My Quarterly Blog Update: What's Up with Mom

That seems to be about the frequency I'm posting with lately! I really appreciate the comments from longtime readers and am glad to know you are still checking in! And it is good to hear from you about how you are doing in your own pursuits of financial stability and independence.

T'Pol, thanks for asking after my Mom. She is actually doing quite well. I invested the money in her two trusts (one revocable trust that is all hers, and one irrevocable trust, where she only gets the income but can't touch the principal) in Vanguard funds and they have been doing well enough to generate over $13,000 of income for my mom in 2018. She has been living on what she still gets from my father's pension, and her social security payments. In 2016 and 2017, she asked me for $5000 from the trust income to pay for other expenses. One year, that included my grandmother's funeral. The other year, she was moving to a new apartment. In 2018, she ended up asking me for two $5000 checks, as she had some expensive dental work. I was a little worried at first that she needed that much more-- it came at a point where she was fantasizing about moving to a larger and much more expensive apartment, and I sent her a slightly stern email querying the amount to make sure she wasn't somehow going behind my back to rent the new apartment. This was in December, and I explained to her that things were generally going well with the trusts but that the markets had just plunged and that we should be careful. I had another conversation with her where I reminded her how stressed out she had been when she was drowning in credit card debt, and that we had things under control now.
I worry that my mom doesn't understand the concept of building up a cushion for emergencies. I'm legally required to report to her on the trusts every year, and I've come up with a nice little template where I paste in a lot of charts and numbers from Vanguard showing what the assets are, how they did, and how much is being paid to her. (I do this by transferring the income from the irrevocable trust into the checking account for the revocable trust, which I also control. When my mom needs money, I write a check from the revocable trust made out to her personally.) My mom always just seems to glaze over on the overall details of the investments and just wants to know "How much did we make? How much more do we have than when we started?" Right now, the value of the trust accounts is over $130,000 more than when we started in 2015 (with about $450,000), and I worry that a number like $130,000 just makes my mom think "woo-hoo, we won the lottery!" So I keep reminding her that the funds go up and down, and that the money has to stretch itself out over quite a few more years, and that the more money we have invested, the more income we make, etc etc.
Some of that sinks in, some doesn't. Even though she is basically spending all her income except for a few thousand dollars of the trust income some years, she was on the verge of signing herself up for an apartment that would have cost her about $900 more a month! She said "oh, I'll just cut back on my budget somewhere," but she doesn't have any big areas she can realistically cut.

So overall, I would say things are pretty good, and we haven't had any fights about money, which is the best thing of all. But I'm always wary of what could go wrong! We are lucky to have the resources we do have, and as long as we are careful with them, everything will be fine.

And I do have more stories to tell, and hope to get around to posting again soon!

My Early Retirement Calculations

A commenter on the previous post asked if I'd share the calculations that made me feel confident about retiring early. I'll give you a simplified version!

There are a few different ways that people tend to look at retirement readiness. One of the simplest is the 4% rule. The idea is that if you can live on spending only 4% of your savings each year, you don't need to add to those savings, as investment gains should generally outpace what you are withdrawing. This is also sometimes expressed as a 25X rule-- multiply your annual spending by 25 to see how it compares to your savings.

My total net worth at the point of deciding to quit my job was somewhere around $1.2 million. (It has since been between $1.3 and $1.4 million due to stock market gains.) 4% of $1.2 million is $48,000. My lifestyle while living in NYC was costing me more than that, but by leaving the city, it was possible to realistically budget for a lifestyle where my half would be less than $48,000. And that doesn't include Sweetie's net worth, which is a little over $2 million (not counting the equity in the house we just bought and paid for in cash, as well as some money set aside for renovations). When taking both of us into account, 4% of $3.2 million is $128,000 and our combined yearly budget is well under that. (My current calculations have it as around $92,000 a year, including a generous travel allowance. We'll see how it plays out in reality as we adjust to our new life in the country!)

This method of calculation doesn't factor in Social Security benefits or other retirement income. My Social Security will end up being less than what they project because they don't take into account that I won't continue to make what I was making last year. (It will be interesting to see if the projections will update in the next year or two when my income goes way down.) Sweetie will get Social Security, as well as a defined benefit pension starting in about 7 years. The pension, which appears to be well-funded and safely on track to be able to pay out in full, will be additional income of about $87,000 a year. That obviously makes a HUGE difference in our projections for the future.

I also used the retirement calculator that is part of the Fidelity website (not sure if it's publicly accessible or if you have to have an account)-- it is a fairly complex tool that allows you to input all sorts of info for yourself and a partner, including life expectancy, assets on hand, sources of income, one-time events, budgeted retirement spending, and other goals like paying for college. It then uses a Monte Carlo simulation to model how things will play out under different market conditions, and projects your savings and spending until your "end of plan," which is their delicate way of saying "when you drop dead." You can see 3 versions of the results-- one assuming a "significantly below average" market, one "below average," and one "average." I plugged all our numbers into this, assuming we'd both live til 95, inflating our expenses (by about 50% over what they currently are budgeted at) to allow for plenty of fun and expensive healthcare, and keeping expectations of any future inflow from earnings or inheritance to an absolute minimum. When really pushing this to the absolute worst case scenario, it says I might run out of money in my early 90s after Sweetie is dead. But even by just changing the parameters to "below average" market instead of "significantly below" brings us back to having over $2 million left over after both of us are dead.

No prediction is 100% confident, and a lot of things could happen that would change these calculations, so of course I still have my moments of worrying about whether it will all work out as planned. But we're also allowing for so much leeway in our budgeting that there will be room for us to cut back if needed. And we'll naturally cut back on some things like travel as we age. The biggest worry is that we'll decide we hate living in the country and want to go back to NYC-- we wouldn't be able to afford to live as we did before, but we could most likely make it work if we really wanted to. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this kind of freedom-- Sweetie and I have worked hard and made good decisions, but I also know that pure luck is a lot of what separates us from the half of all Americans who say they can't come up with $400 in an emergency, let alone retire early.

