On Keeping a Lot of Notebooks

With apologies to Joan Didion...

Many readers will know that I am a die-hard user of Palm OS PDAs. I've probably spent between $5,000-6,000 on assorted devices, software and accessories over the past 10 years or so, (some of which was later recouped by selling old Palms on ebay) and I feel like most if not all of that money was pretty much worthwhile. I love to carry around lots of information, and I am now so addicted to electronic reminders that I find it impossible to remember tasks and meetings without little beepers going off.

But despite my adoration of electronic gadgetry, I am also a notebook person. My infatuation with notebooks started when I was a child: a family member would give me the little pocket sized diaries that she received each year as a member of the Harvard Coop. They were great little notebooks, with a week at a view, and lots of extra pages with space for addresses, measurement conversions, lists of holidays, etc. I would carry one of these with me everywhere, writing down whatever little things I could think of to write. (Since I was, after all, a kid, I was often frustrated at my lack of important things to write down-- I didn't go to any meetings, I didn't have many expenses to track, and spying on the neighbors didn't really result in clues to any mysteries that I might be required to solve.)

Beyond those little diaries, I've probably spent thousands of dollars on hundreds of notebooks over the years, from little wire-bound notebooks to clothbound sketchbooks to expensive leather Filofaxes. When I moved almost two years ago, I packed at least 3 or 4 shoeboxes full of small notebooks in varying degrees of jotted-ness. I just loved notebooks so much I would often want a new one just for the feel of it, whether or not I really needed any more space to write things down. I was always looking for one that would be a little closer to being THE PERFECT NOTEBOOK, my definition of which shifted over time. When I got into the Filofax stage of the addiction, it got much more expensive, and I bought a few things I really shouldn't have spent so much money on. I was seriously addicted.

When my obsession with information-carrying 3" x 5" objects morphed from paper to electronics, I kind of took a break from buying notebooks. But I still liked to keep a journal, and that is something I can't do in a PDA. For at least the last 5 years or so, the only notebooks I've used for this purpose are Moleskines. The pocket sketchbook became my notebook of choice-- it's got nice heavy unlined paper, good for writing and drawing, but also even for the occasional watercolor painting. I have about 12 of these notebooks, full of all sorts of things: memories, musings, lists, numbers, sketches of Venice and floorplans of apartments. I also have 3 of these notebooks that are brand new and still in the wrapper: spares, since I don't like the idea of running out.


I had to go to a stationery store a couple of weeks ago to find a gift for someone, and for some reason, I found my old notebook lust re-awakening. I bought a Moleskine-ish sketchbook that I thought would be good for drawings-- the paper is rougher than the Moleskine, and I liked the thicker, bulkier feel. But of course I still gazed at the Moleskine display too, and discovered a new kind of Moleskine that I'd never seen before: the soft cover Moleskine, with graph paper inside. It looked nice, it felt nice, it smelled nice: I had to have it. And the minute I took it home and started writing in it, I wanted another one with plain unlined paper too.

The store I'd been to didn't have any soft cover ones with unlined paper. I went into a few more stationery stores who didn't have that kind either. In the process I noticed that different stores charge very different prices for Moleskines. The $12 I just paid for a pocket size Moleskine seems to be about the minimum retail price, but places like Kate's Paperie on 57th street charge up to $15.
Then I looked on Amazon, where the prices vary quite a bit-- sometimes they are the standard $12 retail, some models are discounted 20% or so, and of course you get the other "Used & New" sellers sometimes offering prices as low as $3 or 4 plus shipping. I also found a site called Moleskines.com which offers lower prices and discounts for buying in bulk. The thought of having a dozen pristine Moleskines delivered to my doorstep is disturbingly pleasant.

What can I say... for people like me, Moleskines seem to be one of those things where any sense of financial reason just flies out the window. And I'm not alone-- throughout this post, the word Moleskine links to different sites where these notebooks are artfully used and appreciated, but I particularly enjoyed this writer's summation, at the Cranking Widgets blog:

So, since we’re neat, organized people - here’s a list of what Moleskine’s really are:

1. Paper Notebooks - This is first and foremost. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, these things are just pads of paper. You write things in them just like you would a $.59 spiral-bound notebook from the drugstore or on the back of a cocktail napkin.
2. Expensive - A single large (5.5″ x 8.5″) Moleskine notebook will set you back anywhere from $15-$20, depending on where you buy it. If you were to tell me 5 years ago that one day I would drop that kind of cheddar on a book of blank pages, I would’ve laughed in your face. But, i did it...

I should also point out here, and I feel like a commenter may have mentioned it in the past, that Moleskines can help with expense tracking if you want to do it manually. The pocket on the inside back cover is a great place to store receipts!

Do we have any other Moleskine fans in the peanut gallery?

Wine & Money

An article in today's Dining section of the Times talks about whether enjoyment of wine is affected by outside factors such as the circumstances in which you drink it, or knowing how much it cost.

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine, measuring sensations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where flavor responses apparently register. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive.

“Forget those blurbs about bouquets, body and berries,” one newspaper account crowed. “A meticulous new study found that the more people think a wine cost, the more they like it. And the less they think it cost, the less they like it.”

