Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Soul Train
- Live Out Your Dream And Discard The Box
- Tears In A Bottle
- From The Young Mom I Once Was, To You
- I Can’t Help Falling
- What A Difference Ten Years Makes
- The Next Best Thing To Robert Redford
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Where Have All The Years Gone
- Fun With Kiki Cullen
- Stuck On Mom
- Ten Years Later, Our Girls From Northern Ireland Remembered
- The Thrift of Grief
- Job Security
- The Party’s Over
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Who Knew That When You Plant Seeds, Stuff Grows?
Honestly, people! I think I was pretty darned good at raising kids, but that’s where my “growth potential” came to a grinding halt.
I used to cry openly from intimidation when given a common houseplant as a gift, knowing I would kill the thing in three days flat. But now I simply whimper to myself and make the giver promise not to think less of me if he never sees the thing alive again.
My darling son Kevin gave me a beautiful white orchid plant for Mother’s Day last year and scared the bejeebers out of me. The bloom did finally die, but new leaves continue to emerge on an occasional basis, so I am not parting with it! Who knows but what I’ll be enchanted one of these years with another exotic bloom?
This Mother’s Day, Kev gave me a different variety of orchid (just in case I’d mastered the care of the first one and needed another challenge, I’m thinking….), this time a pink one with multiple small blooms. As always, I begged his forgiveness in advance for what will most likely become another Fallible Houseplant Demise. He’s so sweet. He said, “But in between now and then, you’ll enjoy looking at it, right?”
Yes, I will! And even more so this year, since I am now an official gardener! While a number of my experiments with food growing have proven failures, like the three out of four broccoli plants that bolted, most everything is thriving. In fact, tonight we popped a couple of ribeyes on the grill and had salad made WITH LETTUCE THAT WE GREW!
For even more fun, while we cut lettuce leaves for dinner, we popped a few bright red and SWEET strawberries into our mouths. Yay for us!
Small heads of cauliflower have formed and are growing, green peppers and brussel sprouts are coming along nicely, we’ll have a least a number of purple onions, and the tomatoes and zucchini are taking off. Plus, we’ve got tiny peaches on one of two peach trees, which are surrounded by three apples, two pears, and a cherry.
You know that whole can’t-teach-an-old-chick line of thinking? SO NOT TRUE. I have been making a habit of learning new things, and in 2009 I’ve developed several skills that I’ll enjoy for years to come.
And, yes, I know that hanging clothes on a line in the sunshine is not exactly a skill. But I’ve been doing it since February and I love it. It makes me feel like a kid again, since hanging laundry in our dryer-less household was often assigned to me, and what’s not to like about recapturing one’s youth?
It’s fascinating when you start caring less about what the stock market’s doing and more about the weather forecast.
“Do you think this load will dry before the rain comes in?”
“Should we water this morning or count on storms to do the job later on?”
“How much water do you suppose is in the rain barrels? Enough to do the whole garden?”
“Hey, the temperature is perfect. Let’s walk around the property and see what’s growing….”
It’s refreshing to realize that even when the whole world seems like it’s going to heck in a handbasket, there’s always something to look forward to, something to savor. And what a wonderful surprise to find that in a very down-to-earth sense, we really do reap what we sow.
Recessionista?
Now that we’re this far into the recession/depression, I’m curious. Are there ways your life has changed that you never could have imagined?
I know, I know. There IS the giving up and/or cutting back precipitously on Starbucks. THAT hurt, huh? I’ve confessed on earlier occasions how often Doug and I frequented that venerable establishment back when stocks were flying high and our future as old folks seemed as if it just might pan out. But now, well. Now things have changed.
One of the first things we did was cut back to once per week in the imbibing department. But you know what? It’s not exactly sacrificial living to only have lattes on Sunday, is it? I mean, sure we’re saving some money, but honestly. We needed to break that habit, and we can see that now.
But Starbucks withdrawal was just the beginning for us. Whether we had to trim our lifestyle and cut back on our monthly expenses or not, it became a game and a challenge that we embraced like we actually had good sense.
Since September, in fact, when the economy really hit the skids and the truth could no longer be hidden behind unopened brokerage statements, we’ve made tons of adjustments to our budget and, for the most part, stuck to our new plan with dedicated resolve. When we really started fine-toothing our line-by-line itemization of expenses, we found a shared veto power we did not know we possessed.
I think a cheaper bundling of cell phone, landline, and Internet was the first project we tackled. We’d already nixed cable, saving us $50 per month, but I am not able to do without a landline. Being completely deaf in one ear, it’s nearly impossible for me to hear on a cell phone and I simply can’t rely on it for adequate communication. We used to each have one, but why? We cut back to one shared cell, with not too many minutes since we truly hardly use it.
We also eliminated one of our two landlines, which we’d gotten because we both work at home and Doug did not want to miss calls. But isn’t that what CallNotes and the cell phone are for? Besides, with only one line, the landline makes a funny sound on our end when someone else is trying to call in, and we can see who it is on Caller ID. We saved maybe $30 per month adjusting this bundle, in addition to the $50 per month for canceling cable.
Then, around the first of the year, I got busy on insurance issues. We raised deductibles on our homeowners policy, knowing it would take a catastrophe at this point for us to make a claim and risk having our rates raised. Why have a $1000 deductible when you have no intention of ever making a small claim? It’s now $2500, a deductible we can self-insure for by having a beefed-up emergency fund. We have two older cars, and neither one carry full coverage anymore since we have the money saved to replace them when our hand is forced. And again, why pay extra for low deductibles when you would never make a small claim?
