The Housing Piece

A lot of these early retirement advocates talk about house hacking. That can mean many different things, including living in a fixer upper while you ready it for sale; taking in roommates to help pay the mortgage; or finding an arrangement where you swap elder or child care for lodging. The goal is always to get this big expense (on average, at least 25% of income—sometimes 40% or more—according to Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 figures) to shrink. Of course, one of the best ways to accomplish this is to live in a place that costs less.

At the American Horticultural Therapy Association Conference last week, I visited with a classmate who had been in my Horticultural Therapy cohort. Her son and daughter-in-law had recently bought a home in Cincinnati—in what my friend describes as a nice neighborhood—for $90,000. Median price for a home in a decent neighborhood in San Francisco is $1.3 million.

So clearly, huge savings can be had here.

But what if you grew up in a place, or moved to a place many decades ago, and, as a result of spending a lot of time in that particular place, you have spun a web of human connections in that place that are precious and dear to you? What if you love many locations in that physical place, and have many fond memories triggered by those locations? What if you love a place that, through no fault of your own, became expensive after you were born in it or decided to move to it?

This is such a prickly one. I completely understand and respect the decision to move to a less expensive place. It’s a smart move and a practical move, and could certainly accelerate one’s arrival at early retirement or comfortable wealth or whatever financial goal one might have set.

But, if you’ve been in one place for a long time, moving to save money minimizes the value of that social capital in which you’ve invested for decades.

The move-to-save formula leaves the heart and soul out of the equation. For some of us, moving now would do real damage to our taproots.

Dishes, Bowls, Cups, And Glasses

This morning, I beat my egg in a chipped, chartreuse, ceramic Ikea bowl. When I originally bought it, it was part of a set of six, and I really liked them. Now the one I used today is the last man left standing.

At some point, this one will end up like his comrades: chipped beyond using, or out-and-out broken; thrown away; winding up in landfill. Then I will replace the broken bowls, in a constant cycle of creating more waste for landfill and spending more money in order to create that additional waste.

It all reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a friend from India. She recounted how she and her cousins used to spend summers with their grandmother. At lunch and dinner, each child would pick a big leaf from one of their grandma’s banana trees. They would use the leaf like a plate, and after they were done eating, they would just compost the leaves. Simple and elegant. Ecological and economical. Plus: No dishes to wash.

Around the same time, in a different conversation with another friend from India, I learned about a custom from her region that had a similar economical, ecological, elegant feel to it. When a couple married in this region, they received a gift of a large set of kitchenware—dishes, bowls, drinking glasses, and platters in various sizes—all made out of stainless steel. The expectation was that the couple would use that same set of dishes for the whole of their married lives together. In fact, the evening when my friend told me about this, we were eating off a fraction of that stainless steel kitchenware. It was scratched and scuffed but entirely functional, and I would add: handsome. The dishes had a long history and a long life in this household. Of course, they had been dropped many times over the years, but because they were steel, they hadn’t shattered or chipped or broken. An investment was made in this set of kitchenware decades before, and it was still delivering return.

I’ve decided that I’m going to spend money on some stainless steel kitchen stuff. It’s late in the game for me, but I think it will still be worthwhile—both economically and ecologically. I’m going to start with drinking glasses; then later, I’ll get bowls. I love the look of colorful ceramicware, but we all know how that story ends.

I’m not endorsing either of the products listed below; I haven’t actually bought or used them. But I have begun preliminary research, and these choices look pretty good to me. (I am going to try to find equally good, positively reviewed, cheaper cups and bowls.) I include them in case anyone reading might be interested in looking into the stainless steel kitchenware option for him or herself.

Hudson Essential 7-ounce stainless steel drinking cups; set of six; $19.99:

https://www.amazon.com/Hudson-Essential-Stainless-Steel-Cups/dp/B078RSFTNX/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=hudson+essential+stainless+steel+cups+7+ounce&qid=1569953692&s=gateway&sr=8-4

Mirenlife 31-ounce stainless steel bowls; set of four; $16.99:

https://www.amazon.com/Mirenlife-Stainless-Double-walled-Insulated-Noodles/dp/B07PM33NMG/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=hudson+essential+stainless+steel+soup+bowls&qid=1569953791&s=gateway&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExMVpUMkFXWEwySFJHJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTE0NzcwMldOQzI2RzlFSlFLNSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMzg1NzUyMjRSQTJVRDZYQ0VNNCZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

Savings On Discount Sites Can Be Dramatic

My best friend, Ivory, is 11 years old. She has arthritis in her back legs, which makes many activities in her life difficult.

Because Ivory is my best friend, and because I want her older age to be as comfortable as possible, and because I want her to remain as active as possible for as long as possible, I allow myself to spend $$ on two things that I believe make a difference for her. Ivory’s vet explained to me that glucosamine, often used as an oral supplement for both people and other animals with arthritis, is frequently not absorbed very well through the digestive system. He has seen better success with intramuscular injections of Adequan Canine. The way he describes it, Adequan Canine is basically glucosamine that gets completely absorbed and goes right where it’s needed. Ivory also takes, twice a day, a dose of cannabis tincture that combines THC and CBD.

