Things I Thought I'd Write About

 I was going through a notebook that I've been keeping for the past couple of years that has a page in it where I jotted notes about things to write blog posts about. Obviously there is a lot I didn't get around to! But here's the list so you'll have at least some cryptic idea about things that struck me as being interesting from a money perspective:

Babbitt (the book)

The Manticore p 21-22 (a rather fascinating book, with some interesting observations about wealth)

p.154 Murder Must Advertise (another book! I don't remember what the money connection was, exactly)

Elizabeth White Faking Normal (I haven't read the book but saw something on TV about her, I think. A 55 year old woman talks about how she hid her financial problems.)

HDFC coops

"Hard Work"

Social Security projections

XX Finance advice (this related to a friend of mine who invested an inheritance with a financial advisor who had been recommended by some other friends. They put the money in a ton of different funds and did a lot of trading, and then the market went down. XX freaked out and ended up pulling out all her money and taking a loss. She then used the money to pay off her mortgage instead. The whole thing was just a series of mistakes in my view. XX couldn't handle the idea of risk and waiting for longer term results. The advisors were not investing her money efficiently, I don't think. I kept telling XX she could just put her money in Vanguard funds and do better but she was more comfortable playing it safe, even though her mortgage interest rate wasn't that high and she didn't have much of a savings cushion left after paying it off.)

Musicians, $600 (a friend of ours performed in a club, a big career step for him. But he had to pay backup musicians. The club was slow in paying his share of the ticket proceeds, the musicians wanted their cash, and he ended up borrowing $600 from Sweetie to close the gap. Sweetie never got the $600 back, though the friend more than made up for it in other ways later. But it just got me thinking about how many musicians seem to live on a thin edge financially. And that was way before the pandemic.)

Fred Bass $25 mil estate (this was the owner of the Strand bookstore in NYC, who amassed quite a bit of wealth. More recently his daughter caught some flak over her appeal for people to buy books from them during the pandemic, which some people took as a wealthy woman crying poverty.)

Wild (again, the book.)

Baby shower (someone I know spent an insane amount on a fancy baby shower party)

Near misses (__layoffs, __ layoffs, could have changed my luck) (I've worked a few places where other people got laid off and I somehow didn't, at a point where my finances weren't really solid enough to handle it. There but for the grace... etc.)

Investment results

Optimism vs pessimism/distrust

Healthcare, mom's $3k meds, medicare (yikes. now I can't even remember what those $3k meds were!)

Gala (a swanky fundraiser I went to, where the ratio of expense to benefit was probably questionable)

Mom's apartment move

Virus!

That's the whole list. At some point I'll elaborate more on some of those later items, perhaps! Or maybe I'll just keep accumulating notes and sketchy comments! 

Life Goes On...

I continue to enjoy my leisure as a "retiree." I'm healthy, I feel relaxed, I go to the gym a lot, I read a lot of books. I continue to feel incredibly lucky, especially when I hear about other people's struggles with money. Such as...

A friend who I don't think I have written about here before, so I'll call her Sally. She's been divorced for many years, and for almost that entire time, she's been chasing her ex-husband to try to get him to pay child support. She has often been working multiple jobs and is willing to do pretty much anything to make money, however menial or physically demanding. Her ex-husband works on and off, mostly for cash. He hides income via his girlfriend. He complains that it's "not worth it" to look for a job sometimes. He may or may not be using drugs at times. He owes her over $50,000. Meanwhile their two kids are in college and racking up huge student loans, even while attending state schools. Sally has a full time job with benefits now, which has helped her a lot, but they have crappy health insurance, so every time she or her kids have to go to the doctor, she is trying to get the doctors to not order too many tests, and questioning every prescription to see if they can stretch it out to a lower dosage. With regard to one medication, her doctor said "It costs you $900? I had no idea!" I guess it's a good thing to make sure doctors don't just over-prescribe and over-test, but I think it is better for medical decisions to be made on the basis of what a medical professional thinks is best, vs. what a consumer thinks they can afford. I just hope Sally will eventually get to a point where she doesn't have to worry so much about money.

And then there's Mortimer, who has appeared in my posts from time to time. Mortimer has been unemployed for almost 2 years now. His COBRA ran out and he's on Medicaid. He's kind of tapped out the friends who were able to help him find jobs in the past. I think he feels a bit paralyzed when it comes to next steps-- he's taken some classes to develop new skills, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to parlay them into a new career. Mortimer used to make around $75-100k, I think, and I think he is struggling with the idea of starting over at a much lower level in his late 50s.

Another friend, let's call her Tory, who has been dealing with the aftermath of divorce-- not her own, but her husband's, who she married relatively late in life. I'll call him Todd. He pays a large amount of alimony to his ex-wife, and unlike Sally's ex, he pays it regularly and on time. In his late 50s, his finances hadn't totally recovered from the divorce settlement, and then he lost his job. He set himself up to do some consulting but wasn't able to make much money. Then, fortunately, he got another job. But then Tory lost her job. And then Todd lost his new job. Todd is by now in his early 60s and Tory is in her late 50s. They have a 10 year old daughter. (Tory didn't mention it but I know it took her a long time to get pregnant so that was probably another big expense.) They lived in an upscale suburb of NYC, and after a couple of years with no success at finding new jobs, they realized they weren't going to be able to stretch out their assets long enough. So they sold their house and moved to the midwest to start a new, cheaper life. Just to kick them in the shins a little more, they ended up taking a loss on their house sale, since they'd bought it at the top of the market. Tory is happier now and seems optimistic, but I can't help feeling like there is an undercurrent of disappointment. For a few years, everything was falling into place for her, with a new husband, a new baby, a career and a nice lifestyle, and then she had to give it all up and move far away from family and friends. A tough choice.