Big surprise. Sommeliers all over know that the hardest wine to sell in a restaurant is the cheapest bottle on the list. “Yeah, clients don’t want to be embarrassed in front of a date, so they don’t order the cheapest wines,” said Fred Dexheimer, the wine director of the BLT restaurant group. The fact is, the correlation between price and quality is so powerful that it affects not just our perception of wine but of all consumer goods.

Studies like this seem to come up every so often, so this is no big surprise. But what these studies have never taken into account, as far as I know, is the subjects' attitudes towards money. I think that a frugal-minded personal finance blogger might be more likely to enjoy a cheap wine just because it's cheap. I know I can be this way-- sometimes I probably like things just because I am so happy I got a bargain when buying them. Someone who really values saving money might not enjoy an expensive wine just because they want to believe that a cheap one is just as good.
On the other hand, someone who is very focused on attaining wealth and luxury goods and projecting a certain image of their financial status might be more likely to enjoy an expensive wine, because they believe expensive things should be better, and because they want to feel like their hard-earned money is buying them the kind of rewards they deserve. After all, if expensive things aren't better, there's no value to being rich, right?

Obviously, the answer is for some researchers to set up a study comparing the wine tastes of personal finance bloggers to those of the rest of the population at large. I hereby volunteer to be your first guinea pig!

Headache.

I hate getting headaches. I get bad ones sometimes and they drive me crazy! Nothing seems to work other than going to bed with an icepack, and even that doesn't always help. For some reason, several people, including my doctor, have suggested I try using Excedrin. This morning I was a bit desperate so I went to the local pharmacy to find some.
For $4.27, I could buy a 24-pill jar of Excedrin Migraine. For $4.29, I could buy a 24-pill jar of Extra Strength Excedrin. They actually have the exact same ingredients: 250 mg of Acetaminophen, 250 mg of aspirin, and 65 mg of caffeine. So I decided to buy the migraine version and save 2 cents. And I did this while knowing full well that I already have generic acetaminophen at home, as well as coffee, and I could easily buy some cheap generic aspirin to construct for myself the exact same combination of active ingredients for less money.
But like I said, headaches drive me crazy. The Excedrin hasn't helped. Groan.

Saving on Software

Since buying my new Mac, I'd been wondering what to do about my lack of Word and Excel programs on it. I could use the basic TextEdit program for minor bits of writing, but I don't need to do that very often. What I really wanted was to be able to play with complicated financial spreadsheets at home! It's been such a long time since I've been able to easily do that. On my old Mac, I had to run the OS9/Classic operating system to use Excel, which was a nuisance so I never did it. I ended up doing all my spreadsheets at work. Which I really didn't have time for unless I stayed late and blew off the gym-- not good.

So with the new Mac, I wondered what to do. First thing was to call my friend Mortimer, who I thought might have an extra copy of Microsoft Office. I am not advocating software piracy here, but it sometimes comes with multiple user licenses and I liked the idea of "free!" But Mortimer wasn't able to help me.
Next I considered buying Microsoft Office. It's about $150 for the Home/Student edition, which should do more than enough for someone like me. But the customer comments on Amazon made it sound kind of buggy, so I stopped just short of hitting the "buy now" button.
Then I wondered about Apple's iWork-- that was only $79, but it sounded like I could potentially run into some compatibility problems if I was emailing files to PC users.
Some of these "problems" might have been the misguided rants of crazy Amazon customers, but it was enough to make me hesitate about spending so much money. I tried looking on some Mac forum elsewhere, I don't even remember which one, and noticed a mention of a program called NeoOffice. It's an open source, volunteer-developed Office-type program. They ask that you make a donation before downloading it, but it can be as little as $5. I decided to give it a shot.
After playing around with it a little, I am totally impressed and can't believe it's basically free. If you're used to Word and Excel and Powerpoint, you might find a few things slightly different, but it's 90% identical, and seems to work really well. Here's a highly sophisticated chart I was working on to illustrate the price differential:

I'm looking forward to posting a lot more financial charts and spreadsheets now! Thank you NeoOffice!

A Penny for a Smile: Shopping at the 99 Cent Store

I did a little shopping with a friend this past weekend. One of our exciting destinations was a 99 cent store in my neighborhood. I yanked my friend across the street so we could go in, because in a pile outside the store, I had seen a little plastic table I wanted for my balcony. I had looked at the same ones last summer but they sold out before I could go back and buy one, so this time I didn't want to miss it!
My friend asked why I wanted to go into the store, which at first I interpreted as a sign of scorn, as in "why do you want to buy anything in that dump?" It turned out she just wanted to know what I was planning to buy, and was actually kind of excited because she loves 99 cent stores. "You never know what kind of things you might find," she said.
I bought my little table, which was only $5.99, as well as a wastebasket, and a package of t-shirts. Total damage about $21. My friend bought some dishwashing liquid and a chapstick, totaling $4.71. When she went to pay, the cashier said "I don't need the penny." She didn't hear him correctly as she was fishing around in her wallet for the change and he repeated it, saying "No penny, you don't have to give me the penny." She finally realized what he was saying and jokingly replied "Oh, you don't want my penny? My penny isn't good enough for you?" The cashier started laughing and joking back at her, and was still giggling when we left, which amazed me, because I have been in there many times and have never seen him crack a smile-- I thought he was one of these grumpy old guys who would never smile at anyone, let alone laugh.