I’ll tell you what, when all those teen-aged and young adult drivers move out, you can bring your car insurance bill down to almost nothing! (Thank the Lord for small mercies, eh?)
Next up? Life insurance. Being self-employed, we are on our own with all types of insurance. But we realized that Doug’s policies needed to be structured differently. We may need some insurance for quite a few years into the future, especially with the state of our retirement accounts being what they are. In fact, the prospect of retiring completely from work is not on the radar screen right now. But Doug only had one large policy, and believe me, the premium is expensive. We decided to replace it with two smaller policies, staggered so that one will expire five years sooner than the other.
Not only will we pay less for these two policies than the current premium, but we’ll have insurance about five years further out into the future than we have now. AND when the shorter policy’s term runs out, we’ll have that monthly premium amount to add back into the household budget. A win-win!
You will think we are nuts, but I guess we were the Last Two People In America who still had fees associated with our personal and business checking accounts. Ridiculous, I know! With a well-worded plea, Bank of America dropped both the monthly charges. We’ve never used ATM machines, so those fees are a non-issue, and we don’t bounce checks, so no overdraft fees. But we were paying $45 per year for a bank box! Again, dumb on our parts.
In general, we got fed up with Bank of America and the bailouts. We decided to make the switch to a regional bank with excellent ratings and non-participation in government schemes. No fees whatsoever, free bank box, and an annual savings of beaucoup bucks. What the heck took us so long?
Finally, we’re refinancing our house. By using the same mortgage company we’re currently with (and because we have a very favorable loan-to-value ratio) we were able to avoid needing an appraisal and the paperwork has been radically streamlined. We currently have 11 years left on a 15 year mortgage at 5.875%. We opted for a 10-year at 4.625%, with almost no costs rolled into the loan. We don’t owe much money on our house at all, but this move alone will cut a year off the loan and save us more than $25,000 in interest, which I think is going to work out to about $250 per month.
We’ve made other adjustments, too, some big and some small. Everything from stringing a clothesline and using it, to planting a veggie garden and some fruit trees. It remains to be seen whether these changes save us money or cost us big-time! But I know for a fact that with the simple measures outlined above, we’ve cut expenses by well over $1000 per month since September. And these are sustainable cuts, ones that have not caused us pain or anguish—-only a bit of time (and sometimes frustration) to put them in place.
OK, to be completely honest about the pain, I guess the Starbucks thing still smarts a little. But I’m a big girl. I have a feeling I’ll live through it!
How about you? Care to share your experiences as you strive to thrive during this recession? Even though our income hasn’t been affected at all, I am thrilled with the incremental changes we’ve made to reign in our lifestyle. Enough, it’s been said, is as good as a feast.
Because I’m So Fallible, You Might Win A Free Book!
I cannot believe how long it’s been since I posted here at fallible!
Suffice it to say that a LOT’S been going on, and sometimes a girl just gets overwhelmed.
But just to show you how much I love you and to let you know that there are good things still to come from Old Reliable Fallible, I am giving away not one but three hardback books to three fortunate commenters.
Leave a comment—-maybe telling me that you’ve missed me!—-and you’ll be entered in a random drawing to win either Kathy Ireland’s “Real Solutions for Busy Moms,” or Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace Revisited,” or Leanna Ellis’s fun novel “Lookin’ Back, Texas.”
The first name drawn will get first choice, the second name second choice, and the third name will get the final book. Sound like a good time? I’ll give it a day or two, and then my impartial drawer of names, aka Doug, will do the deed.
I promise if you get to commenting, I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging! I really, really will.
Twenty-Five Years And Ten Thousand Harmonies Later
When you grow up surrounded by brogues, you lose so much when your loved ones die.
Because for those of us who are first-generation Americans, there’s always the sense that the Old Country is at least as much home as the New. The brogues our parents and aunts and uncles never lose remind us daily, while they live, that our roots here are tenuous, that we are not quite like our friends whose families came over during the potato famine and helped to weave the very fabric of this nation.
At one time, here in Kansas City, I had my dad and his siblings—-Aunt Cathy, Aunt Mary, Uncle Bernard, Uncle Eddy, and Uncle Francis—-all thick with Scottish brogues that infused me with an identity I’ve never shaken off. Nor have I ever wanted to.
The first song I ever learned besides, I guess, “Happy Birthday to You,” was a song Bing Crosby recorded called “Dear Old Donegal.” My father taught it to me like this:
Some years ago this very day
I left the Port of Cork
And on my trip I took a ship
And landed in New York.
Without a friend to greet me there,
A stranger on the shore,
But I wore a great big Irish smile
And my fortune came galore.
I could sing this song in its entirety by the time I was four. In fact, my little sister Liz and I performed it on a Kansas City children’s television program, much to my father’s delight. We never did get the brogues right, though.
When Dad and his siblings had a gathering of the clan for a wedding or a funeral (my father insisted wryly that these were essentially the same event), you can bet the booze flowed freely. And when they’d each had a few drinks, their brogues thickened to the point that singing was the only thing left to do.
My dad and his siblings, on these occasions, would pull Scottish and Irish songs out of their repertoires and we kids couldn’t understand a single word they sang. It was fantastic and mysterious, the way the six of them could become one unit as they crooned “My Heart Belongs To Glasgow.” I didn’t drink, but they could make me cry like a baby with the heartfelt way they belted out, “There’s something the matter with Glasgow, ‘cause it’s spinning roond and roond….” I’m such an easy mark.
