How I Spent [Money During] My Spring Vacation, Part 1

As you may have noticed, I'm back from my vacation... I feel like I was away forever, as the weather has changed a lot, flowers have bloomed, the days are longer, and there are just lots of things I have to readjust to now that I'm back in NYC after almost 2 weeks in New Zealand.

I flew there via Los Angeles and Sydney-- I was very glad that I took the Economy Plus seat upgrade that cost me $119, as that is a very long trip. United charges for the extra leg room on international flights, but on the JFK-LAX leg, the whole plane was Economy Plus-- that is, except for business and first class, which took up a much larger than usual percentage of the plane. I guess a lot of people go for the more expensive seats on this route, and even for those who don't, the extra space in economy is popular. While in JFK, I bought a couple of little NY teddy bears as gifts for the children of some friends I'd be seeing in NZ, for about $8 each. On the plane to LAX, I bought a $5 boxed meal-- I'm actually glad that airlines are now charging for food on domestic flights, as the quality of the meals is much better than what you used to get for free. At LAX, I bought some chocolates and cigarettes, again as gifts for friends in NZ, totalling about $45. I also bought a book (about $15), as I had already demolished almost 2 entire books and a magazine and was worried I'd run out of reading material!

When I arrived in Sydney, I had a dilemma. I only had a couple of hours to kill between flights, but after that long journey, I was dying for a cup of coffee. It seemed silly to get Australian money just for a cup of coffee. But the cafes all seemed to have a minimum for credit cards and I didn't want any other food, especially since NZ has really strict biosecurity and they're picky about what you can bring in: no fruit, honey, meat, etc. I ended up getting $20 out of an ATM, and buying a couple more small gifts with some of it, but I still have $6.80 left over. I wish I'd had more time so I could actually have stayed over in Sydney and seen some of the place, but I'm sure I'll have a chance to go back some day.

Here are some terrible pictures I took of some Australian money:



(I really need a camera with a macro lens... perhaps a post about digital SLRs is in my future...)

From Sydney, I continued to Christchurch, where my sweetie, who had traveled from elsewhere, met me at the airport. I was so happy that I'd finally arrived that I didn't realize until we got to our hotel that I hadn't gotten any New Zealand money! I had a few dollars left over from my last trip, but it turned out that most of my coins were no longer usable. In the 3 years since I last visited, NZ has eliminated 5 cent coins, and changed some of the larger coins like 50s and 10s to different sizes. (I think they had already done away with 1 cent coins a while ago, and NZ's paper money remains the same, with $5 being the smallest denomination.) All prices are now rounded to even 10 cent increments, which I think makes a lot of sense. I wonder when the US will get its act together to do this! But one interesting thing I noticed just now was that some of my credit card receipts show prices that are not rounded-- I guess if you really wanted to pinch a few pennies, you could pay with cash when the price needs to be rounded down, and pay with a credit card to stick with an exact cost that would otherwise be rounded up!

Here are some equally bad photos of my leftover NZ money. The first one is the obsolete coins:



I like how both Australian and NZ bills have these little see-through inserts, seen above on the right side just above the number 10. They are slightly textured, and I'm sure make forgery a lot more difficult.

After checking into our hotel, we went out for dinner at a cafe/bookstore where there was a poetry reading-- one of the poets was American, and read a piece that happened to be about staring at Abe Lincoln on the $5 bill while sitting in an airport cafe, which I thought was kind of funny. The next morning, I took a walk to a cash machine and took out $200. Then I went to a cafe to get some breakfast. Coffee is relatively cheap in NZ-- I found that a large latte tends to be about $3.50, which when you do the exchange works out to less than you'd pay in most places in the US. But it seemed weird that a bagel with cream cheese and jelly was $5, which works out to almost US$4. I was also not too happy at the fact that the bagel was toasted on a sandwich press which obviously hadn't been cleaned too thoroughly since something with pesto had been on it. And then the whole melty, cream-cheesy, strawberry-and-pesto flavored mess was just shoved in a paper bag instead of being wrapped in paper. Anyway, I am not really one of these people who misses the point of travel by complaining that everything isn't the way you can get it at home, so for future breakfasts I took advantage of the superior scones and crumpets available in NZ.

Before leaving Christchurch, we availed ourselves of another good thing that comes cheap in NZ-- a nice big swimming pool. The public swimming pools there are nicer than many private ones in the US. The locker room facilities might be more spartan, but it's wonderful to be able to walk in a take a swim for only a few dollars, and it seems less prevalent for people to join private health clubs at all, unlike here in NYC where it can be fairly difficult for a traveler to go swimming for less than $20 a dunk.

I didn't take any photos in Christchurch, as I'd been there before and though it's a neat little city, this time it was merely a starting point for the real adventure: getting on the road and doing a mini tour of some of the South Island's best hiking! Tomorrow I'll tell you more about the rest of the trip, with plenty of photos of spectacular scenery. I promise they'll be of better quality than my currency close-ups!