After all that, we ended up going to dinner in a different neighborhood of Brooklyn. Cobble Hill is a lot more upscale than where I live, but it still has its un-gentrified remnants, one of which was another 99 cent store. As we passed, my friend said "Oh look, they have your little table!" I went over to look, certain that they'd be charging some outrageous price for it, in effect a yuppie tax that I'd be avoiding by shopping in my own grungy neighborhood. The Cobble Hill price for the table turned out to be $4.99, $1 less than I paid in Sunset Park.

I guess the moral of this story, if there is one, is that preconceived notions can be toppled by even the smallest amounts of money!

Customized, at a Cost

Ok, yesterday's post was indeed an April Fool's joke: much as I'd like my blog to make more money, I don't plan on getting into the merchandise business. But to those of you who are disappointed by that, I'll just point out that the 3 items I mentioned are all things that can really be bought online!

You can go to the Converse website and create your own customized shoes, with a variety of materials and colors. You select your options, they're displayed on screen, and then 2-4 weeks after you order, your unique Chucks arrive! I am seriously tempted to get a pair of suede ones, though perhaps not quite in the colors I displayed below. Actually, what's dangerous is that when you play around on the website, you have too much choice! I came up with about a dozen color combinations I could imagine wearing! But $75 is kind of a lot of money for such simple shoes. (The regular canvas ones tend to retail for $42 or less. Even that seems like a lot when I remember buying my first pair at an Army/Navy store for about $16, back when I was in high school and they were considered kind of punk!) It's still cheap compared to many other sneakers, though, and I do like the idea of having a pair that looks exactly the way I want them to. Do you think it's worth the money?

How about the Kleenex? Again, you really can buy these at the Kleenex website. I know some people can't stand to have their decor thrown off by a clashing Kleenex box. When my mother was visiting last year and wanted to help me decorate, a tissue box cover was one of the first things she wanted to buy for me. My own opinion was that it was the last thing I needed! It's not like looks don't matter to me-- they do. But I'm just not extreme enough about it to want to spend $15 or more on a tissue box cover, and I really don't see why anyone would want to pay $5 for a customized Kleenex box that is totally disposable. Sure it makes a fun wedding favor, but for everyday use, I would never spend the money. Even the regular oval boxes they have in the store come at a big markup compared to the usual ugly square and rectangular boxes, so I won't buy them, despite their cooler looks.

In any case, it's fascinating that we now have the technology to produce such things cheaply enough for them to be a mass-market item. It used to be that customization was only for things like tailor-made suits and shirts that were going to be really expensive anyway. And to me, something like a suit or shoes being custom-made is more worthwhile anyway-- if I made a bit more money, I would much rather spend the big bucks on a few perfect-fitting items of clothing than on off-the-rack stuff.

What's your opinion? Do you think customized items like this are worth the money? Have you ever purchased this type of item?

How Things Change: My Wacky Phone Spending

For the last few years, I was in a long distance relationship. Now, I'm not. You might suspect that I performed some sort of cost-benefit analysis of the relationship and made a calculated decision that it wasn't compatible with my financial goals, given that I have written here before about how expensive such a relationship can be. I can reassure you that I am not that cold and unemotional a person! There were many other reasons why I cut things off. But I'll confess the money aspect was a teensy tiny smidgen of a reason to shed a few less tears over it!

My ex- lived in another country. This led me to investigate a variety of strategies for cheaper telephone calls, including an international calling plan with AT&T and online calling cards. After moving to my current home a year ago, I never reinstated my AT&T international plan and just used the calling cards. Unfortunately, with those cards you sometimes get what you pay for-- the sound quality can be lousy. When you're trying to have a meaningful conversation about your future with someone, or lack thereof, it sucks to have to keep saying "what? I can't hear you!" So there were a couple of times when I called back on my home phone without thinking too much about it. I knew I didn't have the international plan any more but I thought, ok, maybe it cost 10 cents a minute with that plan, so without it, it will probably cost $1 or $2 a minute. Unfortunately, as I discovered when my phone bill arrived, it was actually about $5.00 a minute!

At this point, my volume of international calling has dropped quite a bit... but since we're trying to "stay friends," it hasn't gone away entirely. I decided to look into signing up for another international plan with AT&T so as not to have to keep committing myself to phone cards in $20 increments. Option 1, "Worldwide Value Calling," costs $5.00 a month, plus $0.08 per minute. Option 2, "Worldwide Occasional Calling," costs only $1.00 a month, plus $2.24 a minute. I used a little basic algebra to determine the break-even point:

Let X= the number of minutes
5+.08X = 1+2.24X
5-1= 2.24X - .08X
4= 2.16X
1.85= X

So, are we going to stay good enough friends to talk on the phone 1.85 minutes every month? I optimistically decided yes, and signed up for Worldwide Value Calling. I mean, I'd feel a little guilty relegating someone who's been so important to me to just "occasional" rather than "value." (At least until a decent period of time goes by!) If we talk one hour per month, I'll save $125.60 vs. the other plan. I budgeted $1,200 for telephone expenses this year, and am currently at over $1,300. Next year's spending should be far less... but keep an eye out for future posts on the costs of dating and new relationships, which I'm sure will wipe out any savings!