It's Done

In my last few posts, I was working my way towards a big life change... and now I've taken the next big step. I quit my job! It was both a big step and strangely anti-climactic, since I hadn't been at that job for very long and had never really settled into it in some ways. Now I just wish I'd done it sooner so I could have had more time off during the summer, but it's actually kind of nice to go into vacation mode just as everyone else is going back to school/work.

This is going to be weird, though. I haven't been unemployed since I was 21! What am I going to do with myself? More blogging, I hope! And I do intend to find other work, but at the moment we're working on moving out of NYC, which seems like a job unto itself. The main thing I'm going to have to adjust to is seeing negative numbers in my income/expense tracking. I will not be saving money in the short term. I will have to be very strict about sticking to a budget, but spending some of my savings is all part of the master plan. It is going to be painful over the next few months as we'll have higher household expenses while we deal with relocating. But afterwards, our ongoing expenses will be lower. And Sweetie will have a lot more liquid cash after the NY apartment is sold. We are pretty sure that if we play our cards right, we don't really ever have to have jobs again, though we do want to find other work, preferably part-time.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing of more and more people who are also leaving NYC-- some are moving to totally new cities for new jobs, some are moving back to their home towns to be closer to parents, some are doing reverse commutes to jobs outside NYC and planning to fully move later. Others are also leaping into the void of uncertainty: one guy quit his job, sold all his stuff, and moved to Berlin! There is a sense that the city has changed so much from when we ourselves were the young new arrivals, but maybe every new generation feels that NYC is becoming just an over-developed playground for the wealthy and their children and just isn't as fun anymore...

But for me, what I'm doing now feels exciting, inspiring, and a little scary. It's rejuvenating, perhaps, to throw off my very stable routines and enter a phase of disruption and reinvention-- though I suppose some people wouldn't think that a middle-aged couple moving to the suburbs is that adventurous! We shall see...

Juice is My New Financial Kryptonite

What is it about juice that makes it so expensive sometimes?? I've always enjoyed fresh juices and smoothies made with fruits and vegetables, and they seem to be becoming more and more popular and widely available. There are green smoothie books all over the bestseller lists, and people are always talking about how great their Vitamix blenders are. You can buy all these fancy juices on Amazon, as well as various health food shops, Whole Foods, etc. and they are sometimes $10 a bottle! This is exactly the kind of thing where I'd normally dismiss it as a crazy fad designed to part stupid people from their money... but I guess I am one of those stupid people, because I often find myself spending the $10! I can't resist!

I'm not buying these juices every day. But it's gone from being maybe once every couple of months to once a month... to once a week... to sometimes multiple times a week! And as the weather gets warmer, a nice cool refreshing juice will seem more and more attractive.
Sometimes I go to a place where they make them fresh, and as I watch them stuffing a handful of spinach, a big carrot, a couple beets, and whatever else into the blender, I try to do the mental math of what it would cost to buy those vegetables. I don't have a good mental price list for fruits and vegetables, though. Or maybe I don't have a good sense of weight! When I buy apples at the supermarket, I'm often shocked at what it works out to per apple-- I've seen the per pound price, but I never think each apple will be that heavy.
I comfort myself that this particular extravagance is at least a healthy vice-- a $10 juice is still less than the cost of a pack of cigarettes, and less than the average glass of wine in many NYC restaurants.

What's your financial kryptonite?

2012 Income and Expenses

2012 was a great year in terms of income-- I hit another new high:

Salary $106,244
Bonus $18,239
Employer contributions to my 401K $8,119
Dividends $15,977
Realized Gain (from a fund change made in 401k) $11,347
Blogging income $4,402
Gifts received $100
Interest $208
Tax refunds $2,516
Total Income $167,152

Almost all the dividends and realized gains were reinvested, and sometimes I don't really even consider these "real" income. But I love seeing my money work for me-- that is over $35,000 worth of income made not from labor but from my own savings and 401K participation.

The other income I had this year was $10,000 in rent from the tenants in my apartment, but for this year, I am kind of looking at it as a defrayal of my housing expenses. I'll start breaking this out differently next year, as I'll be reclassifying some of my expenses as business expenses for an investment property rather than personal household expenses.

Now for expenses:

Bank Charge	$77
Charity	$1,153
Clothing	$3,062
Dining / Groceries	$11,296
Education	$458
Entertainment	$1,364
Gifts Given	$2,266
Gym	$2,249
Household	$1,792
Housing (net)	$11,974
Income taxes	$34,639
Medical	$1,714
Miscellaneous	$3,434
Newspapers and Magazines	$404
Travel	$8,421
Utilities Internet Access	$360
Utilities Telephone	$953

A few notes:

• Charity refers to my personal contributions. I also plan to donate all the blogging income from this site.
• Dining-- about $8500 of this is for stuff shared with Sweetie. (I have to admit that we have been indulging in fancier wines than we used to! We buy it by the mixed case and usually 1 or 2 of the bottles is a special treat, i.e. something in the $16-35 range, compared to the $9-12 range for the rest. But at least in restaurants, we tend to stay with whatever's cheapest.) The rest is mostly for my own breakfasts and lunches.
• Entertainment was pretty high this year, due to buying more tickets for concerts and theater, including a rather expensive one to see Madonna at Yankee Stadium
• Gym-- this covers a membership renewal for 2 years
• Household is mainly laundry and dry-cleaning, plus a new armchair for the apartment Sweetie and I now share
• Housing-- as noted above, I pulled together my housing expenses such as condo charges, property tax, mortgage interest, rent I pay to Sweetie, and gas and electric charges for my condo, and then subtracted the rent I receive from tenants to arrive at a net housing cost for the year. This does not include about $10,000 in mortgage principal I've paid off, as I view that as a transfer from my cash net worth to home equity.
• Miscellaneous included a new iPhone and a lot of art supplies, plus haircuts and all the usual little personal items
• Travel includes daily commuting, some family visits, and a 2-week summer vacation in Europe.