Price Discrimination at Dry Cleaners

Well, this started my morning off all wrong: I went to a local drycleaners on my way to the subway. I've used this place ever since I moved and found them to be friendly and reasonably priced. But after today, I'm not sure if I'm going back.
This morning, in addition to wanting to have my winter coat drycleaned, I brought in a couple of shirts that I wanted laundered. Sometimes I am just a slob and wear slightly wrinkly shirts, but when spring rolls around, I like having them pressed and since I still don't have an ironing board, and hate ironing, I thought it was time to have some cotton shirts done at the laundry.
So I hand the girl my two shirts and she says "are these man shirts or lady?" I look at her blankly and she says, "oh, these are ladies blouse, so dryclean." I say no, that I don't want them drycleaned, just laundered, no starch. She says they only do that for men's shirts, and that women's shirts have to be drycleaned, at a cost of $2.50 vs. $1.50 each. I argue that that is ridiculous, as all collared cotton shirts are the same and they should charge based on the service rendered, not what gender wears the shirts. She doesn't budge, so I told her I would be taking all my laundry and drycleaning business elsewhere. (Unfortunately, this meant lugging them into my office, as I didn't have time to go elsewhere before work!)
The thing is, I thought New York had passed a law specifically prohibiting this kind of price discrimination. A little googling found me a NY Times article from 1998 about a new law, but I'm not really sure exactly where it stands now-- the article suggests that the law just prevents drycleaners from posting separate price charts for men and women, without necessarily preventing them from actually charging differently. I've been to many other laundry places that were perfectly happy to do my shirts at the normal price, even if in some cases their drycleaning prices distinguished between a "blouse" and a "shirt"-- which is fine with me. A women's silk blouse is often going to be more delicate, more embellished, etc. than a man's shirt, so I can see why it might require more careful handling. But the kind of shirts I am talking about are almost identical for men and women other than the cut and the collars being a bit softer.
I might have to call 311 about that law, and write a letter to the owner of that store. I'm going to be really annoyed if I have to go a few blocks out of my way to do my drycleaning, so I would like to continue to give them my business, but if they're going to be jerks about this, they've seen the last of me.

Weekend News

Ok, this one really pissed me off:
For $82 a Day, Booking a Cell In a 5-Star Jail

There is a reason some offenses involve fines and others involve jail time. Doing jail time is supposed to suck. People with money shouldn't be allowed to pay to make it suck less.

But... in the very unlikely event that I had to go to jail myself, I am sure I would want to take advantage of this sort of program myself, given that I am kind of a wimpy, non-alpha girl-- hardly the type who would do well in a prison gang...

As for lighter fare from the City section, this article about "fixies" is kind of funny. Fixie is short for fixed-gear bicycle. They have no brakes, there's only one gear, and the pedals are fixed so you can't just coast. They have a lot of fans among bike messengers and hipster kids-- I can see why, as they have a stripped-down aesthetic to them, and to actually ride such a bike indicates a certain hard-core cred, especially in a city like this one, where to ride any bike at all is to take your life in your hands. But don't think skipping all the bells and whistles makes this kind of bike any cheaper-- au contraire. They start at around $800 and go much higher.
What I think is funny about the article is that the devotees of these bikes seem to see them as a symbol of some kind of alternative culture:

Although fixed-gear bikes can be seen as a trendy accessory, they also allow a mild form of rebellion against what many of these bike riders see as a wasteful and insipid way of life. Fixed-gear riders embrace the contrary notion of taking a different route.

One of the riders interviewed says he believes in fixies as an "extension of a squatters' lifestyle... 'living a certain way, subsisting on recycling, not wasting, finding liberation... spiritualist anarchism.'" That is an awful lot of meaning to attach to a particular kind of bike, and I wonder if these people stop to think about how they are basically fetishizing an $800+ object-- doesn't sound too anti-materialistic to me! They are investing these expensive bikes with all these messages about what kind of people they are. How is that any different than spending $800 on a Louis Vuitton bag? The message may be a bit different but the medium is almost the same. I do think bicycle ridership should be encouraged, as it promotes fitness and energy conservation... but hey, carrying a heavy leather Vuitton bag should build a few muscles, and every cow they kill for one of those things is that much less methane gas being released into our atmosphere... Anyway, my point is: sometimes an expensive bike is just an expensive bike.

More Randomness from the Archives

But then... then... in the movie of my life, this is going to be where the clouds part, the sun beams down, and a rhapsodic swelling of choral voices and violins heralds the arrival of something truly mind-blowing!

I seem to suffer from some kind of mall-induced paralysis.

Busy Weeks

My posting and comment moderation will probably be very intermittent over the next couple of weeks, due to work, vacation, etc.-- apologies to anyone who is actually hanging on my every word! If you truly can't cope during the downtime, go to Cafepress.com where you can order a t-shirt featuring a photo of my mom-organized, rolled-up sock and undie drawer to make you feel better.

I'm future-dating this message so it will appear at the top for a while, but please check below for recent posts. And I promise I'll get back up to speed at the end of the month!

Greetings from New Zealand

I am having a great time on my vacation, and will have lots of money-related tidbits to blog about later, but for now, I will just tell you that I am at an internet kiosk where I have paid NZ$4.00 for 16 minutes of usage. The kiosk is located in a hotel in Mt. Cook Village called The Hermitage, where rooms start at NZ$560! Am I actually staying in one of these rooms? Yes! Did I pay $560 for it? No! We got a night here for FREE, via a connection my companion managed to exploit. It's a fabulous spot-- our room has a gigantic picture window looking out at snow-capped mountains that feel like they're about a foot away. The only catch is that there is hardly anyplace to eat in this town, so we had dinner in one of the hotel restaurants last night-- the casual buffet-style restaurant where dinner is NZ$51.50 per person! That includes tax but not wine, so add another $24 for 3 glasses of a lovely Hawkes Bay Sauvignon Blanc. If we'd eaten in the a la carte restaurant, main courses would have started at about $30, so we could have done worse. The New Zealand dollar is really strong right now, but still, by New York standards, things aren't too expensive here... except for a $4 bagel I had in Christchurch.
Time's running out... more later!