I'm glad I have friends who are open about what is going on in their lives financially. I don't really know all the details of their savings and income and expenses, but they are honest about their difficulties and what they are doing to try to survive, rather than just pretending everything is fine. It's a good reality check.

Another Down-to-Earth Heiress

Consider this a sequel to my last post, in which a woman's family money seemed to be funding some luxuries for an otherwise frugal couple.

This time, the story is about a childhood friend of mine. I hadn't really kept in touch with him for years, but some years ago I was at a party in my home town and met his wife. She was a lovely person who taught in a local nursery school, just really sweet and friendly and exactly the sort of person you'd want your child's teacher to be. My old friend worked in what sounded like a mid-level corporate marketing job. They had a child and another on the way at that point. They were renting a house and hoping to find one to buy. It all sounded totally typical for a young married couple of my general world, which I'll again describe as mostly people who have had a stable, middle-class to upper-middle class upbringing, college grads-- people with many advantages in life but who would not be seen as particularly rich. People who probably aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck, but who have worries about the bigger financial goals in life such as helping kids pay for college, and retirement. People who can't take money for granted.

As in my last story, an offhand remark by the wife made my head spin-- I was telling a story about my own job, with an example of a regular task I had at that time, and I referred to a company name. The wife said "oh! That's my family's business! [Things associated with this company, one of which I had just cited,] are named after my sisters and cousins and me!" This company is not a household name but it's one of those things that is actually pretty major in a behind-the-scenes way, which you notice everywhere once you know where to look. I didn't pry into all the family tree, but from doing a little research afterwards, it appeared that the wife's grandfather was at that time the richest man in the country where this company was founded.

Being the richest man in that country is not like being the richest man in the US-- our billionaires are way richer. But still... he's a billionaire! I guess there is no law that says grandparents have to provide money to their grandchildren, and maybe this woman doesn't get a thing, but even if she is one of lots and lots of grandchildren, she would surely inherit something someday. And at that level of wealth, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of trust fund distributing some money already.

At some point after that party, I asked a mutual friend if he knew about the wife's background. He was aware that she came from money, as apparently a group of this guy's friends always joked about how he must have sold his soul to the devil because he'd gone from being kind of a nerd in high school to marrying this beautiful and wealthy woman! But they didn't even realize exactly how wealthy her family was.

I was just looking up this couple to see what they are up to lately, as I haven't seen them in a while and don't know much more about them other than what their kids are doing in photos posted on Facebook. The wife is no longer a teacher, and has what sounds like a management job at a tech company. My friend seems to still have more or less the same job. When the wife was a teacher, I thought "ok, that is the sort of job that is emotionally rewarding if not remunerative, so it makes sense that she would do that." Obviously I don't know any details about her current job, but it sounds more like the kind of thing people do when they need to make money-- she may find it satisfying in other ways, but I guess it is my own bias showing that I think anyone who has some family money would want to be an entrepreneur, or work for a non-profit, or teach-- in general, do things that are too risky or low-paying to do if you really need a steady income. I wish I could ask her a lot of questions....

I May Not Be With the Program...

... but I'm IN the program.

I went to a performance last week, which was organized by an old friend of mine. He occasionally has fundraisers to support his work, and I've always tried to donate money. This year, I contributed $50. So when I saw the show and flipped through the program, there was my name, listed in the lowest rung of contributors. I wasn't expecting to see that at all, and it suddenly made me feel quite weird. I think it may have been the first time I ever saw myself listed in a program as a donor.

Those lists in the backs of programs are always funny. When I was a kid going to the ballet or symphony with my parents, I'd always read the lists of names, mainly because I was the kind of voracious reader who couldn't not read in an idle moment and would read the cereal box at breakfast if necessary. But it also kind of interested me, as I got older, to know that there were these rich people who supported the arts. As an adult, I became more aware of who those names might be-- well-known business executives, perhaps, or members of wealthy families. I'd look at the lists wondering if executives in my own industry might be contributors, or looking for the names of my old college classmates who might be rich and/or successful today.

The lists always have various tiers-- "friend," "benefactor," "donor," "angel," and such. If I saw names I recognized, I couldn't help noticing which level they were in and how much money they gave. I suppose for many people, donating to arts organizations is done with this sort of thing in mind-- showing everyone how benevolent you are, showing everyone your taste and passion for the arts, and showing everyone how much money you've got. Of course there are always a few "anonymous" donors listed, but most people are named.

When I donated to my friend's organization, it didn't cross my mind that there would be a listing in a program. And it was a very short listing. I couldn't help thinking, geez, I sent 50 bucks and yet I'm one of only a dozen or so donors total, at all the levels! I guess I also saw it as crossing some kind of line in my life-- in my younger days, my name was in programs because I helped paint the sets, or design the poster, or handle props and push furniture around. I was a part of the show as a creative person, not just that person once removed who throws some money at it. Some of the other donors were people I knew were also creatively involved with my friend's work, so it's not like there's always a hard line between those who "do" and those who pay. But it was funny to think that in some way, I'm working at my not-that-interesting office job so my friend, whose creative work seems to pay his bills, doesn't have to.
Such is life, I guess. And I have to say, I was thrilled for my friend and thought his performance was amazing. I haven't been able to get it out of my head for days, and experiencing that kind of art is certainly worth $50 or more. In fact, he just sent out another fundraising email and I contributed another $50. If he does another show, I'll buy tickets and if he sends out another email, I'll donate again. Maybe I'll even make it to the next tier in the program!

