Conversation With Dad

I had a long phone call with my dad the other night. As usual, we sort of rambled along, discussing music, cooking, health issues (mostly his), and what's going on with our extended family. Somehow, we also got onto the topic of the economic stimulus payments. He said he had gotten the full $1,200 for him and my mom. I told him about my $19.70.
"What?" he said. "Why didn't you get the full amount? Did they make some sort of error?"
"Uh, no, Dad, I just made too much money..."
He seemed quite surprised. He said he hadn't really registered that there were income limits and what they were. He then made some joke about me being "such a fat cat" at which point I had to remind him of the cost of living in this city and that it doesn't go far.
It's funny, I've never discussed my salary in detail with my father. I've alluded to my budgeting, and the fact that a good chunk of my income can be in a bonus. He knows I've made some career moves and gotten promotions. He knows I have enough money that I've never needed to ask him for help. But I guess he probably never thought all that much about how much I might make, and perhaps he'd be surprised to hear the actual number.
For someone who is so worried about his own money, (and so egotistical about always being right!) he rarely gets into a parental advisory role about how I handle my money. When I was unemployed for a couple of months while living back at home after college, he lent me a little money. After I paid him back, we kind of settled into a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of thing: I didn't ask for advice or help, and he didn't volunteer it. Realizing this makes me feel weirdly grown up, and kind of sad. Life seemed less complicated when father always knew best.

People Throw Money at Cute Children

I was just listening to a podcast of a Studio 360 episode from a couple of weeks ago, about the concept of cuteness. I didn't finish listening to it, so I don't know if they discussed cuteness and money at all, but it reminded me of something I'd been meaning to write about, which is that cute children always seem to inspire financial generosity.

One recent example I can think of in popular culture was in La Vie en Rose, the movie about Edith Piaf. As a child, she's trying to help her father as he performs in the street for whatever coins might be tossed his way. It's not working all that well for him, but the minute little Edith starts to sing, everyone puts in a coin or two when the hat is passed. (That example might have more to do with musical talent than with cuteness, as Edith is kind of a sickly little kid, but still...)

In my own life, I have been seeing the effect of cuteness on family finances. My niece and nephew are truly adorable-- I know I am not totally objective here, but they really are incredibly cute, in looks and in personality. One day, my sister and her husband brought them to a local restaurant. When they finished their meal and asked for the check, the waitress told them it had been taken care of already. An elderly couple who had been sitting nearby were so impressed by the kids' charm and good behavior that they paid the bill on their way out, without sticking around to be thanked.

Of course it's not just anonymous strangers whose largesse benefits my sister's family. I've written before about the assistance they receive from my father-- as much as he seems to worry about supporting his own retirement, he pays for the lease on a car that is more or less permanently loaned to my sister, since she and her husband only have one SUV and a motorcycle. He is also paying for my niece's preschool, after finding out that my sister had put the first term's bill on a credit card. And who knows what else he chips in for.
My sister and her husband aren't poor-- though they only have one income, it's probably a fairly decent income to cover basic needs, but they are constantly spending money to go to weddings, renovate and decorate their home, eat out or order take out food, make payments on the motorcycle and their large mortgage, etc. They don't live extravagantly: they live what most Americans would see as a pretty normal middle class life. But they are being subsidized in doing so because people want the kids to have a nice childhood. They could lower a lot of their expenses without hurting their children's quality of life, but given that they are already dealing with paying those bills, no one wants them to cut corners in ways that would affect the kids.

I myself am susceptible to this: I love giving my niece and nephew books, toys and cute outfits. I worry about their future education and have thought about setting up college funds for them. They are just so adorable, I don't want them to be deprived in any way. But I am realizing that I need to be careful about it. I don't want to get all moralistic about my sister's behavior, and it's not my place to withhold money to penalize her for choices I disagree with. But I don't want to be another person who is reinforcing the message that it's ok not to live within your means because someone else will always pick up the tab for your kids' sake.
I know it is tough to maintain a certain standard of living for a family, much more so now than it used to be, it seems. Part of my goal in saving money is to make sure I never have to depend on anyone else for support, and also to be there for my family members if I'm needed, which I suspect I will be. But I'd feel better about it if I knew it was because of true necessity, not just to subsidize certain lifestyle choices. I wouldn't hand my brother-in-law money and say "Hey, don't sell your Harley, here's a little something to help you make the payments on it!" But if I pay for my niece to take ballet lessons just because she looks adorable in a little pink tutu, that is effectively what I am doing.

Anyway, I love my niece and nephew, and my sister and her husband. They're all good people. Hopefully once the kids are older, my sister will start working again and they'll be able to manage their family budget without assistance. But in the meantime, I want to take advantage of these precious years when the kids are such cute little munchkins: I'm going to start bringing them along whenever I go to an expensive restaurant, in hopes that some stranger will pick up the check!

The Cost of Curiosity: Online Genealogy

Here's the weirdest thing I've spent money on lately: I paid $32 for a month's worth of access to Ancestry.com.

This started out rather innocuously. A friend was telling me about her family's small business and I tried to Google it. This led to a couple of results popping up that were from old New York Times articles about her relatives. It turns out that they had an interesting history and were prominent enough at one time to have made the papers, back when they used to publish lists of who'd just come in on ocean liners from Europe and who'd been tapped for secret societies at Yale. The family name was unusual enough that I started to see a chain of relationships, with deaths and marriages, and I sketched out a little family tree.

I told my friend what I'd discovered, and she was fascinated, and knew her other relatives would be interested too, especially her mother. She told me a bit more about their family, but said the traces wouldn't go too far back, as her great-grandfather had supposedly emigrated from Scotland and changed his name when he arrived. But I discovered someone else with his name who I suspected might be his father, and started to be even more curious. I moved beyond the NY Times results and began to look at genealogy sites, and with the limited results brought up by ancestry.com's free search, I thought I'd discovered something. I couldn't stand the suspense, so I registered myself for a free trial membership-- within minutes, boom, I was staring at a passport application from 1920 that proved that my friend's great-grandfather was born in the USA, and that the other man I'd seen references to was his father! Then I wanted to trace the family back even further, but to get access to census records from Scotland, I had to actually pay up front for the world membership. I was gritting my teeth about doing it, but I was dying to find out more, so I went for it, and sure enough I found connections to the family back as far as the 1841 census in Scotland.

