Today's News

Hallelujah, my blogging evangelism is working! New Yorkers are not the country's biggest spenders anymore!

New Yorkers Slip in Survey on Spending:

New Yorkers earn and spend much more than most other Americans do, but they no longer spend more than the residents of Chicago and Los Angeles, according to federal data released yesterday.

Ok, I don't really think my desire to inspire New Yorkers to live within their means has actually influenced the spending habits of more than, oh, maybe one person, and I mean me! But it's still a fascinating article about the latest statistics on household spending from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, published in today's New York Times. As it turns out,

It is not that New Yorkers have been cutting back, just that people in the country’s next two largest cities have been on a relative spending spree. The bureau’s figures show that the typical household in each of those cities spent more than 80 percent of its pretax income — slightly more than the national average of 79.4 percent — while the average household in New York spent only about 72 percent.

Of course, New Yorkers took in more money. The average household income in the metropolitan area was $74,851, about one-third higher than the national average, $56,593. In Chicago, household income averaged $67,726, and in Los Angeles, $65,810.

Higher taxes in New York could account for some of the difference between income and spending, but there are other factors, most notably the cost of owning and fueling cars.

The typical household in the Los Angeles area spent almost $11,000 annually on transportation, with only a small fraction going to mass transit. Transportation costs amounted to almost one-fifth of total household expenses there. For New Yorkers, annual transportation costs were $7,581, less than one-seventh of all spending. The typical Chicago household spent $8,875, one-sixth of its total expenditures, on transportation.

Housing costs varied less. New Yorkers spent the most on housing at $20,065 annually, but that was only $154 a year, about $13 a month, more than the typical Los Angeles household spent and $1,103 more than the typical Chicago household spent.

I also loved the fact that Los Angeles households spend 40 percent more than the national average on personal care products and services!

Another article of interest:

Housing Plan Puts Idea of East New York’s Revival to the Test

This one may be illuminating to people outside the city, in terms of its illustration of New York's unique and rather warped housing market! In the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, in an area near the projects featuring a "bulletproofed Chinese restaurant, 99-cent store.... [and] a 4 ½-acre parking lot ... that is currently home to a dozen stripped and smashed cars... and a cluster of men on folding chairs, drinking beer," the city wants to find a developer to build a complex of "middle-income", "affordable" housing. 165 units would be available for familes of 4 making up to $92,170, and 15 additional units would be set aside for families making under $56,700.
Here's what the beer-drinking guys had to say:

“Anyone with common sense wouldn’t live out here,” said a goateed gentleman about 50 who identified himself only as Keeping It Real. “What makes you think people are going to want to wake up to Dodge City to the left and Vietnam to the right and the O.K. Corral in front?”

Santhony Mason, a U.P.S. employee spending a vacation day hanging out with childhood buddies, scoffed at the idea of a town house surrounded by projects.

“This is a bad place for kids to grow up in,” said Mr. Mason, 34, who did just that. “A couple of weeks ago a kid got shot in the head right in back of that building.”

Two-family townhouses are expected to be offered for about $300,000. Here's a local real estate broker's comment:

“There’s going to be a very strong demand,” Mr. Longo said. “Someone making $92,000 can certainly afford that.” Indeed, Mr. Longo said that a family of four earning $92,000 could afford to pay up to $450,000 for a house. He then reeled off some recent sale prices for two-family homes in East New York: $570,000; $533,000; $540,000.

This is our idea of affordable housing.

The Expensive Peal of Wedding Bells

Oh dear. A friend of mine is getting married. It's a bit weird, actually, as she and her boyfriend have been together for ages, and now they are suddenly tying the knot on short notice. (And I don't think it's because she's pregnant.)
I had already heard the news second-hand when she called to tell me. So I already knew the wedding was going to be "very relaxed," "very informal," very soon, and very expensive, at least for the guests! So now that I have actually been invited-- over the phone, nothing written to follow-- I have to decide whether I want to spend around $600 on transportation, another $600, probably, on accommodation, who knows how much on an outfit, because I'm sure I won't find anything in my closet that is appropriate for an "informal" island wedding, and then of course there is the issue of a wedding gift. The bride, "Fifi," has rather expensive tastes, which is why she's broke. Her fiancé is probably paying for the whole wedding, and I think they were hoping that hardly anyone would actually attend! So should I do them a favor by declining and just sending a gift with best wishes?
I also have to decide if I am going to this wedding, or another wedding for which I received a "hold the date" fridge magnet but as yet, no actual invitation even though I know other people got theirs at least a week ago. (It figures the two weddings of the summer would have to be happening on the same day!) The other wedding is for people I am not as close to, but it will be easier and cheaper to get to, more people I know will be there, and when this couple says it's relaxed and informal, they really mean it, so I could more easily get away with clothes I already have.
Ugh, invitation etiquette, gift etiquette, travel, hotel, clothes-- I just can't believe all the stress weddings cause!

Supreme Court Decision on Pay Discrimination

This has to be one of the most bone-headed legal decisions ever made: Justices' Ruling Limits Suits on Pay Disparity. A woman who was consistently given lower raises than her male counterparts didn't discover this fact until she'd been at her job for over 20 years. She then sued her employer, Goodyear, and won. However, the company appealed and the Supreme Court just reversed earlier decisions awarding her back pay and punitive damages, because she could not show that she had been discriminated against in the most recent 180 days. That is a pretty limited interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states employees have to make an accusation of discrimination within 180 days “after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.” You could argue that her most recent paycheck was an event of the unlawful employment practice, or even that each day of work for which she is being paid was such an event, but a majority of the justices would not agree.
This really seems absurd. I've been working at my current job for several years and have no idea what anyone makes, and any efforts to find out would surely be frowned on by HR. So if I discovered tomorrow that all the men made 10 times more than women in equivalent jobs, I'd have no legal recourse because I hadn't somehow dug up that information in my first 6 months of employment?
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that Congress take action against this decision, and apparently Hillary Clinton has already submitted a bill to do so.

The Cost of Doing Laundry

This post at Apartment Therapy elicited quite a few comments detailing how people do their laundry and how much they pay for it, up to $1.25 a load for a regular washer to $4.50 a load for a giant-size washer to $45 a week for drop off laundry service. I used to always drop off my laundry and $45 a week sounds like an awful lot to me-- I don't know if the poster is using the authorial "we" or referring to the laundry of a whole family, though, so perhaps they are getting a lot of clothes washed for that amount. I tend to spend less than $45 a month on laundry even including dry-cleaning.
This was my favorite comment:

A man named Bruce comes to pick up our laundry in his Lexus! It gets washed and returned, folded nicely and stinking of Bounce, for $40 every two weeks. There are two of us, so it's not so much money and well-worth it as far as I'm concerned. Even though my underpants occasionally disappear.

How much do you spend on doing laundry?

Renters and Owners in NYC

Here's some stats I found interesting:

Monthly housing costs for owner-occupied homes and apartments with a mortgage consumed about one-third of the median income in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens in 2005 — a higher percentage than in all but four counties in the country. Manhattan homeowners spent about one-fifth of their median income.

This is from a NY Times article this past Sunday, about the rising levels of home ownership in New York City: In a City Known For Its Renters, A Record Number Now Own Their Homes.

Though one might expect Manhattanites to spend the most on housing, the numbers kind of make sense-- although the prices of homes in Manhattan tend to be much higher, Manhattan is where the super-rich people tend to live. In other words, the kind of people who still have money to burn even after paying for a penthouse on 5th Avenue. The outer boroughs have plenty of wealthy people too, but there is more of a shift towards the middle class. Who are, as usual, under a heavy burden when it comes to paying for the lifestyle they've been told they should feel entitled to.

Acela-rating

I spent the weekend visiting family-- always a fun thing to do, especially on such a glorious sunny weekend. We had a picnic at the beach, where I enjoyed observing the contrast between my niece, who spent the whole time splashing around in the icy cold water and smearing mud on every inch of skin left uncovered by her diaper, and my nephew, who is currently terrified of the ocean and preferred to stay near our blanket. I tried to build a sandcastle for him, but he kept asking for a snowman instead. It turns out it's not that easy to build a snowman out of semi-moist sand, so I ended up laying 3 sand-balls next to each other and telling my nephew the snowman was taking a nap.