And then there was this McKenna family favorite:
Just a wee doch an doris
Just a wee drap that’s a
Just a wee doch an doris
Before you gang awa
There’s a wee wifey waitin
In a wee But ‘n Ben
If you can say
“It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht”
Then you’re a richt ye ken.
My father sang his way into and through my life, and today I hear him singing yet again. Besides drinking songs and nostalgic songs fondly recalling the Auld Sod, Dad loved American show tunes, and the way he infused even these with a beautiful brogue improved them in a way most kids never experienced. Dad had come from such a disadvantaged background that I found it inspiring the way he took to lyrics like “To Dream the Impossible Dream” and managed to convince the listener, at least for a moment, that any circumstances could be overcome.
He’d get in a Sound of Music mood and stroll through the house exhorting us to “Climb Every Mountain” until we believed we actually could. If he thought one of us might be feeling a bit left out of the action, he’d launch into a stirring version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I always got a huge kick out of him singing “What Kind of Fool Am I?” The next lines are “who never fell in love, It seems that I’m the only one that I have been thinking of….” This cracked me up because he and my mother were married for 33 years, and as far as I could tell, never had eyes for anyone else.
This one made me tear up a bit, because it seems he sang it more toward the end of his life, perhaps as he realized his own personal party was winding down. “The party’s over. It’s time to call it a day. They’ve burst your pretty balloon, and taken the moon away….”
The hymns my father loved to sing in church, when I would stand next to him and sing melody to his harmony, mean the most to me these days. I cannot sing “Crown Him With Many Crowns” without hearing a brogue supplying the harmony, even when I sing alone. I am left here with only memories of his music and of his life. I am glad I stood near him for all those years, though, our voices blending and our faith building as we worshipped our God side by side.
My father died twenty-five years ago today. I miss him so much, and his beautiful singing, and all the brogues that are now forever gone from my life.
O’Dark-Thirty
Yesterday, my 87-year-old mother-in-law had surgery bright and early. Which meant that Doug and I pulled out of the garage for our long ride into the city just a few seconds past O’Dark-Thirty.
We were both so terribly groggy from getting essentially no sleep that we were startled by the magnificent display, behind our house, of gorgeous Caribbean colors lighting up the horizon. Oranges and aquas and purples—-fantastic!
But something wasn’t right, and it only took me an instant to figure it out.
As Doug drove, I pointed way past him to the other side of the road and said, “Wait. Don’t all those pretty colors usually happen over THERE?”
To think that otherwise mature adults have actually asked us to be their Durable Powers of Attorney.
Bowing To The King
Evidently, American protocol dictates that no president should bow before a king or queen, although a slight bow might be considered a sign of courtesy and respect, especially when offered to a close friend of our country. In order for a bow to be considered deferential, though—-a position our leader is not supposed to assume—-the top of the president’s head must be lower than the monarch’s chin.
Whether President Obama bowed to the Saudi king in a manner that truly broke with protocol, I have no idea. But the incident got me thinking about how low I’m willing to go when bowing to the King of Kings.
On Good Friday, the day he spilled His blood for my very life, do I consider Him worthy of only the bare-basics bow? Do I calculate precisely within a fraction of an inch how slightly I might acknowledge His Kingship without actually making myself subservient to His rule?
Or do I enter His presence trembling and cast myself face first at His beautifully scarred feet?
I hope when all is said and done, when the measurements of my puny earthly kingdom are taken and recorded once and for all in His book, that He’ll reach down, lift my chin from the throne room’s floor, and allow me the unspeakable privilege of dining with Him at His banquet table.
A King and His daughter, the Redeemer and His redeemed, the Monarch of Heaven and the child for whom He died.
What Kind Of Fool Am I?
OK, just for the record: I make the singular worst April Fool’s joker in the UNIVERSE. I totally spaced out coming back to fallible and making it clear that I am NOT entertaining an offer in the six figures for the fallible name, though such an offer would be entertaining indeed. Sadly, I’ve been offered nothing at all—-but neither am I in the market to sell.
Next foolish item: I have decided to try my hand at veggie and fruit gardening for the first time ever, except for that one year when Scotty was a toddler and he’d pick the tomatoes and eat them whole before I could catch him. We only attempted tomatoes and green peppers and succeeded at both, but our next-door neighbor was a gardening guru and made us feel inadequate with our pitiful offerings, just over the chain-link fence from his bounty.
But now, 28 years hence, I’m feeling braver. I also am not as deathly frightened of bees and wasps as I used to be, perhaps because I’m deaf in one ear and therefore buzzing is automatically reduced by 50%, tricking my brain into believing the threat has diminished. Also, I forced myself finally to first read and then view “The Secret Life of Bees.” I’d resisted the book for YEARS because I knew darned good and well that it would end up having SOMEthing to do with bees, and I just couldn’t handle that.
Reading the novel first eased me into the whole bee-keeping story, and I asked myself, “How bad could the movie be, really? Those bees don’t want to sting you!” (Yeah, right, that’s what they all say….) The movie was as amazing as the book, and helped me overcome another layer of fear.
So….I’m planning on trying to grow tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, lettuces, carrots, strawberries, green beans, and peas. I’ve already sown some seed in tiny paper cups, pushed my large breakfast table under the big bay window in the kitchen, and added cookie sheets of seedling-hopefuls to the sunny spot.
