him for a penny and thinks "that b*tch never paid me back?" But it's not like I can say something to him next week like "hey, you did realize I settled my one-cent debt on Friday, didn't you?" Should I give him another penny next week and pretend I didn't do it today? Should I just try to forget about it? Will I be haunted by a shadow of doubt for the rest of my life? And when the heck am I going to manage to do my laundry?
This month's expense recap pointed out one of the confusing things about how I track my savings. I kind of look at it two ways:
One is the overall bottom line. Total income minus total expenses, equaling a net of $36 saved for May. "Expenses" are defined as money I spent that no longer belongs to me in the form of cash or investments. Since my 401k contribution still belongs to me, it's not an expense.
But my second way of looking at it is more useful to me in some ways. I have a spreadsheet where I take my gross spending and expenses and then break out things that sort of "don't count"-- I subtract taxes and business expenses that will be reimbursed, and back out the 401k. What I really want to look at is how much cash I deposited in my savings account, and how much my controllable expenses are. To me, this is a good reality check. I can't spend my retirement savings or home equity or unrealized stock market gains, so I like to pretend they're not there. I see my 401k contributions as a baseline of necessary savings-- but on top of that, I set myself a goal of saving additional money from what is left of my net paycheck.
I set up a spreadsheet that allows me to enter a few numbers from a monthly Quicken summary and look at the results. Here's this year's spreadsheet so far (click image to enlarge):
This allows me to see what I "really" spent each month. I also break out major items like housing, food, and fixed costs like my base monthly cost for cell phone, newspaper subscription, and internet access, so I can see what I spent on "other," which is what I really need to be vigilant about. I note any unusual large expenses that might skew a particular month, and calculate running totals and averages at the bottom. It's kind of a quirky way of doing it, I guess, and I could probably simplify the spreadsheet, but it tells me what I need to know. I highly recommend the exercise!
As you can see, when looking at my cash flow in this way, I'm not exactly behaving like Miss Thrifty! In my grid for 2006, my average monthly total savings in column N was about $1,700 when I backed out extraordinary items like my bonus and condo downpayment. This year the average is $1,229, which is entirely due to 401k savings. Also, I didn't back out my bonus this year, so it skews higher than it should. When you look at the "paycheck cash saved" column, I'm at -$477, vs. $476 in 2006. (Kind of weird how the numbers are almost a mirror image!)
As I always try to remember, it's expensive to move into a new home. For me, it's been particularly so because of the way I had lived for most of my adult life. After living either with someone else who already owned a lot of furniture, or in tiny studios of my own, I made it to my late 30s having bought very little furniture, so now I am catching up! And in general, I am in super-nesting mode in my new place. I just love it, and of course I want it to look nice and be comfortable and well-organized. Which is all very well and good, but at a certain point, I have to acknowledge that I can no longer afford it.
Trying to have a perfect home all at once was what got my mother into over $50,000 worth of credit card debt within a single year. I am definitely her daughter in many respects! Luckily, I have a more stable income than she did, and I am more financially secure and independent in other ways. So is it ok for me to spend this money, or not? What is the right balance point for me? Since I've covered most of the major items on my wish list, I think it's time to put the brakes on for a while. I can't let myself get into the habit of buying everything I want and throwing frugality to the wind. I have to remember that I have much larger fixed housing costs now, so I have to be more careful about what I spend on other things.
In the near future, I'll be looking more at how I'm doing vs. my overall budget and where I'm at in relation to long term retirement savings goals. Now that the dust is starting to settle after moving into my new home, it's time to refocus and make sure I am on track!
Labels:
budgeting,
excel charts,
goals,
saving,
spending
As detailed yesterday, the nice increase in my net worth this month didn't have much to do with my income vs. expense ratio:
Total Inflows, including salary, interest, etc. were $7,772.80
As for the ugly outflows:
Housing $1,810
This is still somewhat higher than it should be because of the property tax escrow thing that needs to be adjusted. But sometimes it still blows my mind that I spend this much on my apartment, vs. the $850 my old studio cost me. Especially when you add the following, which wasn't an issue in my old place:
Gas & Electric $204
That is more than my average monthly cost, as the gas bill only comes every other month.
Payroll Taxes $1,904.88
Business expense $301.49
This at least should be reimbursed soon.
Clothing $331.69
When I discover that the Gap has lovely, soft low-rise khakis that fit me perfectly, I have to buy about 5 pairs. Plus some t-shirts I don't need.
Dining $527.93
Another month where I'm under budget! Yay!
Education $41.00
Don't I sound smarter than I did last month?
Entertainment $5.41
Just Netflix.
Gifts Given $533.64
This was mostly a long-overdue $500 savings bond given to my nephew as the start of a college fund.
Household $1,296.76
This includes miscellaneous things like laundry, but is mostly the new mattress I bought and a few other home items.
Medical $97.42
Misc $229.17
Subscriptions $55.45
This includes internet access and the newspaper.
Travel $308.00
Just commuting and a family visit.
Telephone $89.78
Another area where I have managed to be under budget lately.
Total Outflows $7,736.60
Net Inflows/Outflows $36.20
I'd really like to be saving more than $36 a month! Which I actually did, if you back out the business expenses. And I keep telling myself I had some atypical things this month, mainly the $500 gift and the mattress, and the clothes. But still, that bottom line number was kind of scary!
I need to do some analysis soon on year-to-date monthly averages vs. my budget and make sure things are still in line!
Labels:
income,
monthly recap,
spending
As of May 31st, my net worth was $344,102.13. I'm less than $6,000 away from my year-end goal, so I think I'll have to revise that and challenge myself a bit more!