My trips to family almost always involve a ride on the Amtrak Acela train. Ever since they introduced this service, I've found it hard to go back to the regular Amtrak trains. It's a bit of a paradox:the Acela is maybe 45 minutes faster between New York and Boston. The cars are cleaner and more modern. And there is the beloved quiet car. Otherwise, there really isn't any difference. Is that really worth the extra $20-30 each way? I guess I have decided that it is. And so have a lot of other people. The Acela train is basically a tube-shaped terrarium exhibiting a selection of Eastern seaboard upper-middle-class life. You've got your business people, your Ivy League professors shuttling between schools, your blondes in pretty flip-flops with their calico weekend bags, your law students with their big textbooks open on the tray table... and all sorts of other people too, who at least have in common the preference and ability to pay for a comfortable, fast train ride rather than using the various cheaper methods of transportation available.

Other than that, I had a pretty cheap weekend. I spent about $32 on various food and snacks, including $9 worth of chocolate covered pretzels-- I don't know where that weird craving came from! I also spent $68 on a shirt, and $32 on some little treats for myself: another bottle of perfume and some hair products. I guess that is another weird craving: the desire to have one's head smell like a coconut just because it's summer.

When Do You Appreciate Your Money the Most?

Do you ever stop to appreciate what money can buy? We all have times where we think "I'd love to have XXXXX, and if I had more money, I could afford it." But aside from idle dreams of luxuries we may never be able to afford, when do we really find ourselves appreciating the money we have? Valuing it?
I ask because it is a beautiful evening in Brooklyn. I came home, ate dinner on my balcony, and sat out there for a while with a glass of wine, talking on the phone to a friend while watching the twilight deepen. The moon is out, you can see Venus, and every couple of minutes a plane goes by overhead on its landing path into LaGuardia. There's a soft hum of traffic noise, but otherwise it's quiet and dark, and no one is out except the local cat who likes to thread his way through everyone's fences.
Those of you who live in suburban houses might not appreciate this, but in New York City, where almost all of us live in cramped quarters with limited windows, and often no outdoor space, being able to have a quiet, solitary moment outdoors on a warm evening, while simultaneously being in the comfort of one's own home, well, it's just extraordinary. At least that is how it feels to me.
And this makes me so happy that I was able to buy this apartment. It took money to do that-- money I earned through work, and money that has grown from good investments. I spend my money on lots of things, and sometimes I wonder how worthwhile they really are. But tonight is one moment where I feel like the career rat race, the budgeting spreadsheets, the bank balances: they're all worth something. This may still just be materialism in some form-- it's not like I'm saving the world or curing cancer. I'm just enjoying a moment of peace that I wouldn't have in quite the same way if I'd made other financial choices in my life. But sometimes, I think, that's enough.
Do you ever feel this way?

Yay, my blog works!

My apologies to anyone who stumbled across the site while it was broken, but things seem to be okay now. You'll be redirected automatically from the old blogspot domain, but please update any links and bookmarks to the new URL: http://www.myopenwallet.net

My Dream Salary

[note: I've been having some technical difficulties switching this blog over to www.myopenwallet.net. Stay tuned and hopefully I'll get it working soon!]

To follow up on yesterday's post, I've been trying to think about the question "How Much Is Enough?"
I am only human, and of course I can dream of untold riches and the many luxuries they could provide. But in other ways, I think my desires could be quite finite. I do believe it's possible to have too much money, or at least more money than you or your immediate heirs could possibly use. Money can never really buy happiness. But money can solve problems, and ease stress, and make life more pleasant. How much money would be enough for me?
My overall financial goal is to feel comfortable and secure and independent. To some degree, i already feel that way. I make a decent salary, I own a home, and, depending on what variables I plug into my retirement income calculator, it appears that I won't starve in my old age. But there is more to life than that. The reason people want to be rich is because it's FUN! What about the fun I'd like to have?
First of all, I'll start with something that is pretty basic, that other people take for granted.

• A car: It's a pain in the ass to own a car in New York, which is why relatively few people do. The best way to do it is to have a private parking space, which is rare. The next best thing is to keep your car in a garage. You have to call and tell them when you'll want the car, so they can get it out from behind all the other cars that are crammed in like some kind of puzzle. And parking costs more than what many people in the mid-west probably pay in rent. So I'm figuring I'd like to lease a decent car and keep it in a garage or rent a parking space, and then there's insurance, all of which I'm guessing would set me back about $2,000 a month. As an alternative, I could probably just rent a car every single weekend and end up paying a similar amount.
  
• A weekend house: I want a house on the beach. It doesn't have to be a big house. But all houses on the water anywhere near NYC are going to be expensive. For the house itself, I'm going to allow myself a very modest shack that might cost $500,000 and figure my monthly costs for the mortgage, etc. might be about $3,000. I also want to be able to get to that house without wasting many hours of my life stuck in traffic. So I want to be able to take a helicopter to my weekend house. I'm not sure how much that would cost, but I found a company that will take you from Manhattan to JFK airport in 8 minutes for as little as $159 one-way, so let's just figure my round trip to the Hamptons might be, oh, $1,000, every weekend of the year.
• Clothes: I'd like some nicer ones, please. Let's take my monthly budget of $150 up to $1,000. Whoohoo!
• Services: Since I'll be away on the weekends, someone will need to clean my apartment. And during the week, someone will have to sweep up all the sand I'll be tracking into my beach house. Let's budget that at $500 a month. I'd also like to have a personal trainer and frequent massages. Trainers run about $80 an hour at my gym, I think... times 4 days a week, so that's about $1400 a month, plus a few massages... let's say $2,000 a month.

What I've thought of so far gets me up to about $13,000 a month in extra expenses that I don't have now. If I figure what I'd have to earn to net that after taxes, I'd need to earn an extra $200,000 a year to pay for it, on top of the approximately $100,000 I'll earn this year. I am not really sure how many jobs there are in publishing that pay $300,000 a year, but I know there are some. I knew of at least one VP at a very small company who made about $150,000, and then went to another job at a bigger company where the pay was "MUCH better."

Of course some of the things I'm talking about here are a little pie-in-the-sky, almost literally, i.e. the helicopter. And I haven't factored in other things I would probably like to do, such as having cable TV for the rare times I would like to watch it, going to some plays and concerts, and travelling more. And sailing! But at least some of these things can be realistically within my reach in a few years if I make good career moves-- it's not like I'd need to become a hedge fund manager.
The trouble is that once you have that weekend home and that regular helicopter trip, you start rubbing elbows with those lawyers and bankers and hedge fund managers, and they start telling you about all the other things they're spending their crazy millions on... Writing this post right now is a stretch for me: I'm grasping at fantasy things to want, and I don't know their true costs. But I'm sure I'd find it much easier to want and need such things, and the money to pay for them, if I started to live in that world.

Whoops! New Domain!

I'm not sure how long this will take to kick in, but I hope you will soon discover that the URL for this blog is now http://www.myopenwallet.net. Please update your links and bookmarks!

[UPDATED] No wait, don't! I'm back to this address for now. Right now if you go to www.myopenwallet.net, you'll see an example of what my real prose style is like when my ghostwriter is on vacation. But stay tuned, pretty soon everything will be moving over there!

[UPDATED AGAIN!] Okay, now this is actually working. This blog lives at http://www.myopenwallet.net, and unless something breaks, it's going to stay there!

A special shout-out to Flexo of Consumerism Commentary for generously helping me to achieve this.

[CONTINUALLY UPDATED AD NAUSEUM] Well, it was working, but now it's not. One of these days I'll get there! But back to blogspot for now!

Whoops! New Template!

Just discovered that if you start playing around with your template after switching to the new version of Blogger, you can't necessarily go back to your old one, even if you've saved a backup! So pardon the temporary new look, which I'll be working on more as soon as I have time!

Hitting Six Figures

I did the math today, oh boy!
I kind of knew 2007 might be the year when I'd see a six-figure number for gross income on my last paystub of the year, but I didn't want to count my chickens until I knew what my bonus would be. Well, I just looked at the numbers once again: based on what I have already earned this year, as long as I get a raise of at least 2.2%, I will get to $100,000. Maybe that is still counting my chickens a bit, but I think my company is doing well enough that I should get a halfway decent raise.
I guess that is a pretty good milestone to hit: a six-figure income before I'm 40 (just barely). Of course it is one of those things that has more psychological significance than actual real-life impact. If I look at it another way, it's less of a big deal, given my age, and the fact that I live in New York where it's worth less, and where you've got hordes of 25-year olds who already make more than that as lawyers or bankers. And yet only about 10% of American households have incomes of more than $100,000, from stats I've read-- and given that many households these days have two wage earners, the percentage of individual workers who earn more than $100,000 must be even smaller.
So... it's a nice number, but life goes on. I guess now I have to start wondering if I'll ever manage to make $200,000... but that brings up another question: how much is enough? How much of an income would I really like to have to live the way I'd like to live? How do I want to live, anyway? What do I want all this money for? I will have to explore that in another post...