Who can say whether I’m being foolish to think I can learn some new tricks at my age? All I know for sure is that I’d better take notes about what works and what doesn’t, because by this time next year, I won’t remember!
Finally, on this Foolish Monday, I’m thinking more about our finances than ever. Here’s the deal: We’ve been going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at our church, and it’s been great. I think we’ve done 6 of the 13 weeks now. We have heard some sad stories from others in the class about foreclosures and job losses and uninsured medical bills, and since we go to church in a prosperous part of town, it’s shed a lot of light on how some of our own parishioners are hurting. I guess I was not expecting there to be such serious difficulties as are represented by this group, but it just goes to show that the economic downturn is no respecter of persons.
We decided to take this class (even though we have no debt except for a small mortgage) because we knew we could buckle down and do better for our own future and in order to be a blessing to others. I’ve found myself second and third-guessing every frivolous unplanned purchase, until by now I usually skip all the guessing completely and simply walk away. Continuing to add to our travel fund is MUCH more important to us than geegaws and trinkets and whatnots, so why waste time shuffling through bins of junk?
Maybe I’m more of a fool than I know, but I read a Money Makeover online this morning that really got me going. A forty-year-old childless couple, combined take-home income of $75,000. No debt except for the house, on which they have THREE mortgages—-one of them an adjustable ready to re-set this month. That, evidently, is why they panicked sufficiently to seek a makeover.
They purchased the home five years ago for $325,000, requiring two mortgages just to make the deal happen. Since then, they’ve opened a HELOC and borrowed extensively. They now owe $400,000 on their home, and the article did not say what the current value of the home is. I can only imagine that it’s less than $325,000.
Here’s the kicker: They are budgeting a TOTAL of $100 for savings per month. They have NO retirement accounts at all, and only a few $100 bills have actually accumulated in this savings account. Now, they used to have credit card debt which they managed to clear up, so turning that around and beginning to save of course is a positive. But then the article revealed how much cash they each receive per month to spend “on anything we want that’s not in the budget.”
People! The husband and wife EACH get $560 per month to blow! Doug and I each get $50 per month, and we feel rich at that! Ha.
Tell me if I’m the biggest fool alive or what, but I do not think this couple needed a money makeover. I think they need to split the monthly $100 they are now putting in savings, and call that their splurge money. Then they need to EACH send $560 per month to their savings/retirement accounts. Problem solved.
Am I missing something? Besides a six-figure deal for the sale of fallible.com, that is?
If you’re feeling foolish about something today, go ahead and weigh in here!
Ten Years And One Little Fallible Word Later
Ten years ago this month, Doug and I happened upon an article in Wired Magazine that would change the course of my life.
The piece was about how few (1760, to be precise) English words remained available to those wishing to register a one-word.com domain name. The very day we read the article, we pored over that list and decided that fallible was perhaps the best one-word domain we’d EVER heard of, even if 24,000 or so other single words had already been registered.
Since then, the word fallible has come to define me. (Of course, my husband and children will assure you that the word applied in spades long before I registered it!) Why, I have been in a public restroom in line with dozens of women at a conference, introducing myself to the lady next to me, when all of a sudden another gal far behind in the queue (waving to author Tammy Alexander!) shouted out for all to hear, “Hey, you’re FALLIBLE!!!”
I couldn’t deny it then, and I can’t now. The opinions, outlook, values, theories, beliefs, and advice presented here are so flawed as to be laughable, and that’s when I’m not even trying to be funny. But you know what? I persist in being fallible because, well, it’s been nothing if not one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to entertain you on this site.
And, perhaps, even to inspire you. I hope that’s the case, because there’s a dearth of genuine inspiration in the world these days. If the good Lord sees fit that I should be allowed to dispense even a bit of it, I’ll be more than satisfied.
Which, O fallible readers, is precisely why I’ve decided to turn down the offer I’ve received to buy out fallible.com for a price that’s so obscenely high that it, all by itself, would put me in the Dreaded Top Five Percent Of All Income Earners, and well, you KNOW what that means.
I don’t want to pay the tax on such an enormous income, and besides, who knows what nefarious purposes the prospective buyer of my name might have in mind? I’ve got my good reputation to protect (never mind that I was temporarily banned in the Kingdom of Bahrain for writing about, ostensibly, panties….) and would never allow fallible to fall into the clutches of disingenuous owners.
I may have to add a few paltry ads to comfort myself over the loss of this missed opportunity, though. I hope you’ll understand.
Crass Envy
I’ve been completely fascinated this past week with all the media references to the supposed rage that exists in the general public against those employees of AIG who received ginormous bonuses after the company took taxpayer bailout dollars.
First of all, I don’t think American citizens are as stupid as American politicians think we are. In general, I think we get it that many corporations defer the compensation of their key employees, in part in an effort to retain them for an extended period of time. Heck, anyone who’s ever seen Chevy Chase in National Lampoon Christmas has to feel for the guy when his entire year’s budget is dependent on a promised bonus that turns into a pitiful pittance.
Even in spite of the fact that tour buses have now taken crowds of envious folks to view the homes of the AIG employees in question, and to insist that those rich people ought to be paying the overdue rent of the touring masses who could have paid their rent if they hadn’t bought the bus ticket, I still believe most of us would side with Chevy.