A Pricing Analysis of Amazon's Kindle E-Book Reader

The latest publishing buzz is Amazon's introduction of the Kindle, a new e-book reader. At $399, it's a bit pricey: Sony's e-book reader is $100 less. And there are many e-books that can be read on PDAs-- even if you're dealing with text-only on a much smaller screen, you don't necessarily need a separate device. But the Kindle offers some pretty cool features, and the books and newspapers that are available to be read on it are discounted quite a bit compared to their print versions. Can the Kindle end up paying for itself?

I actually had a chance to play with one of these a few months ago. I thought the size and weight were ok, and the experience of using it was pretty impressive-- not perfect, but better than any other portable electronic reading device. I liked the fact that it was a stand-alone wireless product: if you're traveling or at the beach and you decide you want to read something, you can go online and download it without having to go back to your computer, and without having to subscribe to any sort of wireless plan or be at a hotspot since it's on a cell phone network. All in all, I was intrigued by what the device could do, but as a dedicated PDA user, I didn't see myself buying another electronic device to tote around. (Also, a large percentage of my reading is done in manuscript form before the book is actually published, and though I could probably do some of that electronically, I'm not necessarily the ideal user for this product.)

But when I tried the Kindle, I didn't even think about the costs that might be involved. A lot of early comments have focused on the fairly high price of the device-- is it worth the money?

Books: NY Times Bestsellers and New Releases are $9.99 on the Kindle. For hardcovers that are $25 and up (the new Ken Follett hardcover is actually $35, which seems like a shocking price for fiction, even if it is over 1000 pages!), you're saving at least $15 per book. If you buy 26 hardcover books, the savings offset the price of the Kindle.

Newspapers: the NY Times is $13.99 a month. I pay $40.80 a month for delivery of the print edition. 15 months of subscribing saves you enough to pay for the Kindle.

Magazines: The Atlantic is $1.99 a month on the Kindle. Amazon offers subscriptions to the print edition at $24.95 a year, or $2.08 a month. The cover price on a newsstand is $4.95. No big savings for subscribers, but if you'd been buying individual copies, your savings would pay for your Kindle in, oh, about 11 years.

Blogs: $0.99-$1.99 a month each. Well that's not much of a deal, is it? Blogs are usually free, so here's one area where the Kindle doesn't exactly win. But compared to the cost of having a wireless Internet plan that allows you to go online and read blogs anywhere on a laptop or handheld, it might be a good deal, at least if you only read a few blogs. Their current selection is not all that great. None of the personal finance blogs that I read are included. From a quick search, the only blog I read that's on there is Apartment Therapy, which is one of the $1.99 ones. Until My Open Wallet is available in Kindle format, obviously this feature of the device is useless.

Bottom line: if you are someone who reads a lot and likes to read current bestselling hardcovers when they first come out, the Kindle could save you quite a bit of money. It's also probably lighter and smaller than that doorstop by Ken Follett, so you might avoid some chiropractor bills too. And aside from anything else, it's a nifty new electronic toy that I'm sure will end up under the Christmas trees of many people whose loved ones wonder what you get for the person that has everything... What do you think? Would you buy one?

Getting Into the Closet: A Price Comparison

One of the most satisfying home-improvement projects I've ever done was to install customized shelving and poles in my closets. In my old studio, I only had one closet-- it was a wonderful closet with built-in shelves and double-hung hanging rods, but it just barely held everything I needed to put in it. When I moved into my new apartment, I was looking forward to having not one, not two, not three, but four (!) good-sized closets, but once I had unpacked, those closets didn't seem to have any extra room left in them. My new closets only had a single hanging rod each, with one shelf above. It was kind of amazing to realize how much more efficiently my old closet used its space!

Storage space relates to personal finance in a couple of ways. In some respects, a lack of storage space can save you money, as having no place to put things really discourages you from buying new ones. But on the other hand, having very efficient storage space can save you money, as it will allow you to feel content living in a smaller, and therefore cheaper, overall home. I also think having adequate storage space for clothes helps keep them nicer-- fewer wrinkles, therefore less frequent dry cleaning.

For me, it's important to be able to put things away. I like to have a neat and organized home, and when my clothes and shoes and other belongings are put away tidily, I feel like I can be more efficient in how I use my time, because I'm not running around searching for things or forgetting to pay bills because I can't find them, etc. So with all that in mind, I knew I really wanted to do something about my closets, and started shopping around for a solution.

First I checked to see if Consumer Reports had reviewed closet systems. They gave Rubbermaid Configurations the highest overall score for price and quality. Elfa was #2, and Schulte Freedom Rail was #3. According to CR, Schulte was more expensive than Elfa, but I did not find that to be the case at all. California Closets was also rated highly by Consumer Reports for their professionally installed systems, but the prices are much higher, more than twice as much as Elfa or Schulte or Rubbermaid. California Closets also makes a DIY version, but it was rated much lower for quality and ease of assembly. Ikea got the lowest ratings for quality and assembly, and surprisingly, was nowhere near being the cheapest.