Where I Live

In his NY Times column today, Bob Herbert mentions some interesting statistics about New York City:

There are 8 million residents of New York City, and roughly 700,000 are worth a million dollars or more. The average price of a Manhattan apartment is $1.3 million. The annual earnings of the average hedge fund manager is $363 million.

The number of families in the city’s homeless shelters is the highest it has been in a quarter of a century. Twenty-five percent of all families with children in New York City — that’s 1.5 million New Yorkers — are trying to make it on incomes that are below the poverty threshold established by the federal government.

185,000 of its children ages 5 or younger are poor, and 18,000 are consigned to homeless shelters each night. More than a million New Yorkers get food stamps, and another 700,000 are eligible but not receiving them.

I live in the middle of a city of extremes.

Bought a Mattress

Another big milestone in my new home set-up: I finally purchased a mattress so I can actually take advantage of the bed I've had for almost 2 months now!
Shopping for these big items is tough. It took me a long time to commit myself to a bed frame. And then it's just been sitting there-- I did put the inflatable air mattress on it, and actually slept on it like that a couple of times, but I didn't find the air mattress very comfortable. The rest of the time, I'd continued to sleep on my old futon.
Partially, the delay was due to not finding the time to go shopping for a mattress. But I was also just procrastinating because I couldn't get my head around how to shop for a mattress. I don't think there is any foolproof way-- ultimately you just have to try different mattresses and find one that feels comfortable for you. You can read about what coil counts and wire guages mean, but it still doesn't tell you much about whether you'll feel comfortable, and I find this kind of subjective shopping to be very frustrating! If I'm going to shell out several hundred dollars for a major long-term purchase, I want to be able to do some research, check the Consumer Reports ratings, and walk into the store knowing exactly what I'm looking for, preferably in an environment where sales people are not incentivized to hound you. Mattress shopping is exactly the opposite of all that.
As it is, I know I tend to be more comfortable on firm beds when I stay in hotels, and I had a price range in mind, so when I finally managed to force myself to actually go into a store, I let that guide me to a few appropriate models. I tried a few out, spending a fair amount of time lying on them in various positions. One felt pretty good, so I decided to stop farting around and just buy it!
We'll see how this approach works out-- I hope my $700 will be well-spent, but I also figure after sleeping on futons for the last 7 years or so, anything would be an improvement! So far I've slept on the new mattress for two nights, and am still getting used to it. It's quite an adjustment to sleep on something that is actually flat, rather than the saucer-like shape my futon had taken on.

And if it doesn't work out, maybe I'll exchange it for one of those $40,000 beds from Hästens that have been advertised like crazy over the last few months...

Greenies for Greenery

As I mentioned recently, I suddenly have this strange urge to garden. I have always loved the idea of having house plants, but I never seemed to be very good at caring for them. In the past, I've tried to buy extremely low maintenance plants, one at a time lest I be too overwhelmed by their need for nurturing. I'd water the plant a couple of times a year, and in between it would get a little attention from visiting friends of mine who would take pity on it. You know how it goes from there: droopiness, death, discard, repeat with new plant. This is why I've been afraid to have pets, let alone children.
My last plant in my old apartment was a tiny cactus given to me by one of the plant-pitying friends. It was small enough that when I was moving, I took it with me-- but about two months into my sublet odyssey, I suddenly wondered "hey, where is that little cactus?" It turned out that I had forgotten to take it out of a box of stuff I had stored in my aunt and uncle's basement. Oops. Needless to say it could not be saved.
When I moved into my condo, I was determined to start over, especially since there is one part of the apartment that just seems to be made to be a plant corner-- in other words, I can't figure out what else to put there. But I still had my doubts about having any kind of green thumb... "thumb of black death" might be more like it. So I started to wonder if I should just get fake plants!

I know fake plants kind of miss the point of gardening a bit-- they don't bloom, they don't clean your air, they don't emit nice fragrances unless you squirt perfume on them... but the most you have to do is dust them once in a while for them to always look nice. I also wondered if it might be cheaper to buy fake plants than real ones. I was in Pier 1 one day and noticed that they have some fake flowers that are only a few dollars each-- of course you have to buy more than one stem for them to look nice. On their website, there are quite a few options for fake flowers at under $5 a stem, and whole plants for about $25-50. I also got a copy of the "Petals" catalog-- they have some nice-looking arrangements, but they can be quite expensive: some items are in the $30-50 price range, but quite a few are also $80-$120 and up. And reading their descriptions, where they tell you the plant comes in a glass bowl "filled with acrylic 'water'" kind of creeped me out. Water is just one of those words you don't want to see in quotation marks.
Anyway, as far as the financial issue goes, fake plants probably will save you a little money, but only if you are such a bad gardener that you constantly have to replace your real ones. Of course my whole financial philosophy goes against the idea of repeatedly replacing things just because I haven't taken care of them properly, and I believe in spending more to buy things that will last. Another part of that financial philosophy is to try to save a little money by doing things myself, but only if it's something I can do well and enjoy doing enough to make the time spent worthwhile. So buying real live plants is in many ways not something you'd think I'd do... but I decided to dive in and try to become a gardener anyway.

My first new plant was a Calathea with big green leaves. I didn't read the label too closely, so when I got it home I was a little nervous to read that it likes lots of moisture and a warm room temperature, since my home tends to be a bit on the chilly side with very low humidity in the winter. But though some of the leaves are a little dry on the edges, I have actually been doing pretty well with watering it, probably because it looks so glum and pathetic when I don't. It even survived my vacation, since I had rigged up a plastic water bottle to give it a slow drip. And there are signs that it may have a flower about to bloom.
My other house plant is a dragon plant, I think-- this was another one that I just bought because I liked the look of it, without checking the tag. When I got home, I discovered that it didn't even have a tag, so I had no idea what it was or how to care for it. Luckily I have a small guidebook to houseplants, and I think I managed to identify it. Even if it's not a dragon plant, it seems to be thriving with a little water once or twice a week.
Then there is my herb garden-- these are my only outdoor plants so far. I bought 5 little plants and arranged them in a rectangular planter. I have peppermint, sage, basil, lemon verbena, and lavender. So far they seem to be doing well-- the basil and sage seem particulary lush, and I'm looking forward to actually using some bits of them to cook with.
All in all, I've spent about $40 on plants, and probably another $40 on pots, a plant stand and soil. But in the meantime, I have been observing various neighbors who have far more elaborate gardens with trees and vegetables and vines, and every weekend I'm itching to buy more plants-- this could become an expensive obsession! I also should find some good books or websites with gardening advice, so I can protect my investments by actually learning how to properly care for them. If anyone has any suggestions for good container plants for a city balcony that gets full sun all afternoon, let me know!

Weekend Reads

I'm sure many bloggers will be commenting on Saturday's NY Times story about a couple who are drowning in debt, so I won't add to the pile, other than to say that I think such articles are becoming extremely easy to characterize in broad strokes:

• Mr. and Mrs. Debtor both work and their income is somewhere around the US household median.
• They have, or have had, student loans, a period of being uninsured, a period where one of them was unemployed, a period of illness, and/or an adjustable rate mortgage that is about to kick up to a higher interest rate.
• Their credit card debt totals $XX,XXX, and they have to make minimum payments of $XXX a month, including finance charges of $XXX.
• They do not want to deprive themselves or their children of occasional treats like eating out, ballet lessons, going to the movies, having a big wedding or going on vacations.
• The reporter will make sure to point out that they have recently spent a large amount of money on an oversized flat screen television, in wording that clearly says "I am being journalistically neutral but you know my voice would be somewhere between 'mildly remonstrative' and 'dripping with sarcasm' if I was saying this out loud."

Check, check, check, check and check. So, nuff said about that one!