Total expenses for the year came to $85,616. This is also an all-time high. I think the new iPhone, big vacation, 2-year gym expense and new chair account for a lot of that, plus trying to take better advantage of all the culture NYC has to offer.

Net savings were $81,536, of which $10,125 is the transfer to home equity for paying off mortgage principal. This is NOT an all-time high, but it's second only to the year when I received a $25,000 inheritance, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I saved about $5000 more than I did last year,
and about $9000 more than I did in 2010 if you back out the inheritance.

As always, I could easily have cut back on expenses and saved more, and I always have these thoughts about how much sooner I could retire if I did, and whether I'll wish I had saved more when there's another economic crisis... but at the end of the day, I am comfortable enough with my savings and net worth so far to allow myself some luxuries. I feel very, very lucky and thankful for the good fortune that has come my way.

2010 Year End Recap

Well the year came to a close in an interesting and good way.

First of all, let's look at my net worth as of 12/31/10:
Cash and Bank Accounts: $66,039
Retirement (401k and Roth IRA): $320, 626
Other Investments (mutual funds @ E*Trade): $51,294
Bonds $5,197
Home Equity $82,592
Credit Card Balance -$2,615
TOTAL: $523,133

Now you may be thinking, as I did, whoa! Her net worth as of a month before was only $479,273! Did her net worth really increase 9.15% in one month? Well, I did receive $9,000 more of my inheritance from Great Aunt Minnie, and the stock market did ok... but what I also discovered is that I had the wrong symbol in Quicken for one of my mutual funds and therefore the wrong price, so my net worth has been understated by several thousand dollars for I don't know how long. So I not only blew away my original year end goal of $450,000, I sailed past the half-million dollar mark, which was totally unexpected. Pretty cool.

As for my income and expenses, here's a look at the totals for 2010 vs. 2009:

	2009	2010	Var.	% Var.
Income
Bonus	$11,765	$17,288	$5,523	47%
Gift Received	$1,309	$24,200	$22,891	1749%
Interest Inc	$776	$502	-$274	-35%
Other Inc	$6,503	$6,386	-$117	-2%
Salary	$96,206	$99,373	$3,167	3%
Tax Refund	$4,211	$2,873	-$1,338	-32%
Total Income	$120,770	$150,623	$29,853	25%
Expenses
Bank Charge	$160	$97	-$64	-40%
Business expense	$0	-$7	-$7	N/A
Charity	$468	$1,055	$586	125%
Clothing	$1,639	$2,648	$1,009	62%
Dining	$7,895	$8,552	$656	8%
Education	$406	$455	$49	12%
Entertainment	$663	$448	-$214	-32%
Gifts Given	$962	$1,924	$963	100%
Gym & Fitness	$1,317	$1,361	$44	3%
Household	$1,337	$760	-$577	-43%
Home Insurance	$335	$335	$0	0%
Housing	$14,384	$14,171	-$213	-1%
Medical	$1,938	$4,556	$2,619	135%
Misc	$2,215	$3,412	$1,197	54%
Taxes	$30,325	$34,053	$3,728	12%
Subscriptions	$956	$743	-$213	-22%
Travel	$1,712	$4,803	$3,091	180%
Utilities	$1,936	$2,454	$518	27%
Total Expenses	$68,648	$81,819	$13,171	19%
Net Savings	$52,122	$68,804	$16,683	32%
% of Gross Income Saved	43.16%	45.68%

A few notes:

• As noted elsewhere, I received a $24,000 inheritance from a family member.
• Other Income is matching 401k contributions from my employer.
• Interest is down because I shifted quite a bit of money from bank accounts into investment accounts.
• Charity and Gifts Given are up for reasons explained in this post.
• Medical is way up because I had a crown and root canal and exceeded the annual cap on my dental insurance.
• Miscellaneous is up mainly because I bought an iPhone and some apps.
• Travel is up because I didn't do much of a vacation last year, but this year I went to Turkey and splurged a little on hotels even though my air ticket was purchased with frequent flyer miles.
• Utilities is up because of the higher monthly costs of the iPhone.
• Subscriptions is down because I canceled my NY Times delivery at home, since I spend so much time at Sweetie's place. Household is lower for the same reason
• I'm pretty consistent but I let a few categories creep up a bit without any real reason, particularly Dining. I still like eating out and drink too much-- everyone has to have a vice, right?
• Clothing was also higher but I really needed some new work clothes and shoes, so I'm not too concerned about that.

But the bottom line is that I continue to save a lot of my income. If not for the inheritance, I would have saved less than I did last year, but at least some of that was due to more giving, and higher taxes because I earned more. It's not like I went crazy buying tons of stuff, even if I did allow myself a few treats like an iPhone, some clothes and a vacation.

Now I have to look ahead at 2011... what should my next net worth goal be? Should I make any changes to my budget? This could be the year when I rent out my apartment and move in with Sweetie, which could change things a lot. And I need to take a close look at my investment allocations, which I haven't done in a while. So much to think about! And write about here... I'm going to try to post more frequently this year. So happy 2011! As always, onward and upward!