So did I buy the Rubbermaid shelves? Maybe I should have, but I was doing a lot of shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond and encountered the Schulte Freedom Rail brand there. Frankly, BB&B offered delivery and were very helpful with tips as to how to plan everything out and assemble it. I had considered them before looking at the CR ratings, but when I saw that they had scored well, that is what I decided to go with when I went back to the store.
To make your own decision, Consumer Reports suggests going to the manufacturer's websites first to check out the various options and accessories offered. Also, read the assembly instructions carefully before you buy, to make sure you have the needed skills and tools. Also, measure your space very carefully. See how the standard size pieces will fit your desired layout, and if you need to have things cut to custom sizes, remeasure, and then remeasure again to be sure you got it right, as once cut, the pieces aren't returnable.

Here's my thoughts on the brands I looked at in stores:

Schulte Freedom Rail
They sell these at Bed, Bath and Beyond. At first I was a little leery of the way everything is mounted, but after looking at the CR ratings, I decided to go for it. A nice man in the store gave us a demonstration of how easy they were to install, and they really were a piece of cake-- I tackled the project while my mom was visiting, thinking it might be good to have an extra pair of hands, but I didn't end up needing her help at all. You just have to level the rail at the right height, mark and drill the holes, pop some anchors in, and then screw the rail in place. Then you just hang the uprights on the rails and click your shelves and hanging rods into place. The most difficult thing about it was popping the closet rods into the brackets that hold them up, as they were a bit tight. Actually the other difficult thing was that I had ignored my own advice above, and measured incorrectly-- both of my rail pieces ended up being too long! I cut one down to size with my hacksaw, but that was hard work. For the second one, I waited until my uncle could come over with a power saw!
A couple months after installing one of these closets, I decided I would prefer to have the hanging space to the left of the shelves rather than vice-versa. And the great thing about this system was that after I took out all my clothes, it was no trouble at all to rearrange the layout. If I moved, I could easily take the pieces with me and reinstall them in a new closet.

Sample prices:
12 x 24 shelf $5.99
Mounting hardware $2.49
12" shelf bracket $2.99
24" top rail $4.99
48" upright $6.99
12 x 36 shelf $9.99

ClosetMaid Shelf-Trak
I bought some of these shelves at Lowe's for a small area where I just wanted a couple of shelves. At first glance, I thought they'd be almost identical to the Freedom Rail system, but they weren't, quite. The anchors they come with are harder to use, as you can't just plug them into the wall before you put the rail up. It was very awkward having to position the rail and hold it there while poking all the anchors into the holes before sinking any of the screws in, especially since I didn't have anyone helping me. I wouldn't buy this brand again, but for this one small project it was fine, and the cost was comparable to that of the Freedom Rail shelves.

Sample prices:
3' shelf kit (includes shelf and 2 brackets) $16.08 ea
Top rail 40" $4.98
Mounting hardware $3.04
30" uprights $4.60 ea

Elfa
Though I haven't actually used Elfa, from looking at the pieces on display at The Container Store, it seemed pretty much identical to the much cheaper Freedom Rail brand.

Sample prices:
32" top rail $12.99
Mounting hardware $4.99
36" hanging standards $9.99 ea
12 x 24 shelf $8.99
12 x 36 shelf $12.99
12" shelf bracket $4.99


The one thing you have to be careful about is to make sure you get the right number of pieces of everything, and plan very carefully, especially if you are going to have anything cut to a custom length, as that renders the pieces non-returnable. And it's a good idea to add everything up beforehand-- all those little $4.99s and $5.99s can add up to hundreds of dollars before you know it! I put a combination of full-height and double-hung hanger space and shelving in two approx. 5' closets, plus two other small shelving units, and in total, I spent almost $500, not counting delivery fees (those long rails and uprights are a bit awkward for the subway, or even a regular taxi). But after finishing everything and finally being able to put away all the stuff that had been cluttering my apartment since I moved, I consider that $500 well spent!

So now the question might be whether I'll spend more money on clothes now that I actually have enough space for them! I don't think I will. I actually did another big purge of stuff destined for the Salvation Army after loading up my new closets. The other thing about these closet systems is that they look so pretty, they kind of encourage you to thin out your wardrobe to try to get it to look more like the beautifully monochromatic, streamlined, identically-hangered ensembles you see in the Elfa ads!

That Bananaman is No Dope

This morning, when I greeted the bananaman, and as usual, selected a large banana from his pile, he called my attention to the fact that he now charges two different prices for bananas. The large ones are 35 cents, while the smaller ones remain 25 cents. He obviously knows how to do his math and did the same kind of analysis I did about banana prices by weight.
He apologized for having to raise the price, but said that by offering two prices, he hoped to keep everybody happy. I said it was no problem, and though I had a quarter already in my hand, I decided to stick with my large banana and went digging for an extra 10 cents. I was fumbling around a bit trying to find it. I was about to tell him I could give him 8 cents now and 2 more later when he started to tell me not to worry about it and that I could just give him the extra 10 cents on Monday. But just then I found a dime for him, so we were all squared away. We wished each other a good weekend and I went off to work thinking "I love my bananaman...."

Gardening: Is it Worth the Money?

As I've mentioned before, I've undertaken a bit of gardening on my balcony. For someone who's barely been able to keep a single aloe plant alive in the past, I've been quite ambitious. But I've been a good mom to my plants so far-- I remember to water them and fertilize them, I trim them back occasionally, and I have gradually been learning how to better take care of them due to trial and error along the way.