What interested me more this weekend was an article in the latest New Yorker magazine about Milton Bradley and the Game of Life. It's funny, I remember that game from when I was a kid, and I think we had a set at my grandmother's house. But although that side of my family loved all sorts of games and constantly played them, we never played Life, and I have yet to ever play it. The games we played at my grandmother's house included cribbage, Scrabble, chinese checkers, parcheesi, Sorry, Boggle, Othello, chess, Taboo, Guesstures, charades, rummy, and a few wacky ones like "stadium checkers" and a board game based on an old TV show called Ramar of the Jungle-- that one was really fun: "Taken Prisoner by Man-Eating Pygmies, Lose Turn." The other game we never played, though I sometimes made my parents play with me at home, was Monopoly. I guess games about money just didn't cut it at Grandma's!
The Game of Life actually started out as a kind of morally instructive game that actually didn't have much to do with money at all-- you moved along the board and through a combination of luck and your own choices, you might end up at "Poverty," but the point was more to do virtuous things that get you to "Happy Old Age." As the author of the New Yorker article states, "by our board-game standards [it was] incredibly dull." So in 1960, for the game's 100th anniversary, they decided to revise it to be more in step with today's times:

...it was reinvented as a lesson in Cold War consumerist conformity, a kind of two-dimensional Levittown, complete with paychecks and retirement homes and dental bills. Inside the game box are piles and piles of paper (Life is . . . paperwork!): fake automobile insurance, phony stock certificates, pretend promissory notes, and play money, seven and a half million dollars of it...

They have continued to revise the game ever since, or they've at least tried:

The game is so relentlessly amoral and cash-conscious that a nineteen-nineties redesign team, eager to make it less so, pretty much gave up.

They tried to add in features where players would get ahead by doing good deeds but the reward was still money. And apparently, the latest version of the game has gone electronic, with Visa-branded credit cards that you insert in a "Life Pod" to keep track of your points, or your money, or your credit, or something! And it turns out that this version has

...a rather forgiving attitude toward the highly leveraged player. "If you're bankrupt in Monopoly, you're watching," a Hasbro Games vice-president, George Burtch, says. "In this game, you can be hugely in debt, but you're still playing!"

If that's not a sign of the times, I don't know what is!
It was an interesting article, but it still sounds like a pretty boring game. I get enough of all that stuff in my real life.

And from the world of blogging, this post at 3 Things About Money is a must-read:

...if you can't take responsibility for killing your own meat, what does it mean that you would you pay someone else to do it for you? . . . And so the reality check began. I borrowed the gun...

Great stuff.

International Postage

I went to the post office today-- I had to return something that I'd bought online, and I also had to send some thank you gifts to my friends Wanda and Bud, for their hospitality in New Zealand. Of course this is a busy week at the post office, with the stamp rate having gone up on Monday. Fortunately, I'd already bought my 2 cent stamps to use with my old 39 cent ones, and buying those was actually a very pleasant experience! I went to a post office in lower Manhattan that is open on Saturday, and I was literally the only customer in there: no line.
But today, there was quite a line at a different post office. I was surprised to discover that in addition to the rate hike, there have been some changes in how the USPS ships international packages, which seemed to be confusing some customers. First of all, the old cheapo slow-boat method is no longer available. International surface mail has gone bye-bye-- and good riddance to it, as it could take months for things to arrive. Instead, I was offered 3 airmail options for my package to New Zealand-- If I'd wanted the package to arrive in 1-3 days, it would have cost over $100. A 3-5 day delivery was less, about $75, I think. Of course I took the cheapest one, which offers delivery in 6-10 days. But cheap is a relative term-- since my package was kind of heavy, it cost $58! But I could have paid a lot less if I'd been able to pack my items in one of their flat-rate envelopes or boxes-- I'll have to remember that for next time.

On Buying Art

Have you ever spent money to buy art? I don't mean reproductions or posters: I mean real, original art. I wonder how many people actually do this-- lots of people like to look at art and browse around in galleries, but original art can also be very expensive. Even smaller paintings by little-known artists can cost in the hundreds of dollars, and if you're familiar with cost of painting supplies, you can understand why.
A long time ago, when I was living in Boston, there was a wonderful gallery on Newbury Street that specialized in prints-- again, I'm not talking about posters. These were lithographs and etchings, which happen to interest me because I used to do them myself. The prints in the gallery were by a wide variety of artists, and I suppose some were limited editions by notable artists, and some were quite expensive. But the nice thing about that gallery was that there were also lots of smaller prints, drawers and drawers of them, and the owner was happy to let you just browse. I must have spent a couple of hours in there one night, paging through lots of small etchings, looking at them up close and thinking about the techniques the artists must have used to make them. I ended up buying 2 small unframed etchings, at a total cost of around $60, I think. This was a lot of money for me to spend at the time, as my salary was quite low. I also remember a larger print that I fell in love with, but didn't buy because it was $80, and that just seemed like too much for my budget.
Aside from those long-ago purchases, I have never really bought original art, aside from maybe a couple more small etchings bought as gifts/souvenirs when travelling, at even lower prices. That is the nice thing about prints-- they can be an inexpensive, accessible thing to buy, as an artist can make more of them, more cheaply than painting, usually. But now that I have more wall space to fill, I find myself noticing paintings on display in cafes and galleries and starting to think I'd like to buy one. The other thing that made me think about posting about it is that this weekend is the Park Slope Open Studio Tour-- you can view the map here. It's fun to stroll around and peek at what local artists are up to... and this year I'm wondering if I'll see anything I might actually want and be able to afford to buy.

The thing is, I can't really imagine "going shopping" for art. A painting or photograph or print should be something you just stumble on and have to have because you think it's beautiful... and if it goes with your couch, that is just a happy extra. The other trouble I have with the idea of buying art is that my DIY impulse kicks in and I tell myself "I can MAKE this stuff, why am I buying someone else's?" Of course that kind of misses the point, in that every artist's imagination produces different things, and what is interesting to me about most art is that I couldn't or wouldn't necessarily create it myself... and even if I could, someone else thought of it first. But if I just wanted something that matched my decor, I could probably do that... though it would take a lot of time, and materials I don't currently own. And I'd have to spend more money on fruit.

'Tis the Season

In my post about financial routines yesterday, I didn't think to include "seasonal." With the sudden appearance of spring, and even summer weather, a certain seasonal spending binge has been on my mind: clothes.
Yes, in spring a young woman's fancy turns to clothing, but does her wallet turn there too? Every year, I feel like I want to buy a whole new wardrobe when the weather gets warm. And sometimes I feel like I actually do spend a ton of money in one big rush of shopping. It's not just the fact that it is spring, it's also that this time of year is when occasion arise that demand new outfits, such as weddings and parties and for those of us in publishing, the BookExpo trade show. But do I really end up spending as much as I think I do? Maybe not!
I graphed my monthly clothing spending in 2006 and here's what I found:

I did have a big spending binge in June but it wasn't as big a spike as I thought in relation to the rest of the year. And it was almost the only money I'd spent on clothes year-to-date, as I seem to have bought a bunch of stuff in January that I mostly returned in April!
Also, last year was a weird year. I was so preoccupied with moving out of my old apartment and finding temporary housing that I'm surprised I remembered to wear clothes at all. I was also consciously trying not to buy new stuff that would just have to be packed. And then in October, there was that big spike of spending when I had to buy fall clothes because all the ones I already owned were still in storage-- let's hope THAT doesn't ever need to happen again!

So every day now, it's just a question of how busy I am at work-- do I take some time at lunch to do a little shopping? I haven't done it yet, but it has to happen soon. I just got a Banana Republic coupon in the mail that might come in handy... and I have a coupon for Macy's... though now that I say that I am wondering if it's expired. This is the dark side of the spring clothing fling-- I will inevitably end up falling in love with things that are not on sale, that will probably go on sale the day after I become ineligible for any kind of price adjustment. But I like to think that I end up ahead in the long run: if I was the kind of agressive shopper who constantly scours the stores looking for bargains, I'd probably buy more overall. Instead, I try to shop only when I need to buy things, and I buy things I really like and will use, even if they are not on sale. I think I end up spending less money this way. (Yeah, you tell yourself that, Madame X... whatever makes you feel better...)