Brief Notes

Here's a few quick notes about money matters I've been thinking about. I suppose I should be using Twitter more actively if I'm going to write like this instead of managing to finish longer posts!

I used to track all my miscellaneous foreign currency in Quicken as part of my net worth. I kept a separate account for each currency, and occasionally adjusted the US dollar value to account for exchange rate fluctuations. There were times when I was traveling a lot and these accounts might have totaled over $100, but that's not the case any more, so I decided it was a stupid waste of time and just deleted those accounts! I still have the money in my jewelry box and will take it with me the next time I visit Canada, the UK, Europe, Mexico or New Zealand! I think I have a few Botswanan Pula and South African Rand too, though I never set up an account for those.

One of the best things you can do for under a dollar is to write a good, old-fashioned postcard and send it to a friend. I came across a whole shoebox full of cards from 15-20 years ago and they are gems. I'm still friends with many of the senders and we've started sending cards again, having been reminded that email and Facebook just aren't the same!

My home value just dropped by about $25,000 yesterday according to Mint.com. When I first signed up for Mint, I thought their valuation seemed pretty accurate, but now that it's around $40,000 lower than it was a few months ago, I'm not so sure! Wishful thinking may be playing a part, but I also think they must be basing this on some comp sales that aren't truly comparable.
I've also been paying close attention to rents in my neighborhood, and I think I could rent out my apartment for at least a couple hundred dollars more per month than it costs me. This has been on my mind more lately, as Sweetie and I seem to be talking more and more about the possibility of cohabitation.

Remember my friend Richard, the successful business owner who got a big bonus this year? I saw him again recently and was very pleased to hear that he put a huge chunk of his $2 million bonus towards paying off and refinancing the mortgages on his two homes. Richard seems to enjoy luxuries more and more as he gets more accustomed to the level of income he's been earning, and I've heard him say he's never been much of a saver, so it wouldn't have surprised me to hear that he'd spent money on a new car or some incredible piece of art, or a big vacation. I'm sure he's treating himself to some nice things, but it's good to know that he also has his eye on the long term picture and used his windfall to lower his monthly expenses in case he hits a rough spot in the future.

More bills set up on auto-pay: utilities and condo maintenance. I think I will now only write one paper check every 5 weeks, when I pay for my French lessons. Sometimes I even pay that with cash, so who knows how long it will take me to use up all the old checks with my previous address still on them!

My Life in Transactions

The other night I had dinner with an old friend I'll call "Ace." We were really close back in college, then grew apart for a few years, but reconnected a few years ago and now have a great long distance friendship. Fortunately she comes to New York on business sometimes, and we always have a great time whenever we hang out.

This time, we had dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea. As a side note, it's just amazing how many businesses are turning over in this economy. The first restaurant I wanted to go to had closed. The second restaurant I wanted to go to had closed. But fortunately, its space had been taken over by the third restaurant I wanted to go to, which had moved and expanded.

After finishing dinner, we lingered for a while as Ace sipped a $16 glass of single-malt scotch. I'm usually glad that I do not enjoy such things given the expense, but this time I took a sip and kind of liked it-- uh oh! Anyway, the check came and we all started trying to figure out the bill. Sweetie, who was with us, wanted to use a credit card, as did I. Ace wanted to pay cash, so this led to a bit of befuddled calculating as we tried to figure out how to split the bill on the two credit cards and split Ace's cash, which involved making change, etc. Afterwards, I of course whipped out my Treo and entered the cash received into Quicken. Sweetie made some sort of "oh, there she goes" remark and Ace laughed and asked what I was doing. As I explained my extreme cash tracking habits, she grabbed my Treo and started looking at it.

First Ace was just amused at her own inability to figure out my Treo-- she kept swiping her finger across the screen as if it were an iPhone. But once I showed her how to scroll down, she started making fun of all my cash transactions! Here's some of her remarks:

Whoa, you need to spend less on food! Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast, lunch, lunch, lunch. And were you drunk when you entered some of these?? "HOok?!?!" What's up with that? You have a breakfast problem and a capitalization problem! Wait, you really were drunk, look at this one! "BEer!!" And "HOse thing??" I don't even want to know! Haircut $100, wow, I can't believe you spend that much, but they used to be a band... "Amanda-- French," hmm, who's Amanda French and what are you paying her for? Sweetie, did you know about this? And let's see, Girl Scout Cookies $4... oh, and here's another one where you were drunk, "DUpe keys," ooh, was that so Amanda French can get in? And earrings $4.31? What the hell kind of cheap shit earrings did you buy for $4.31? And windshield fluid, what? You don't even have a car, you must have been drinking it when you made all those typos...

It seemed to go on like that forever. It was just hilarious hearing her spin all these crazy tales about my life out of my misinterpreted cash spending! I'm just glad she didn't figure out how to switch to viewing my credit card transactions!
Have you ever showed your spending records to anyone? Did you ever think about how your life would look to someone who saw them?

Helping Out in a Health Crisis

Sometimes I look at the past year and wonder if all the good luck I've had in life is turning out to be a loan that's been called in by the bank. Nothing bad has happened to me personally other than losing some money in the stock market, but I feel like misfortune has been getting closer to me, in the form of bad things happening to my friends and family. In addition to my father's brain tumor and friends losing their jobs and getting divorced, I've had a cousin and a friend diagnosed with very serious cancers. Things were very scary for a while with both of them. Now, miraculously, things are looking pretty good. But none of this came without a cost, both emotional and financial.