I feel like I have a whole new hobby now! I wish I'd been a historian, or a detective or something, as I seem to have an obsessive curiosity and patience for digging through records and searching out possible misspellings of names, etc. I've printed out pages and pages of old newspaper articles, letters to the editor, passport applications, census records, passenger lists for Ellis Island arrivals, old phone directory pages, etc. It is amazing what you can find! My friend and I are going to put everything together in a binder and give it to her mom for her birthday, who I think will be amazed to discover that she had a great grandfather who was here in the USA doing interesting things, rather than being some long lost anonymous person in Scotland.

If you're wondering why I'd do all this for someone else's family, well, it's just because they were way more interesting and easier to trace than mine! And guess what, that's largely because they had more money! I have names of my own ancestors going back a few generations, but when you're looking for people with very common names who had 8 brothers on one side of the family, and 16 siblings on the other (!), it gets difficult, and kind of boring! No one in my family had the money to do any international travel and their social activities weren't noted in the papers, so there just isn't as much of a historical record beyond census data. But it was cool to see my grandparents listed on census sheets when they were little kids, almost 100 years ago!

As for the money I paid to dig into all this? There are some free sources of genealogical data, I guess, but I had a hard time finding any that were actually useful at all. Most are horrible to look at, full of broken links, and very limited in terms of what information they cover, or they just refer you to brick and mortar libraries where you can look at microfilm. Ancestry.com is a piece of cake-- it has a great search tool, and lots of data is aggregated there, with very clear images of the original documents. The $30 was well worth it. If you've ever wanted to know more about your family tree, give it a try!

More on Dealing with Mom

This comment on yesterday's post really struck me:

do you think there's a way to do things differently, so you're not 'enabling' her self-sabotaging spending habits? I mean, we all can learn and change, no matter how old we are. Believing that it's just fine to spend an extra $100 - $250 so you have more time to get ready and put on makeup for a flight -- that's just not in tune with reality, especially in this economy.

This is very true. The idea of spending $200 to have time to put on makeup-- well, it's pretty terrible. Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. I'm worried about my mom-- she is under such stress living with my father, and I think she is really suffering from anxiety and depression. My mother has always been a very cheery person, always trying to see the bright side of things, but she's been so subdued and distracted the last few times I've spoken to her. I think depression is why she is finding it so hard to drag herself out of bed in the morning, and if she still cares about how she looks, maybe that's kind of a good sign.

But I do think my mother would be happier if she could get a grip on her finances and gain a little independence. When is financial "tough love" appropriate? Am I enabling her? What is the right balance between trying to guide her towards more financially responsible habits and trying to just be supportive to someone who is having a rough time? And is there ever a time when it's just "too late?"

That is how I feel about my mother, that it's kind of too late: she's in her mid-60s, she spent almost her entire life taking care of her children and husband, and her own mother, and now her grandchildren too. She wanted to be a housewife and have a husband pay the bills, in the traditional mold. After a life like that, it's a bit of a raw deal to expect someone to suddenly be independent and take care of herself. She's not equipped for it-- it would be like setting a highly-bred toy poodle loose in the wilderness and expecting it to survive on its own. Of course people are not poodles, and my mother, like any human being, can sometimes have surprising resilience. But right now I think she's really worn down.

It always just makes me so sad that she and my dad can't just relax and enjoy this time of their life the way I see the parents of many of my friends doing. I can't help but wonder what went wrong. Where did the money go? Did my father make less money than we thought? Did he not invest what he had well enough? Did my mother really spend too much? Did my dad overspend on his own interests too? Did paying for my sister's and my college education do them in? Did their health problems have a financial impact? Did my parents' marital incompatibility make money just one weapon in their ongoing skirmishes?

I suppose the answer to all these questions could be yes. But how is that so different from other people? I thought my parents did a lot of things right. What did other people do right that they didn't? What can I do right that they didn't?

Mom's Christmas Present

I finally gave my mother her Xmas present-- I sort of gave it to her back in December, when I handed her a box with a slip of paper in it which I had illustrated to look like a fancy gift certificate for a plane ticket to visit her family. But I knew she wouldn't use it right away.
Giving my mother this kind of gift always ends up being a bit more expensive than I'd like, but it seems worth it. It's always a challenge to find gifts for my parents, but for my Dad there are always books and classical music CDs he wants, and my mom usually seems happy with jewelry or a gift certificate to her beloved TJ Maxx. But I would rather give my mom something I know will make more of a difference in her life right now. And since my parents live together in a state of barely contained warfare, a plane ticket for her is actually a gift to both of them, a gift of peace of mind!

Last week, my mom announced that she had figured out dates for her trip and said I could start looking for a ticket for her. Given my mom's destination, I'd always figured I'd just get her a one-way ticket on Jet Blue, and then when she was ready to come back, I'd buy her another one-way ticket for the return. In the past, she's spent more on ticket change fees than the cost of the original round trip! And of course the cheapest ticket for a direct flight was on Jet Blue. But there was only one direct flight, leaving at 8am. My mom said that was too early, as she's not a morning person and has a lot of makeup to put on. So given her constraints of not wanting an early flight, and not wanting any stopovers, her roundtrip ended up costing me over $400 instead of about $250. I was talking through some of the options on the phone with my mom, so she was aware that the gift was becoming rather pricey. At first I was a little annoyed because she just didn't seem to care, but by the end of the whole process she thanked me and sort of apologized for it costing more. She still wasn't entirely thrilled about her return flight being slightly earlier than she wanted (10am!) and said "oh well, I'll probably just end up changing it anyway!" She's on her own for however much that costs!