Back to Normal

Yes, I'm back... it feels like I've been away from regular life for a while-- work trips, vacation, and the herculean task of hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance. (Actually it wasn't all that bad... you should try it sometime!)
So since I'm back in it, what IS regular life, anyway? At least financially speaking? I was thinking about what my usual routines are:

Daily:
I enter my cash transactions in Pocket Quicken, on my Treo. This tends to be for breakfast and lunch, and not much else. I also check my main savings and checking account balances online most days, just to make sure there aren't any auto-payments I've forgotten to cover, or weird charges on my credit card, which happens to be with the same bank, so it's all in one website.
Then of course there is all my daily reading: the New York Times on the way to work, and various blogs and websites I tend to check up on, on finance and real estate topics.
For most days, that is it as far as finance-related activities go. Occasionally I will also do a little shopping at lunchtime, or while sitting at my computer. And some days I buy groceries on the way home, or maybe have dinner out with a friend. But otherwise I don't spend much money.

Weekly:
Once or maybe twice a week, I synchronize my Pocket Quicken transactions with the desktop version on my Mac. At the same time, I download all the latest security prices for my portfolio, and also download recent credit card transactions.
On Fridays, I also update a spreadsheet I've been keeping that tracks the number of real estate listings in the NY Times, for a little experiment of mine that I posted about a while back.
I used to check my E*Trade account at least weekly, but lately I don't bother. I can see the overall balance update in Quicken, and other than that I have been feeling pretty hands-off about it lately.
Another weekly activity of late is a lot of household errand-running on the weekends: this is when I spend money! Though the decorating of my new condo is winding down a bit, the change of seasons has gotten me into gardening. I'll post more later about my newly-green thumb and how much it's costing me.

Twice a month:
I enter all my salary and deductions from my paystub into Quicken.

Monthly:
About once or maybe twice a month, I pay my bills, and set up transfers between savings and checking to cover them. Some bills and transfers are set up for auto-payment, so it's just a question of making sure they're entered in Quicken. For others, I have to go over the bills and manually enter the amounts for electronic payment, or for my condo maintenance, a paper check. I also reconcile my savings and checking transactions in Quicken using my bank statement, enter investment account transactions from my 401k and E*Trade statements, and check off all my credit card receipts against the statement, then stapling them to it and filing it.
"Filing" means just shoving these papers into a bin for a while!
I try to get all the statements entered within the first week of the month, so I can post an accurate net worth on this site. Each month, I also use the category summary report in Quicken to update a spreadsheet that I keep which tracks how much of my net paycheck I'm actually saving-- even though I plow a lot of money into my 401k through deductions, I like to track how I'm doing against my budget for saving cash on top of that.

Quarterly:
That bin I've "filed" papers in starts to get full, so I go through it, weed out unneeded items, and try to fit everything else into an actual filing cabinet where I keep my tax returns, credit card statements, etc. I used to keep bank statements for quite a while too, but now that they are available online and I have the data in Quicken, I throw them out within a year.

Yearly:
I pull together all my tax-related paperwork and go over all my expenses for tax deductible items. Since I've kept things fairly organized throughout the year, this isn't too onerous a task. And at the beginning of each year, I look at all my spending, savings, investment performance, net worth growth and goals for the following year-- and blog about them here, of course!

These are the basic ways I keep track of my financial life-- I like to stay aware of where I'm at, and not let the paperwork pile up til it gets overwhelming. Sometimes it seems like I spend a lot of time on it, but really it's probably only a few hours a month at most. It just seems like more to me because I am always thinking and blogging about it!

What are your financial routines? How do you stay organized?

Carnival of Personal Finance #100

Welcome to the Carnival of Personal Finance, C-Note Edition! Yes, this is the one-hundredth Carnival. Think of the hundreds of bloggers who have participated over the past almost two years! The hundreds and thousands of posts! The hundreds and thousands and even millions of dollars we've all earned while reading and writing this stuff when we were supposed to be working at our real jobs! (Since a lot of people didn't submit until late in the week, I actually didn't spend that much of my employer's time putting this carnival together-- it just took up an entire sunny weekend instead.)

If you're visiting for the first time, welcome to My Open Wallet, a light-hearted, irreverent, personal blog about all aspects of money, especially MY money. In other words, it might be entertaining more often than it's useful, but you look like you need to relax, so why don't you subscribe to my feed? Check out my rules and favorite posts in the left sidebar if you're not ready to commit.

This week's Carnival is full of wonderful advice and stories from a wide variety of bloggers-- and yes, there are 100 articles in this carnival! (ok, I had to add a few that hadn't been submitted yet... but it would have been really close even if I hadn't.) I've highlighted some of my favorites, and also tried to flag a few of the newest blogs that contributed. The rest of the posts are organized by topic, in the order they were received. (A couple of submissions were not included, as they were either off-topic, not recent, or had already been in other carnivals.)

100 is a pretty amazing number-- as Wikipedia will teach you, it's very mathematically interesting: it's the sum of the first nine prime numbers, and the sum of the cubes of 1, 2, 3 and 4. And it's an 18-gonal number, whatever that is. 100 is also the number of degrees Celsius at which water boils, the police telephone number in Greece, India and Israel, the record number of points scored in an NBA basketball game, and the number of "Famous Views of Edo" woodblock prints by Hiroshige in one of my favorite art books.
Of course as money is concerned, 100 is the number of sub-units into which most currencies are divided (cents, pence, etc.) and the 100 dollar bill is the largest US currency now in print. And as the ever-quotable Benjamin Franklin once said, "A hundred dollars saved is a hundred dollars earned, and better yet, it has my picture on it." Or something like that.

On to the submissions!

Editor's Choice:

Golbguru from Money, Matters, and More Musings presents Husband, Does Your Wife Know How To Invest? Wife, Does Your Husband Know How To Pay The Bills?, and says, "You can pass on millions of dollars to your surviving spouse (or children) but if you haven’t passed on your financial knowledge to them, those millions of dollars will probably vanish pretty soon. Bottom line: regularly make efforts to communicate our financial knowledge to our partner (or a family member). It's important." A good reminder that information about family finances must be shared.

Lyman from My Wealth Building presents Top 5 Money Leaks in April, a very frank presentation of some money the author wishes he hadn't spent.

David from My Own Millions presents My investments highlight my dual personality, and says, "The difference between my 401k and brokerage account, and how that got me into thinking the importance of diversification." An investor wonders why a down day in the market can seem like both a good thing and a bad thing.

Shannon from Save to Quit doesn't want you to use credit or debit cards, ever! Read her 5 Reasons to Pay with Cash, even if, like me, you prefer to use credit cards for everything. new blog

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity provides an excellent guide to replacing your driver's license, passport, mortgage, car title and other important documents: How To Replace Destroyed or Lost Important Documents.

Jackie from Saving for Wealth presents Top 5 Ways that Real Estate Can Help You Become a Millionaire, and says, "A discussion of the advantages of real estate investing." Lots of good information here.

Hazzard from Everybody Loves Your Money presents You Know You Shouldn't Buy A House When...., and says, "An ongoing list of reasons you may want to reconsider buying a house. If very many items from the list apply to you, maybe you should work on your financial fundamentals before moving forward." You'll laugh... and you'll cry, because you know there are a lot of people who still buy houses despite these things!

Yowza, this post is like a carnival unto itself. But I think I might have to print it out and hang it on the fridge, as it provides so many good basic tips that are worth being reminded of. So many that I might need a bigger fridge. The Frugality Cheat Sheet: 147 Tiny Tips to Live Healthier, Happier, Greener and Better from the Frugalist.

Plonkee from plonkee money presents starting a business will not make you rich. A not-often-heard theme in the personal finance blogosphere, and somewhat comforting to those of us who don't have an entrepreneurial bone in our bodies.

At Queercents, Paula presents Sleeping With Money: Communication and Control, saying "The big lesson once you’re coupled is that what one partner does with money affects everyone. That is why communication is key..." I also liked her observation that money problems in a relationship might signify larger overall problems that a couple needs to deal with.

Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar presents 26 Personal Finance Books - Ranked From Best To Worst, and says, "The title says it all. Your Money or Your Life is #1." Trent must never sleep! He's a very productive blogger, AND he's reading a different personal finance book every week for a year! This post recaps the first 6 months' worth of books.

Silicon Valley Blogger from The Digerati Life presents Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Lessons, Pay Taxes On Your Winnings!, which you should definitely read if you've been wanting to appear on a reality TV show!