Both my friend and my cousin have health insurance, one through an employer and one privately purchased as she is self-employed. But that didn't mean their treatments were affordable. In one case, there was chemo and radiation and major surgery. In the other, there were chemo treatments, a special diet, and a lot of long-distance drives to doctors. Both had to take time off work, unpaid in at least one case. Both of these people have spouses, but neither were making much money. Both couples also had another dependent, either a child or an aging parent. What all this comes down to was that even with insurance, the illness put them in debt.

But here's the upside to this depressing story: people helped. Both my cousin and my friend knew people who organized fund-raising events for them. They were each fortunate enough to have a lot of family and friends who could donate their talents or their services or their products or convince others to do so. In each case, a whole community came together and donated money and showed their support and love in a truly special way. They raised thousands of dollars, but it ended up being about more than just the money, somehow.

All this reminded me of an article I bookmarked months ago: Helping Out With Cash: A Delicate Art (which was an follow up to an earlier article Not Laid Off? How to Aid the Less Fortunate. Both of these articles give some excellent suggestions on how to handle the delicate issue of offering help to someone who may need it, but feel awkward about asking for it or accepting it. It's a more and more common issue these days. I just hope my usual sphere of good fortune will return and no one else I know will need this kind of assistance! How about you? Have you ever been involved in a situation where friends helped raise money for someone in need, or been the recipient of such aid?

Friends at Both Extremes

Here's a story about a relatively new friend of mine, someone I don't think I've mentioned here before. Let's call her Bella.
Bella is a divorced mom with two teenage kids. She gets child support payments from her ex-husband, but money is tight. She works at least two part time jobs at any given moment, and is always hustling for other little projects. That is what I love about her-- the hustle. She will literally do pretty much any honest job, from bartending to babysitting, to hauling garbage out of someone's basement. Her oldest child obviously picked up on this enterprising attitude, and has already started working, not just for her own pocket money, but realizing that her earnings will help support the household. Things are that tight.

Interestingly, Bella's parents are quite well off. They seem to be a bit oblivious to money matters and don't realize how much of a struggle it is for Bella to make ends meet. And Bella doesn't want to ask for handouts. Their wealth means her kids get nice gifts once in a while, and go to their house in the Hamptons once or twice each summer, but Bella isn't yet desperate enough to ask them for cash support, even though they've given big handouts to her siblings in the past.

Switch gears for a minute, to a dinner I had recently with another friend, who's met Bella many times and known her for years, though they aren't close. This friend, who I'll call Henri, is very successfully self-employed. Though he was worried that the economic downturn could put him in the position of having to lay off some of his small staff, he's actually landed some great deals recently and his business seems to be booming. He mentioned that he needed to hire a new bookkeeper and someone immediately mentioned Bella. Bookkeeping turned out to be among her many past jobs, so it seemed perfect. Since Henri and Bella don't talk that often, someone else said they'd tell her about it and have her call him, and then asked "how much is the pay?" Henri answered "$90,000 plus bonus."

At that point, my jaw dropped, and I wondered if I should apply for the job myself! I make slightly more than that now, but given the kind of growth Henri's business has been having, I wondered if it would be worth riding his coattails! (And hey, I like counting money! And I even worked for a bookkeeper when I was about 13.) In reality, I'm not sure I want to be a bookkeeper-- I think I was just shocked to realize how truly successful he must be if he can employ a whole group of people, many of whom are probably equally (or more) well-paid. I heard later that Bella was also a bit shocked-- when she was told about the job and the potential salary, she seems to have gone into a sort of reverie, saying "$90,000? Do you know how much that would change my life right now? $90,000....."

I would like to say that this story had a happy ending in which Bella and Henri were an employer/employee match made in heaven. But alas, Henri's other bookkeeper might not be leaving after all. And Bella would have a hard time doing the commute into the city for a full-time job-- her kids are at a tricky age to have to fend for themselves in a suburb without good public transportation. And who knows, maybe there was some awkwardness there? It can be weird to mix friendship and business, especially when there is such a disparity in circumstances. Bella is probably my poorest friend right now, and Henri is probably the wealthiest. It's strange-- but they both give me a lot to think about for this blog!

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.

Bargain Betty

I was thinking the other day about a friend of mine from college, who we sometimes jokingly called Bargain Betty. She came from a very frugal family, and never seems to have felt any need to rebel against that aspect of her upbringing, as some might. She sometimes thought her parents went a bit too far, as in buying the rotten fruit from the mark-down shelf at the supermarket, but otherwise she kept up with all their frugal habits and still does as of the last time I saw her.
It's interesting to look back on it now-- when I was in college, most of my friends were from middle-class families and paying for school was significant, and in some cases a huge burden. None of us had money to burn, but we still had trouble being as frugal as Bargain Betty. I particularly remember that she used very rough generic tissues, while I insisted on the softer Kleenex or Scotties brands. And she always ate whatever food was on her plate, while the rest of us felt free to leave behind any part of our ample buffet meals that didn't please us.
Here's a funny detail: this was back in the days when women wore pantyhose much more frequently. Bargain Betty mentioned that she wore "Rock Bottom Pantyhose," which I'd never heard of. It turned out that Rock Bottom was a discount drugstore chain, but I thought it was someone's clever tagline for some kind of figure-shaping control-top. You know, like rock-hard... bottom, rock bottom... ok, whatever, but it was funny at the time!