One of the reasons we would side with Chevy is that it’s becoming really difficult at this point not to be suspicious when we’re told by our leaders that the citizenry is “enraged,” especially when we’re told that our fellow Americans are only enraged by one specific minor-in-the-grand-scheme-of-a-meltdown item of interest. It’s hard not to be reminded of Bill Clinton bombing, what? a baby-formula factory, or was it an aspirin factory? back when he seemed to be attempting to divert attention from his shenanigans with Monica Lewinsky.
If you’d like to read a resignation letter from an AIG employee whose bonus was retracted, take a look at this.
After I read it, I had a much better understanding of how certain members of our citizenry are taking the fall for those who have truly been party to grossly negligent fiscal policy. And I’ve pretty much decided that from now on, whenever I’m told I should be enraged, I’m going to take a closer look at why and not accept anything at face value.
Of course, I run the risk of finding myself enraged at the true culprits rather than the ones who are being made scapegoats. But that’s a risk I am perfectly willing to take.
Afterword: My commenter Suzan pointed out that the tour bus was hired by ACORN. It figures. Read all about it here.
Better Not To Mess With The Little Woman
Doug and I have been inundated with car problems and when we’re inundated, we get testy.
OK, I get testy. Let’s face the facts here. Doug is a brilliant graphic designer, musician, and lyricist. He also makes a tremendous latte. I am a competent patient advocate, a bread baker and sprout grower, and a wannabe published novelist. I am also very good at doing lunch with my girlfriends.
You might as well know, though, that it takes more than the two of us to change a lightbulb.
Still, we’re adults, and when we’re dealing with car problems, we hope to be treated like adults. And by that I mean that we expect not to have our intelligence insulted, even if our intelligence isn’t exactly in the automotive field. You know what I’m sayin’?
So two weeks ago, the good car (which is now 7 years old and has 100,000 miles on it) started misbehaving. It seemed to me like a transmission problem, since I had to baby the car on its way from 0 to 45, and if I didn’t that needle on the RPM thingie would shoot to the right and scare the bejeebers out of me.
I warned Doug not to get on the highway until we had it checked out, but he forgot and nearly got killed when he couldn’t build up speed fast enough to merge into the flow of traffic. That day we bit the bullet and took it to the transmission shop our erstwhile mechanic recommended.
To their credit, the transmission shop said it checked out fine from their perspective and they drove it back over to the general mechanic. The next day, that guy called with the diagnosis. Doug was away at a meeting and when I saw his name on caller ID, I picked up.
“Yeah. Can I speak to Doug?”
“He’s not here at the moment. I see this is about our car. May I take a message?”
“Well, if you DO, am I just going to have to explain the whole thing over again to HIM?”
OK, see. Right then, I was so tempted to say, “Only if you do a really terrible job of explaining it the first time.” But I didn’t. I bit my tongue, and then I lied and pretended to be the stupid little wife he took me for. (Doug and I are both mechanically disinclined. We are NOT stupid.)
“Oh, you’re right,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to take this message and convey it to my husband correctly.” Never mind that I take copious notes during Other People’s Doctor Visits, in a stalwart and successful attempt to apprehend for them the healthcare for which they’re so dearly paying. “I will have him call you the minute he gets home.”
I was hoppin’ mad by the time Doug returned the mechanic’s call thirty minutes later. When Doug hung up the phone, he turned to me and said, “It’s the catalytic converter. Unfortunately, the part is only made by GM. The labor is cheap, but because we have to use the authorized GM part, the whole thing’s gonna cost us over $1300.”
“Except for, you know what?” I said. “It’s not.”
Poor Doug. He knows when my Irish is up, there’s gonna be heck to pay. But the way I look at it, heck is still a lot cheaper than $1300. And the fact that the mechanic had soundly insulted me, when he doesn’t even know me well enough to know that I DESERVE to be insulted on this subject, made Doug instantly decide that THIS was exactly why God invented the Internet.
Within 5 minutes, Doug realized that it was a complete falsehood that we needed a GM part for the repair. He found an online company that sells nothing but catalytic converters, called our unhappy-to-be-found-out mechanic to make sure he would install the part (which has a 5-year warranty), and then ordered the part.
My sweet man saved us from being TAKEN for $1000! The mechanic finished the work yesterday and the car runs great. I do not plan on ever using this guy again, for obvious reasons. He lies, cheats, is sexist, and thinks we’re google incompetents.
But I will say this about him: He pushed me just far enough to guarantee that he lost a customer and we saved a mint of money.
Not so great for him, but my ever-growing Passbook Savings account couldn’t be happier.
One of my best money saving strategies is to, as Ronald Reagan used to say, “trust but verify.” To save even more money, you might also try skipping over the trust step completely.
Whatever you do, enjoy the $1000!
Spring Has Sprung!
My husband, an incurable romantic, couldn’t stop himself this morning from telling me how gorgeous I am. I know, I know. Get him a new prescription for eyeglasses, right? In the meantime, I decided to enjoy the moment and compliment him right back.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Well, you’ve got a physique like a Greek god.”
In true fallible style, he hesitated for only a second. “You mean….broken off in parts?”
Our Grandparents Still Speak. Will We Listen?
One of my favorite things about listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio is when he says his tag line. “We give you the same advice your grandmother would, only we keep our teeth in.”