October 2010 Recap

Better late than never! Here's what October looked like in terms of expenses and income:
My income from salary and interest was about $8,512.
Expenses were as follows:

Taxes	$2,740
Clothing	$1,959
Housing	$1,716
Gym & Fitness	$1,339
Total Dining	$701
Home Insurance	$335
Misc	$207
Utilities	$199
Medical	$153
Travel	$76
Gifts Given	$74
Charity	$52
Education	$44
Subscriptions	$37
Entertainment	$24
Household	$13
Business expense	-$709

Clothing looks outrageously high because I ordered a few pairs of boots from Zappos that I ended up returning, with the credit showing up in November. Gym & Fitness is high because I renewed my gym membership for a full year. With several free months tacked on, I now won't need to pay for this again until sometime in 2012. Home insurance is another yearly bill that happened to come due this month. Business expense is a reimbursement of things I paid for over the course of several months.
The net effect of these odd expenses, plus routine things being slightly higher than usual, was that I saved no money this month! I was in the red by about $448.

As for my net worth:
It's approximately $458,780, up $10,718 / 2.39% from last month. One major change is that I moved some money from a savings account into my E*Trade investment account. You can see the higher credit card balance here too, which should correct itself next month (and of course, as always, I pay it in full every month anyway). I haven't made any more adjustments to my home equity, but I feel pretty good about where it's at based on some recent sales data I've seen in my neighborhood. Of course, there aren't tons of sales to base things on lately, so I continue to think of that number as being a rough ballpark estimate.

	Sept.	Oct.
Cash and Bank Accounts	$ 69,355	$ 45,665
Retirement Accounts	$ 272,805	$ 282,052
Stocks & Mutual Funds	$ 22,236	$ 49,780
Bonds	$ 5,091	$ 5,091
Credit Cards	$ (2,915)	$ (5,664)
Home Equity	$ 81,490	$ 81,856
TOTAL	$ 448,062	$ 458,780

So the good news is that I've surpassed my net worth goal for the end of the year already. In November, I'll also add $15,000 I inherited from Great Aunt Minnie, so I'm hoping that even if the market is down somewhat, I can still beat my net worth goal. Onward and upward!

Changes in Household Spending

This graph appeared in yesterday's New York Times and I found it fascinating:


Look how much the share spent on food and clothing increased during World War II, and how much lower they are now than at any time since. And I was surprised to see the share spent on education being quite low, and not showing as much of a spike in recent years, despite other stats that show the price of college skyrocketing. This could be because not everyone goes to college, and because although the rack rates for tuition have skyrocketed, more and more people get financial aid in various forms to cover a lot of it. And of course health care costs have risen hugely, after being quite stable through the '30s and '40s-- but it still surprises me that on average we spend more on health care than we do on housing.

The article the chart accompanied mainly focused on the housing part of the budget, and whether this data suggests housing prices have stabilized or are still likely to fall. David Leonhardt says:

I can’t claim to clear up all the uncertainty. But I do want to suggest a framework for figuring out whether you lean bearish or less bearish: do you believe that housing is a luxury good and that societies spend more on it as they get richer? Or do you think it’s more like food, clothing and other staples that account for an ever smaller share of consumer spending over time?

If you believe housing resembles a luxury good, then you’ll end up thinking house prices will rise nearly as fast as incomes in the long run and that houses today aren’t terribly overvalued. If housing is a staple, though, prices will rise more slowly — with general inflation, as food tends to.

The difference between these two views ends up being huge, and it’s become the subject of an intriguing debate.

After digging into it, I come down closer to the luxury good side, which is to say the less bearish one. To me, housing does not rank with unemployment, the trade deficit, the budget deficit or consumer debt as one of the economy’s biggest problems. But you may disagree.

What do you think?

Mint Adds Manual Transactions

Mint.com has added a feature many people wanted: the ability to enter cash transactions and manually enter future transactions in other accounts. But the way it works is a little weird.

Let's look first at adding manual transactions, for instance to a checking account. This makes a lot of sense, as you really need to know what pending transactions could affect your account balance. You can enter a future check with a check number and later, when that check has actually cleared against your bank account, it will be automatically reconciled so you don't have a duplicate entry. I'm not sure how this would work with a savings account where there's no check number to help with matching the transactions.

As for cash transactions, I don't like the way they've implemented this. You can add a random transaction that isn't counted against any account if you just want to track cash expenses against a budget, but there's no way to maintain a cash account and enter expenses against it. Instead, they want you to assign your cash transactions to your recent ATM transactions, which some people were using as a workaround already. I guess they've made it a little easier to do that, but they've missed half the point of bothering to track cash in the first place. Cash is cash, and what matters is the total you have and the total you spend-- why would you need to assign it to a particular ATM transaction? And what if you receive payment in cash and then spend that money?

Another thing worth noting is that you can't yet enter new transactions from the iPhone app, which is really a necessity. Mint says they're working on adding that soon, though.

You can read more about this all works at the Mint Blog. Some of the comments bring up these exact issues so perhaps they'll listen to their users and make some changes.

But on the positive side, after using Mint for a couple of months now, I have to say that there is a lot to like about it. It's very easy to set up and I love being able to check my balances and see transactions on my iPhone. That makes it all the more frustrating that they have left a lot of good features out-- I wish I could see how the individual stocks and mutual funds in my portfolios were doing on my iPhone (showing how much they were up or down, not just the current price), rather than just a total balance. I wish the budgeting categories were a little more flexible. And the cash transaction thing is just bizarre. Let's hope they keep refining this without heading off in the wrong direction...

October 2009 Monthly Recap

It's a bit late to be getting to this but here's a look at October's results!
My net worth at the end of October was $383,344, a decline of 1.5% from last month. The decline was entirely due to the stock market being down a bit. Also, my credit card balance was a bit high due to business expenses of over $1,000 that I haven't been reimbursed for yet. But I did okay in terms of saving some cash.