Anyway, I always suspected it back then, and the years have borne it out thus far: Bargain Betty will probably retire a lot richer than the rest of us. She put herself through grad school, and helped put her husband through business school. They bought a house in the suburbs where they could send their kids to a good public school. They've had the same car forever and still seem to use a lot of the furniture they've had from their first apartment . Whenever I've eaten dinner at her house, all the leftovers are saved or sent home with the guests. Bargain Betty doesn't worry much about fashion and always buys classic clothes on sale for work. She's not into jewelry or manicures or dying her hair. Her one extravagance was hiring a nanny to take care of the kids before they were in school, since she and her husband both work full-time. And I'm sure she has great discipline about saving and investing, as she once asked me, with a look of concern, whether I was making sure to take advantage of my 401k. Compared to Bargain Betty, I am a raving spendthrift!

It's funny, I suppose all of us have someone in our lives who makes us feel like we could do just a little bit better. That we could try a little bit harder to be as disciplined as they are. And despite loving the person, there's this tension: we wonder if they slightly disapproves of us, and we want them not to disapprove, even as we might also sometimes want to tell them to lighten up and have more fun! For me, I think Bargain Betty may always be that person...

Three Names on the Doorbell

I guess you could sing that to the tune of "Three Coins in the Fountain," but it's not a song. To me, it was an economic indicator. I noticed that two apartments in my building, both two-bedrooms occupied by roommates, have gone from having two names on the mailbox and doorbell to three.

These are not large apartments but I guess they are trying to make ends meet by squeezing in a third roommate. It's interesting to see these small signs of tough times. Have you noticed people around you making money-saving changes in their lifestyles? In what ways?

Checking in with Fifi

It's hard to believe it's been almost two years since I wrote about Fifi's bachelorette party. I haven't been seeing much of Fifi since then, but I had dinner with her recently to catch up... here's the scoop!

As is typical, Fifi and I met at a rather upscale restaurant she suggested. I always go along with it, because it's always someplace I've heard of and wanted to try, but sometimes I just sigh and think "why can't Fifi just eat a burrito once in a while!" We went to Applewood, a small restaurant in Park Slope that offers all organic, locally sourced ingredients. The entrees range from $19 to about $25, and though the food was good, it wasn't THAT good and the portions were on the small side. We got wine and dessert and coffee and the final total including tip came to $68 each. You'll hear me sighing about it once more when I do my May wrap-up and my dining expenses are over budget yet again! Fifi agreed that it wasn't quite worth the money, especially since she wasn't with her husband, who always picks up the check.

Anyway, back to the rest of Fifi's life. Fifi recently got a promotion-- that's good. Fifi's job involves fundraising for a non-profit-- not so good. It's like pulling teeth to get money out of anyone these days. Fifi probably makes around what I make-- just under six figures a year unless there's a really big bonus.
Fifi's husband, who I'll call Bruno, seems to do quite well and supposedly his job is secure. I don't know how much he makes but I'm going to guess it must be over $150,000.

Since at least 5 years or so before they married, Bruno has owned a house in the suburbs. He bought it figuring that he and Fifi would someday get married and raise kids there, but in the meantime, he was quite happy there anyway, since he worked nearby and was also close to family. But Fifi doesn't like the long commute into the city and has always wanted to live in Manhattan. One of the conditions for them finally getting married after a long off-and-on relationship was that they would sell Bruno's house and move into the city within the next few years. Meanwhile, Fifi had a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn which she hung onto. Though she spent most of her time at Bruno's house, she still kept a lot of stuff at her apartment and spent the night there occasionally, with or without Bruno. The apartment apparently cost about $900 a month, which is cheap if it's your primary residence, but for someone with Fifi's finances, a pied a terre is probably not the best use of that money!

But now, Fifi will be giving up her Brooklyn apartment, and Bruno is selling the house in the suburbs. They decided to wait until they got the right offer, and despite the lousy real estate market, they got their price. They'd been looking at apartments to buy in Manhattan for quite a while, but have instead decided to rent a place for a year. They found a small 2-bedroom with fabulous views in a luxury building in Chelsea for about $4,100 a month. The landlord threw in a free gym membership, but Bruno won't be parking his car in the building's garage because that would be an additional $700 a month! He'll be taking the train for his new reverse commute.
But they are both excited about the move-- they've been walking around the neighborhood a lot on weekends, and have scoped out various restaurants and cafes that will be their new hang-outs.

If real estate prices continue to fall in Manhattan, Bruno and Fifi may have made a smart choice to rent for a year. I said so to Fifi, but she said that the real reason they're renting is that "this is the first time we'll ever be living together full time, without having my apartment to fall back on. This year will either make us or break us!" The response I kept to myself was "Wow! Maybe you should have tried that before you got married!"

Oh, and did I also mention that they just spent over $25,000 trying to get pregnant, without success?

It will be interesting to see how things work out for Fifi. I love her dearly, but we do not see eye to eye when it comes to managing one's finances. I think she senses this on some level, as I hear from another friend of ours that Fifi still has a lot of credit card debt that she is either hiding from Bruno, or Bruno is unwilling to pay off for her, I'm not sure which. Fifi never talks about that with me! Either way, I do hope things work out for her and Bruno, though I suspect there will be some more bumps along the road...

The Latest on Mortimer

I'd been wondering lately what Mortimer was up to. Since being laid off at the end of February, he'd only managed to go on one interview. I tried to hook him up with a job at my company that would have been perfect, but the position ended up being down-graded and they thought he was overqualified and didn't even interview him beyond an introductory phone call with an HR person. In our last couple of emails, he was being a little evasive about whether he had any more job leads and I was starting to worry that he was in total denial about his situation.