Here's an example:
Zinnia just after purchase:

Zinnia about a month later:


It looks even worse now. I think the Zinnia cost me about $10, and it's not looking like money well-spent. But my other flowering plants, including some geraniums and a portulaca, have done beautifully. Here's something else that seems to be thriving:


This tomato plant cost me $14.99, with the cage included. When I took that photo I had about ten tomatoes that seem to be coming along nicely, and several more have sprouted since. If they all ripen to the point of edibility, I'd be thrilled-- but is $1.00-1.49 per tomato a good deal? So far I've eaten 6 or 7 smallish tomatoes, which were yummy if a bit thick-skinned. I can see that one of the really big tomatoes has a big crack in it and won't be edible, but I will hopefully be able to harvest some others before it really gets too cold.

I also have some herbs, which have been an obsession all summer. I noticed there were some gnats flying around in them, so I tried a couple of homemade remedies, including putting a layer of sand over the soil and spraying them with soapy water. When I told one of my friends that I'd sprayed my herbs with soap, she said I'd been an idiot, as they'd now taste like soap. "Surely that will wash off," I thought, but when I next tasted my basil, it did indeed turn out to be kind of bitter. But I later discovered that the reason for that was that I'd been letting it flower like crazy! You have to pinch off any flowers as early as possible or your basil will taste unpleasant, and apparently the only way for it to recover is to take cuttings, let them re-root in water and then replant them. So now I have tons of basil that looks nice and smells nice when I run my hands over the leaves, but I can't make all the pesto I'd been dreaming of.

I also have some sage and mint and a few other things-- they look and smell lovely most of the time, but I fight to keep them from drying out, and I had some leaf fungus issues that rendered some of them inedible too. So all in all, the $10 or so that I spent on assorted herbs probably doesn't compare favorably to the culinary usage I got out of them. But next year, when I will know more about what I'm doing, I expect to save some money by growing my own herbs rather than buying the expensive little bags of fresh herbs in the supermarket. And regardless of my grocery budget, I just enjoyed having green leafy things growing, and fussing over them all summer was actually a lot of fun.

All in all, I'm not sure gardening is a financially sound hobby. I bought pots, soil, a watering can and all these various plants, as well as an extra broom and dustpan for the balcony in order to deal with all the dry leaf debris. For what little I managed to eat, the cost/benefit analysis isn't looking so good. But I really enjoyed taking care of all my plants, and just looking at them and smelling them. You can't put a price on that!

The Price of Bananas

Remember my post about the Bananaman? That and some comments on my deli posts got me thinking about doing some price analysis on the cost of the items I buy for breakfast, to see if I could really be saving a lot of money by buying them elsewhere. Here's the results of some research into banana prices in New York City:

Garden of Eden (a sort of gourmet deli): .79 per pound. 3 large bananas weighed about 1.5 pounds, so one large banana about 40 cents

FreshDirect: as low as .59 per pound. 3 banana minimum. est 1.35 lbs, so .26 per banana. But FreshDirect does not deliver to my neighborhood.

Whole Foods: .99 per pound for organic bananas. 3 bananas were about 1.25 lbs, so about .41 per banana.

Sunset Park Key Food: 2 lbs for $1.00. The bananas were pretty average in size though I didn't actually weigh them, so I'm guessing something like .23 per banana. This was definitely the cheapest per-pound price I found for bananas.

Bananaman: 25 cents per banana. Bananas tend to be a bit smaller than the ones at Garden of Eden, but sometimes just as big, and sometimes even bigger.

I don't know how else to sum this up other than to say "SIZE MATTERS!" As long as I make sure I get a nice big banana, the bananaman is actually one of the cheapest places to buy bananas. But if he always has wimpy little bananas, then I might be able to do better elsewhere on a bite-by-bite basis.

Well, that was interesting... maybe I will do some more price comparisons on other fruits I regularly enjoy, such as cherries, fresh figs, melons...

Rule #17: Numeracy

• Do the math.

Personal finance is about numbers. And working with numbers means you'd better be able to do math. I know it intimidates a lot of people. They grit their teeth all through school, eagerly awaiting the day when they will no longer have to do math. They take their SATs thinking "Ugh, when am I ever going to need this stuff in the real world?" I actually have a secret yen to become a question-writer for the math section of the SAT, because really, who's sitting around saying "If I have 10 marbles and my brother has half as many marbles..." If that were truly the case, the siblings would either just count their marbles or be too busy beating each other up to care. I can think of much better real-world questions to engage today's students in practical problems they might one day have to solve, such as this one:

Mary is on the Amtrak Acela train. She goes to the cafe car and buys the cheese & cracker plate and some wine, for a total of $8.50. She gets 4 pieces of cheese, and 4 packages of crackers. 2 of the packs of crackers have 3 crackers each, and the other 2 packs have 2 crackers each.

Questions:
1) Into how many pieces must Mary cut the cheese in order to have an equal amount for each cracker?*
2) Can you think of a good joke to make about "cutting the cheese?"
3) How much wine did Mary get? It must have been cheap. Should she go get a couple more?