More randomness from the archives

What would Laura Ingalls Wilder say?

Mr. Darcy in his wet and clingy linen.

$119

That is the cost of an upgrade to Economy Plus seating on a United airlines flight from LA to Sydney. And I just paid it while checking in online.
I remember the good old days, when I could get an Economy Plus seat just by asking, or sometimes without even asking. But in the last couple of years, United isn't giving anything away for free. Given that I am on the tall side, a few extra inches of legroom can make all the difference, especially on a looooong flight like this one!
Is a slight increase in comfort worth $119? Part of me thinks I should not be spending $119 on something like this right now. If it was a shorter flight, I wouldn't have bothered. And maybe I could have gotten lucky and gotten the extra legroom seat for free if the plane wasn't full. But I really didn't want to take any chances. And since I paid for the rest of my ticket with miles, I can still feel like my trip is a bargain overall. (At one point, this logic had even tempted me to buy $500 worth of extra miles so I could upgrade to business class, but I passed on that.) I am also indulging myself in taking a car service to the airport-- given the weather we've been having, there is no way I want to drag my suitcase on even a short walk to the subway!

Well, I really am getting out of here now. I will be trying to post a little bit via email but I apologize in advance for the weird formatting that seems to happen when sending a post via Blackberry-- if anyone knows how to prevent that, let me know!
Hasta la vista, babies!

More Randomness from the Archives

Sue still doesn't have carrots-- just do the thing without them?

Randomness from the Archives

While I'm away, I thought it would be fun to post some outtakes from the distant past...
"anything the broker told you may be a lie, even if it was in writing."

Flipping Out

I just discovered that someone in my building has already put their condo on the market, for about 30% more than they paid for it only a few months ago. It will be very interesting to see how much they end up getting.
I've been keeping track of the real estate listings, with only slightly less vigilance than when I was actually shopping for an apartment. Anyone can see that the bubble is over-- there are more properties on the market and more listings offering incentives to buyers such as free common charges for a year, etc. But as the various market reports seem to be finding, prices continue to hold steady or go up. I have yet to see a single listing that made me wonder if I made the right choice in buying my condo. My only regret is that I didn't ask if I could buy the identical unit one floor up from mine-- I get plenty of sun as it is, but I wouldn't have minded even more, plus a bit more view of sky-- and even water. I can see a teensy bit of what must be New Jersey now, but only if I lean way over the edge of my balcony. I suppose I could try to buy that unit if it's ever for sale, but I doubt it would be worth the trouble and expense. Especially if the price ended up being 30% higher than I paid for mine! And even if I sold my apartment for 30% more than I paid, I don't think I could afford to buy anything else that would suit me as well, given what seems to be on the market now.
I do sort of envy people who have the ability to flip apartments for a profit. I knew someone who did it a couple of times in a row, at the very beginning of the Brooklyn boom-- everyone thought he was nuts moving after only a year or so in each place, but his timing was right and he kept making enough of a profit to trade up to a better apartment or neighborhood. I guess he liked decorating enough not to mind leaving his hard work behind. And maybe he just didn't have too much stuff to pack up and move! When I think of having to repack all of my books again, I feel like I'll live here forever!

Weekend News

Do I have my finger on the pulse, or what? This weekend's NY Times real estate section has a big article entitled "Sinking Your Money Into a Rental." You can read my recent post on the topic here.

To change topics somewhat, I've been rather disturbed lately by something that actually was a news item, if only a very small local one, somewhere other than in NY. I won't go into the specifics, but someone I used to know slightly was arrested for stealing a fairly large amount of money from his employer. I heard this from some other people who knew him and we were all shocked. There was nothing about him that would make you think he'd be so dishonest. And above all, it just seemed so stupid! Why would you risk your career, and part of the means of supporting your children, on some crazy scheme to rip off your company? And from what I heard about it, the scheme really was crazy enough that I'm amazed he got away with it for as long as he did. I guess it just goes to show you that money can cause temporary insanity, and self-destruction. It's sad, really.

Obsessive Thoughts Meme

Juan Millon (1Mil) has tagged me to list my 5 obsessions... this is definitely a more difficult thing to list than 5 things you don't know about me. Especially when the first thing that pops into your head is "Well, I'm obsessed with Greta Garbo..." after the person who tagged you lists "Freedom and Justice" as his first item.

If you've followed this blog for a while, you may remember that I've said I'm obsessed with money, but that needs clarification. Most people would take that to mean that I'm obsessed with MAKING money, which I'm not, really. I'm obsessed with feeling financially secure, or at least financially stable. And I'm obsessed with the way money obsesses society in general, and all the weird things we do because of that.

You may also have noticed that I'm a bit obsessed with James Brown. I'm not sure why, but ever since I was in high school and happened to see him on TV, I have just loved the music and his whole persona, which mystified everyone I knew at the time, given that I grew up in a kind of stuffy white suburb where the two musical teen cultures were punk and new wave on the one side, (my side), and classic rock on the other. My mixtapes consisting of funk, disco and Motown interspersed with the Clash, the B-52s and Siouxsie and the Banshees were considered really bizarre. Even beyond the stuffy white suburb, it was hard to find musical kindred spirits in the late '80s-- I always remember a black friend at work who said "Get that crazy old man off the tapedeck, I want to listen to Luther Vandross!"