Part of me thinks, geez, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Mom! If someone gave me the gift of a plane ticket, I might not love the time options but I'd take whatever cost the giver the least money, or offer to make up the difference if there was some reason it really didn't work. But this is my mom we're talking about-- she has always been incredibly generous with me, and everyone else in her life. And she's been having a rough time with my dad over the last few years. Longtime readers may remember the countless posts I've spent agonizing over my mother's debts and spending habits and the family stresses that are rooted in money. I suppose all of that is part of the reason I can't help groaning whenever I have to spend extra money on something, but it's also the reason I have to give my mom a break and just suck it up... until the next bit of family drama comes along!

6 Degrees of Wealth

How close are you to wealth? I was inspired to think about this question by English Major's post about her aunt, who she describes as "... rich. Like, rich rich. Like, lives off her investment income rich."
I thought, wow, I know some people who are well-off but I don't think there is anyone like that in my immediate circle these days. My family are mostly in various tiers of the middle class, and their income comes from working, or their own retirement savings. I can't think of many family members who are likely to have more than 5 figure incomes except one cousin who is a lawyer, one uncle who is successfully self-employed, and the husband of a cousin, who works in the insurance industry. I also have family members who are pretty working class and probably earn well below the US median income (which I believe is around $48,000). If I expand the circle to include friends as well as family, there are a few more lawyers, a Silicon Valley project manager, and a couple other people in the business world who do pretty well, but also a number of people who work in non-profit fields, or low-paying industries like my own.
If I broaden the circle even more, to college acquaintances who aren't really friends any more, then we'd have some bigger money. A bunch of Wall Streeters, one or two people born into wealthy families, a minor TV star, and a few very successful artists and writers. And I'm sure some of them are rubbing elbows on a regular basis with people whose wealth puts them in the stratospheric upper levels of richness. I know for a fact that one person I used to sit next to sometimes in a college class is now married to a celebrity whose earnings are in the millions. Which just seems really weird.
Many personal finance writers talk about how your friends can influence your spending habits. Does having or not having wealthy people around you influence your attitudes about your own wealth? Do you have a financially diverse group of relatives and friends, or is everyone more or less at the same level?

Miscellaneous Updates

Happy New Year, everyone! I've taken a longer than usual holiday from posting this year, due to visiting family and friends. Here's a little report on what I've been up to, as it relates to personal finance:

I had a short conversation with my Dad about whether or not he has a will. He doesn't, which is probably not a good thing for a man in his mid-70s, with serious health problems and a financially irresponsible wife. He does have the name of a lawyer and I offered to visit again and go with him if he wants. I think I've at least goaded him into taking some action and he seemed glad I'd brought it up, even if he doesn't end up involving me in the whole process.

I deposited checks totaling $220, which were Xmas gifts from my parents and great-aunt.

I gasped in horror on New Year's Eve when I saw a TV news report about how much the stock market had dropped yesterday. As I write this, I have not yet updated Quicken to see what the damage was and whether I'll make my year end net worth goal.

I listened to my mother's worries about my sister. My mother, whose own shopaholic tendencies put her in quite a bit of debt, says that my sister is "even worse." She said she advised my sister not to overspend, which I'm sure Sis took as the pot calling the kettle black. Of course my mom always has her own spin on things-- she's worried that my sister's husband, who she adores, will get stressed out by having his earnings eaten up by my sister's spending. Though my sister is a stay at home mom right now, she and her husband discuss and share all the financial decisions. That may not mean he approves every item she brings home from Costco, but my mom is obviously putting their relationship into the context of her own marriage, in which the husband earned the money and controlled all the purse strings. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but I guess to me, it just showed that my mother couldn't see controlling one's expenses as something worth doing for its own sake, but just as a way of making sure your husband doesn't think you're some kind of shrew!

And speaking of Costco, I went there for the first time over the weekend. The friend I went with is a member but doesn't go too often. She said it herself: "the prices are great on lots of basic things it makes sense to stock up on, but every time I go, I always end up buying some high-priced special item and when I check out, I can't believe I've spent hundreds of dollars." And sure enough, between the two of us, we did some damage. My purchases: two pairs of much-needed pajamas ($17), half of a two-pack of those racks that hold brooms ($2.50) and the new Mary J. Blige CD ($10). Her purchases: a mini-stereo system ($150), a book ($15), the other half of the broom holder two-pack ($2.50), some stick-up lights for inside closets, ($10, I think) and jumbo packs of toilet paper, paper towels, AA batteries, Power Bars, and a number of other food items including a $10 shrimp cocktail package that we ate as a post-shopping snack. The total was somewhere over $300. I was glad to have an opportunity to pick up a couple of things I needed/wanted at very good prices, but it's probably just as well I'm not able to shop at Costco more often!

I also did some other shopping, buying a couple of new pillows to replace the flattened out ones currently on my bed, and a new answering machine to replace the 20-year old one that just recently broke. I also picked up a cute little pizza-making kit for kids that was on sale for $2.50 at Bed, Bath and Beyond-- it will be perfect for my niece's birthday.

That's it for the moment-- I'll be returning to my regular posting schedule soon. Now it's time to do some work in Quicken so I can have a net worth update ready for later this week... will I be able to hold to my $350,000 net worth goal? Oh, the suspense!!!

Happy Holidays

I wanted to interrupt this holiday hiatus to wish everyone a Merry Christmas,and a belated Happy Hannukah, etc.

It is a dark and stormy night up here in the northern regions and I'm about to turn in for the night. I have been celebrating Christmas with my family in a drawn-out kind of way: tonight a mini-Christmas with my sister's family and my parents, tomorrow Xmas eve with just my parents, and then Xmas day to be spent with the huge extended clan.

Just to bring this to my constant topic of money, I can say that I have spent more on gifts this year than last-- I just ended up buying a lot more gifts and giving fewer books that I could get for little or no money. Of all the gifts I gave my niece and nephew, I think the most rewarding was actually the cheapest: I got these weird rubber squeezy balls at Pier One-- it's hard to describe but they are covered with mesh so that when you squeeze them, the plastic pops out in multi-colored blobs and it almost looks like a bunch of techni-color grapes. I found them endlessly fascinating and so did the kids-- it turned out to be difficult for their little hands to squeeze them effectively, but they quickly learned to use their feet to stomp on them instead. Best of all, they were only $2 each!