Here's how it breaks down:
Cash, including savings and checking accounts and CDs: $30,030.46
That is starting to feel like kind of a lot to hold in cash, even though about $10,000 is in CDs I can't immediately access without penalties. Assuming my monthly expenses will soon settle into more normal patterns, I think I may put some of this money into mutual funds and hopefully make it work a little harder for me.
Retirement, including 401k and Roth IRA accounts: $212,797.34
Stocks & mutual funds (that aren't in retirement funds): $16534.18
Bonds: $4482.40
This may be a little low, as it's been a couple of months since I checked the current values online.
Home Equity: $82,677.27
This is what I determined to be the present value of my condo minus what I owe on my mortgage. I haven't adjusted the value of my condo since first coming up with it after my closing: it's more than I paid, but may be less than it could sell for, if other prices in the neighborhood are any indication. But it's a moot point, as I don't intend to sell or try to borrow against it any time in the near future.
Credit Card: -$2419.52
That balance is always paid in full each month.
My net worth has increased by about $31,330 this year, despite the fact that I've been spending money like a madwoman, and am actually in the red by about $2,300 in terms of spending more than I earned in my net paycheck. How'd I pull off that neat trick? It's all the market, and the fact that I steer 18% of my gross pay straight into my 401k.
My 401k contributions total $8,528 year-to-date. Yet my retirement accounts are worth $31,388 more than at the end of last year. So that is $22,860 in interest, dividends and unrealized gains. Of course the market could take a downturn and it could all evaporate, but it does nicely illustrate the point that having money makes you more money.
So what about my goal for the end of the year, up til now set at $350,000? I'm going to think about that and post a new one when I do a mid-year recap next month.
Back when I was interviewed for the Money Blogger Podcast, I was asked why I chose to blog, and I seem to remember giving some very convoluted answer. I still think about the question-- why am I doing this? Maybe the question is more why did I start doing this-- now that I'm in the midst of it, I enjoy the interaction with commenters and other bloggers I've gotten to "know," and it's great to have the stimulation of doing some kind of creative writing almost every day. It's also been really flattering to have been mentioned in some national press. Most of all, I find it incredibly rewarding to have people say they find this site helpful, or that it has inspired them to try to take control of their finances, or in a few cases, even start a blog of their own. That is the kind of thing that keeps me going, but before I started writing this site, I had no idea any of that would happen.
But if I had to explain to someone what I actually do here, it would sound a little weird: I write about money. Everything about my own money, and other people's. News about money, funny stories about money, weird things about money, thoughts about how to manage money, and tracking my own acquisition of money. It sounds like all I care about is money, but that certainly isn't true. I don't let money rule my life, but that's like saying I don't let my bones rule my body-- it's there in everything, underlying every decision and interaction I make.
This is not a blog about "getting rich." It is about trying to live within one's means, and about working towards sensible financial goals. I'm doing it the slow and steady way, and trying to find a balance between enjoying life now and building financial security for later. I don't make any claims to be extremely frugal, especially career-savvy, a brilliant investor, or any kind of entrepreneur. I could measure myself against some yardsticks and be considered a financial flop (see Rule #16). But in other ways, I think I'm doing pretty well. I have made a good start on retirement savings, I've managed to buy a home, and I manage to enjoy at least a smidgen of the cultural wealth this city has to offer.
My goal is not to have to worry about money. I'm not quite there yet, and in some sense I suppose I will always worry about money. But there is a difference between caring about and managing your finances, and lying awake at night wondering how you're going to pay your bills. And at this point in my life, I don't have to do that, which is great. Instead, I lie awake at night thinking "it would be cool to do a post analyzing the taxes I've paid over the last 15 years," or "maybe I should take a series of photos of people reading finance books on the subway," or "oops, I forgot to put my net worth back in the sidebar when I changed my template..."
Labels:
blogging,
living within one's means
Just a reminder that this site is now published at www.myopenwallet.net.
You should be redirected automatically from the old blogspot domain, but this doesn't seem to work with some versions of Internet Explorer, so please update any links and bookmarks to the new URL: http://www.myopenwallet.net
Labels:
blogging
A while back, I blogged about having had to take my Dad to the emergency room. I spent much of that time thinking how glad I was that I am healthy and not accident prone, and thereby not likely to have to spend much time in emergency rooms myself. They aren't fun places to be.
Well I must have jinxed myself, as I had a little episode recently where I had to go to an emergency room! It didn't turn out to be anything serious, but it was a little scary for a while. But even in my moment of distress, I couldn't help noticing that an emergency waiting room is an interesting place for personal finance observations.
First of all, the TV was tuned to some station, I guess it was Court TV, that was showing some kind of People's Court-type program, and the cases had to do with stupid things like people suing each other for $500 because they couldn't agree on who was supposed to pay for them to go to Las Vegas on their third date. This was interspersed with advertisements for home equity loans and ambulance-chaser law firms.
The people at the hospital seemed rather surprised that I had medical insurance, and that I didn't particularly want a note from them telling my boss that I should be excused from a few days of work. I suppose it makes sense-- plenty of people without insurance probably go to emergency rooms since they don't have any particular doctor to go to, and many probably work at the kind of job that isn't too tolerant of absences.
So I'm glad I have a good job that treats me like an adult regarding absences, and provides me with decent insurance... but I'm a little confused about that insurance right now. I just got a bill from the hospital for the emergency visit, as well as a statement from my insurance company.
According to the insurance company statement, the total cost of my emergency room visit was $824.49, which is ridiculous given the minimal amount of attention I got, but fortunately they show the total amount I owe is zero. According to the hospital bill, the total cost of my visit was $413.00, and the amount covered by my insurance was only $313.00, leaving me having to pay a deductible of $100. I haven't yet made any phone calls about this, but I can just imagine it's going to be a ton of fun to untangle.
Labels:
medical
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