I don't know if this is considered obsession or paranoia, but I always kind of jump into revolving doors, because I'm afraid I'll get squished if I'm half in, half out as the door turns...

Ok, that leaves me one last obsession to tell you about... I guess it would be learning. Even if I didn't work with books, I think I'd be obsessed with reading. I like studying languages and history and art and reading about people and places and all kinds of things. This obsession kind of extends into a general interest in self-improvement: basically, trying to be a Renaissance Woman. I don't mean that I go to those fairs and dress up as a 16th century serving wench, as I by no means aspire to that period's female roles or aesthetics, and I don't have the figure for a lace-up bodice. I am referring to the female equivalent of a Renaissance Man, someone with wide knowledge who is good at many things. Or in the parlance of a recent NY Times article, I want to be an "Amazing Girl," but grown-up! Aside from reading and learning, I'm trying to save money, succeed at my job, stay physically fit, be a good aunt, cook healthy meals, be creative, decorate my apartment, re-learn a musical instrument I gave up long ago, grow some plants, give back to society, moisturize, floss, remember people's birthdays and stop biting my nails. Like most people who try to do too much, I tend not to do anything all that well! Luckily I also have a very unambitious streak which allows me plenty of times when I am happy to just kick back, tune out, and do nothing while soaking up the sun at one extra obsession of mine, Coney Island.

Now I get to tag some folks... how about 3 Things About Money, Simplicity in Kansas, English Major, Donna Jean, and fin_indie?

How Much is Good Content Worth?

How do you feel about paying for content, i.e. music, video, and especially the written word? There are a lot of people out there who want to know your answer to this question. I work in publishing, and I write this blog, so I see two sides of this issue.
My whole livelihood depends on the fact that in book publishing, there has traditionally been an expectation that the available content has to be chosen, edited, printed, marketed, and distributed. When you buy a book, you expect that what you read inside it will meet at least some minimum level of grammar, spelling, readability (in the sense that words are used well and you can understand what the author is talking about), legibility (in the design and quality of the printing), and for want of a better term, interestingness, meaning it's a good story, or gives good information about a topic. Most people probably don't think about it explicitly, but you probably assume that books that look a certain way and come from a publishing house will meet these minimum standards, whereas if you know that some person just wrote a book and had it printed up themselves, you might wonder if it's any good.
At least that is how it used to be. With books, it's been somewhat difficult, or at least expensive for just any old person to create, market and distribute a book without the support of a publisher. That is changing due to new technology that makes it much easier and cheaper to do small print runs of books that look halfway decent, and there are always a few success stories about someone who self-published a really successful book and sold thousands of copies out of the trunk of their car. But when you hear those stories, it tends to be because a major publisher heard about it, bought the rights, and is now publishing a new version of the book and marketing it in the traditional ways. I don't know any stats about the number of readers who have ever bought a self-published book but I'll bet it is incredibly small.

The more content goes digital, the more this changes. An enormous number of people want to, and do create content. Now that we have blogs and websites, we can easily share our creative work with the world at large. There are no publishers acting as gatekeepers to tell the end user which content is worth reading. There are no marketers or publicists raising the profile of certain authors. There is no art department designing how the pages look. So there are millions of pages of writing out there that may or may not be worth reading, and they probably look awful, and hardly anyone has heard about them. And no one is making any money off them, probably, which isn't a big surprise.

But then you have many other thousands or millions of pages of writing that are halfway decent, they get a little attention, and maybe are making a little money from advertising. For most, it's probably just pocket change, but some bloggers are actually able to make a living at it. So do people even need publishers any more? Can people make more money by writing and promoting their own blogs?
Barbara Ehrenreich recently wrote a blog post called "Before You Write That Book," in which she tries to discourage people who might want to write a book, saying that it's difficult to get published and you probably won't make much money anyway. And that is true. But especially for people who have been blogging already, it can become very tempting.

Take this blog, for example. I've featured a few ads here and there for most of the time I've been writing it, but I've never wanted them to visually overwhelm the site. The result is that I have made a few dollars but the lifetime amount is only in the low 3 figures (which I have been keeping track of and periodically donating to charities). But what if this blog was a book? My site has been mentioned in several national publications (Business Week, New York Times, Marie Claire, The Week magazine, Bitch magazine) and on msn.com, as well as in a couple of local and international newspapers or magazines, which is more than can be said for a lot of first time book authors. And I've had a couple hundred thousand unique visitors as a result, which I still find pretty mind-boggling! What if instead of reading my blog, those people had bought "My Open Wallet: The Book," as a $10 paperback? Assuming a 10% author royalty, I'd have made $200,000 instead of $200! Of course not every unique visitor to a blog would necessarily be a book buyer, but they don't necessarily click ads either, and you can see that the scale of revenue is just totally different.