Meanwhile, I can't help observing my sister's household. There are lots of new little decorative touches, and the kids' biggest Santa present is a very expensive desk for doing art projects. I think it was over $400. Yes, it may last for a long time, but I had to wonder if it makes sense to buy something like that for two toddlers who would be just as content to do their fingerpainting on the floor, given that my sister and her husband seem to be racking up credit card debt for all these purchases. Anyway, it's not the time to be snarky about these matters, and I don't really mean to be. It's just hard nowadays to separate the holiday season from its associated frenzy of spending. Especially when young kids are involved, everyone wants to feel like Christmas is full of wonderful, special treats, and that the everyday rules we make about our spending shouldn't apply. I'm no exception-- I think I spent at least twice as much on my niece and nephew as I'd originally intended to. My usual gift-buying thriftiness just goes out the window where they're concerned! But then I get photos like this that remind me it's worth it!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

The Cost of Caring for Elderly Loved Ones

Here's an article worth reading from the New York Times: Study Finds Higher Costs for Caregivers of Elderly:

The out-of-pocket cost of caring for an aging parent or spouse averages about $5,500 a year, according to the nation’s first in-depth study of such expenses, a sum that is more than double previous estimates and more than the average American household spends annually on health care and entertainment combined.

Family members responsible for ailing loved ones provide not only “hands on” care but often reach into their own pockets to pay for many other expenses of care recipients, including groceries, household goods, drugs, medical co-payments and transportation. That nudges the average cost of providing long-distance care to $8,728 a year.

These caregivers, spending on average 10 percent of their household income, manage the financial burden by taking out loans, skipping vacations, dipping into savings or ignoring their own health care.

Here's another interesting aspect:

In addition to the telephone part of the survey, the report also includes detailed information and narrative accounts from 41 men and women who were paid $100 to keep expense diaries over the course of a month. This subgroup — not a representative sample because they were self-selected and were paid — reported sharply higher expenses than the telephone respondents.

The diarists spent an average of $12,348 a year — more than double the annual expenses of the larger, randomly selected telephone sample. In addition, the diarists who lived with their older relatives, spent the most — $14,832 a year, followed by $14,064 for long-distance caregivers and $8,496 for those who lived nearby.

That part may not be representative as far as appropriate survey methods are defined, but I wonder if it's closer to the truth than the average from the broader sample? I am a firm believer in keeping records of expenses, and I tend to think that when people estimate their expenses, they end up underestimating them, as it's easy to forget how much you've spent. Either way, these numbers are pretty daunting.

The Ethicist on Family Handouts

In the Sunday NY Times Magazine, this week's "The Ethicist" column had a question that struck me:

My beloved sister, a human rights worker in Central America, has long received financial help from our parents. I earn enough to support a comfortable lifestyle. May I ask them to make a reckoning of their aid to my sister, subtracting it from any bequest they eventually make her, so that overall, she and I receive equal amounts? — Name Withheld, Albuquerque

The ethicist's answer:

You may ask, but your parents need not comply. This is their money, not funds they hold in trust for their heirs....

However, he goes on to note that

No matter how genuinely you love your sister and esteem her work, if your parents underwrite her over the years, it’s hard not to ask why you should seem to subsidize her life choices. You might also consider that if your parents develop protracted illnesses and need financial help, it will fall to you, not your sister, to assist them.

That rang a bell with me! As I noted on a recent trip home to see my family, my sister has been getting a bit of help, not to mention all the money spent on her wedding. My mother has often joked that because of that, I'll get their house, but I'm not counting on it! I don't mind if my sister's family gets a few handouts-- I look at it as something that gives my niece and nephew a good childhood. But sometimes, when I find myself postponing a purchase because I don't feel I should spend the money, I wish my sister and her husband would share that attitude a bit more. If my parents ever need financial help, I'll definitely be the one left holding the bag! Oh well. I guess that's what family is all about...

Take That, Starbucks!

Can I get a skim semi-decaf eggnog hazelnut creme coffee? Chez Madame X you can!

I had been noticing recently that I was running low on coffee and wondering if I should buy some. I was holding off until visiting my parents-- though I have written a lot here about my total financial independence from them ever since I was a recent college graduate, I have to confess that I've actually been relying on my father for coffee supplies!

My dad is signed up for some kind of monthly coffee shipment from Gevalia. He gets both regular and decaf coffee, but since he doesn't drink coffee all that heavily, he had ended up with a growing stockpile, especially of regular coffee. He asked me if I wanted some-- since I was starting to run out of some coffees he'd given me for Christmas one year, I said yes, the result being that I haven't actually spent money on ground coffee for at least 2 or 3 years now! (I only drink 2 cups of coffee per week at home, sometimes even less.)
Unfortunately, my dad cut back on his Gevalia subscription and didn't give me any the last time I visited. So the last couple of weekends, I kept watching the supply dwindle but was reluctant to buy more. Should I just switch to decaf? I had plenty of that. While searching my cabinets, I also realized that I had three little tins of coffee that I had gotten as a Christmas present from my great-aunt. Each one is probably about a pot's worth of coffee, and they have Norman Rockwell paintings on them.

On a side note, aren't great-aunts wonderful for this kind of thing? Mine is 94 years old, and she's given me some fun Christmas presents over the years. My favorite was the set of four glasses, each decorated with a picture of a different Massachusetts Revolutionary War site. Three of them have broken over the years, but I treasure the one that's left!