Actually, I suppose those aren't appropriately multiple choice. But to get back to broader personal finance concerns, I think it's very important not to be innumerate. You don't have to know calculus or trigonometry to manage your finances. All you really need is the ability to do basic arithmetic, and at least some understanding of a few other general math concepts.

Why? Here's a few very practical reasons:

• Getting change: can you look at the change you've just been given and be sure you got the right amount even if it's not spelled out on your receipt?
• Prices: what if the little "unit cost" sticker is missing from the supermarket shelf? Can you tell which size of a product gives you the best value for your money?
• Discounts: do you know how much an item is really going to cost you if it's 30% off, plus an additional 10% off the already-reduced price?
• Interest: can you figure out how much more you'll earn a year if you move your money to a different savings account with a higher interest rate?
• Medians and averages: if you've got 9 people who make $10,000 a year and 1 person who makes $10,000,000 a year, the average income of that group is $1,009,000. But the median is only $10,000. That is an important difference to remember when reading any kind of economic statistic.

Some of these may seem like silly little things, and you may think it's still not that important to be able to do some basic math in your head. You may use a calculator for everything, or an Excel spreadsheet. And these are wonderful tools which I highly recommend using! But tools are only as good as their users: it's very easy to make mistakes using a calculator, and especially Excel. Your own sense of what an answer should be can sometimes help you catch an error that may be buried in a formula in a spreadsheet.

You may say "but I'm just not comfortable doing math in my head. I don't have that kind of brain." That is perfectly understandable. I personally can't do it all that well, and have always been jealous of people who are better at mental math. But sometimes it's not about calculating an exact number in your head, it's just knowing the range the answer should fall in. I remember being shocked, at one of my earlier jobs, when I had to show a spreadsheet to a high-ranking financial guy. I forget exactly what issue we were trying to resolve, but I said something about how if we changed a certain percentage in one place, another number would be about 30% higher. He stopped, said "uh, um," a couple times, tapped a few numbers into a calculator and then said, "yeah, you're right." I just found it so bizarre that this guy had risen to a very senior level of managing a company's finances without being able to get his head around what was a pretty straightforward bit of mathematical estimation.

How can you improve your numeracy? Here's a few ideas:

• Practice: challenge yourself to do little bits of math in your head, while balancing your checkbook or when paying for things in stores.
• Check out sites like math.com for quizzes and tutorials.
• Consider using books like a GED test prep guide, Everyday Math for Dummies, All the Math You'll Ever Need, or Secrets of Mental Math, for tips and tricks and explanations of solutions to math problems.
• There may be adult education classes in your community that are targeted towards practical math. They may even be free.
• More practice: even if you're comfortable with basic math, it never hurts to keep exercising that part of your brain and learning new skills. Instead of using online calculators to figure out your mortgage payments or retirement plans, build your own spreadsheets and play around with them.

Remember, you don't have to actually take the SATs anymore. Think about learning math as just one more nifty little way to improve your financial life. Pretty soon, you may even think math is fun!

*As for Mary's problem, the answer is 5: there are 10 crackers, so each of the 4 cheeses has to be cut into 5 equal pieces to make 20 little nuggets of cheese which can then go 2 each on the crackers. I think a proper explanation would have something to do with least common multiples. But good luck actually trying to divide those little cheeses evenly into fifths! I think Mary usually simplifies matters by ditching two of the yucky Wheatsworth crackers, which crumble too easily, and anyway, she's still on Atkins.

The Cheapest Noise-Canceling Headphones

A while back, I wrote a post called "We Want to Be Alone, about how a lot of our spending these days is driven by the desire to isolate ourselves from others. Well, here's a great example of that: Headphones to Shut Out the World. In his New York Times column from yesterday, David Pogue writes about what has become a de rigeur accessory for many travelers: expensive headphones that provide a true luxury: quiet on an airplane, or wherever you might want it.
These have been around for a few years, starting with the original Bose models priced at about $350. That is a lot to pay for peace and quiet! So Pogue takes a look at some of the competing headphones that have since been introduced, to try to find the best bang for the buck. Or perhaps that should be the least audible bang for the buck.
His conclusion: the cheapest headphones, the $40 JVC HA-NC100, are compact and have a nice retractable cord, but they don't do as good a job of actually reducing noise.
But the next lowest priced models, the Panasonic RP-HC500 T at $100 (Yahoo shopping's lowest price is $114), and the Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 at $132 ($199 at Amazon, unfortunately) were judged to be comfortable to wear, and did a great job at reproducing music as well as canceling outside noise. Both were judged to be indistinguishable in quality from the Bose headphones that cost about three times more.
I'm not planning to buy noise-reducing headphones for myself, but I've considered getting them as a gift for a good friend of mine who is a writer and finds noise really distracting when she's trying to work. $300 was too much for me to spend on such a present, but at $100 or so, I might just do it.

This Year's Price of Love

As Valentine's Day is fast approaching, I thought I would re-post this item I wrote last year.
All the prices still seem to be in effect, except for Yahoo Personals, which has gone up to $39.95 per month. I don't think anything else has changed, except that Match.com now has that rather dicey slogan "It's Okay To Look," or in other words, "We Make More Money if People Cheat on Their Spouses."