Expenses were as follows:

Condo	$ 1,835	maintenance charge just went up
Bank Charge	$ 71	stupidity: ATM fee and late charges
Business expense	$ 1,060
Charity	$ 100
Clothing	$ 301
Dining/Groceries	$ 828	a very social month, eating out a lot!
Education	$ 26
Entertainment	$ 5	Just Netflix
Gifts Given	$ 55
Household	$ 72
Property Insurance	$ 335	once a year charge
Medical	$ 127
Misc	$ 147
Taxes	$ 2,073
Subscriptions	$ 149	renewed the New Yorker
Travel	$ 76
Utilities	$ 167

If you back out the business expenses, my total outflow was $6,366, so I saved $1,651, or about 20% of my gross salary. We're heading into the home stretch for the year, and I have a holiday vacation planned, plus Christmas shopping, so I may not be saving a whole lot more... but hopefully I can still manage to end the year at or close to my all-time net worth high... we'll see! Onward and upward!

Family Stress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Fast Can You Adjust?

A while back, I posted "Do You Have a Crisis Plan," asking what you would do if you were laid off or had some other sort of financial crisis. But sometimes the question is not just "what will you give up," but "how quickly will you give things up."

An example drawn from real life: a couple in which the husband has just lost his job. The wife is a stay at home mom. They have a lot of home equity, and pretty good savings due to an inheritance, but they have a pretty expensive lifestyle. They also have a few significant one-time expenses planned for later this year: a vacation and a bat mitzvah.

Their savings might last a couple of years if they stay in their current home and make some cutbacks, like taking the kids out of private school. They could also refinance their mortgage to lower their monthly costs a bit, though that could be problematic if no one has a job. They could sell their house and move to a much smaller place with lower maintenance costs. They could cancel the vacation and scale back the bat mitzvah, but they don't want to, for the sake of the kids, and probably, to some extent, keeping up appearances.

The question about these changes is, how much? How fast? People often talk about having a 6-month emergency fund, or a 1-year emergency fund, but what if that isn't long enough? In this particular situation, and in this economy in general, I'd be extremely worried that it could take a very, very long time for the husband to find another job, and it may not be for anything near his previous salary level. If they just coast along trying to economize in minor ways, they could end up in big trouble. But if they were able to sell their house quickly, they'd free up a lot of cash that could significantly extend the time they can survive without anyone working.

Losing a job is a traumatic thing. People are scared and angry. They might feel a lot of self-doubt and shame. They want to put a good face on things, for themselves and for their kids, but also for the world around them: they don't want to admit they're in trouble. Each person's situation will be different, but I think it's important to take a hard, realistic look at your savings and budget and your prospects for getting another job, and then plan for the worst. I don't mean to downplay the significance of a family having to sell their home and turn their lives upside down-- it's not the sort of thing you should or can do at the drop of a hat. But sometimes you just have to act sooner rather than later.

Back to my crisis plan: if I lost my job today, I'd probably give myself a week or two before I tried to find a short-term roommate, given that back-to-school timing would be key-- at another time of year, I might let myself wait a little longer. I would immediately be emailing everyone I'd ever worked with to try to network my way into a new job or at least some consulting work, and based on some connections I have, I think I'd have a pretty good chance at getting at least some part-time income based on that. I'd also be keeping an eye out for any other job I thought I could do. If I saw a retail store with a "we're hiring" sign, I'd apply, even if the money was far less than my current income. I'd probably take the first job I could get, and just keep looking for a better one. If I was unemployed for more than a couple of months, I'd also probably be talking about moving in with Sweetie and renting out my entire apartment. I'd rather make short-term sacrifices right away than have to make more drastic sacrifices after running out of money later. We'll see if the family I mentioned above make the same choice.

Questions from Readers: Expense Tracking

Here's a question from my May expense wrap-up post:

Nobrainerdeals said...

What kind of program do you use for tracking of your bills? Do you input ur receipts daily? I use quicken and should breakdown my dinning even further like yours so I can know exactly when and what I am spending on.

For many years now, I have been using Quicken on my Mac at home, and synchronizing it with the Pocket Quicken for Palm OS, which is on my Treo phone.

The desktop Quicken has almost all the features I need-- I can download my credit card transactions and update security prices with single click. I used to be able to download my 401k transactions too, but my provider currently doesn't support that for Macs, so I have to enter them manually. I set up expense categories and budgets, editing the categories and subcategories to things that are meaningful to me. Every month, I use desktop Quicken to run reports on my net worth, how my spending breaks out into categories and how I'm measuring up against my budget.

For daily cash transactions or ATM withdrawals, I enter them in Pocket Quicken as they happen. This is a great way to capture every single penny I spend and minimize the cash that somehow disappears. About once a week, I synchronize my Treo with my Mac so all the handheld transactions appear on the desktop. This also keeps all my balances and transactions on the handheld up to date, so I can run basic reports on my spending vs. budget even when I don't have desktop Quicken handy.

I can't emphasize enough how important the PDA integration has been for me. I've always been a huge fan of Palm devices, and being able to use a neat-o tech toy has made it fun to track my finances religiously. I don't have to worry about jotting down spending on paper, or keeping receipts for everything. Occasionally I'll forget to enter something in the Treo and then be annoyed when my balance is off, but when I'm good, I literally account for every dollar I spend, no matter how minor the expense. I'm worried about the future of this method-- Palm OS seems to be getting phased out, and there doesn't seem to be a Pocket Quicken app for Blackberry. They've recently introduced an iPhone app that syncs with the free online version of Quicken, but that lacks many features of the desktop version. It also seems to be annoyingly focused on younger users who are focused on living paycheck-to-paycheck. I don't want an app that tells me how much I have left to spend before I get paid again, and I don't think that approach should be encouraged! (I realize that living paycheck-to-paycheck is a true necessity rather than a choice for some people, but those people probably aren't splurging on iPhones.) I also find it annoying that the crucial feature of PDA integration would only be available for a stripped-down free version of a program but not the deluxe/premier versions they expect you to pay money for! I hope someone at Quicken is listening and that other PDA/smartphone apps are planned that will work with the desktop Mac version of Quicken.