S. Shugars at Personal Finance Advice wonders: Am I the Only One That Realizes That Having My Groceries Delivered Makes Financial Sense? and says "I have found that having my groceries delivered has saved me far more time and money than I could have ever done by shopping on my own." (They key here is to actually do your ordering from home, so you don't have to set foot in the store!)


Here's the rest of the posts, grouped by category in the order they were received.

General and Miscellaneous Personal Finance

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it. -- Benjamin Franklin

• Joshua Dorkin at Real Estate Investing For Real presents How to Protect Your Identity: Stop Giving Out the Last 4 Numbers of your Social Security Number, in which he says you shouldn't give out the last 4 digits of your SSN, but what is the alternative?
• Cheryl from Basenji Mom presents Paycheck to Paycheck, and says, "This is my synopsis of an article printed in the money section of our local paper, which I found inspiring."
• In Financial Maturity, It's Good For Your Money Situation, Monty Loree at Canadian Money Advisor imagines how an 80 year-old might look back at what he's learned about managing his money.
  
• Plus 6 from Plus6Personal Finance presents Personal Finance Spring Cleaning Things To Do Now, and says, "An article detailing five important spring cleaning things to do now for your personal finances." They're great suggestions for any time of year. new blog
• Junger from Online Savings Blog presents Our Vanguard Roth IRA Conversions Are Done!... despite a few hassles along the way!
• Ellesse at Goal Setting College wants you to think rich: How To Acquire A Wealthy Mindset in 5 Powerful Steps
• Wenchypoo at Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket presents The Dark Side of Fuel Efficiency: better fuel efficiency could lead to us all spending more money on gas.
• Jon from The Money Mythos presents How Electronic Fund Transfers Can Pillage Your Bank Account, and says, "A life lesson I shared on the dangers of giving companies permission to draw electronic fund transfers from your bank account." new blog
• ispf from Grad Money Matters presents What is the War on Iraq Costing *You*? . It's always interesting to look at things in personal terms-- according to this post, over $10,000 of my taxes went towards military spending last year. Yikes.
  
• PT from Prime Time Money presents Blockbuster Total Access - Should You Try It?, with a look into the pros and cons.
• Andy at Money Walks reminds us that Time is More Important than Money: it's not just how much you save, it's when.
• Mike from Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money presents I got diet pills for $109, but never ordered them. A cautionary tale about a debit card scam... but I want to know if he tried the pills and if he lost any weight!
• Jeremy from Generation X Finance presents The Top 5 Ways to Become a Millionaire.
• Henry Stern, LUTCF, CBC from InsureBlog presents Survey: Disabled, which offers "some troubling stats about how (ill-)prepared a lot of folks may be if faced with a disability. It could happen to you."
• Sid from Moneywell.co.uk presents Spend Wisely - Spend Smart, a reminder to save your spending for what's really important.
• Jon from Smart Money Daily presents To Bankruptcy and Back: My Story, the story of a friend who says, ""Hopefully, you’ll never have to face the decision of whether or not to declare bankruptcy. But for those of you who are in a situation in which it’s time to at least consider it, I can tell you from personal experience, it isn’t actually the end of the world, or the end of your financial future. Here’s what happened to me.""
• Wanda from Well-Heeled: 20something life & money presents College Reflection$, and says, "Mom paid for my education, and I'd like to do the same for my future kid. But the cost of a private school education in 25+ years is frightening, to say the least. "
• Holger Jacks at Buying and Selling Your Life Insurance presents What is a Life Settlement?
• Dana from Not Made Of Money presents We’re Hemorrhaging Money - A Good Time For The Emergency Fund, reminding us that sometimes you do have to use that money, and how to decide when that is the case.
• Majic from Krugergold Finance presents Free Audio Resources for Business, Finance and Entrepreneurship. A great collections of links for anyone who would like to keep learning about finance but doesn't have time to sit in front of a computer or read books all day!
• Jjoa from i want a sabbatical year presents financial software for Mac and for the rest of us. A detailed review with screenshots of a Quicken alternative for Mac users. It seems to offer more levels of expense subcategories, e.g. "Addictions> Chocolate> Hazelnut!"
• Ben from Money Smart Life presents Why Your Mom is the Engine of Growth in the Global Economy, and says, "Moms not only raise us, they help drive the global economy. Happy Mothers Day!"
• frugalbabe from Frugal Babe presents Pondering Investments and College Costs, and says, "Since paying for college is such a hot topic in the pf world, I thought I'd mention my thoughts on students shouldering some of the burden (without loans) themselves. "
• NCN from No Credit Needed presents Getting Out Of Debt: 10 Ideas About How To Begin, and NCN is someone who has successfully gotten out of debt since starting his blog, so he knows what he's talking about.
• Boston Gal's Open Wallet observes that Crying Poor Is Not Cute!
• Savvy Saver's tips for Garages Sales.
• Him at Make Love Not Debt says (Un)Happy Mother's Day.
• Tired But Happy on the ups and downs of using Prosper.com, her Favorite Way to Lose Money.
• Fearless Money decides to hire someone to do something he could have done himself, in Getting Help= More Time to Make Money.
• The Frugal Zeitgeist manages to talk herself out of spending money in Lust for Shoes, a topic that will hit home with many women!
• Nina at Sitting Pretty discusses Matters of Life and Death: the Importance of Wills. Making one has been on my to-do list for years.

Careers and Money-Making Tips

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.-- Benjamin Franklin

• From Vince Cordic's Internet Marketing Tactics: Why Do 97% of People Fail to Make Money Online.
• Is your blog not making you any money? Check out 8 Shrewd Ways to Optimize Google AdSense, by Robinson Go at Rob's Blog: Advice for Bloggers.
• FMF at Free Money Finance presents a few suggestions for How to Exit a Job Gracefully
• JD at Get Rich Slowly says that those who are unemployed should not expect to make a quick buck by starting a blog, and suggest some better ways of Coping with Unemployment.

Relationship Finances

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable. -- Benjamin Franklin

• David at Money Under 30 presents some simple common sense rules for couples considering cohabitation in Unmarried Couples & Money: Financial Tips for Shacking Up.
• David from My Two Dollars presents Love & Marriage - On Combining Our Finances.. Hear how David and his wife took the big plunge!
• CJ from The Coin Jar presents Financial emergency brings one couple closer together.
• Living Almost Large ponders the difference between "cheap" and "frugal" in Being worthy of money...martial argument #4.
• Kevin Surbaugh at Becoming and Staying Debt Free offers us 33 Ideas for Dating Frugally: You've made a love connection, but now you're weary of the wooing process because you're on a tight budget. But don't worry, because dating without much cash is possible and it can allow you to be creative while showing your date a good time. If you think that showing your true frugal colors may be a turn-off, then no need to tell your honey how much money you're saving.

Frugality & Savings Tips

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship. -- Benjamin Franklin

• SavingDiva from Saving For a Home of My Own presents Scoring Discounts--A Reformed Shopaholic's Methods-- good tips to try on your next trip to Macy's.
• Rich Minx from Rich Minx presents Ladies: You Can Be Beautiful and Cheap, and says, "It can be expensive to look good. Here's some advice on saving money on all your beauty expenses."
• Inswatch at Home Insurance Guide offers up the Top 5 Ways To Reduce Your Homeowners Insurance Premiums.
• Q from $1 Million to My Name presents The upsell - you can say no, save your money!, and says, "This post discusses "the upsell" - your bank or credit card company will often try to sell you extra services because it is extremely profitable for them to do so. I offer a polite way to decline these offers."
• Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity is celebrating two anniversaries: his marriage and the purchase of the car he plans to drive til death do they part, in An Anniversary.
• Patrick from Cash Money Life presents Save Money with Discounted Gift Cards; Sell Unwanted Gift Cards, and says, "This post has some info about how to buy, sell, and trade gift cards on-line, and gives some examples of legitimate sites.
• Joe Caterisano at Penny Pinching presents More Questions that Will Prevent Impulse Spending
• The Frugal Law Student presents 3 Ways to Save Money on Your Personal Printer
• Dawn's 30+ Ways to Save a Dollar a Day at Frugal for Life.
• Kimber at No Limits Ladies suggests that you might save money and be happier by not geing a control freak about your wedding planning: Frugal Fridays: Total Control Costs.

Retirement

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. -- Benjamin Franklin

• Loi Tran at Investing Guide presents My Early Retirement Plan: doing the math to get real about retiring at age 45.
• Mr Credit Card from Ask Mr Credit Card's Blog presents 2007 Tax Advantage Retirement Plans Cheat Sheet, all the basic info about contribution limits, etc. for various types of retirement savings plans.
• Jim presents Top 5 Reasons To Save For Retirement Now!, at My Retirement Blog. I especially like reason #2: Old Habits Die Hard, So Start An Old Habit Today.
• KMC from Advanced Personal Finance presents A quick way to tell if you're saving enough for retirement.
• Super Saver at My Wealth Builder compares two hypothetical retirees in Retirement Planning - Focus On SPENDABLE Net Worth.
• The Mighty Bargain Hunter presents Top five ways to kill your retirement dreams, in case you want to be sure you don't have a comfortable retirement.
  

Real Estate & Mortgages

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body. -- Benjamin Franklin

• Colonel Cash from Money and Credit presents Debt Ratios- Are they really that important?, an interesting look at how lenders evaluate potential orrowers.
• Broknowrchlatr from Broke now, Rich Later presents Rent vs. Buy: Only rent for the right reasons-- very sensible advice on how to compare renting vs. buying a home.
• Flexo from Consumerism Commentary presents Renting Makes You Richer, and says, "A valid argument that if you're disciplined, there are situations where renting will pay off over and above buying." Another good look at some aspects of the rent vs. buy debate.
• FrugalTrader from Million Dollar Journey presents Top 5 Reasons Why Building is Better than Buying!, and says, "Top 5 reasons why building a home is better than buying an existing home!" One of them is that it might be cheaper.
• Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade quite reasonably opines that Gravity Is Not a Major Determinant Of Housing Prices: "the graph of housing prices takes place in a mathematical construct world, not on Planet Earth. It's a Cartesian Plane, not a jet plane."
• Steve Faber at Debt Free says you can Get a Mortgage With No Closing Costs That Beats Any Written Offer From Our No Commission Loan Officers, Then Don’t Make Any Payments For a Year!!!!!!!!! ... but like all the other mortgage ad tag lines he warns us about, it's too good to be true.
• Another warning about mortgage shenanigans you should avoid, courtesy of Nigel Swaby at Salt Lake Real Estate Blog: Don't Fall For the New Option ARM Marketing
• Wendell Sherk from Bankruptcy Law Network presents How To Make A Debt Trap, which he describes as "A piece discussing current lending to low-income borrowers that can trap them into a cycle of debt without a way to escape."
• Single Ma has some tough decisions to make in order to keep her Financials Fabulous: now that she has relocated for a new job, should she sell or rent out her home?

Investing

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. -- Benjamin Franklin

• Dan at Everyday Finance from Everyday Finance presents Profiting Handsomely from Takeovers: he's got his eye on the knot.com.
• Average Joe at Investment Jungle tells us how to find a good dividend-paying stock in Screening for Quality Dividend Paying Stocks.
• Shadox from Money and Such presents Beating the Market or Faking It?, and says, "This post is a story demonstrating how it is impossible to know whether the fact that someone's portfolio is outperforming the market is due to skill or due to simple dumb luck..."
• TJP at Investor Trip is wondering: TD Ameritrade Online Trading: Good or Bad?
• Tate Dwinnell at Trading Stocks - Self Investors gets into the nitty gritty of trading in Live Trading Room Case Study: Day Trade in Force Protection (FRPT)
• The Money Diva from A Canadian and her Money presents I am an Impulse Shopper!, and says, "Two large stock purchases this week on "impulse" led to this not-completely-serious post..." I like the idea that people might be able to satisfy their shopaholic urges by buying stocks!
• Kevin from Personal Finance at KMull.com presents Locking in Stock Gains, and says, "An article explaining how to lock in stock gains with stop limit orders."
• Michael K. Dawson of The Time and Money Group thinks it's a good time to be investing in the mining industry: Mining Merger Mania: Say It Three Times Fast.
• Yoroku from Yoroku's Notes on International Index Investing presents Mental Preparedness of Cooks and Investors, where he compares his investing philosophy to that of a cook who tweaks a recipe to his own taste.
• Blunt Money presents The cost of not investing, reminding us that if you do nothing, you're not just keeping your money, you're losing it.
• Mark Rosner from capitalAI: the artificial search for better returns presents Spider-Man 3: Personal Finance Lesson? Yes!, and actually does draw a financial lesson from this unlikely analogy.
• Financial Jungle Guy from Financial Jungle presents Debunk Passive Investing as the Holy Grail, in which he says that he Tarzan, you Jane. Oh, and that actively managed funds aren't necessarily a bad choice.
• Sun from The Sun’s Financial Diary presents some very detailed analysis in Generating
• Passive Income with Dividend-Paying ETFs and Stocks.
• Babak at Trader's Narrative presents The Amazing Four Year Stock Market Cycle: "The four year stock market cycle can pinpoint great investing opportunities (includes a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average showing each the 4 year cycle going back to 1900's)."
• Clint from Accumulating Money presents Fundamental Indexing vs. Traditional Indexing, and says, "Today, one of the biggest idea battles in investments is between fundamental indexing and traditional indexing."
• JLP of All Financial Matters on What Do You Do When You're Too Scared to Invest?

Credit Cards

Creditors have better memories than debtors. -- Benjamin Franklin

• Matthew Sevenson at Food for thought, by archangelG presents The price of credit, a look at the cost of using credit cards with high APRs.
• John Place of johnplaceonline.com presents The #1 Mistake Consumers Make with Credit Cards. I think we get a few extra mistakes beyond #1 too-- all good reminders about the pitfalls that can come with using credit cards.
• DDL from Make Your Nut presents Advice for New Graduates: Credit and Financing, and says, "I’m writing to those soon-to-be graduates who have little or no credit history, who need to start building a positive credit record while avoiding the quicksand of consumer debt abuse." The good news is that you're allowed to buy your own toilet plunger rather than borrowing one from your parents.
• FIRE Finance tells you how to Avoid Credit Card Fees and Interest Rate Increases!
• Jonathan from My Money Blog presents Surprising Truths (and Half-Truths) About Credit Card Debt, and says, "You’ve probably heard that the average American has over $8,000 of credit card debt. It’s been quoted all over the place. But does that single stat accurately explain the whole picture? I dig deeper and find some surprisingly facts." Interesting stats and charts here.

Whew! That's it! If you can't find something in this carnival that will make you $100 richer, you're beyond help.

Next week's Carnival of Personal Finance will be hosted by FIRE Finance. Don't forget to follow the submission guidelines, and make the host's life easier by using the form from the Carnival homepage, adding a comment that summarizes what your article is about, and submitting early so the host has time to assemble the carnival! And remember:
Time is money. -- Benjamin Franklin

We Want to Be Alone

I was thinking about how much our economy and technological development seems to be driven by the desire not to physically interact with other people. Think about it: we have gone from being entertained by plays and movies in theaters, to having TV sets in our living rooms, to watching video iPods. And with music: from concerts, to radios and stereos in the home, to Walkmans to iPods. Telephones used to have party lines, and there used to be more phone booths-- now we have cell phones. Now the internet gives us so many reasons to do things from the comfort and privacy of our own homes rather than among other people: shopping, dating, education...
Of course cars are a big one-- we've developed this American dream of having your own car, not taking public transportation. And the wealthier people get, the more they isolate themselves: owning yachts instead of going on cruise lines, taking private jets instead of flying commercial, building houses with pools and fitness rooms so they don't have to go to a gym.

Sometimes I feel pretty anti-social myself. Now that I have bought this apartment with outdoor space, I find myself wanting to stay home and enjoy it. I'm also keenly aware of needing to stay on my budget. So every weekend, I have this little inner debate: should I go out to a café for breakfast, or should I stay in and make my own coffee to save a few dollars? But even when I do go out to the café, it's not all that interactive, or even particularly interesting just for people-watching: everyone's just sitting there hunched over their laptops, with iPods on!

More Randomness from the Archives

say "wow, Dr. Ruth is here again" and go all kissy-poo with everyone


And don't be put off by their weird-smelling garlic bread.


I don't know how such a tiny creature can make a noise that sounds like Jason is about to scrape a hole through your wall and murder you.

How I Spent [Money During] My Spring Vacation, Part 3

Ok, let's wrap this up, since I've been back for well over a week now!
First, a few more pix:

A lot of my "freaky clouds" photos didn't come out well, but I like this one:


Lake Wanaka:


The hotel room view at Mt.Cook:


Yes, these are icebergs:



The thing I'd love to post photos of is my friend Wanda's flat, but that would be too much of an invasion of privacy. As I mentioned last time, part of the reason I've visited New Zealand twice now is that I have friends who live there. One of them is Wanda, who was featured in this post about her purchase of a $150 belt. Wanda has gone through some financial ups and downs over the last few years. She's an artist, and not an overwhelmingly successful one, so her ups are never all that up, but for a long time, she did have a stable day job 4 days a week and managed to save some money. Then she decided to move back to the small town in New Zealand where she's from, after many years of living in other countries.
As an aside on that, I'll just note that New Zealanders are really big on their O.E.-- overseas experience. I don't know what percentage of the population has lived and worked abroad at some point in their lives, but I think it must be huge, much larger than the percentage of Americans who have even taken a vacation in another country. And when you figure that the currency and comparative cost of living has often made it really expensive for kiwis to come to the UK, Europe, America, etc., it's even more impressive.
Anyway, to get back to Wanda, thanks to her, and her brother, who is also a friend of mine, I've had a chance to see more of how people live in NZ. Through them and other friends of theirs, I've stayed in private homes in Auckland, Napier, and the town in the South Island where they're from. I'd name it, but it's too small a world down there and I'd be afraid someone could identify them even from what little I'm writing here!
In general, all the people I've stayed with have been pretty middle-class. As far as I can judge, I think their situations would be comparable to people I know in the States. And in many ways, they live very much the way people I know here do, which isn't surprising. But in other ways, things are a bit different. They definitely tend to drive smaller cars, due to higher gas prices I'm sure. And in other ways, they just don't seem to have as much STUFF, or as much emphasis on brands and materialism. Some of this may be more about the individuals themselves, and about my perspective as someone who spends way too much time in New York City, where you sometimes discover you've just walked through a fashion photo shoot without realizing it, because everyone just kind of blended in. But I do think there is some part of it that has to do with a certain national attitude.
In the case of Wanda herself, as I got to know her, I learned to stop being surprised at her ability to live in dire conditions just because they were cheap. One of her homes that I visited was a tiny room in a house full of alcoholic middle-aged men, where the bathrooms and kitchen were shared. Then she moved to a much nicer flat that had been recently built-- it was lovely in many ways, but the only closet in the whole place was not a real closet but rather this strange thing known as an "airing cupboard." As I said to Wanda, "let me get this straight-- in order to dry your damp clothes, you fold them and put them on the shelf in a closet??" Mystifying. She has one again now in New Zealand-- and that segues into another general observation I have: people there seem much more inclined to hang their laundry in the yard to dry it, even if they own a dryer.
At Wanda's current flat, the washer and dryer are in a sort of shed outside the actual house. At first I thought that meant that Wanda didn't have to pay for the electricity to run them, but it turns out that each flat has a numbered outlet, and the tenants are expected to plug the machines into the right one whenever they're doing laundry. This may sound a little old fashioned, but it's actually one of the more modern features of the house.
The place was built in the 1920s or 30s, I think, and when I walked in, I almost felt like I was in a time warp. It was once probably a kind of Arts and Crafts-style bungalow, and a lot of the original woodwork has been preserved. The kitchen has a nice fireplace, and a built-in china cupboard. The bathroom was obviously an afterthought, built onto the outside of the house at some point, with only a shower stall. The kitchen stove and fridge probably date to the 70s. No dishwasher, needless to say. Then there's Wanda's living room, which is also her bedroom. And here the timewarp impression really struck me, as there's another lovely fireplace, and all her furniture is 2nd hand or stuff she's found on the street-- if you took a black and white photo, you'd have to look closely to see anything that would put you anywhere near the 21st century. Wanda also has another large room, but she mainly uses it for storage. Why? Because it's another room added on to the outside of the original house, and it has no fireplace. And no fireplace means no heat.
When Wanda told me her apartment was unheated, I couldn't believe it. The South Island of NZ has real winters, it's not like it's tropical. But apparently it's quite common for homes there to have no central heating. Wanda has an electric heater, but she doesn't like to use it much because it's so expensive. She also has a portable gas heater, but doesn't like that much either. So she mainly uses the two fireplaces for heat. Her brother helps her out by bringing her wood scraps from construction sites, and she also collects pine cones to burn. And then she buys coal. Lumps of coal! I didn't even know you could just buy coal nowadays-- I thought it was only for industrial uses, and frowned on even for that, given how bad it is for the environment. This really seemed weird-- and to anyone out there who doesn't understand my reaction, it's not just me. I told someone else this story, and when I mentioned the coal, she said "you mean like for a barbecue?" No, not charcoal briquettes! We're talking coal, real coal, anthracite, the other black gold, not to mention black lung...
Most people in NZ probably don't use an open hearth as their main source of heat. Wanda's brother, who I'll call Bud, is more typical in using a modern woodstove, which is rigged up to a duct that is supposed to push warm air into other parts of the house. But even with that, he has to put a space heater in the kids' room sometimes. Bud works in construction and said that he thinks New Zealand is "behind the rest of the world" in terms of heating technology. (Bud has also done his O.E. and worked in other countries for a few years.) But both he and Wanda also believe that there is a certain pride in being rugged and just "getting on with it" that makes kiwis less concerned about details like room temperature. Wanda "gets on with it" by wearing several layers of clothes, including gloves and a ski mask, to bed on the coldest nights of the year.
Over dinner one night, we also talked about lifestyles in general. New Zealand has also had a big real estate boom, and people are over-borrowing, though not to the extent they are here. Interest rates are much higher in NZ-- I saw a CD advertised with a rate of over 9% for a pretty short term. Houses tend to be much smaller-- that is changing but their new McMansions are still smaller than ours. Wanda and Bud are my age and a little older, and they agreed that the expected standard of living is evolving quite a bit in recent years. Until fairly recently, the New Zealand dream for families like theirs, they said, was to buy a house and a car, and maybe have a bach somewhere. A bach is a house for weekends and vacations-- traditionally it might have been not much more than a small, rustic cabin, without indoor plumbing or electricity, but now people are building more and more elaborate ones. And now, the car is more often an SUV, and the next thing you have to get is a motorboat.
Wanda sees Bud as being a bit caught up in this himself-- he has a house, just upgraded to a new SUV, and bought a camper that stays by a lake all summer as the family's weekend retreat. So far his only boat is a kayak. Meanwhile Wanda is struggling to get work and keeps watching the value of her savings erode as NZ's currency strengthens, since she left some money in an overseas account, thinking its value would go up rather than down. She has gotten a small government grant for her art, but it's not enough to live on. And she doesn't have too many other options, as most of the jobs in her area are agricultural or in things like meat-packing plants. If she moved to Auckland or Wellington, she might have more opportunties for arts-related jobs, or anything else that would use her office skills as opposed to manual labor-- but the cost of living is much higher there, so she's a bit stuck.

Anyway, that is my long meditation on other lives, other places. You've probably learned more about my background and prejudices than you have about New Zealand, though I really don't mean to sound like a snooty New Yorker who thinks other countries are primitive, and I swear I'm not Zsa Zsa Gabor doing Green Acres! In many ways, New Zealand feels more like the US than any other country I've been to except Canada, and I could happily live there if it wasn't so far away from everything else that is important to me.

In closing, one last money fact about New Zealand: don't forget the departure fee when you leave! At the airport, you have to pay NZ$25 before you're allowed to leave the country. Last time I was there, I'm pretty sure you had to pay in cash, as I seem to remember being really annoyed that I had to take out more cash, after so carefully planning to minimize what I'd have leftover. But now they have a lot of little credit card machines where you can pay the fee, as long as you have a PIN for your credit card. I find that departure fee so ironic-- it's as if leaving is this highly desireable thing that they make you pay for... but all I wanted to do was stay...

Total cost of my trip (at least the parts I personally paid for):
Transportation (to and from airport and taxes/fees/seat upgrade on frequent flier free ticket. Does not include car and gas): $264
Lodging: $376
Meals, gifts and miscellaneous: $519 (I didn't keep close track of my cash spending, so I don't have a more detailed breakdown.)
TOTAL: $1159
Memories, of course, priceless.