The Price of Love

No, this is not the post where I detail how much prostitutes charge for their various services. I'll write about that next week, and anyway, that is sex, not love. Instead I thought I'd post a little wrap-up on the financial aspects of a few of the popular online dating sites, for anyone who might need a little last-minute Valentine's Day help! Site Price per month Asks Income Level? Sexual Orientation/Users Match.com $29.99 yes All eHarmony $49.95 yes Straight only Jdate $34.95 yes Jewish, mostly straight PlanetOut $12.95 no Gay/lesbian Yahoo Personals $24.95** yes All **2006 price. 2007 price is $39.95 If you need a cheap date in a hurry, gay is the way to go-- PlanetOut not only has the lowest monthly price, they offer a 3-day membership for only $4.95! As for eHarmony, it's a shame only heterosexuals can waste a full day filling out their interminable questionnaire only to be told there are no matches in their area. (I swear I only did it for research purposes!) I also wanted to check whether the profile questionnaires on these sites included a question about income level-- this is something some of my friends and I were debating. A few of us thought it was really obnoxious, or tacky, or at least unromantic, for someone to say they only want to date people who make a certain amount of money. But on the other hand, money is a real compatibility issue. If I were designing a dating site, I'd include questions about savings and spending habits, not just income level. Of course if you want to do all this completely for free, most of these services offer some level of limited access without having to pay-- except eHarmony, which won't put you in touch with anyone until both of you fork over. And if you're really trying to be frugal, there's always Craigslist. Happy hunting! And happy Valentine's Day.

Rule #12: Coupons

• Pay attention to coupons

This would seem to be a personal finance no-brainer, right? You look out for coupons, buy things for a little less, what's not to love? For grocery and pharmacy items that are repeat-purchase staples, I definitely try to use coupons. Sometimes it's a little annoying if the coupon requires you buy a lot of something, but I know I'll use these basic things, so I will stock up a little to get the discount if I have to-- it makes perfect sense. But there is another part to this rule:

• Ignore coupons

Aside from the aforementioned items, I don't go looking for coupons, and I often don't use the ones I come across. Too often, seeing a coupon makes you think you should buy something that you probably didn't need. It makes you go to that store or website, and once you're there, you end up spending money. Sometimes coupons are only good on a large size of something, at McDonald's, for instance, where you end up paying what you would have paid for the smaller size you should have gotten in the first place. Sometimes the coupons aren't valid on certain merchandise, so you end up picking up all kinds of stuff at Macy's only to discover that since it was already on sale the coupon won't give you any additional discount but you buy the stuff anyway.
I pretty much try to ignore these kinds of coupons and discount deals. When I need to buy something major, I'll look around to see if I can get a deal anywhere. If I can't, I'll buy the thing anyway. If I end up buying fewer unnecessary things overall, I think that makes up for possibly paying a few dollars more for the ones I do buy.

Some more thoughts on coupons in this post and its comments.

The Price of Love

No, this is not the post where I detail how much prostitutes charge for their various services. I'll write about that next week, and anyway, that is sex, not love.

Instead I thought I'd post a little wrap-up on the financial aspects of a few of the popular online dating sites, for anyone who might need a little last-minute Valentine's Day help!

Site	Price per month	Asks Income Level?	Sexual Orientation/users
Match.com	$29.99	yes	All
eHarmony	$49.95	yes	Straight only
Jdate	$34.95	yes	Jewish, mostly straight
PlanetOut	$12.95	no	Gay/lesbian
Yahoo Personals	$24.95	yes	All

If you need a cheap date in a hurry, gay is the way to go-- PlanetOut not only has the lowest monthly price, they offer a 3-day membership for only $4.95! As for eHarmony, it's a shame only heterosexuals can waste a full day filling out their interminable questionnaire only to be told there are no matches in their area. (I swear I only did it for research purposes!)
I also wanted to check whether the profile questionnaires on these sites included a question about income level-- this is something some of my friends and I were debating. A few of us thought it was really obnoxious, or tacky, or at least unromantic, for someone to say they only want to date people who make a certain amount of money. But on the other hand, money is a real compatibility issue. If I were designing a dating site, I'd include questions about savings and spending habits, not just income level.

Of course if you want to do all this completely for free, most of these services offer some level of limited access without having to pay-- except eHarmony, which won't put you in touch with anyone until both of you fork over. And if you're really trying to be frugal, there's always Craigslist.

Happy hunting! And happy Valentine's Day.

High-tech vacillation

I'm still contemplating my possible bid on an apartment. The good news is that so far, there doesn't seem to be anyone else who's seriously interested in the place. The bad news is that on a second visit with a measuring tape, it's a little smaller than I thought, and I decided I might really want to renovate the bathroom before I moved in.
Then, there's the ????? news.
After noodling around with various numbers, I did a serious re-vamp of my real estate spreadsheet. The old version just told me whether I could afford to buy based on my monthly costs, overall budget, and savings goals. Those are not factors I can ignore. But then there is the next level, of deciding whether higher monthly costs make sense, even if I can "afford" them month to month. I put the whole "capital loss" calculation into a new tab on my spreadsheet, and also added a comparison of my potential gains from buying vs. potential results if I keep renting and invest my money.
I'm looking at two timeframes, 5 years out and 10 years out, with just two variables to input, potential investment returns percentage and potential real estate appreciation percentage.
Here's a few scenarios: