Palliative Care

There was an article in yesterday's New York Times that is long but well worth reading, about palliative care doctors and end-of-life treatment and counseling. Aside from one amusing quote about whether it's worth it to spend $400 on Victoria's Secret lingerie, the article itself is a little off-topic for this site, I guess, but in relation to my own life, it hit me hard today. I spoke to my mom last night and the latest info is a little vague but it is now sounding like my dad could be going downhill faster than we thought. And what I'm about to say will sound very callous in this context, but the only silver lining to this cloud is that it now seems very unlikely that we'll have to worry about paying for a nursing home for my dad, as he'll probably go into hospice care, which is covered by Medicare.

So now I just have to worry about other stuff for a while-- getting up there to see him, how long I'll stay, what exactly is happening, and how my mom and sister and I are going to deal with all of it.

NYC Saver's Swap Meets

From the mail bag, here's a neat tip for NYC residents:

8 times a month the ING DIRECT Cafe (968 3rd Ave @ 58th St) hosts Saver's Swap meets. Every Sunday from 1-5pm, anyone can come by the Cafe with gently used home goods, apparel and electronics to swap with other Savers. Every Tuesday all day long we host a Media Edition swap meet where Savers can contribute used books, DVDs, CDs, vinyl records & VHS tapes. All remaining items are donated to the Salvation Army. Here's a link to a NY Post article featuring the Saver's Swaps.

If anyone goes, leave a comment and let us know how it went!

Banks in Poor Neighborhoods

An interesting story from yesterday's New York Times:

City’s Poor Still Distrust Banks

In 1986, when the Lower East Side had just one bank in a 100-square-block area, the high numbers of residents without bank accounts alarmed the city but did not surprise anyone.

In the years since, the number of bank branches has skyrocketed, with the big names compelled to open in underserved areas. Community credit unions have sprung up from Washington Heights to Bedford-Stuyvesant. Outreach workers have taken to the streets to draw the “unbanked” — many of them the city’s poorest, living check to check — into the system and away from the high-fee world of check-cashing and money orders.

But none of it has worked. In Manhattan, long the world’s banking capital, 12 percent of households still do not have a bank account, compared with the national average, 8 percent, according to recently released data by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

You'd think the reason might often be that banks charge high fees for low balances, but many of the people quoted in the article aren't even thinking about that: they hardly ever have any spare money. If they do, they send it to relatives in another country. And sometimes they just don't trust banks not to rip them off. So instead they go to check-cashers who really do rip them off!

Finances and the Family: The Earlier Generations

Thank you all for your advice and kind wishes after reading my last post. Obviously the family finance issue is on my mind a lot, and one of the aspects I was mulling over last night was how these things slide from one generation to the next: my mother's finances will affect mine, and mine could affect my niece and nephew. But what about the earlier generations? How did my grandparents' finances affect my mom and dad?

I've mentioned before that my mother grew up quite poor, with parents who divorced when she was a teenager. Her father was a barber-- he died a while back, and I never knew him well enough to know anything about how he spent what little money he made. Her mother is still alive, and seems to live very simply on a small income, I guess from Social Security, plus occasional checks sent by my mother and her 3 siblings. She is remarried, and lives in a small house that her husband bought. The mortgage is paid off. My step-grandfather supposedly has a few thousand dollars saved, but he won't tell anyone where it is-- as in, it's not in a bank, it's just in a coffee can buried in a closet or something. I don't think my mother's parents ever had much spare cash-- but nor did they have debts, as far as I know.

As for my father's parents, I don't think I've ever gotten around to writing much about them, and they are quite a different story.

My father's father was a lawyer. His parents were poor immigrants so he put himself through college and law school. He may have been the only one of their 9 children who got an advanced degree, though one of his older brothers was also successful and was actually in the House of Representatives for a term or two back in the 1930s. Probably because of this government connection, my grandfather ended up working for the Veteran's Administration. I don't know how much money he made-- a decent amount, I'm sure, but nothing like what we hear about corporate lawyers making today. My father has expressed some resentment about the fact that my grandfather volunteered for the Navy during World War II despite being well over the age where he'd have been drafted-- if he'd stayed home, his political connections might have led to an appointment as a judge, but by the time the war was over, his brother was out of office and had no strings to pull.
My father's mother also came from immigrant parents of what I guess you'd call a white-collar working class background (her father was a machinist but became some sort of supervisor). My grandmother graduated from high school but never attended college. She never worked until after my grandfather retired, when she did some part-time clerical work for her sister (who has an interesting story herself, which I'll have to tell later.)