Maybe some readers would be willing to pay me $1 to read this blog. That is the exchange people have traditionally made when it comes to the written word: someone entertains or informs you in exchange for payment. And some authors probably see blogging as a dangerous precedent of writers giving away their labor for free. But now that written words are becoming more like broadcast media, it's hard to get people to pony up! So book and magazine publishers are going a little nuts trying to figure out how they're going to make money in the future-- ad revenue online is only a tiny fraction of what it is for print. And actual consumer payment for content online is almost non-existent. And a lot of people in publishing are having a hard time adjusting to this. I was just in a meeting where a sales rep referred to a bookseller who had only just now gotten access to the internet for the first time and asked "Ok, I'm on the World Wide Web, now where do I go?" And someone else, when told about publishers offering widgets for searching book content, asked "Is that a cookie?" Meanwhile, I'm hoping to get involved with a committee on digital initiatives, as I have some experience with the blogging world now, and some ideas on how book publishing can evolve. I also have a very vested interest in its doing so, as I'd like to have a job for the next 30 years. But at least if I did get laid off, I'd have more time to work on this blog... and maybe I'd figure out how to turn it into a money-making machine!

Putting Money Into a Rental

Here's a real New York money-spending issue: how much you should spend to improve a rental apartment. I've been thinking of this ever since I visited an apartment my friend Mortimer was thinking of renting-- I could see immediately why he wanted a second opinion. The rent was relatively cheap for the size of the space, and could probably be negotiated down even further. Why? Because the apartment was a dump.
Maybe dump is too strong a word, but truly the place was in horrible shape. There was a thick layer of dust all over everything, the paint was grimy, and there was an unspeakably filthy old carpet in the hallway. You could tell that whoever had maintained it over the years was not very handy-- there were random screws and hooks in the walls in strange places, and a small window by the door had been boarded up. The bathroom was in a sort of shed that had been built onto the back of the house, with just a rickety, leaking shower stall. In the kitchen, you could see through a gap by the baseboard into the basement below. The upsides were that it had access to the backyard, and... well, maybe that was the only upside.
The sad fact is that rents are so high here that people will actually consider living in such places just to stay more or less in a desirable neighborhood. This apartment was maybe 1 block from what many people consider the border of Park Slope. It was near the subway and plenty of stores, and walking distance to plenty of restaurants in the Slope. In Park Slope itself, you can easily pay $1,600 a month for a studio and $2,000 or quite a bit more for a one-bedroom.
So thinking he could get a one-bedroom with outdoor space for maybe $1300 or so, Mortimer was seriously thinking about this place. "You see what I mean when I say it has potential, right?" he asked me.
I did see that it had potential. If you could gut-renovate the place, you could turn it into a cute apartment that only had a couple of compromises. Even just cleaning, painting, and ripping out that horrendous carpet would have done a lot. But I said to Mortimer "How handy are you? And do you really want to put a lot of money into fixing up this place? Because the landlord's answer to those questions would obviously be NOT AT ALL!"
Since Mortimer isn't handy and doesn't have the money to spend either, he decided to steer clear of the place, and has since found a much nicer, renovated apartment in a further-out location. But someone will eventually rent that place, I'm sure. Lots of New Yorkers ARE willing to spend a lot of money fixing up property that belongs to someone else. When I was a senior in college, I helped some friends who had just graduated move into an apartment in Park Slope, back when the character of the neighborhood was still quite different. We painted, ripped out carpet, and installed new linoleum tiles in the kitchen, all stuff that cost maybe a couple hundred dollars. In my own former rental studio, I replaced the toilet seat myself, caulked the tub myself, and bought a ceiling fan with my own money and asked my landlord to install it. But all that cost me only about $50. If anything else needed to be done, I asked my landlord, as he did take good care of his building even though he procrastinated a lot on minor repairs.
Then you have people like my cousin (the one that SingleMa said "rode the financial short bus.") Some years ago, she and her boyfriend, with the help of some carpenters in the family, re-did the floors and put in a new kitchen and bathroom in their apartment. When their landlord saw how nice they'd made it, he hiked up their rent at the first opportunity!
Some New Yorkers are probably smarter about negotiating rent discounts or long leases in exchange for their sweat equity, but I'm sure there are many others who just do what they want to do and hope for the best. So many people here are style-conscious types who work in artsy, design-y fields, and even if they can't afford to buy apartments, they want some control over their homes. Also, given the space constrictions we face, it's no surprise people often create built-in shelves and loft beds that sometimes have to be left behind for the next tenant. And then there is the special case of rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartments. When an apartment that has been occupied by the same family for decades, leading to a way-below-market rent, of course the landlord doesn't want to spend a penny on improvements if he can possibly avoid it. And of course that tenant is going to want to stay in the apartment for as long as they possibly can, and the money they're saving on rent makes it worthwhile to fix a few things themselves.
One of the more spectacular examples of a renter-reno was blogged over a 9-month period on Apartment Therapy. In the comments on a post called "9 Month Cure: The Money," there was a lot of discussion about the fact that the renovation coincided with the tenants expecting a baby, but it took a while for anyone to bring up the issue of investing that much money in a rental:

I'd like to address the money issue. From what you say it seems like you are renting your current place, yet you are going to renovate your kitchen at your own expense? Why would you do that when you think you might move soon? Why not take that money (which would probably be at least 10k) and put it towards a downpayment?

Another commenter took a different tack:

I have renovated my apartment a fair bit, with some supplies paid for. But I would have done it even if I had been paying for all the supplies. Why? Because the cost of buying versus renting in my city has reached such crazy ratios that the cost of my rent is less than the cost of interest, taxes, and maintenance if I were to buy a similarly sized apartment in the same neighbourhood. Note that this does *not* include any principal repayment. I wasn't in a position to buy a few years ago, and it turns out I'm still not, despite being a fair bit better off financially.
People spend money on all kinds of experiences to make their lives fuller - travel, restaurant meals, theatre tickets. What you have are the memories. Any money I spend on renos is similar - I get the pleasure of living in my space for several years.