Back to the coffee tins, one was just regular coffee, one was Eggnog flavored, and one was Hazelnut Creme. Last weekend, I decided I could extend the life of my nice Gevalia coffee by dumping the regular Norman Rockwell coffee in and mixing it up. It tasted fine.
This morning, it got to the point where I decided I'd better use the other flavors. I opened the Eggnog and it did have a rather cloying sweet smell. I opened the Hazelnut and it didn't seem too bad. But still, I thought they might overpower what little regular coffee I had left, so after dumping them in, I mixed in a lot of decaf as well.
The resulting brew did have a rather bizarre flavor, but it actually seemed kind of yummy in a festive, cozy, Norman Rockwell holiday kind of way.
At this rate, I might have enough to get me through to Christmas, and who knows, maybe then someone will give me another gift of coffee!

Moral of the story: do whatever you can to delay spending money for as long as possible, and if you're lucky, maybe you won't have to spend it at all!

Notes from a Family Weekend

I was visiting family this weekend... If you're a relative newcomer to this site, just click on the category "family" to get a tiny sampling of the kind of angst-ridden financial tizzy a family visit can get me into!

This time there were a few items of note:

1) My sister, who I thought had paid for my niece's pre-school with a credit card, turns out to have been given some money for it by my father. She has also had my mother's car on a semi-permanent loan for the last few months, and needless to say, she is not paying my father for the lease. I know it is tough to raise kids in an expensive suburb, but sometimes I can't help feeling a bit disgruntled that when she and her husband overextend themselves, the family comes to the rescue, while everyone just thinks I've got everything sorted out and can take care of myself. And I CAN take care of myself, and want to take care of myself... but if there's money to be handed out to cover non-emergency expenses, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of it, selfish wench that I am.

2) My father spent $130 on a new shaving brush, and added a fancy new razor (also expensive though I don't know exactly how much) to his order from whatever obscure British shaving supply company he bought it from. My dad has never been so over-the-top frugal as to deny himself a few luxuries, but this one was surprising to me. He has also been allowing himself more bottles of expensive wines to supplement his usual cheap wines. His attitude in the last few years has been one of extreme penny-pinching martyrdom, because of the enormous credit card debts he's had to bail my mother out of, twice. So what does it mean that he is now giving himself more of a break? He had some papers on the floor in the living room-- I could see the edge of one and it was clear that it was a statement of his retirement account from his employer. So of course I peeked: the date was almost a year ago and the balance was under $200,000. I know he also gets a pension and social security, but I don't know what other assets he has. He's in his early 70s, and has a lot of health problems but they are less threatening to his life than to his quality of life, I think. Both his parents lived into their 90s. Is he okay financially, or not okay? I have no idea. But the fact that he seems to have loosened his standards of frugality almost alarmed me. It seemed as though he might have thrown in the towel, basically. Perhaps his health issues are worse than I thought-- he is always depressed about his illnesses, but maybe there is more to it. If he is allowing himself expensive luxuries, especially one such as wine, which he really shouldn't be consuming in more than tiny amounts, does it mean he doesn't care any more, because he thinks he won't live much longer? Is he just learning to lighten up a bit, or is this almost a sign of suicidal depression? This may sound alarmist and melodramatic on my part, but to make a long story short, if you knew my dad, you might have the same thoughts.

3) I found a photo album with pictures of my high school graduation, as well as one of the first letters I wrote home during my freshman year of college. Here's how the letter began:

Hello!
I decided to write instead of call-- since my initiation to the world of debt, I've been very money conscious. I also decided today that I'm not going to buy any more food at [a campus convenience store]. Their prices are outrageous and B [my roommate] says there is a real grocery store somewhere.

I'm always a little surprised when I realize the preoccupation with financial security that I thought had hit me in my late 20s and 30s was actually well established at a much earlier age!

4) As always, I had a great time playing with my niece and nephew. We played pizza restaurant, birthday party, monster attack, knock-Auntie-X-over and a variety of other games, including a new one: shoe store. My niece sold the shoes and my nephew played my butler, who carried home my purchases for me. I also instructed him to take some of the play money (post-its scribbled on by my niece) out of my pocket and put it in the bank, and then to take some out of the bank to pay for another pair of shoes. I have to start early with these kids!

When is it Okay to Ask?

When do you think it's okay to ask someone how much money they make? I'm not thinking of situations like when you're going to be giving someone a mortgage, I mean personal situations. Have you ever asked a friend how much money he or she made? Why did you ask? Were they willing to answer? What about a family member? Or a co-worker? What about someone you were dating? Is there a point in a relationship where you start to have money discussions with a partner and lay all your cards on the table? Is it only when you're thinking of moving in together or getting married? Or might it come up under other circumstances, just in the course of negotiating how you spend your time and how you pay for things?
The question isn't one that people are used to asking, I think. It seems rude, and your motivation for asking could be questionable. In many cases, maybe people would rather not know. But more often, I'm sure people are dying to know, although they would never dream of just coming out and saying it: "How much money do you make?" Have you ever said these words?

A Family Visit

My sister, her husband, and their kids are coming to stay with me tonight, before we all go to a family wedding tomorrow. Of course I've been running around like a maniac trying to remember what needs to be done to prepare for guests and how I might need to child-proof my house. After so many years of living in a tiny studio, I feel like I am kind of out of practice as a hostess!
I was asking my sister all kinds of questions, such as whether I should buy black-out shades for the room the kids will be sleeping in, and whether she planned to bring their little white noise machines since they won't be used to the sounds of city traffic. I also asked her what she'd like for dinner and explained what some of the local restaurant options are, since there is NO WAY I'm attempting to cook for them! I reminded her that it would of course be my treat, and she wrote back "well in that case, let's just go to the most expensive place! :)"

Ever since I started this blog, I've been planning to write more about my sister's family's financial life. I'm always worried about them, basically. In some ways, they could be one of these typical American families you see profiled all the time, who are having trouble making ends meet. They own a home, have two kids, and are trying to make it all work on a single income that isn't especially large. They ran up credit card debt, and then consolidated it and paid it off when they refinanced their mortgage, but now they seem to have run up debt again. My niece recently started preschool and my sister confessed that it was a lucky thing that the school accepted payment by credit cards.