But here's the kicker: my grandparents had 6 children, my dad and 5 sisters. They put them all through college and may have made some contribution to graduate school/law school costs for at least one or two of them. (3 of my father's sisters have advanced degrees.) Can you imagine paying for all that in today's world, on a middle-class government lawyer's salary? Education just cost less back then, and though all the kids went to Ivy League/Seven Sisters colleges, most of them were able to live at home while going to school, which must have been a big savings. And I suppose my grandfather would have paid for some weddings too, though I imagine they'd have been small.

How else did they make ends meet? My grandparents definitely had a depression mentality, and never threw out a scrap of food. But they weren't crazily frugal-- my grandfather gave my grandmother plenty of jewelry, and he played golf (though at a public course, not as a member of a private country club), and they had a comfortable house in an expensive area. They didn't really travel much, but I remember them taking a couple of winter vacations. I'm sure there were many years when money was tight, but by the time they were retired, they had a nice life.

My grandfather went into a nursing home and lived there for a few years til he died at the age of 90. My grandmother continued to live at home for about 13 more years, with part-time care from an aide for about 2 or 3 of those years. Then she went into a nursing home for about 9 months before dying at the age of 94. In the later years of her life, she gave each of the 6 children a few thousand dollars a year, and after she died, they each got a share of the proceeds from the house-- it sold for about $500,000 at the top of the real estate market, so each of the kids ended up getting over $80,000 in the end. (This inheritance makes up almost 1/3 of my father's current net worth.)

It just boggles my mind that they managed to raise so many kids and live so long and pay for nursing home care yet still not run out of money. My grandfather may have had a really good government pension. Maybe he invested well. He definitely left everything set up for my grandmother after he died, with some kind of annuity in her name. I would not say my grandparents were wealthy, but they were definitely prosperous.

The "American Dream" is for that kind of prosperity to increase in each succeeding generation, not evaporate. Yet that evaporation is what seems to be happening in my family. My parents have savings now, but they'll likely be gone well before they're even in their 80s, and then they'll have to tap the equity in the house. My sister and her husband are in their mid-30s with credit card debt and have probably barely made a dent in retirement savings or college funds for their kids. Our family's situation could be far worse-- some of stories told by commenters on this site make me feel like I have no right to complain. I guess it's just sad to look back at those early generations, on both sides of the family: their hard work after starting from nothing, their frugality, their willingness to live with less. They passed on an amazing gift to us, a gift that went well beyond money itself. I think they'd be sad to see that gift wasted.

Family Stress

I'm writing this after spending most of my weekend feeling some combination of angry and nauseous. My mother called to say that my dad, who'd been doing really well lately, was back in the hospital because he took a fall on the driveway and broke his shoulder. After my mother gave me the medical update we were just sort of catching up on other things. She told me they'd finally finished having the exterior of the house painted and mentioned that she also wanted to expand the downstairs bathroom to add a shower. Although this idea actually makes some sense, there are reasons it may not be possible and I also reminded my mother that we'd had this big discussion about the budget and that she really needed to hold off on any major projects for a while because they're running out of money too fast.

Well, I know it probably wasn't the best time to have mentioned it (though you'd think it was also probably not the best time for my mother to be regaling me with tales of home improvements), and sure enough, Mom kind of blew up at me, saying, more or less, that she didn't care about the money and was going to do these things no matter what I said... that they'd have to sell the house someday and it was important for it to have curb appeal... that she was stressed out from taking care of my dad and that decorating and renovating the house are her only pleasures in life... that somehow or other all the money stuff would work out because things just always do.
I started to remind her that things don't "just work out" and that she would be broke within a few years if she wasn't careful, but I realized I had to just shut my mouth and get off the phone or I'd say things I'd regret.