But we had dinner last night, and the good news is that he's been working for about a week! The bad news is that it's a temporary project... and he's being paid under the table. This is totally dicey, of course. He's still collecting unemployment, but the weekly payment is particularly low in New York, so this extra money really helps. He just had to renew his lease, which meant his rent went up by about $100, to $1,250, I think. His health insurance is about $250 a month-- weirdly, it's now less than it cost him when he was employed, thanks to the COBRA changes that were part of the stimulus package.

It's interesting to see these government policies at work in a way that directly affects someone I'm close to-- sometimes it's too easy to see government spending as this big waste that just goes straight into the hands of corrupt administrators or the stereotypical welfare cheat who's sitting around watching TV while the checks roll in. On the one hand, what Mortimer's doing isn't exactly ethical-- he's definitely gaming the system. But on the other hand, he wants to work and has been trying to find a job. He found a situation where someone could afford to pay him for a little while, but knowing the future of it was uncertain, they wanted him to be able to keep collecting unemployment benefits (I think he is getting even less than the maximum of $430 per week). If Mortimer gets the chance to take a real full-time job, he'll happily do it, so I can't really blame him for what he's doing to make ends meet in the meantime. (FYI, of the 30 other people who were laid off with Mortimer, he said only 6 have found jobs.)

Have you ever been paid under the table? Would you do what Mortimer's doing?

Are You Anxious About the Recession?

A lot of people out there are feeling pretty stressed out about the economy these days: Recession Anxiety Seeps Into Everyday Lives, from today's New York Times:

Anne Hubbard has not lost her job, house or savings, and she and her husband have always been conservative with money.

But a few months ago, Ms. Hubbard, a graphic designer in Cambridge, Mass., began having panic attacks over the economy, struggling to breathe and seeing vivid visions of “losing everything,” she said.

She “could not stop reading every single economic report,” was so “sick to my stomach I lost 12 pounds” and “was unable to function,” said Ms. Hubbard, 52, who began, for the first time, taking psychiatric medication and getting therapy.

That might seem pretty extreme, but the article goes on to detail various other cases of people having nervous breakdowns and turning to drugs, therapy, meditation and other methods to reduce their levels of stress about the economy, despite still being employed and having savings.

Ms. Hubbard, knowing “financially we were fine,” said she believed “I shouldn’t feel like this, I’m lucky.” She cried visiting her primary doctor, who recommended therapy and medication, hard to accept, she said, because her Depression-era parents believed “you pull yourself up.”

“I felt like a neurotic middle-class, middle-aged woman too weak to deal with life on my own,” she said. “I should be stronger, it was simply money, and why do I have to take pills to not worry about money.”

But treatment and further organizing family finances helped. She said the weakening economy made her “fear that even if you do everything right, something bad can happen to you.”

Do you feel this way, or know anyone who does? I find myself worrying about money in a way that I didn't a couple of years ago. Back then, I knew I was saving money at a good rate, and my investments were doing well enough that I seemed to be right on track to reach my retirement goals. Hopefully I'll still end up fine, but I may not be able to have quite as much fun along the way!

Meanwhile, I'm worried about my friend Mortimer, who's only had one interview since losing his job. I recommended him for a job at my company, for which he would have been very qualified, and they did call him to discuss it, but it turned out that the position paid about $25,000 less than he'd been making. Mortimer, to his credit, made a very good case about why he'd still be interested, but they seem to fear he's overqualified, or would be likely to move on at the first opportunity. To me, Mortimer admitted he wasn't thrilled about the idea of making so much less, but he was already trying to figure out how he could make ends meet on a lower income, knowing that he has to get a job, any job. But there aren't many out there in his field, unfortunately, and I know he doesn't have a lot of savings to fall back on. I haven't heard whether he's been able to start collecting unemployment benefits yet, and I'm worried he'll get into debt very quickly.

Fortunately, my worries are mild at this point. I'm not losing sleep or pulling out my hair, though I've probably been more stressed out at work because we're all under a lot of pressure to perform. But I'm trying to take it all in stride and save any real anxiety for an actual crisis, which hopefully won't happen!

How about you?

My Dinner with Richard

I had a nice meal last night with a friend who I'll call Richard. He owns a small business which has been very successful in the last few years, catering to a very wealthy clientele. Richard himself seems pretty wealthy these days, and it's gotten to the point where arranging to have dinner with him makes me a little anxious, as he sometimes suggests rather expensive restaurants!

It's not always a problem-- sometimes we just order cheap Indian food and eat at his apartment. But last night we went to a place where the entrees ranged from about $27-40, and Richard ordered an $18 appetizer. He also picked the wine without my seeing the list, and when I did the math in my head afterward, I think it must have been between $40-50 for the bottle. And who knows, maybe that was the cheapest bottle! The total bill with tip ended up being about $80 per person-- you could certainly do far worse in New York, and the meal really was very good, but I couldn't help thinking it was the kind of thing I should only be doing for a special occasion, not just a routine dinner with friends.

The other thing about the dinner that made me laugh was that just before we were about to leave, Richard's eyes suddenly opened wide as he was looking behind the other friend who was sitting next to me. "Don't look, don't turn around!" he said. At first I thought, ooh, what celebrity is sitting behind us at this swanky place... but there was only a wall behind us-- a wall upon which a giant cockroach was crawling! I reached over and swatted it away with a napkin and an attentive waiter immediately stomped on it with a big crunch. And that is one of the great truths of life in NYC-- no amount of money will ever make you totally immune to cockroach encounters!

Rule #20: Don't Be Dumb

How's this for a nice simple rule?