No matter how many times he says this, I smile. Because I am distinctly remembering things my grandparents taught me, and mottos they spoke and lived by. I’m talking about my mom’s parents here, by the way, since my father was an immigrant from Scotland and his parents were dead by the time he came to this country in 1946.
Baga (my father taunted my two-year-old self into attempting to call my grandmother “Old Bag,” and Baga is what I came up with. It stuck!) and Papoo (no, we weren’t Greek, but my older brother Patrick—-God rest his soul—-christened Grandpa, and his chosen name stuck, too) were two of the best role models a kid in the 50s and 60s could have possibly had.
Papoo was a college graduate, who worked 40 years as a CPA for the A&P grocery chain—-The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. He and Baga (whose given names were actually Carl and Bernice) married in 1925 and in 1930—-after the Great Depression had begun—-their only child, my mother, was born. A point of interest for me has always been that of the couples my grandparents were friends with over the years, many of them had only one offspring.
My mother (a Protestant by birth) married a Catholic and we kids were raised in the Catholic church. The only only child I ever knew was my own mother! But I wonder, as I look back at my grandparents’ lives and those of their contemporaries, whether many of them decided not to have more children because of the tenuous times in which they lived.
Unemployment in those bad old days, they say, reached 25% at its worst. Papoo, though, never missed a day of work. In 1935, the A&P transferred him to the office in Kansas City, where Mom grew up and still lives to this day. I’ve got to think that for my grandparents to have come of age in the flapper era and then to find themselves as young people in the midst of a national disaster must have been sobering, no matter how they cut it.
All I know for certain is that they were the hardest working, most resourceful people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. My mother led an advantaged life, though I don’t think she quite sees it that way even still. She had dance lessons and piano lessons, and at the age of eight, she was given a magnificent grand piano that now graces the home of my youngest sister, Bridget. My grandparents were never ostentatious, but when they spent money, they purchased the highest quality items, intending to use them for a lifetime and then pass them down through the family.
I’ll just add that all my favorite pieces of furniture, I inherited from them. I LOVE having a black-and-white photo of my toddler-self standing in the middle of Baga’s velvet-upholstered Victorian settee that now graces my living room. The sense of continuity that comes from treasured objects that have spanned multiple generations of one family never ceases to comfort my soul.
During WWII, when my mother was in high school and they’d moved from the city to a house on five acres, my grandparents raised chickens. Lots and lots of chickens. They didn’t just raise them for the eggs, either. They slaughtered the darned things and sold them to all the nearby restaurants as an additional source of income. My mother still rues the day she got pulled into the chicken operation. All she wanted was to go rollerskating at the rink with her girlfriends on Saturdays, and instead she got stuck plucking the feathers out of chickens for a few years running.
Papoo even wrote a book about how to raise chickens, self-published it, and sold 5000 copies through mail order. It was a true kitchen table enterprise, garnering them even another stream of income. Sure, Baga did the patriotic thing and worked in a factory during that time, and I have in my possession some leftover ration coupons to prove they lived under the same constraints as other citizens. But they always managed to hang on to entrepreneurial spirits, which served them fabulously well their whole lives.
In 1947, they moved into a beautiful house they had build on 160 acres. Maybe they should not have moved in as soon as they did, since the first winter in the house they had no central heat. In fact, much was unfinished when they took up residence, but they weren’t deterred. And they stubbornly refused to borrow money to build the house. It was cash on the line, baby, or no house for them! I believe they miscalculated that they would have the cash to put in the heater before the snow flew, and paid for it all winter with the shivers.
But a miscalculation was not an excuse to go into debt. One of the things Papoo told me solemnly in a moment we shared driving down the road when I was 12 or so was this, “Whatever you do, Kate, NEVER take out a mortgage!” Trust me on this, he was NOT talking about a home equity line of credit. He meant a FIRST mortgage. He must have been mortified that my parents took out a 20-year mortgage on the house I grew up in, even though they DID pay it off in 11 years.
When I graduated from high school, Papoo bought me a brand spankin’ new car. A 1972 purple Gremlin. I named her Kiki. I will never forget the shock on the car salesman’s face when my grandfather counted out twenty-five $100 bills to pay for that purchase. It went without saying that I should NEVER take out a loan to purchase a car!
Baga once felt the need to give me this salient piece of wisdom: “There’s never a reason for you or your clothing or your home to be dirty. A bar of soap still costs a nickel, and anyone can afford a nickel.” That lady scrubbed us, herself, the laundry (can we say “wringer washer”?) and her white tile and grout to within an inch of our lives.
Papoo, before a massive heart attack forced him to retire at age 59 and he began sub-dividing his property into 1/3 acre homebuilding sites, raised Black Angus cattle for the family’s consumption. I felt bad when I realized I was being served Debbie, Mary Jo, or Claudia, but the homegrown corn-on-the-cob we picked and cooked right before dinner and the ice cream made with peaches from Baga’s trees softened the news considerably.
What I’m trying to say is that my grandparents married and raised a daughter in tough times. They lived through the Great Depression and then WWII, and while they did not go through the type of suffering so many did, they were careful to structure their habits in such a way as to ensure the family’s well-being. For them, that meant NO debt EVER. It meant a substantial amount of savings to see them through a crisis. It meant always thinking up and implementing supplemental strategies for income, to protect them in case their primary source of funds were cut off.
It also meant passing on the homespun wisdom that served them well, and making sure their daughter and grandchildren were educated in the principles of living well within our means.