I was kicking myself afterwards and feeling guilty and doubtful. I felt like there was too much going on and I shouldn't have said anything about money until a calmer time. It's not like I want to harass my mother about her spending. I just want her to have a decent, comfortable life as best she can. And I began to wonder if maybe I was being too harsh. Maybe I'm too conservative, and was not taking into account that some of her expenses will lessen over time. Maybe things would work out.

I was mulling over all this until the next day when my sister ZZ and I were texting each other while she was at the hospital with my dad. I mentioned that our mother had an amazing ability to obsess about the house's curb appeal while her husband was in the hospital, and ZZ texted back:

F'ing serious?? Stupid driveway estimate why hes in hospital

Suddenly I didn't feel so guilty any more and was just angry. One of my mother's home beautification plans was to repave the driveway . Of all the items on her wish list, this was the craziest-- the driveway is fine except for a couple of minor cracks, and spending even a relatively low amount like $2,500 to repave a driveway is just stupid given that she is on track to potentially run out of savings and lose half her current income before she hits the age of 70. But despite telling me she'd hold off, she was apparently forging ahead, and I guess just shopping around for lower estimates. And I guess my Dad must have wanted to see what was going on and talk to the contractor and that's where he was when he fell. I guess my Mom felt guilty about it and wanted ZZ not to tell me how it happened.

I felt like I was in some kind of emotional butterchurn for the rest of the day, but in the end what upset me the most was that I felt my trust had been abused. My mother has had such a checkered history with money, but I used to think my dad was partially to blame for a lot of it. He treated her like a child; he was secretive about their finances, and never gave clear messages as to what they could afford and what they couldn't, other than to constantly complain that my mother spent too much. My mother became convinced that he was a rich miser who was witholding cash just to torture her.

So when my father got sick and I started organizing the family finances, I kept trying to clearly explain things to her. I walked her through all the bank accounts and bills. I drew up a budget and showed her exactly how much their income was vs. their expenses, and how the deficit was made up by drawing on their savings, and how many years those savings would last. And when I re-did the budget a couple of months ago, I sat her down again and showed her exactly what was going on. I didn't just tell her she was spending too much money. I didn't really tell her to do anything. I just explained to her that this was her current reality and that she needed to make some choices, and that if she could make some modest cutbacks now, it would save her from having to make devastating cutbacks later. I thought I could trust her to take this seriously if she felt like she was in control.
But now I feel like I've been lied to and that trust has been betrayed. I'm back to feeling like my mother is a drug addict or an alcoholic who swears they've cleaned up their act but keeps falling off the wagon.

Of course I keep telling myself that it's not MY money. But it's my father's money too, and he is too sick to control anything anymore, and I know that he would agree with me on all this if he had the mental energy to listen to any of it. And ultimately, if my mother really does burn through all her assets including any proceeds from selling the house, which I wouldn't put past her at all, then it will be my money that's at stake because I can't just let my parents starve. And then I see this chain reaction-- I'm trying to save all this money for my own retirement because I won't have anyone else to take care of me, and if that doesn't go according to plan because I'm supporting my parents, then will my niece and nephew be left holding the bag someday because they have to support me? I know that is getting a bit too gloom and doom and I can't imagine it would come to that, but it's hard not to feel angry about all the WASTE. My parents were never rich but they would have had enough money to have a perfectly comfortable retirement, and I don't understand why my mother prioritizes cosmetic enhancements to the house over things that would actually improve her life, like hiring someone to clean the house or help bathe my father.

I really don't know if I'll ever be able to get through to my mother. Part of me wants to just give up and let her suffer the consequences. Part of me wants to stick to my guns and tell her that she'd better not repave that driveway if she ever wants me to set foot on it. And then there are the crazy, desperate plans: could I send a letter to every contractor within a 20 mile radius of home and beg them not to return my mother's calls? Would it be worth the money to hire a lawyer to prove my mother is so insane as to be incompetent so I can take control of her bank accounts and somehow prevent her from doing all these crazy things to the house? But maybe other events will intervene: it's looking more and more like my dad could be in a nursing home soon, which means their money will evaporate a lot faster than even my mother can spend it. Will that be the thing that finally makes her wake up? Who knows... I just don't know how I'm going to deal with this.