I wonder how many millions of dollars must be spent each year by tenants to improve rental apartments. How much would you be willing to spend?

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...

More on How to Pay for Public Transportation

There were some interesting comments on the last post, about whether or not the NYC subway should be free.
One thought was that although you could save some money in some ways, making the subway free would cause an overwhelming increase in ridership that would create more expenses for maintenance, etc. I do agree that you'd probably have more homeless people in the subway, unless you took some of the staff who currently deal with fare collection and turned them into security guards instead. But more riders in general? Most people don't ride the subway and buses because they have nothing better to do-- they ride them because they have to, because it is the cheapest way they have of getting to work or school or doctor's appointments. Some people choose to ride bikes or walk instead of taking the subway, but I think that choice is often motivated just as much by concerns for health and the environment as by money. So I'm not sure who all these droves of people would be who currently aren't using the subway only because it costs $2.00 a ride.

The other interesting suggestion was to privatize the system. The assumption is that a company motivated by profit will run the system more efficiently than a government bureaucracy thereby making it cheaper and better for everyone. But how well does this ever work in practice? I can't say I'm familiar with too many examples of public transit being privatized other than the rail system in the U.K., and from anything I've ever heard or read about that, it either didn't work all that well, or was a total disaster, or something in between.
What I see as the problem is that government subsidies are still involved, and more importantly, when you privatize something like public transportation you are giving a for-profit company a total monopoly, so in order to prevent the riders from getting screwed you have to regulate the industry, and then the company running it tries to cut corners in other ways, and you end up with a decrepit, unsafe public transport system that is no better organized than it ever was and no one is happy except for a few people who probably got rich along the way. I kind of feel the same way about Edison Schools-- it's nice to bring more efficiency to public institutions, but is there really a place for profit margins in public education?
Perhaps I'm being naive here and I certainly can't claim to be well-versed in the intricacies of the financing of public transportation or schools. So I invite all comments and opinions-- have at it!

Should the Subway Be Free?

There is a very long but interesting post at Subway Blogger about why the New York City subway should be free. The gist of it is that they spend so much money on fare collection that eliminating it would save a lot of money and lead to other indirect savings through better conservation of resources, etc. Given that I spend about $912 a year to ride the subway, I kind of like the idea!

Yesterday's News

Happy Birthday Bronx Chica! (which is actually today's news.)

Now for some items of interest from yesterday's New York Times:

It Didn't End Well Last Time: an editorial noting that income inequality is at its worst since 1929

The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me: another piece from the op-ed page, about the theory that rich people often do stupid, obnoxious things with no regard for others because

getting power causes people to focus so keenly on the potential rewards, like money, sex, public acclaim or an extra chocolate-chip cookie ... that they become oblivious to the people around them.

Backyard Pests? Think of Them As Dinner: now here's a way to save money! You can follow the example of one of my fellow Brooklynites by trapping squirrels and sparrows... and then cooking and eating them!

There was also a special section about big mergers and deals and hedge funds, etc.-- I wish I'd saved it as I can't find those articles online. One story compared salaries for investment banking jobs. Since I can't find the numbers to quote, suffice it to say that they were disgustingly large.
[Updated: thanks to the first commenter, I found the link to the article and graphic.]

The Electronic Drool Aid Asset Test

Cell phones are a particularly egregious example of planned obsolescence-- lots of people seem to just upgrade their phones every year or two, taking whatever low-priced or free phone their service provider happens to be offering. My own approach has been a bit different-- when I first decided I wanted a cell phone, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted, and I didn't buy a phone until I found one that was right. It cost about $450-- so I bought it. I did have moments of groaning over how crazy it was to spend that much on a phone, but it was a great phone.
I used it for about 2 years and would still be using it now, probably, if it hadn't been stolen.
I loved it so much that I couldn't bear to replace it with a different model, but there was no way I was paying $450 again, or even more to buy it without a contract, so I bought a used one on eBay for much less-- unfortunately, it didn't always work very well. But I was still so in love with it that I had it repaired, twice, rather than replacing it. But that probably wasn't a cost-effective way of dealing with it.
After a while, the problem kept recurring and got worse: every time I picked up a call, I'd end up disconnecting it instead. It got so ridiculous that one of my friends, the one who was probably being hung up on the most often, gave me her old phone when she got a new one. I never liked itall that much, but it served the need for over a year, until recently, when the charger I had for it stopped working. I probably could have bought a new charger from a guy on the street for $5, which was how my friend had originally bought it. But I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do:

• Cancel my cell phone service, since I now have a landline again, as well as a Blackberry for work that I could use for personal calls, within reason?
• Buy a nice new phone?
• See what kind of phone I could get for free by renewing my contract?
• Wait for the iPhone?
• Buy a charger and keep using the old phone?