Let me just say that in these days, I’ve been thinking of them a lot. And cherishing the example they gave me, since of them it could truly be said that they practiced what they preached.
Any wisdom you’ve been handed down that is serving you well during this economic downturn? No sense in putting it to waste! Feel free to share it here.
Right Of Refusal
So here’s the deal. Doug and I have been going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at our church. You should know that even though we attend church in a very advantaged neighborhood in Johnson County, Kansas, there are some hurting folks in this group.
We’d be hurting, too, if it weren’t for One Fantastic Thing: Two years ago, we thought we’d help a young couple out. We invited our daughter Carrie and her fiance Marc to a Dave Ramsey live event in Kansas City. Their wedding was quickly approaching that June, and we knew they’d be starting marriage with some significant debt.
Who knew but what Dave Ramsey could get their marriage started out on solid financial footing?
By the end of a few hours inundated in Dave’s personal energy, they came away resolved to live like no newlyweds they knew, so that later they’d be able to live like no olderweds they knew. And they have done FANTASTIC. Their discipline and commitment—-especially in the face of friends who buy houses and furniture and take their second honeymoons within six months of their first—-has amazed and delighted us.
But what surprised us even more was the way Dave managed to light a fire under US. Two years ago right now, our debt—-because of Kevin’s final year of hospitality management and business schooling which occurred in Switzerland, and paying for Carrie and Marc’s wedding—-had spiraled into something completely unacceptable. We had a couple of credit cards at 0%, but you know what? Interest rate or not, WE OWED THE MONEY. We also carried a balance on our HELOC, at a low rate of interest, but again. WE OWED THE MONEY.
I committed that night at the live event. I knew it would take a few more months before we could radically reverse the direction we were going in. But by the morning after Carrie and Marc’s wedding, we would begin. And so we did. If I told you how deeply we cut to make a debt-free life possible, you might recoil in disgust. There were times I nearly did, but then we’d pay off one bill entirely and start on the next one and I would get fired up all over again.
Happily, in one year’s time, and before the market crash of the fall of 2008, we had gotten completely out of debt (except for a small mortgage on our house) and had also amassed much more money in emergency funds, car replacement funds, and all the rest. And then we got absolutely clobbered in our 401K, but you know what? The sting of losing money in our retirement accounts is SO MUCH less than it would be if we were also struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis.
Here’s my resolution going forward: No matter how grim the news, I’m following Dave’s lead and refusing to participate in the recession. Heck, if it turns into a bona fide depression, I’m gonna turn down that offer, too. Of course, we can’t expect that our business will continue completely unscathed (although so far, it has….), but we can expect of ourselves that we keep thinking, keep regrouping, keep building upon ideas we’ve got for new streams of income, and NEVER agree to victimhood status.
I’m also continuing to enjoy my beautiful Passbook Savings Account, a throwback to my childhood and early married years. EVERY time the passbook comes back to me in the mail, updated with my new (higher!) balance, I IMMEDIATELY write a paper check (I think the tactile experience of paper and ink makes this process work for me….), fill out the deposit slip, and mail it back to them in the stamped envelope they provide.
Doug and I find ourselves, like everyone else, in the midst of a downturn. Sure, we’ve lost some value in our home (though I don’t think much….) and some retirement assets. But we can easily manage our attitudes, our savings, and our business in such a way that the recession doesn’t eat us for lunch.
Millions of households and obviously a huge number of businesses are insolvent in our nation, having borrowed their way out of prosperity, and I’m afraid some truly abysmal policies will come out of this recession/depression that will plague our country for decades to come.
As for me and my house, though, we’ve decided we’re just not going to play along.
We refuse to participate in this recession, and I hope you exercise your right of refusal, too.
Summons
Yesterday, I read that Blogger and Twitter founder Evan Williams, a young man I actually corresponded with by email seven or so years ago about a business idea my husband and I had, was summoned to the White House in order to offer his advice about the abysmal economic crisis in which we now find ourselves.
I hadn’t yet signed up to follow Ev on Twitter, but I did so, post haste. He gave a number of updates throughout his day at the White House, and also posted a picture of himself standing next to Ivanka Trump, with the House in the background. He didn’t say so in so many words, but it seemed clear enough that Ivanka had also been invited to share her brilliance with our current administration.
Then, this morning, I come upon this story, which manages to encompass EVERY cause of our current debacle (irresponsible lending, greed, belief that markets can only go up, spending your own children’s future, believing that spending should come before or instead of earning, trusting in complimentary sirloin-tip buffet soirees to assure you that you’ve made sound economic decisions, and all the rest of it) in a few easy-to-read but difficult-to-digest words. Ivanka, evidently, was hugely a part of this failed undertaking of the Trumps, which only recently occurred, and has now been rewarded by being treated as if she’s all that and a bag of Perrier.
Is THIS what the leaders of our country need? To be counseled by the (admittedly brilliant) guy who runs Twitter, who asks his 200,000 followers “What should I say?” before leaving to share his answers with the administration? Does the United States of America now NEED the advice of Ivanka Trump, a young woman who told investors in a Baja resort that a Trump property COULD NOT FAIL?
We’re falling far and fast here, people. Our problems are way too serious to be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We don’t need another summit every fool day on the economy, health care, education, and shovel readiness. And trust me, I am NOT saying Obama is responsible for this mess. As much as I admired some things about George Bush, I lost my remaining respect for him the day he said, last fall, “I am abandoning my free market principles to save the free market.”