Last Summer's Vacation (Yes, It Was Botswana!)

I can't believe it's taken me so long to get this written! Sorry I've been torturing my loyal readers for over a year. But if you think that was bad, get this: I told no one in my family, other than my very discreet sister, that I was going to Africa until about 3 days before I left. My parents tend to be worriers, and I didn't want them to be spending more time than necessary thinking I would a) catch malaria or worse; b) get caught up in Zimbabwean refugee violence or other political turmoil; or c) be chomped on by a lion. In the end, my dad was the more paranoid one, shuddering at the idea of having to be evacuated to a hospital in Johannesburg. My mother, on the other hand, who worries I'll be mugged in broad daylight in NYC, was thrilled to hear I'd be doing a safari and rhapsodized about me following my dreams, living life to the fullest, yada yada... which is actually no surprise when you consider my parents' financial personalities!

So, long ago, I'd alluded to the possibility of traveling with some friends. I'd said a safari was one of those possibilities but I'd initially written it off as being too expensive. After thinking about it more, and thinking about that year's budget, I changed my mind. I didn't know when else I'd have a chance to do this kind of group tour with friends, and I am not a sociable enough person that I wanted to risk being trapped for 2 weeks in the middle of nowhere with total strangers! So I gritted my teeth, signed myself up, and started bleeding money! The initial $500 deposit was just a drop in the bucket!

Package tour costs:
Perhaps if I'd been exploring this on my own, I would have picked one of the cheaper tours that other people I know have been on. But the friends I was going with had used our tour company before and were used to a certain level of travel comfort I guess. And I was okay with that for a trip like this-- I'll explain more about that below. Included in the tour cost was one internal chartered flight, other transport by boat and bus, all game park entry fees, all accommodation and all food and drink except for a couple nights in lodges where some drinks weren't included. All this, for a 13-day trip, came to $5,960.

Travel costs:
I shared a car to the airport with one of my friends-- I think that was about $40. Then there was the airfare-- I had to buy a round trip ticket between New York and Johannesburg, plus one-way flights from Johannesburg to Maun, Botswana on the way there, and from Victoria Falls to Johannesburg on the way back. The total for airfares was about $2,400.
One significant wrinkle was that my travel companion and I decided to book flights on National Air for the Victoria Falls to Johannesburg leg. National, which is basically "Air Zambia," had some kind of crash incident, or a wing falling off, or something like that, which led to their fleet being grounded, which in turn led to their bankruptcy about a week after we booked our tickets. We totally lost the money-- $300 each-- and had to rebook on British Airways for about the same cost. (Per the suggestion of some commenters, we tried to get a refund through the credit card company, but it didn't end up being eligible.)

Lodging costs:
We had to stay one night in a hotel at the Johannesburg airport before continuing to Botswana the next morning. We stayed in a lovely and convenient place for $152 including the cost of round trip van service to the terminal.

Food costs:
Most meals were included, but before we joined the tour, I spent about $20 on dinner in the Johannesburg hotel, and about $100 on lunch and various drinks at the hotel in Victoria Falls. (We stayed at the Royal Livingstone, which was very high-end, and only the room cost and dinner food were included in the tour cost.)

Medical costs:
If you're going to southern Africa, it's recommended that you get shots for yellow fever and hepatitis, as well as a typhoid vaccine and polio booster. (If you've had these before, you may not need them again.) Malaria pills are also recommended. There were no bugs whatsoever at that time of year in Botswana and we weren't doing any swimming, so the actual risk of infection was quite low, but to me, that just isn't something you want to mess around with. I spent $175 on doctor visits and shots, and $125 on medications. Travel medicine is not cheap, and insurance doesn't tend to cover it, though you can claim these expenses against a healthcare FSA. But the good news is that most of this was a one-time expense that won't be needed again the next time I take an exotic vacation to some disease hotspot of the world!

Tips:
It's customary to tip the trip leaders and the camp staff. The tour company suggests amounts of about $100-125 for the trip leader, $80-100 for the assistant trip leader, and $80-100 to be split among the other crew members. The tip amounts seemed like a lot to me at first, but for the length of the trip and the level of service, I ended up feeling like they were justified. We pooled all the tips from our group and then gave them out, so if anyone had wanted to put in a different amount, they wouldn't have had to feel self-conscious about it.