I know my sister worries a lot about money. She has the same family perspective on it as I do, whereas her husband seems to be more of an optimist. He comes from a simple, relatively happy family who seemed to manage to make do comfortably on about the same kind of income that my parents were always fighting about. But my sister and her husband both want to enjoy life and have fun with their kids. They go to weddings, they share a house rental for a week or two in the summer with other friends who have kids, their garage is exploding with sports equipment, bikes, toys, and a ping pong table. Basically, they don't live extravagantly, but they don't deny themselves much either.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law is trying to get a start-up business off the ground with a couple of partners. He's hoping it will allow him to quit his current job within the next year. If it all works out, he could make a lot of money... but of course it's risky and a lot of things could go wrong.

I just worry about them. I love spending time with the whole family and my niece and nephew are very special to me, so I can't help being concerned about their financial future. I gave each of them a $500 savings bond when they were born, and keep thinking about how much of a role I want to play in helping to pay for their education or other needs they might have. The way things are going, their parents are going to have a lot of catching up to do, so I'm sure I'll want to help. But I have to worry about taking care of my own future too, and I have to let my sister and her husband be responsible for their own family life.

Anyway, all that musing will be taking a back seat tonight. I'm looking forward to seeing how the kids react to seeing where Auntie X lives! I hope I have enough toys to amuse them, and that I can keep them from smearing peanut butter all over my light-colored furniture!

Share Save Spend

A reader sent me the link to this article, which has some great suggestions for how families can work together to control spending. Kids today may think they are entitled to have the latest and greatest toys, clothes, etc. and it's hard for parents to say no. Nathan Dungan, a financial advisor from Minneapolis, is promoting a program called "Share Save Spend," which recommends ways that parents can share their financial goals and decision-making with children in a way that keeps everyone on track with a sense of shared values. He offers these 3 tips:

1. Be smart shoppers

Stores are great classrooms for teaching about money.

Before you fill the cart, talk about how you got here in the first place, Dungan says. Relate an early memory about earning money. If you patronize businesses that are charitable or support community activities, point that out to your kids. In the check-out line, check out your purchases and make sure they reflect your values.

What if the mall is a family battleground? Suppose you're facing full-court pestering to buy more stuff. Saying "yes" to kids -- provided they use their own money -- can be extremely effective.

Shift responsibility and accountability, Dungan says, and "the level of importance of that purchase drops exponentially."

2. Money doesn't make you

Society tells us how to dress, what to drive, where to go, who's important and who isn't. The password? Money.

Being a conscientious consumer is fine to a point. It's when money consumes you that petty behavior and anxiety surfaces. Dungan cites the research of Timothy Kasser, a psychology professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., which shows that when people focus less on materialism and more on frugality and generosity, they're happier and healthier.

Tell kids that what they have doesn't define who they are, Dungan says. "It's beyond saying 'No,'" he adds. "It's really about boundaries."

Establish those boundaries by talking with your children, in as neutral a way as possible, about pressure to measure up to peers and feelings of inadequacy if they don't. Ask why they want something so badly. Does it fill a void elsewhere? Be honest about your own flashes of envy and wishes for more.

Promote delayed gratification; it might make your kids happier. In a famous Stanford University experiment, preschool children were told they could have one marshmallow immediately or two if they waited. Patient kids developed greater self-esteem as adults.

3. 'Share Save Spend'

Practically, Dungan's "Share Save Spend" program divides household income between charity, investing and buying. For instance, many families, Dungan says, earmark 25% to sharing, 25% to savings, and 50% to spending.

On another level, "Share Save Spend" deals with much more than money.

"Share" isn't just about charity and community service; it's sharing within your family and placing the highest value on communication and honesty. "Save" teaches long-range thinking and drawing a road map to reach your goals. With those two supports firmly in place, "Spend" becomes more about people, places and experiences, and less about trophies.

I think this kind of approach is a great idea, not just between parents and children, but in a slightly different way, between the parents themselves, or any couple in a relationship. I've spent way too much time in my own life worrying about money because my parents weren't open with me or with each other. If the decisions and goals had been shared, I think we all would have been a lot happier.

Thank you to Charles for sending me this link!

Wedding Weekend

As I mentioned, I went to a wedding this past weekend. This was not Fifi's expensive island wedding, but the other wedding the same weekend, that I anticipated would be more informal and cheaper to get to-- and it definitely was.

My total travel costs for the weekend were about $300-- this included a train ticket, a bus ticket, a taxi fare, and gas for my mother's car. As a city-dwelling person who doesn't drive that often, I always find car trips a rude awakening, when you realize that gas is over $3.00 a gallon and that filling a tank is about $60! I feel sorry for those of you who have to deal with this all the time!

I also spent about $280 on two nights accomodation, which I shared with my mother. (This is what stinks about being in a long-distance relationship and having parents who don't get along-- going to a wedding with your mom as your "date.") I had actually expected to pay more for the room, but there was a bit of confusion about it. We were staying at the place where the wedding was being held, which I had been told was sort of an inn that also had cabins and campsites where you could pitch tents-- some of the wedding guests actually did this, which must have been fun, given that it rained on and off during the weekend! So I knew it wasn't going to be some overly elegant place, but I thought it was better than having to stay miles away and drive back and forth on dark country roads, and my sister and her husband agreed, so we both planned to try to stay there.
On their wedding website, the bride and groom said that anyone who wanted to stay onsite should "let them know." They also said they would post a list of other nearby hotels, but never did. I emailed the groom to tell him I wanted a room for my mother and myself. I never heard back. I was starting to get nervous, and heard from another family member that it was best to call the place directly to book the room. I had also heard by this point that not all the rooms had private bathrooms, so when I called, I specifically asked for a room with a private bath, and was told I had one, and they took my credit card to guarantee everything, so I thought I was all set.
However, when my mom and I arrived and checked in, we were told we were in a room where we'd have to share a bathroom with 3 other rooms, one of which was my sister's. It turns out that the wedding party was occupying the entire inn, and that "the bride and groom always do the room assignments." Great, I thought, it would have been nice if you or the groom had mentioned that when I booked the room, rather than letting me think I might actually get what I thought I was paying for!
The cost was lower for the shared bath room, and though I really dislike that kind of arrangement, I wouldn't have minded so much for myself-- but my mom is a high-maintenance kind of lady, and a middle-aged one at that, so she was not pleased. But she bore it pretty well, actually, and got up at about 5:30 each morning to make sure she'd have plenty of time to herself in the bathroom!
Other wedding costs: about $100 for a gift, and about $20 for various snacks while we were on the road.
And as for the non-financial details, the ceremony was lovely, the weather cooperated, the food was good, the location was beautiful, the band was rockin' and a great time was had by all. The only downside was a high concentration of mosquitos that even repeated dousings with bugspray couldn't deter!