But what about the fact that I now have this Blackberry? I really don't like using the Blackberry as a phone or a PDA, but the email function has become a necessity for work, unfortunately. This has led to me carrying around a ridiculous number of gadgets:

• PalmOS PDA-- used for recording expenses in Pocket Quicken, Calendar and To-Do list, Addresses, Memos, encrypted storage of passwords, etc., e-books and dictionaries, a small amount of music, spreadsheets, worldwide weather forecasts, currency conversions and time zones, photos and movies of niece and nephew, restaurant and movie listings for NY and other cities, and other occasional random uses like an inflation calculator, calorie counter, constellation maps, flags of the world, wi-fi web browsing, solitaire, crossword puzzles and other games, and piano and guitar chords (not that I actually play these instruments, but it's a neat thing to have.) As you can see, this is something I really use! See this post for the complete history of money I've spent on Palm Pilots!
• Digital Camera-- you never know when you'll need to snap a photo
• iPod-- I rarely carry this around unless I'm taking a long plane journey. Otherwise I prefer to stay tuned into my surroundings.
• Cellphone
  
• Blackberry

Some of my devices do more than one thing, but often not well enough to get rid of the device that does only that thing and does it well. But I'd really like to cut back on carrying around and charging the batteries of all these devices! I can't get rid of the Blackberry, but I started to consider getting a Treo for all the rest. I love my current PDA and don't really want to stop using it, but a Treo with a big memory card would serve as a phone and a PDA, as well as being good enough for day to day music and photo needs. And getting the latest Treo would satisfy my inner geek needs. The more I thought about it, and the more I poked around online to research it, the more I wanted one! Unfortunately only Cingular sells the model I want so far, so I couldn't just renew my contract to get a good price on the Treo unless I moved my number over to Cingular. I've heard horror stories from a lot of people who have done this, so I want to just stick with T-Mobile and not complicate my life. But that means getting an unlocked phone, which would be about $450.
Compromise: buying a lightly used Treo on eBay... which is what I just did, explaining part of my higher than usual "miscellaneous" expense category for March.
I'm hoping that this Treo works out better than the last phone I bought on eBay. So far, it works well, and though I miss the larger touchscreen on my old Clie, I like the compactness of the Treo and the ease of being able to automatically dial every contact in my address book. The only thing that frustrates me is that I could use the device for email too, but T-Mobile's data plans are way too expensive. There is no way I'm doubling my monthly cell phone cost just for the convenience of occasionally checking my personal email or browsing the web. Especially since I can use my Blackberry for that. But now I loathe that turd of a Blackberry even more whenever I compare it to my shiny little Treo!

This is yet another thing I really hadn't planned to spend money on at this point. And of course now that I have it, I'll want some kind of case, and I've already had to spend a few bucks on new versions of some of the software I use. It's also time to go through the gadgets I'm not using any more and try to sell some of them on eBay, so perhaps that will help soften the blow a bit. Otherwise, I'm hoping my recently reawakened inner gadget freak will go back into hibernation so I can actually start saving money on a regular basis again! But my CD player turned out not to have survived my move-- no surprise, as it was a college graduation present and was already getting a bit wonky last summer. And with the extra space and more frequent visitors I have in my new apartment, watching DVDs on my 12" laptop isn't as satisfying as it used to be. I do kind of have a yen to get a bigger monitor that I could wire up to my stereo, and an extra set of speakers so I'll have good sound in the living room and the bedroom, and maybe a wireless router and an AirPort card so I can blog and listen to music while sitting outside, and an external hard drive so I can burn more music.... AAARRGH, I want a HOME THEATER SYSTEM!!! Must stop now!!!

What are your favorite electronic toys, a.k.a. productivity tools? How much money have you spent on them?

March 2007 Net Worth, Income and Expenses

My March 31st net worth was about $327,000. That is an increase of about 3.5% from last month. Here's what got me there:

Total Inflows $21,232.16
Boy do I wish I had that every month! That includes a bonus and tax refund, as well as interest and employer matching in my 401k.

Outflows
Business expense -326.22 (reimbursement of expenses from earlier in the year)
Charity 1.00
Clothing 239.77
Dining:
--Breakfast 68.44
--Dinner 219.52
--Groceries 452.94
--Liquor 74.23
--Lunch 106.55
Total Dining 921.68 (this is way over budget due to all the extra groceries I've been buying for my mom's 3-week visit)
Education 40.63
Entertainment 5.41
Gifts Given 77.93
Home Repair 55.56
Household:
--Laundry 33.30
--New Home Decor 3,269.49
--Household - Other 553.24
Total Household 3,856.03 (I bought some major furniture this month, as well as smaller household items like towels and silverware. Hopefully my expenses in this category will be MUCH smaller from now on!)
Medical 97.42
Misc 1,034.90 (I will explain why this is so high in another post later this week)
Total Payroll Taxes, Self 5,979.38
Subscriptions 59.51
Travel 85.00
Utilities 322.32 (this is higher than my monthly average, since the gas bill only comes every other month.)
Housing 1810.27 (this is still artificially inflated due to a property tax abatement that hasn't kicked in yet.)

Total Outflows 14,260.59

Net Inflows/Outflows 6,971.57

The rest of the change in my net worth was due to my 401k savings and slight gains in investments since last month.

I was wondering if I should change my year-end goal, as $350,000 is seeming very reachable. But I think I'll let it stand for now. I won't have any more big bumps in my income this year, and even if I stop spending so much on decorating my apartment my regular monthly savings won't be very high until I get a raise again. And who knows where the stock market is going. But I'll take a look at that goal again in June.