Miscellaneous other related costs:
These costs weren't strictly for this trip alone, but I bought some of those packing organizers, which are indispensable when your luggage is a giant duffle bag. I also bought a pair of binoculars, and a few months before the trip, a new camera. Also, I paid $3 for a SmartCarte at JFK (so annoying, as other airports around the world have free carts.) And I spent about $150 on gifts for people back home.


So what was the trip like? Well, in a word it was fabulous. If you'd asked me a few years ago, I would never have said I would do such a trip. I'm not that big an animal lover, and Africa wasn't at the top of list of places I wanted to visit. But this trip was like nothing else I'd ever done and I can sincerely say it was an amazing experience. There's something about being in such a remote place with wild animals all around you-- it's just glorious. I think part of the reason it's taken me so long to write this post is that I found it hard to put in words how I felt about it.

I don't think this kind of safari trip is for everyone, though. You spend a lot of time driving around on bumpy, dusty, unpaved roads. We spent most nights in tents, and even when we were in lodges, which felt quite luxurious, the amenities are still simple, and there are often limits on hot water and electricity use. Even the lodges have mosquito netting and canvas for parts of their walls, and July was winter in Botswana-- temperatures in the tents were sometimes in the high 40s (Fahrenheit) overnight!

If you're into camping, you'd find it quite easy going-- I'm totally NOT into camping and I still found it very comfortable. You don't have to carry your bags anywhere, the tents are spacious and equipped with cots and battery-powered lamps and shelves for your stuff. Your laundry will be done for you and the staff bring you hot water for a wash basin in the morning, and for a shower in the late afternoon. Each tent has its own bathroom area in the back, with a toilet seat over a pit and shower. The grossness of a pit toilet is greatly made up for by the gloriousness of using it under the spectacular stars and moon at night!

Every morning we'd have coffee and breakfast around the campfire. Lunch would be a picnic most days, usually in a scenic spot with animals grazing not far away. Dinner was in a big dining room tent, or, if it was really cold, we'd move the table out of the tent and onto the dirt so we could have piles of hot coals under our seats to keep us warm! The food was amazing: the cook made everything using pans over an open fire or a dutch oven buried in the coals, and she managed to produce all kinds of fabulous roast meats, stews, soups, homemade breads and cakes and muffins, all of it delicious. At first some of us were a little leery of some of the salad-y items, given the typical recommendation against eating any vegetables that might have been washed in iffy water-- but they used a tank of purified water for everything, and I don't think anyone got the least bit sick. Alcohol was abundantly served, and sometimes we'd even stop for sunset drinks out in the vehicles or even on boats. I had no idea we would eat so well.

The food and the level of service in the camping were a big part of the expense. It's key to point out that we were a group of ten guests. The staff were two guides, the cook, and at least 3 or 4 other crew at any given time. On our game drives, there would be 5 guests and one guide in each vehicle so there was a lot of personal attention. The guides got to know everyone and what they were most interested in, and if someone wanted a particular camera angle for a photo, they'd make it happen. After encountering other groups of 10 or 20 or more people packed into oversized trucks, I started to really appreciate the small, personal scale of our trip. We were on no schedule but our own, so if we wanted to stay out a bit later to chase down a leopard, we could... and did!

If there was any drawback to this trip, it was that there was very little "cultural" component-- it's really all about the animals. If you do a safari in Kenya or Tanzania, part of the trip will involve visiting a tribal village where people are still in colorful traditional garb, but in Botswana, you won't get that. We had a little time to walk around and buy crafts in one small village and there was one touristy town at the end of the trip with some shops and galleries, but otherwise we were quite isolated and hardly saw other people. So don't go if you like to shop a lot, and don't go if you just want to gawk at exotic-looking locals. But on the flip side, the tour guides and lodge staff don't keep their distance-- they sit and talk with you at every meal and hang out by the fire afterwards, so you can actually get to know quite a lot about them. They all spoke excellent English and we learned a lot about the history of the country and what life is like for middle-class Africans, who are somewhat absent from media coverage of the continent. In the end, that was probably of more educational value than visiting a traditional village.

So bottom line, if you've got $9,000 to spend on a fabulous two week experience, a safari is a great way to do it! I'm glad I did it-- pulling the trigger on spending so much was really hard for me, so for once, peer pressure was actually kind of a good thing! But of course I didn't take that kind of spending lightly--to make up for it, this year I'm not traveling at all, except for a relatively inexpensive family reunion trip I have planned for Christmas. There is no rule that says you have to sacrifice all luxuries to keep your financial house in order-- you just have to make the necessary choices to keep your budget in line, and in this case, the trade-off was worth it.

Oh, and did you want to see some pictures? :) Here's a few highlights, and I'll just point out that my camera was just a little compact point and shoot, without all that great a zoom lens.

If You Think $5 for a Slice of Pizza is Bad, How About $50,000 for Hot Dogs?

Read this article:

Hot dog heartache has come to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the Parks Department on Friday evicted a weiner vendor who couldn't pay his $53,558 monthly rent.

Over $50,000 a month for the right to sell hot dogs in a prime spot, right in front of the Met. Wow. Of course this doesn't count any of the other expenses for the business, like the cart, the supplies, the labor...

The whole thing brings up so many questions. First of all, despite the populist outrage that the guy must be getting screwed by the government, the city didn't "charge" him that rent, the vendor BID that amount to win the contract. Did he just wildly overestimate the number of hot dogs he'd sell? He would have had to make $1785 a day just to cover his rent. I don't know how much a hot dog costs at this stand, but since there are few other food options near the Met, I'd assume the hot dogs are very expensive, say $4, which is double what many carts charge. That means he'd have to sell 446 hot dogs just to cover the rent. Maybe round that up to 500-600 hot dogs when you factor in all the other costs of the business. Say it takes 15 seconds at least for the transaction of buying a hot dog, plus an average of 15 seconds between customers-- that means it's 5 hours of steady hot dog sales in a day to make ends meet. Not impossible, perhaps, but certainly ambitious!

In any case, the article doesn't say how much the other bidders offered for the spot, or how much the previous vendor had been paying-- I'd love to know!

The Graffiti Writer Grows Up

An unusual perspective from the NY Times "Entry Level" column:

Teddy Ferrer, 28, is a graffiti writer and a tattoo artist who works at Tuff City, a Bronx shop that combines graffiti, tattooing and a music studio under one roof. Mr. Ferrer uses the nickname — or the a k a, as aliases are termed — PACK in his graffiti....

Getting into the business: As we got older, we needed to get paid. The first time I ever tattooed somebody, I realized I wanted to do it. This one arm is, like, 30 hours of work....

Ending his vandalism: We stopped. We got smarter. Now, a lot of businesses, they give you permission. They look at it as art. They pay these guys thousands of dollars. They fly them out to Germany, Italy, to do their walls. I’m not going to write over people’s property anymore who don’t want it. We realized we ended up paying for it. In the end, we’re still taxpayers.

Youth rebellion vs. money: money wins.

Bad Credit Can Prevent You From Getting a Job

What a catch-22: Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries

Digging out of debt keeps getting harder for the unemployed as more companies use detailed credit checks to screen job prospects.

Out of work since December, Juan Ochoa was delighted when a staffing firm recently responded to his posting on Hotjobs.com with an opening for a data entry clerk. Before he could do much more, though, the firm checked his credit history.

The interest vanished. There were too many collections claims against him, the firm said.

One one level, I can understand the reasoning behind credit checks for employment. If someone makes a mess of their finances, they might make a mess of their job too. But a credit report can't always tell the full story and it ends up reducing a job candidate to a stereotype. A company might just as easily screen out former football players because they might be "dumb jocks," or people who like knitting because they might be more likely to get carpal tunnel syndrome.

How is someone supposed to get out of debt if companies won't hire them because they have debt? But it's certainly another strong incentive to stay out of debt in the first place...

My Life in Transactions

The other night I had dinner with an old friend I'll call "Ace." We were really close back in college, then grew apart for a few years, but reconnected a few years ago and now have a great long distance friendship. Fortunately she comes to New York on business sometimes, and we always have a great time whenever we hang out.

This time, we had dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea. As a side note, it's just amazing how many businesses are turning over in this economy. The first restaurant I wanted to go to had closed. The second restaurant I wanted to go to had closed. But fortunately, its space had been taken over by the third restaurant I wanted to go to, which had moved and expanded.

After finishing dinner, we lingered for a while as Ace sipped a $16 glass of single-malt scotch. I'm usually glad that I do not enjoy such things given the expense, but this time I took a sip and kind of liked it-- uh oh! Anyway, the check came and we all started trying to figure out the bill. Sweetie, who was with us, wanted to use a credit card, as did I. Ace wanted to pay cash, so this led to a bit of befuddled calculating as we tried to figure out how to split the bill on the two credit cards and split Ace's cash, which involved making change, etc. Afterwards, I of course whipped out my Treo and entered the cash received into Quicken. Sweetie made some sort of "oh, there she goes" remark and Ace laughed and asked what I was doing. As I explained my extreme cash tracking habits, she grabbed my Treo and started looking at it.

First Ace was just amused at her own inability to figure out my Treo-- she kept swiping her finger across the screen as if it were an iPhone. But once I showed her how to scroll down, she started making fun of all my cash transactions! Here's some of her remarks:

Whoa, you need to spend less on food! Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast, lunch, lunch, lunch. And were you drunk when you entered some of these?? "HOok?!?!" What's up with that? You have a breakfast problem and a capitalization problem! Wait, you really were drunk, look at this one! "BEer!!" And "HOse thing??" I don't even want to know! Haircut $100, wow, I can't believe you spend that much, but they used to be a band... "Amanda-- French," hmm, who's Amanda French and what are you paying her for? Sweetie, did you know about this? And let's see, Girl Scout Cookies $4... oh, and here's another one where you were drunk, "DUpe keys," ooh, was that so Amanda French can get in? And earrings $4.31? What the hell kind of cheap shit earrings did you buy for $4.31? And windshield fluid, what? You don't even have a car, you must have been drinking it when you made all those typos...

It seemed to go on like that forever. It was just hilarious hearing her spin all these crazy tales about my life out of my misinterpreted cash spending! I'm just glad she didn't figure out how to switch to viewing my credit card transactions!
Have you ever showed your spending records to anyone? Did you ever think about how your life would look to someone who saw them?

Property Tax Escrow Windfall

It's happened again: I got a nice fat check refunding escrow overpayments for property taxes paid by my mortgage lender. How nice and fat? Over $5,000!

In a way, this is incredibly annoying. I tried last year to have my escrow amount reduced, since it was still based on an un-abated property tax estimate. After a couple of phone calls and faxes, I got a nice letter from the bank, basically saying "We have reviewed your escrow amount and made adjustments based on your tax bill. Your new escrow amount is [insert OLD escrow amount]." I got frustrated and decided to ignore it for a while, as I knew the escrow balance had to be reviewed annually anyway, which is what just happened.

But back to whether or not this is annoying, in a way I don't mind. It's kind of how I feel about getting a tax refund: they may have just held onto $5,000 of my money without paying me interest, but the money ends up being forced savings. It's a nice lump sum that was hidden from me so I couldn't spend it. Each month, I budgeted for housing expenses that included that higher tax amount, so to get the money back now is like icing on the cake: extra savings I didn't plan for and a nice bump in my net worth. And given interest rates lately, I really didn't lose out on much-- $75 at most, if I'd had that entire lump sum in my highest-earning bank account for a full year. (Yes, it would have been nice to have it in the stock market for the past few months, but that's just bad timing and there would always be the risk of things going the other way.)

Anyway, I'm glad I have my money back, and glad my monthly payments have been reduced going forward-- I'll still probably get a refund next year, but it won't be anywhere near as large. And in the meantime, I won't be spending my windfall.

Searching for Higher Interest Rates?

Check out this link from My Money Blog. Jonathan gives some great ideas on where to park your cash in order to earn somewhat less than abysmal interest rates!