• Don't Do Stupid Things

How much money do you spend because of plain old dumbness? Here are two small examples from my own recent life:

At my gym, there are half lockers, one above the other. I always use the top locker. When I go swimming, I usually take off my earrings and bracelets and leave them in the locker. A couple of weeks ago, when I was getting dressed after my shower, I went to pull something out of the locker and heard a little "plunk." It was one of my earrings, falling through a crack into the locker below mine-- which was locked. I peered through the crack and could see my earring, sitting right there, amidst some dust bunnies. I told the attendant it looked like the locker was abandoned, and in any case wasn't one allowed for overnight storage anyway, but she couldn't open it with a master key and she said she'd have to get permission to cut it off. I didn't have time to deal with that, so I just left-- the earring I'd lost was a favorite, but not at all valuable, so I figured I would just come back and try again to get into that locker after speaking to a manager.
But in the meantime, I felt naked! (Almost as bad as that day I forgot my underwear!) And I had a big meeting that day that I was dressed up for-- I felt like I couldn't go without earrings. So I stopped in a little store at lunch and bought the cheapest earrings I could tolerate, which were only $10.
The next day at the gym, I was still wearing those earrings, and took them off as usual when I went swimming. And later, when I was getting dressed, guess what? "Plunk." I did the same exact thing, dropping one of the new earrings in a different locked locker! Afterwards, I went to buy a pair of earrings again, this time super cheapo ones from Duane Reade for only $5-- but unfortunately they hurt my ears, so I only wore them once.
Bottom line, I always knew it was dumb to leave the earrings on the bottom of the locker where they could easily fall in that crack, but I did it anyway, even after losing them the first time. Ever since then, I've put my jewelry inside a shoe or even poked them through a sock to make sure they'd stay put! Fortunately, I only had to spend $15 on earrings as a result of this dumbness-- no great loss, and a reminder that it is probably a good thing that I don't own any expensive jewelry in the first place.

The other dumb thing happened last night. I went to see the Billie Jean King Cup at Madison Square Garden. I love watching tennis, especially the Williams sisters, so I was happy to go, even though $60 for a ticket to a sporting event is not usually my preferred way of spending money. It was actually Mortimer's idea, and he'd gotten a group together a while ago. Though Mortimer is a rabid sports fan, now that he's lost his job, I'm sure he'd rather have kept the cash too.

Before I got to my seat, I bought a beer-- this in itself is pretty dumb, when you consider that a beer costs $8.75 at MSG. One of my other friends bought a bottle of water and they don't let you keep the cap on the bottle-- apparently they're afraid you'll throw the cap at someone. Despite this, they put a lid on my cup of beer. We were talking about the likelihood of spillage and my friend was envying that I had a lid and asked if I wanted a straw, which I scornfully declined-- it just seems wrong to drink beer through a straw.
Back at my seat, I removed the lid and took a few sips of the beer. Then... I managed to spill it, partially on my bag but mostly on the back of a young man sitting in front of me. Of course I was mortified and apologizing profusely and trying to help him clean his jacket off with napkins. And he was a good sport about it, shaking it off and saying it was supposed to be waterproof anyway. But the woman sitting next to him, who I'd at first assumed must be his girlfriend, turned out to be his mother. She turned around and rather imperiously announced "He's going to have to have that dry-cleaned now!" So I said "ok, I'll give you something," and once there was a break between games, I apologized again and gave the guy ten dollars, which he thanked me for and then handed to his mother.
The rest of the evening was without any disasters, but the tennis dragged on a bit and I ended up leaving at about 11:15, in the middle of the 2nd set. (Serena went on to win, though I'd been rooting for Venus.)
So $60 for a ticket, $8.75 for a beer, and $10 for someone else's dry cleaning. It ended up feeling like kind of a dumb evening all around.

Of course, this is just one kind of dumb spending among many. We spend money on things we don't need, things that don't work, unresearched purchases that could have been gotten more cheaply. And then look at all this dumbness of people lending money they knew couldn't be paid back, and people plowing money into investments they should have known were too good to be true. Dumb, dumb, and dumber.

But does dumbness, on some level, actually drive our economy? I mean, if everyone only did the most smart, sensible thing, a whole lot of consumer products would never be purchased. And in every transaction, there is a buyer and a seller-- what benefits one doesn't usually benefit the other too, so somebody's got to be a little dumb or it would all grind to a halt.

But don't let that stop you from trying to be smarter!

Crappy Times

These are difficult days to be blogging about money. There's lots to talk about, as the economy is front and center in the news, but sometimes it just gets depressing.
This week's crummy news is that my friend Mortimer got laid off. He thought his job was fairly secure but, surprise! It wasn't. He admitted to being in a state of shock and denial, but said he at least had some good connections who would recommend him for job opportunities once he updated his resume and started looking. He also said he figured it was time to join LinkedIn and Facebook to help him network. But his plan for the next day was to enjoy sleeping in and get some laundry done, while waiting for the boxes of his personal belongings from his old office to be delivered.
I didn't want to sound lecture-y, but I told Mortimer not to lose his momentum. He needs to tackle job-hunting with a vengeance and leave no stone unturned, starting today, not a few days from now.
Those who remember my previous stories about Mortimer will understand my concern. He was laid off once before, and it sent him into a tailspin of depression that coincided with some health problems. For a long time, he was paying for his own health insurance, up to about $900 a month. In the last few years, his finances finally recovered somewhat, but they're still precarious. He can't stay unemployed for long.
I would not want to be in his shoes right now, nor in the shoes of many other people I know who have been laid off, or had a spouse laid off. Some of these are people like Mortimer and me, who only have to take care of themselves, but others are parents with kids in college. If I'm a little freaked out these days, I can't imagine how they must feel.