My method won't be right for everyone, but there are various options you can try. I think everyone should start with some program that at least lets you download or monitor your bank and credit card transactions-- you could use Mint, Geezeo, or Quicken, all of which are free. And then you should find your favorite way to keep track of day to day cash expenses-- if you love using your iPhone or some other device, use that. If you have a favorite kind of notebook, such as a Moleskine (the extra-small Volants are perfect) or the handy little Field Notes books, use that. Someone will likely point out that these name brand notebooks can be expensive and a cheapo drugstore notebook would serve the same purpose-- true, but if the feel of writing on nice paper is pleasurable to you, it will encourage you to jot down every expense, and to me that is worth a few dollars. The point is to do whatever you can to help you form this habit.

Tracking expenses isn't just about compiling a lot of data. I firmly believe that when you see where your money's going, it helps you control your spending and focus on attaining savings goals, and it doesn't have to involve a lot of time or effort. Anyone else have any tips to share on how you track your spending?

Madame X Is Moonlighting on "Real" Websites

Not content to just blog away in obscurity, I've decided to branch out into the world of legitimate journalism. That may not make me legitimate or a journalist, but hey, I'm proud that they'd have me anyway:

My first contribution was recently posted at FiLife, a personal finance web community affiliated with The Wall Street Journal. It's called "Can I Afford to Buy a Home, and Do I Want To?"

I've also contributed an article to More Magazine's new website, which just launched:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Money.


Check 'em out!

Do You Have a Crisis Plan?

What would you do if you lost your job or had some other sort of financial crisis? What would be the first thing you'd give up?

I was thinking about this the other day when Sweetie and I were joking about whether we'd move in together if either of us lost our jobs. I have savings I could live on for a while if I lost my job, but I don't think I'd want to count on them. Since I live in a 2-bedroom apartment by myself, I think the first thing I might do would be to get a roommate-- I could probably get $800-900 a month, or maybe even more. That would make a big dent in my expenses, and though it would be a big lifestyle shift, I could probably handle it as I'm spending less time at home these days anyway. If things came to the point where I really did decide to move in with Sweetie, then I'd consider selling some furniture and putting a few things in storage in order to make it work.
As an aside here, I don't think financial necessity is a good reason to move in with someone, but I'm sure it is often a big part of the decision!

What else would I do? I pre-pay my gym membership for a year, and though I really wouldn't want to give it up, I'd consider suspending the membership or letting it expire. I'd definitely cut back on restaurant meals and takeout and be a lot more careful with my food shopping. I might give up my land line and just use my cell phone. I'd give up my French lessons. I'd be careful about all other incidental spending, such as clothing, magazines, etc. But all of that would be far less significant than changing my housing situation.

Sweetie said "ugh, a roommate? That wouldn't be much fun," when we were talking about this. My response: "well of course it's not much fun! It's a CRISIS plan, and it's supposed to just be temporary." I'm lucky to live in a place where I could rent out an extra room, and lucky to have someone who could handle me moving in-- not everyone has this kind of flexibility. But in other areas, I feel like my expenses are relatively low and I don't have much room to cut back-- I can't have a lower cable TV bill than zero, for instance.

How about you? Do you have options to make major changes in your lifestyle if circumstances demand it?

2008 Income and Expenses

On Monday, I recapped the changes in my net worth in 2008. Now it's time for a look at last year's income and expenses. This year I decided to compare 2008 vs. my budget and also against 2007 to see how my spending habits might have changed. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)


Income notes:

• Salary increase was just the usual annual raise. Wish I could continue to be so blasé about that, but I already know I won't get any raise in 2009!
• Bonus increased nicely in 2008, though this was by no means guaranteed so I budgeted quite conservatively for that after some debate about putting any budget number in at all.
• Tax refund increased nicely as that is based on my first full year of having mortgage interest to deduct.
• Investment income was way down, no surprise-- this includes dividends and capital gains from both retirement accounts and my other investments at E*Trade.

Expense notes:

• This year's big increases were Charity, Travel, and Miscellaneous. I took an extremely expensive vacation which sucked up about 3 years' worth of vacation budget. Under miscellaneous, I bought a new laptop. As for charity, I keep feeling guilty that I don't give enough so I tried to up that this year.
• Gifts Given is a bit skewed as I returned a few hundred dollars' worth of stuff in '09.
• Medical is up because of the various shots and pills I needed for my vacation, as well as increases in my health insurance premiums and co-pays.
• Housing is also up a bit as I screwed up one of my mortgage payments which resulted in an entire month's payment going towards the principal. Nothing wrong with that, it was actually kind of a happy accident. (Here I am counting repayment of principal as an "expense" even though I still "have" that money in the form of home equity.)
• Big decreases were Telephone (no more long distance relationship), Clothing (for no particular reason, I guess I just managed to keep my weight stable enough), and both Household and New Home-related Expenses. Last year I was still buying more miscellaneous hardware and cleaning items, and I finished buying furniture. I still have more decorating I'd like to do eventually, but I really forced myself to put that on hold for a while.