Lukewarm News

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.

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.

Just as it's possible to be too thin, sometimes people can be too rich.

And today (ooh! today!), there was this article about baby showers:

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.

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!

That's it for now... tune in again next week, when I'll bring you the best of this week's hot news!

The Aftermath of Hurricane Mom

I've had my apartment back for a couple of days now. After the 3-week visit, it's a relief that my mother is gone, but of course I kind of miss her too. As she realized the day she was leaving, this time has been the longest we've spent with each other since I was about 19... and it went a lot more smoothly than it did back then.
But what I really need to talk about are the financial aspects of my mother's visit!

One thing I realized is that my mom is one hell of a consumer! I don't just mean that she likes to shop-- and she does LOOOOVVVE to shop. She kept raving about what a wonderful store Macy's was, and was almost whimpering when I kept hustling us past enticing things that were not the target of our designated purchasing! What I mean about her being a consumer is that she literally consumes a lot. In the 3 weeks she was here, she somehow managed to rampage through most of a 12-pack of paper towels, half a bottle of Windex, about 10 gallons of Poland Spring water (even though I bought a Brita pitcher the last week she was here), and a whole box of large Ziploc bags. She also leaves a lot of lights on. And I told her where to find my two rolls of quarters in case she wanted to do laundry, knowing she doesn't like to use the same towel for more than a day or two... sure enough, within a week she said "you know, we could use some more quarters for the wash..."
She believes that the kitchen dish towels should be washed separately from any other laundry, and I just realized all 10 of mine are dirty and shoved into a plastic grocery bag in the closet. Speaking of plastic grocery bags, I thought I'd accumulated enough to last a lifetime. I take out the kitchen garbage every day but I never actually BUY garbage bags... but now, somehow, my mother seems to have used them all up!
She also did some local grocery shopping during the day while I was at work, once she got over her reluctance to leave the house. While she was here, my fruit bowl always looked still-life worthy, it was so overflowing with apples and bananas and avocados and oranges. It's a bit emptier now, but I keep discovering other remnants of her shopping: a huge bag of rice and various kinds of beans that I have no idea how to cook, extra soap, Metamucil, toothpaste, oatmeal, and instant coffee, which she never calls just "Taster's Choice." She refers to it as "MY Taster's Choice," as in "I love my Taster's Choice," which is her response when others in the family express a preference for brewed coffee. When my mom likes something, she really wants other people to like it too. I can't just have a cup of coffee without her saying I should have some cinnamon in it, because it tastes really good that way. And if I say I like plain scrambled eggs, she says I should really try it with garlic powder, because it's good that way. She is always trying to improve on things, whether or not other people are perfectly satisfied with them as they are. And that definitely includes living spaces.
I did make it clear to Mom that I would not do a whirlwind top-to-bottom redecoration of my apartment while she was visiting, partially because I hadn't decided on everything I wanted but mainly because I couldn't afford it. She kept saying "don't worry about the money, I want to give you something!" Given her recent history of money mismanagement and debt, I don't want her to do that. She did help motivate me to make some decisions and buy a few things I would eventually have bought anyway, but I tried to keep her in check, although she kept sketching all these little pictures of window treatments and making lists of things I "need," to keep in mind for future gift-giving. Hopefully one thing she'll put at the top of that list is wine glasses, since she broke one of my favorite pair-- the ones I got for free when I was in college!
I can't really quantify how much her visit cost me. I spent thousands of dollars on home stuff while she was here, but I would have spent most of that anyway. I also probably spent a couple hundred dollars extra on food. I was planning to spend more money on entertaining her, but she mostly just wanted to stay home and relax, except for one day when she said she wished we could see Madame Butterfly but it turned out to be too late as it was only being performed that same night.
But what about what I gained from her visit? She did a lot of cooking and cleaning and laundry while she was here-- this makes me sound awfully lazy, and of course I told her I would do these things, but she just likes to do them. And not just because she was bored-- though I have no TV, I got her into reading The Makioka Sisters-- she loved it and had to take it home with her because she hadn't finished it yet.
I also got to hear some fun family stories. She told one about her grandmother, who lived on a farm and was illiterate. She did sewing to make extra money so her sons could take the bus to school. If there wasn't enough money, the boys would head to the bus stop with eggs in their pockets. At this point in the story, my mom and my aunt started laughing-- it was shameful enough to have to pay for the bus with eggs from the farm, but even worse if the eggs broke before they got to the bus stop!
My mom also gave me some money. I discovered that she had dumped all her spare change into the desk drawer where I keep my laundry quarters. She also gave me a check for $1000. At first I tried to refuse it, telling her it was too much, and that I'd rather she kept the money. But she kept insisting that she wanted me to have something, that she felt bad that my sister had had a big wedding and gotten so much from my family that I hadn't...
I didn't deposit the check until today. Part of me wanted to just rip it up and give my mother another lecture about saving money. But it seemed cruel. She truly wants to be generous-- she IS generous, she just doesn't have the money to justify financial generosity. Somehow money just slips through her fingers... so I decided to keep the check and think of it as a "Mom Fund." I know she'll need money at some point, so from now on, I'm going to try to track the value of anything she gives me and deposit it in the Mom Fund. I've had this feeling for a while now that I'd be left holding the bag if she ever got into trouble once my dad is gone-- my sister has her kids to worry about and never has any spare cash, and I'm the older child, the responsible one, the one who just handles everything calmly. I don't exactly WANT to have this role where my mom is concerned but I know it's just going to end up that way. So I'm trying to prepare for it, and if I feel like I have a stash of money that is actually my mother's already, I won't resent bailing her out.
I guess I'm just at that stage of life where you start to think about that role reversal, the point where things change and you have to care for your parents after decades of them taking care of you... and though Mom drove me a little nuts at times, maybe this visit was some kind of transitional moment. After 20 years of me being very independent, it was a chance for her to take care of me again-- she'd come into my room and kiss me goodnight, and some days she'd send me off to work with lunch neatly packed-- though she didn't draw a little smiley-face with pigtails on a brown paper bag as she used to when I was in grade school, which embarrassed me to no end. This time it was just one of those many Ziploc bags she managed to use.
And at the beginning of her visit there was a big snowstorm, so the first time we went into Manhattan, on a sunny day when everything was melting, I found myself reaching for her hand as we'd cross the street, to help her hop over all the big puddles at the corners. In that and other little ways, I had a chance to kind of take care of her too... which is good, because I'm going to need all the practice I can get.

P.S. Did I mention that Mom reorganized all the socks and underwear in my drawers, rolling them all up and sorting them by color? Please don't ask me to post photos...

Cheap Flights

I've been trying to book my mom a plane ticket, as it looks like my aunt and uncle aren't going to be able to drive her home. She was threatening, I mean offering to stay until May 1st, but it turns out my sister has saved me, I mean needs her to babysit.
So I just went online to search for a cheap one way ticket from NYC to Boston. Ok, I'm only working with about 1 week of lead time, but here are my results so far:

Expedia:
Lowest fare is $147, but it's a 7 hour and 20 minute journey involving stops in Columbus and Chicago.

Travelocity:
Lowest fare is $182, a 6 hour and 11 minute journey, changing planes in Buffalo

Kayak:
More of the same. The lowest price for a non-stop flight was $314.

However, all of this was for an attempt to get a Wednesday afternoon flight. Kayak has the easiest interface for finding cheaper flights within a few days of your requested date, so I found that I could get a fare of $135 if she leaves on a Sunday, that is, a few days EARLIER!
Now that would have been what I call a bargain. However, I made one last attempt: the JetBlue website. And wouldn't you know, the cheapest flight, at $70 including taxes, was for Wednesday at 2pm, the exact time Mom orginally wanted me to shoot for. So she'll still be around almost a week longer, but now the ticket is booked, so at least the end is in sight! However, I won't count my chickens just yet: my mom is famous for always changing her flights and paying more in fees than she did for the original ticket!

Weekend Spending

Did I mention that my mom is still staying with me? (Insert slightly manic "they're coming to take me away, ha ha!" style laugh here.) Talk about weird reasons for spending money. Of course there are the obvious things like buying a lot more groceries-- over $100 for each weekly trip, plus a few dollars tip for having it delivered, plus a few more purchases of meats, etc., during the week to supplement the staples. Then this weekend we also did a trip to the drugstore-- Mom paid for this one herself, as that bill came to over $100! I got a couple packs of dental floss and decided to treat myself to the CVS-brand knockoff of the Olay Regenerist eye lotion mentioned in this post-- $14.99 vs. $18.99 for the real Olay stuff. So I accounted for $20, I guess, but then with all her various gums, lipsticks, soaps, decongestants, and stomach-settling products, it's no wonder my mom has money problems.
But aside from all that, I have been spending money because my mother does not seem to want to leave until my apartment is totally decorated! She got it into her head that I have to have a set of charcoal grey towels for my bathroom. Ok, I could see that that might look nice, and it's true that all of my towels are at least 7 years old and starting to look a bit frayed. Getting new ones was not at the top of my priority list, but I figured if it would make Mom happy, and make her LEAVE, I'd do it! She wanted to give them to me, but I figured I'd let her have the fun of helping me pick them out and then just not let her pay for them, as I would prefer she just save her money. So by the time I get out of Macy's I've spent about $300 on towels, sheets, scented candles, etc. She also wanted me to get matching soap dishes, Q-tip holders, liquid soap dispensers, etc, but I drew the line there, especially when she showed me the part of the set that was a tray that goes on top of the toilet tank to hold all this stuff-- the tray alone was $54.
Unfortunately, when we got home, the towels we bought turned out to look totally different in my bathroom light, so they're going to end up being returned.
My mother should really hire herself out as a decorator. She enjoys this stuff so much, and she is good at it. I found a beautiful set of bedding that I fell in love with, only to discover that the duvet cover didn't come in the same pattern as the sheets-- but mom said, hey, no problem: buy two flat sheets and I'll sew them into a duvet cover for you. This made me really happy, as it allows me to have exactly what I want, save a bit of money on it, and give her an outlet for her generosity and desire to help me out.
But there is still all the other stuff... should I spend thousands of dollars to buy curtains, rugs, a bed, a bookcase, more closet shelving, and lamps, just so my mother will feel like her work is done and go home? It is really sad, actually. My mom wants very few things out of life-- she wants to live in a nicely-decorated home and take care of her husband and children and grand-children, basically. We all are conflicted about appreciating her efforts and being driven crazy by them. The worst of this is with my dad, and it's really hard on both of them when they try to live together. When my mother had her apartment, it was kind of an ideal situation-- she lived a few blocks away, so she could look after him while having her own space. Unfortunately, she blew it by wasting a ton of money and getting into so much debt that she couldn't afford her apartment anymore. Having bailed her out twice, my dad now feels like what used to be "their" house is now "his" house. So now, it's as though she's almost homeless-- she bounces around from living with my dad to her mother's house, to her sisters' houses, to her daughters... it's just depressing, because it is a problem that could easily be solved by money, if she had some of her own and knew how to manage it. But I'm afraid she never will.