I've been meaning to do some investigations on this front myself. I've built up a fair amount of cash again and so far, I've just been moving it into my FNBO Direct account, which is earning 1.5%. But I still have smaller amounts that are earning .02%-.06%, which is just appalling. It's less appalling than having lost 20% in the stock market, though!

More on Unemployment Benefits

After writing last week's post about unemployment benefits by state, I checked in with Mortimer to get his take on the subject, as he is still collecting unemployment himself. Here's what he had to say:

Benefits don't change at all based on single/family. It varies by state, so if you work in NJ you get more $ than NY and Mass gives even more $ than NJ (close to $600 per week I believe). Then most states calculate based on your last salary -- I think it's some sort of time frame involved like how much you made over the last 3 quarters. Most folks will get the maximum unless you are making like 30K or less. Max now is $405 plus the feds are adding $25 (not sure how long the $25 lasts). So single person making 200K and a family of 7 making 50K will get the same $405.

Not sure if there is a fair way to do it re families -- they would have to look at household income because you could be a family of 7 with another income in the house. Too complicated. NYS needs to up what it is paying -- they haven't done that in a number of years. They aren't even making inflation adjustments.

And while we're on the topic, there was an article this past weekend about unemployment benefits running out for a lot of people:
Prolonged Aid to Unemployed is Running Out

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

That's pretty scary. There may be some signs of light at the end of the economic tunnel, but stats like that don't bode well. If your job is gone and your savings are gone and you lose your umemployment benefits, what's left? Here's a few examples cited by the article:

Ms. Lampley, 40, who is married with three children, lost her job as a human resources officer in January 2008 and had been receiving $351 a week, which covered the groceries and gas. Even so, she and her husband, who still has work as a machinist, were sinking into debt. Now, still poorer, she feels devastated because they cannot buy their son a laptop to take to college and she cannot give her 9-year-old son money for the movies.

In Ohio, where unemployment is 11.1 percent, Cathy Nixon, 39, a mother of four teenagers from Lorain, has been out of work for much of the time since June 2007, and her benefits — $313 a week — run out in September. Ms. Nixon is already fighting foreclosure and said she feared that when the benefits end, “we’ll be homeless.” She was unable to afford summer camp and baseball activities for her children, despite scrimping on basics.

Raymond Crouse of Columbus operated heavy construction machinery but has found no work since 2007. Mr. Crouse is 72 and receives Social Security but said that was not enough to live on. The $190 a month he has received in unemployment benefits enabled him and his wife to hang on to the house they bought 15 years ago, he said. But with the benefits ending next month, he fears that they will not keep up.

The comments on the article get into quite a debate over some of these quotes, such as whether or not it's trivial to worry about getting a laptop for your child to take to college, or giving a kid money to go to the movies. (A lot of colleges require students to have a laptop these days. But while it sucks to have to deny a child little things they want, saying no to a movie might be a good lesson in reality.)
What if this situation goes on for many years? What do we now take for granted that we'll have to give up? Will we see more extended families living together under one roof? At some point, will our whole definition of middle class life change?

Carnival of Personal Finance

Please check out the latest Carnival of Personal Finance. One of the editor's picks was a post about how to build your own air conditioner! (AC seems to be a very compelling topic for me lately-- let's hope this doesn't mean I'm heading into premature menopause! Yikes!)

A $5 Slice of Pizza??

Yep, right here in Brooklyn:

On Avenue J in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, a small cup of coffee costs $1.39. An 18-stick package of gum is $1.49. And at Di Fara Pizza, the price of a plain cheese slice: $5.

Crowds form at the counter at Di Fara and spill onto the sidewalk. They are not an angry mob, but a hungry one. Some order two slices, for $10, and some, like Frank Mancino, a retired electrician from Bath Beach, Brooklyn, whose girth is a statement about his allegiance to pizza in general and Di Fara in particular, order a whole square pie, for $30.

“Worth it,” said Mr. Mancino, 64, between bites on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s like they dug up my grandma and she made the pie.”

Wow. That's some pretty expensive pizza. I have to confess that I find myself in the "I want to try it" group, as opposed to the "that's outrageous, I'd never go there" group. But I sure wouldn't be getting it for lunch every day at that price...