The bottom line is that due to lower investment income and a few expensive splurges this year, my net savings were lower than in 2007. But I still managed to keep most lines of my budget well under control and sock away a pretty good percentage of my income. The Net Saved amount includes $15,500 deducted from paychecks that went into my 401k, and $12,735 in investment income/401k match that was automatically reinvested in those accounts. The remaining $14,975 is cash savings that I deposited in bank accounts and managed not to spend.

I was pleasantly surprised when I reviewed these numbers. Throughout the year, I was worried that I was losing my frugal habits and spending way too much, but I guess I managed to make up for it in other ways. I'd still like to be saving more, especially given the appalling hit my investments have taken. And 2009 will be a year where I really have to make ends meet on less, since I'm sure any bonus I may get will be much smaller than last year's.
I haven't begun to tackle my 2009 budgeting and goals, but I'll do that soon... and of course YOU, my dear readers, will be invited along for the ride!

What About Me?

After all these posts about dealing with my parents' finances amidst a health crisis, are you wondering how this might have affected my own finances? When I went running off to be with my Dad in the hospital, I barely thought about anything else... but the key word here is "barely!"

When I left, I had no idea how long I'd be gone. I emailed people at work, I threw some clothes in a suitcase, and was ready to bolt. But first, I went online and paid a few bills, knowing I might not be back before they were due. This almost worked perfectly, but as it turned out, I hadn't quite noticed where this left my checking account balance. Luckily, I have an overdraft line of credit, so I didn't bounce any checks, but it was the first time in a while that I hadn't remembered to cover all my bills by transferring money.

My next financial decision involved getting to Penn Station and deciding which train to take. As I've written here before, I am usually a fan of the Acela train, which is expensive but a bit nicer and faster than the regular Amtrak trains. When I got to Penn Station, I just barely had time to catch an earlier train-- it was cheaper than the Acela and would arrive 20 minutes earlier, so I didn't have my usual dilemma about whether to spend more. I just bought my ticket and ran for the train.

I was also having a lot of phone conversations with my mom about how she'd get home (she'd been away caring for her own mother). The ticket I'd bought her before had already been changed once, to a return date just before Christmas, and of course I'd already paid a change fee for that. I suppose I could have just paid another change fee for that return ticket, but this time I couldn't deal with going through the whole phone menu to talk to an agent. I ended up just buying her a one-way ticket, which cost about $350, which didn't seem that bad given I only booked it about 2 days before the flight.

Once I was with my dad and my sister, I found myself going into this mode of trying to pay for everything. The first night in the hospital, I went to get dinner with my sister and picked up the check. At another point, I went to the hospital cafe and bought food for a couple of family members. When we left the hospital, I paid for the parking. Once we were home and I was doing the grocery shopping, I put that on my credit card rather than taking any of the cash my dad had left sitting on the dining room table. Later, though, when my dad was well enough to go to a restaurant one night, he picked up the check, and when I drove him back to the hospital for more appointments, he gave me money for tolls and parking. Also, while we were waiting for him to come out of surgery, we had lunch and that time, my sister picked up the check.

Some of the miscellaneous grocery and parking expenses were paid with cash, and though I am usually so anal about entering everything in Quicken, this time I totally lost track. I ended up entering several balance adjustments, but at least I knew they all had to be categorized as either "Dining" or "Travel" as I didn't do any other shopping!

It's also interesting to note that the food in the hospital cafeterias was quite cheap-- I'd expected everything to be marked way up, but perhaps it was somewhat subsidized, as employees were eating there too. The hospital parking, on the other hand, was quite expensive. If you were visiting for more than 6 hours, you could get your ticket validated for a substantial discount. One night I forgot to get my ticket stamped and was so tired, I just thought "oh screw it." But then the garage guy said it would be $29 instead of $12, which was enough to make me run back a block and a half in the pouring rain to get that stamp afterall!

During all this time of stress, there were moments when I had to escape, just for my own mental health. There were a couple of days when I went to the beach near my parents' house, which was wonderful. Post-Labor Day, it wasn't crowded, and the water was very chilly-- my favorite, as it makes you numb and tingly in a very invigorating way! I walked to the beach without a penny in my pocket, which I did regret on one occasion, as the ice cream man was parked nearby and I rather fancied a fudgsicle. But other than that, those brief times at the beach were a wonderful reminder that the best things in life are free.

After I'd returned to New York, my mother told me that she'd talked to my dad about reimbursing me for her plane ticket and I guess some of the grocery money, which I wasn't expecting, but it would be nice. The other surprise I had after getting home was my cell phone bill, with $64 in extra usage charges because there were so many calls back and forth to friends and family about everything that was going on!

Fortunately, I didn't have to pay for a return trip on the train, as my sweetie drove up to get me, and refused to even take any money for gas. But I'm sure I'll be doing more frequent family visits in the future, without always getting a ride. I'll have to budget a little extra for that. And if I go over budget, so be it. Taking care of my family is more important right now.

Details on Dad's Finances

Quick background for anyone who hasn't been following this series:

Yikes, family health crisis!
More info on the crisis and what I needed to do
Organizing my father's finances
Attempts at estate planning
How Mom felt about all this

Now for the details on my father's actual financial situation:

I had no idea what to expect when I started diving into my dad's finances. I figured he'd always made a good income working for a large company, but I knew his salary was never huge. Given how he'd always talked about money, I knew he made efforts to save for the future. I also knew that he had inherited a share of the proceeds of selling my grandmother's house after she died a few years ago, which I figured had to be close to $100,000.

But on the other hand, I knew my mother had blown a lot of cash in recent years. And I knew that he was always complaining about how much money she spent in general. He was always worried about surviving after retirement-- he had put off retiring for as long as he could, and was still working part time to try to bring in extra cash. I also knew that he'd had to take out a second mortgage on the house when my sister and I were going to college, and had no idea whether that was still being paid.