Amidst all this, I got a phone call the other day from a headhunter. He wanted me to interview for a job that almost sounded perfect-- a great fit for my background, a better title, and potentially a raise of about 50% from what I make now. I know headhunters tend to dangle big salaries in front of people, but I knew this could still be a chance to take a good step up the salary ladder, and making more money would help take some of the sting out of all my investment losses. But there were a few reasons I decided not to pursue the job, and one of them was that I just didn't want to risk making a move right now. My current employer seems to appreciate me, and I've already survived some downsizing here. That, to me, seemed safer than going to a new company full of unknowns. This may be a cowardly and short-sighted decision, but it was all I could stomach right now. What would you have done?

Money Match #5: Erin, Nashville Female Seeking Friends

It's been a while since we had any Money Match posts-- mainly because I totally flaked out and let a couple entries languish in the depths of my inbox. Sorry! This week a new entry reminded me I'd better catch up!

This latest entry is from a young country music fan who describes herself as "not the most financially stable but trying to get there:"

I'm 23 year old female living in Music City, USA (aka Nashville, TN) with my dream job on the outskirts of Country music. I've been working full time since my Junior year of college but insisted on going to a private university because it was the best in the country for my major. This of course is my only form of debt, 54k in student loans. I have no credit card debt, no car payment, etc. I've lucked out and been given a MacBook by my employer and keep my bills low by taking advantage of my apartment's close proximity to my office to avoid paying for internet.

The unfortunate part of my dream job is that it's in an industry famous for paying it's employees in concert tickets and CDs. I work two jobs, and from time to time add a third, giving myself a seven day work week. My financial goal for the year is to contribute 3k to my IRA, which currently sits around 2k and then save a six month contingency. I haven't gotten far, but I think I'm on the right track for a nice financial future.

As for this personal? I'm not sure if I'm interested in dating, but rather meeting individuals around my age, just as aware of their spending/saving habits. At times I can be rather impressionable and get carried away by friends that charge their Visa card to the max. I'd like to meet people that have a good time sitting on the front porch sippin' some homemade wine, walking around a local free festival, hiking in a state park or any other activity that doesn't involve cash or excessive fuel costs.

Sounds like she might know how to make homemade wine, which would certainly have me showing up on her front porch if I lived in Nashville! Email me at openwallet1 [at] yahoo [dot] com if you'd like to get in touch with Erin!

You can see other Money Match posts here. Just email me if you would like to submit your own personal ad in the hopes of meeting other My Open Wallet readers. (And I promise I'll try to stay more on schedule with posting these!) So far there's been one connection made but I never heard back as to whether they actually met up and liked each other!

My Fat Wallet

Today is one of those rare occasions when my wallet is stuffed with cash, including a $100 bill and a $50 bill. I had dinner with some friends last night, including one who was visiting from the UK and had exchanged money for a lot of US currency. Everyone at the dinner wanted to pay cash except me-- I was happy to put the whole thing on my credit card and earn some frequent flier miles. I had gone to an ATM fairly recently, so now I have this big wad of money, coming to $381!
Sometimes I feel a little nervous carrying so much cash-- I mean, what if I get mugged? But then I think, well, I wouldn't want to be mugged no matter how much money I was carrying. It would be a shame to lose a large amount of money, but maybe if I could give the mugger a lot of cash, they'd be more inclined to just take it and run rather than beating me up, or worse!
How much cash is in your wallet today?

"Oh No, I Forgot My Wallet!"

How often have you had to say that?

This weekend, I went to the beach with a friend from outside the city who has a car. I usually like to go to Coney Island on summer weekends, but the car provided an opportunity to try something different, the beach at Jacob Riis Park. It is possible to get there by public transportation, but it's nowhere near as convenient as Coney Island. We left from my apartment after packing up bags with all sorts of things: water, sunblock, reading materials, crossword puzzles, a notebook, a pen, my French homework, Chapstick, towels, a blanket, hats, swim goggles, change of clothes, beach chair, sunglasses... but it wasn't until we hit the parking lot at the beach and I saw the $5.00 price sign that I realized I'd forgotten my wallet.

A car makes it really easy to forget your wallet-- normally, I'd be pulling it out to get on the subway only a few blocks from home. In the car, the first opportunity to use any money would have been a toll on a bridge quite close to the beach, but even then it wasn't necessary, since my friend has an EZ-Pass. Fortunately she also had her wallet, so we were able to park and get some snacks, but otherwise I guess we would have had to go all the way back to my place, or else find somewhere to park for free and just go hungry.

So often, people will tell stories about someone who is always being cheap and claiming to have forgotten their wallet so they won't have to pay. I guess that kind of thing is always on my mind, so on the few occasions when I've done this, I've always been mortified. My friend was teasing me about how I was just trying to make her pay for everything, so of course I was promising to buy her dinner and all sorts of things to make up for it!

As for our afternoon at the beach, it was lovely-- it's a big, open beach, much quieter than Coney Island. It's as if they built the facilities for much bigger crowds but they never come, so some of the buildings are kept shuttered. The water was the perfect temperature, but the only problem seemed to be that all the jellyfish must have just spawned or something! What I at first thought was a sort of foam or algae on the surface turned out to be thousands of tiny baby jellyfish-- ugh, not fun to swim through. Next time I go back, I hope they won't be there... and I hope I remember to bring my wallet!