Sorry, O fallible ones. It just doesn’t work that way. A principle is something you hold so dear and so constant that it eventually becomes the ONLY thing you can’t and won’t abandon. Otherwise, it is no principle at all, but only another half-thought-out weakly formed opinion.
I am aligning myself with some age-old economic principles, ones I have never taken the time to understand, study, or devote myself to—-until now. I’ve realized that I can no longer entertain the luxury of believing that printing presses should invent new money ‘round the clock. Or that the Federal Reserve should intervene in the free market by manipulating interest rates, thereby keeping the boom and bust cycle artificially exacerbated.
In fact, here’s what I really think, and it happens to agree completely with what my banker father believed until his death 25 years ago: There should be NO central bank in the United States of America. The Federal Reserve system should be abolished, and the free markets should be allowed free rein. In addition, we should rue the day that Richard Nixon, in 1971, completely disconnected our economy from the gold standard once and for all, and should do everything in our power to move toward a financial system that is NOT based on fractional reserve banking but that is based rather on a REAL MONEY economy.
If I had understood half of what Ron Paul was saying one short year ago, I would have given far more money to his campaign than I did and I would have fought far harder to see him and his ideas promoted. Interesting that we now have an unfolding crisis in which all Paul preaches is coming home to roost. In my opinion, he remains the only presidential candidate that could have helped us navigate these waters, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
Instead, we move the chairs around on the deck just so, tap our feet to the beat of the orchestra, and imagine that the giant iceberg that’s already ripped away half the hull is just another sign of global warming.
Nationalize Me, Baby!
You might remember that before the first bail-outs became law last fall, I expressed my utter disdain for them. I compared the situation to a parent who’s trying to decide whether bailing her wayward son out of jail (after she’s warned him repeatedly not to miss the court date assigned to him because of a usurious traffic ticket….) would ultimately be the best thing for her son or not.
You probably have guessed my conclusions about the parent/son situation. Three nights in jail won’t kill the kid, and just might cure him. And THAT would make a mother happy, indeed.
But the bailouts, of course, happened. I believe we now refer to last fall’s wealth distribution as “TARP 1.” Is there any doubt left in anyone’s mind that the acronym TARP (Remind me: WHAT does it stand for?) will eventually (and soon) be followed by all manner of numerals?
It’s all got me thinking a lot about the subject of nationalization, and you know what? If I make the topic of nationalization as personal as I made bailouts, I come to an entirely different conclusion. In fact, in only a few moments, I came up with a list called
Fallible Stuff I’d Like To Nationalize:
1. My urinary tract infection. Seriously, people. Peeing every 35 seconds? It is not fair that my bladder should have to shoulder the weight of this burden alone. And since everyone else is already peeing anyway, why shouldn’t they each go one extra time per 24 hours, so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my natural life on the toitie?
2. Blog commenters. I am happy for Dooce and the several other got-in-on-the-ground-floor bloggers who win their Bloggies year after year for Best Design and Best Content, etc, but honestly, isn’t it getting old for her to have thousands of commenters, half of whom don’t even like her? I say that blog comments should be nationalized. If Dooce coughed up several hundred of hers, and the other Top Tier Bloggers did the same, I could end up with more people who don’t like me. Doesn’t that seem right to you?
3. Purses. I went to the same high school as Kate Spade. At the Catholic girls school we attended, we were all trained to view marriage and motherhood as somewhat secondary to career goals. I was paying attention and made excellent grades in school, but is it MY fault I preferred being a stay-at-home mom to designing handbags and forging an empire? Since Kate and I share common roots, I believe it’s correct that we now share purses. Nationalize the whole darn line, I say. If I got to choose my ten or twelve free faves during the Purse Nationalization Act of 2009, I would even agree to pay shipping. I AM a capitalist, after all.
4. The Moms. Although it’s taken a while for me to embrace the wisdom of this idea, I am now more than willing (eager, you might say) to nationalize caretaking responsibilities of The Moms. If you think that the fact they both live in assisted living facilities makes it so that “someone else” takes care of them, think again. Someone else might help them bathe and dress, but the THINKING falls to us. And without the thinking, they wouldn’t last long. I think it’s high time thinking was nationalized, especially when it comes to appropriating many, many others to think about what’s best for The Moms and then just DO it. Without me needing to tell them. That would be heaven.
5. My rear end. An inch here, an inch there, pretty soon every underendowed woman in the country could be amply supplied. It’s a sacrifice, yes, but one I am willing to make for the common good. I’m euphemistically referring to my bottom-line scheme as TARP, also: Troubled “Assets” Redistribution Plan. Any takers?
6. Housework. It is SO not my problem that we have a house that is too big for our current needs. It’s not like I could have foreseen this when we built the house fourteen years ago! We had three kids living with us then, and it seemed like they’d be with us forever. Don’t tell me I should have done the math and predicted a time when Doug and I would only require a few small rooms to suit our purposes! That kind of rational thought has NO PLACE is a discussion of The Housework Nationalization Act of 2009. I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me, especially if you have seen my house and are maybe a little jealous because it’s actually very nice. But I DO think that if you are young, energetic, and in possession of a strong back, you should have no choice but to throw a TARP over this joint. I’m free this morning. I’ll be expecting you (bring your cleaning supplies, I’m running low!) at ten.
Anything you’d like to nationalize, while the nationalizing’s good? Hopefully, Dooce is feeling the love and has already sent some of her commenters my way…