So which was it? Was my dad well-off, or was he broke? It was a total mystery. But here's what I figured out:

Home Equity: my father had paid off the primary and secondary mortgages on his house, and owns it free and clear. He estimated its value at about $400,000-- it's in a desirable community with very good public schools, but the house itself could use some renovations, and is very small, though it has a decent-sized yard. FYI, my father, at least, has no interest in living anywhere other than in this house, so the only way to get any money out of the home would be a HELOC or a reverse mortgage. If he died, my mother might consider moving to a condo but she might also want to stay in the house for as long as possible.

401k: he has about $180,000 in a 401k account. This doesn't seem like much, but keep in mind that he also has a defined-benefit pension plan.

Bank #1: a credit union associated with his employer, where he has a checking account, about $30,000 in a CD, and about $50,000 in a money market fund earning less than 2% interest. (We'll be doing something about that!)

Bank #2: another local credit union, where he has about $80,000 in various CDs.

That's it. He has no life insurance policy, so there would be no additional cash upon his death. But his total net worth is about $740,000.

As for his income, his pension nets out at about $2,750 a month. That's after some taxes and health insurance premiums are deducted. He also gets a Social Security payment of about $1,250 a month. Then his various accounts are earning some interest, say maybe $2,000 or so a year. So his total yearly income is about $50,000 net-- not bad at all. Unfortunately, if he died my mother would only get half of his pension, and I'm not sure how much Social Security she'd get.

So how would their income and assets cover their spending? Here's a budget I drew up:

	Mom and Dad	Mom only
Income:
Pension (net)	$ 33,024	$ 16,512
SocSec (net)	$ 15,024	$ 7,512
Interest	$ 2,000	$ 2,000
Income not counting withdrawal from savings	$ 50,048	$ 26,024
Withdrawal from 401K	$ 10,000	$ 10,000
Withdrawal from Other Savings*	$ (1,438)	$ 8,686
Expenses:
Fixed:
Car Lease 05 Subaru**	$ 3,800	$ -
Car Lease 08 Subaru	$ 3,300	$ 3,300
Car Insurance	$ 1,400	$ 700
Property Taxes	$ 4,000	$ 4,000
Income Taxes	$ 3,000	$ 3,000
Heating Oil	$ 5,000	$ 5,000
Water & Sewer	$ 800	$ 800
Electricity	$ 1,000	$ 1,000
Home Phone	$ 800	$ 800
Cell Phone Mom	$ 1,050	$ 1,050
Cell Phone Dad (prepaid plan)	$ 100	$ -
Internet	$ 360	$ 360
Cable TV	$ 900	$ 900
Landscaping	$ 5,000	$ 5,000
Property Insurance	$ 1,100	$ 1,100
Health Insurance***	$ -	$ -
Variable:
Food: eating out	$ 600	$ 600
Food: groceries	$ 7,500	$ 5,000
Food: wine	$ 1,200	$ 200
Gas	$ 2,000	$ 1,200
Medical: Co-pays for visits	$ 500	$ 250
Medical: Medicines	$ 500	$ 250
Dental	$ 500	$ 250
Clothing	$ 1,500	$ 1,000
Entertainment	$ 500	$ 300
Books	$ 500	$ 100
Music	$ 1,000	$ 200
Gifts	$ 3,000	$ 2,000
Hair/grooming	$ 1,500	$ 1,000
Home Repairs	$ 2,000	$ 2,000
Household supplies	$ 300	$ 300
Laundry/drycleaning	$ 400	$ 150
Magazines, newspapers	$ 1,000	$ 400
Travel	$ 1,500	$ 1,500
Miscellaneous other	$ 1,000	$ 1,000
TOTAL EXPENSES	$ 58,610	$ 44,710

Notes:
In general, all the stuff in italics is just my estimation, not really based on detailed analysis of my parents' actual spending
*The "withdraw from savings" field was a calculation, to see how much would be needed after spending all the income. With Dad's full pension and these budgeted expenses, the number is negative because he actually wouldn't need to withdraw any more from savings beyond the $10,000 from the 401k. The $10,000 is just my estimate of what he'd have to take as a required minimum distribution each year anyway.
**While my mother has been away, my sister and her husband have been using her car. If one of my parents was to die, I assume we'd just give up that car, or my sister would start paying for it herself.
***Right now, my mother's insurance is deducted from the gross amount of my father's pension. She'll be eligible for Medicare next year, so the costs would probably change anyway, if my dad's retiree coverage can get her some kind of supplemental insurance.

Based on this budget, if both my parents are living, they should be able to survive just fine to a good old age. There are bound to be additional large expenses like major dental work, renovations to the house, etc., but some of the variable expenses will decrease as they get older too. (And really, a 74 year old man with diabetes shouldn't be drinking $100 worth of wine every month!!)
But if my father was to die, my mother would have to be quite cautious about her expenses to make sure her money would last. On her lower income, she'd have to draw more from savings, and on this budget, the savings could be depleted in 20 years or so. My mother is only 64, and though her family doesn't have as much longevity as my father's, hopefully she will live past 84. Again, her spending habits may change over time. And none of what I've calculated here even considers the possibility of paying for a nursing home or assisted living facility. But I guess that is where the house comes in-- that $400,000 equity could be tapped to cover further expenses.

At first, I was worried that my parents didn't have enough money, but I feel better about it now. If my mother is let loose on the bank accounts, her spending habits could lead to problems, but otherwise, my parents have a comfortable but not extravagant lifestyle. They aren't into traveling or any expensive hobbies, really, and they should have sufficient assets to live simply for many years to come. But again, many of these calculations are based on my own guesswork-- I'll be doing more research into their actual spending history to make sure this budget is realistic, and I'll talk to both my parents about whatever I find out.