How to Save for Retirement

I was having lunch with some colleagues the other day, and the conversation turned to job benefits, as one of the people at the lunch was about to leave for a new job in a different field. He was surprised that his new job offered a good old-fashioned pension, which is increasingly rare. This got us talking about retirement savings, as one of the people at the table asked if everyone contributed to our company's 401k plan. I was happy to hear that everyone did. Then this guy said to me "If this is too personal a question you don't have to answer it, but what percentage do you contribute? Do you put in the maximum?"
I rarely have moments like this, where the reticence of my "real life" self collides with the openness of my blog persona. But I decided to answer the question fairly openly, saying that I had always tried to contribute the maximum. Then he asked "Do you mean the maximum to get the employer matching contribution, or the maximum overall?" This began to feel slightly more awkward to answer, as a couple of the people in the conversation were entry level staff for whom hitting the $15k maximum would consume half their salary, but again I said that I tried to hit the overall maximum. My interrogator then said "Wow, that's great, but I've heard some people say you should only do enough to get the matching contributions." I answered that yes, some people did believe you should do that, and then make contributions to a Roth IRA instead. His response:

"What is a Roth IRA?"

I found this really surprising. The guy who asked me is very smart, almost my age, and recently bought his first house. I found it hard to believe he had never heard of a Roth IRA, but I guess it's easy to forget that for people who aren't finance junkies, these kinds of topics might just be under the radar most of the time.
So I didn't run out to a phone booth and change into a Statue of Liberty costume and sunglasses, but I did inwardly put on my Madame X hat for a moment to explain the following to my lunch companions:

Retirement Savings 101: a lay person's very basic explanation.*

For most people like me, i.e. full time employees of companies that offer benefits, there are 4 basic ways you might fund your retirement.

1) Traditional Pension, aka defined benefit plan: this is a plan where you don't contribute anything. Your employer agrees to pay you a certain amount of money when you retire, probably a monthly or annual amount until you die. The amount will be higher the longer you've worked for the company. If you leave the company before retirement, you will probably be "vested" in some portion of that money, meaning they either pay you a sum of cash when you leave, or you have to get back in touch with your former employer to get whatever benefit may still be due to you when you retire. If you are so lucky as to have one of these, great! But you'd better save some other money too-- if your company gets into financial trouble or mis-manages its pension fund, your retirement money could be reduced if it's above the level the government insures.

2) 401k Plan, aka defined contribution plan: this is the more common form of retirement savings plan for most employees today. You have to choose to participate, and choose what percentage of your salary you'd like to contribute, up to an annual maximum which is currently $15,000 for employees under age 50. That money is then deducted from your income before taxes-- it lowers your taxable income, so you pay less in taxes. When you reach retirement age you can start to withdraw the money, and you will be taxed on it then. Most employers will match a percentage of your contributions. If you change jobs, you get to keep all of your own contributions, and whatever portion of the employer contribution you are vested in, depending on how long you've been at the job. You can then leave the funds with whoever currently administers them, or roll them over into the 401k at your new job. You could also cash it out, but you'd lose 20% to taxes right away.

3) Roth IRA, another defined contribution plan: for a Roth IRA, you're on your own, as it's not something you do through your employer. But it's easy to open one: any bank should be able to open a Roth IRA account in the form of a CD and online brokerages can give you a Roth IRA account if you want to invest the money in stocks or mutual funds, etc. You can contribute up to $4,000 for 2007, in a lump sum or gradually throughout the year. You even have until April 15th, 2007 to make your 2006 contribution, but beyond that, you can't backtrack if you miss a year. If your income as an individual is above $95,000-- not your salary but your adjusted gross income on your tax return-- your contribution limit is reduced. If your income is above $110,000, you can't contribute to a Roth IRA at all. With a Roth, you are contributing money after already having paid taxes, so when you withdraw it at retirement, no more taxes are due.

What you'll want to think about when deciding how much you want to contribute to a 401k and/or a Roth IRA is how best to maximize your employer's matching contributions, and what your taxes are now vs. what they are likely to be in the future. The usual thinking is that if you are starting out in your career and expect to be in a higher tax bracket by the time you retire, it makes sense to maximize the Roth IRA, so for many people, the priority should be to first contribute enough to a 401k to get the maximum match from your employer, then max out your Roth IRA. My personal opinion is that you should then continue to contribute more to your 401k, up to the annual maximum if you possibly can. It's a great way to save without having to think about it and if you get into the habit early enough, you'll find that you learn to live without that money and don't miss it much.

4) Social Security: you pay into the Social Security system via a payroll deduction whether you like it or not. And when you retire, you will be entitled to a payment from the Social Security system. There has been a lot of political debate about whether or not this system is sustainable, whether it should exist, whether the baby boomers will bankrupt it before the younger generations can retire, etc. My thinking is that you should not count on having whatever your Social Security statement says you will probably get. Save money for your retirement in other ways, as if those savings were all you'd have to live on. Chances are you WILL get something from Social Security, but let that be the icing on the cake.


So that is my very simplistic explanation of some ways to prevent starvation and homelessness when you're a senior citizen. Remember that no matter what method of retirement savings you choose, it's important to start now if you haven't already-- you need time to let those savings grow! I've been saving for retirement since my first job after college. I'm still under 40 and I have almost $200,000 saved specifically for retirement. Am I saving enough to have the retirement lifestyle I'd like to have? (i.e., comfortable, but definitely won't involve a pool boy.) We shall see-- though I think I'm on the right track, I do worry that I'll fall short. How do I know? That involves some educated guesswork that I'll discuss more in another post, but for a start, try a retirement calculator like this one online and plug in some numbers. I doubt you will be pleasantly surprised!

*PLEASE remember that I am NOT a finance professional and that you must do your own research to make the right choices for your own personal situation!