So I give Ivory these injections and this tincture. I buy the tincture from a little independent company—recommended by our vet--that does this exclusively. But I buy Adequan Canine directly from the veterinarian. The first month, I gave two injections every week. Maintenance dose is once or twice a month. I pay $217.90 for two vials of Adequan Canine. The first month, I used both vials, but now two vials last for about six to eight months. I realize this is a big expenditure, but as I tried to communicate earlier, my dog is precious to me and I want her to remain an active companion for as long as she can. I am allowing myself, consciously, this expense.

Anyway, a friend recently told me about chewy.com, a site that sells pet food and various pet paraphernalia at discounted prices. I had just bought Adequan Canine from our vet, but I thought I’d check the site on the off-chance that they sold it and compare the price. Same product, same two vials in the same size sold for $129.99. An $87.91 difference! Ouch!

I called the vet’s office, as I hadn’t opened either vial, but they have a policy of not taking returns on medicines that have left the premises. I asked them to give me the chewy.com rate, and they refused, saying $217.90 was their price for this medicine. I asked for them to meet me part way; they refused again.

So I started talking to some people in my world about how, if you could understand what a particular something costs from various vendors in a given moment when you are about to make a purchase, you could potentially save a lot of $$. Savvy people have already thought of this. I’m aware now of two browser extensions, Honey and Wikibuy, that you download to Chrome, or whatever browser you use. When you’re ready to buy something online, they compare prices for you and offer up what they’ve found in a pop-up window.

I like the idea because of the possible savings, but I’m wary because of the potential exposure of my personal data. I may be overly cautious, but I need to learn more before I take the plunge.

Making Money While You Sleep

Years ago, I read an account by an African-American woman who was working in finance. She had gone to a good university, had graduated with an MBA from Wharton, had gotten a good job. She was working extra-long hours, believing that that would put her on the map for promotions and salary raises. She felt she was following a script that she understood. In reality, she watched as various men in her professional world were promoted over her. She reported that it happened over and over again, and then she had an important insight: Being considered for promotions or other goodies wasn’t a reward for meritorious employee behavior. Those decisions were made on golf courses on the weekends, or in favorite bars and restaurants on weekday nights. There was a whole game going on, and this woman didn’t have the first idea about what the rules were. She had been operating with an entirely different playbook.

I’m feeling that a bit as I dip my toes into the grown-up financial world. There’s a vocabulary and a rulebook that might as well be written in Hittite cuneiform for all I know and understand about it.

But I persist.

I’m currently reading some books, checking out some blogs, watching some YouTube videos created by youngish people who made a lot (or in some cases, just enough) dough in about five years or so, then retired. Retired in these cases means they still often work, but they don’t need to work to survive financially. The model is useful to me because I favor the short timeline, not so I can retire early but so that I can retire ever.

One of these guys is Grant Sabatier, who retired at 30 after making over  $1 million in five years. One of Sabatier’s short YouTube videos is called “Stop Thinking Time Is Money,” his point being that time is much more valuable than money AND if you’re serious about all this, you need to find ways to make $$ that are not simply selling your time for money. Basically, the only way I’ve earned money in my life is by selling my time, so this is a radical and intriguing idea to me.

At one point in the video, Sabatier says he recently checked his accounts and found that he had made more than $2000 in the last 24 hours without working a single hour. He continues, citing Warren Buffett, who apparently makes over $1.5 million every hour, even when he’s asleep.

My goals, at least initially, are more modest. Given the amount of ground I have to cover in terms of accumulating enough to retire in 10 years, I am very attracted to the idea of earning while I’m off in Dreamland. My teeny weeny, itty bitty, little Roth IRA is currently invested in stock and bond index funds and so I earn a very little bit there without working for it, although it always feels as likely that it could disappear as grow while I am asleep.

Still, I consider it a good exercise. All of these early retirement dudes cite two avenues to earn while you sleep, one being investing, the other being creating business opportunities that, once established, require little or no further input. Investing requires making a shift from wage slave to capitalist, or more accurately in my case, continuing to work as a wage slave while adding in a little side hustle as an embryonic capitalist. Capitalists, of course, are those who own the means of production AND make money from the labor of others. Someone who earns money from investments in the stock market is earning because of other people’s labors, other people’s consumption.

So I hope to grow my itty bitty retirement savings and invest that. But I’d also like to launch a side hustle—low stakes here; this is just an experiment—to test these waters. I’m considering writing short, targeted eBooks for Kindle or creating digital downloads on Etsy (I would make horticultural-themed visuals for others to incorporate into their collage or mixed media artworks). In either case, my upfront work would be uncompensated, but then I’d have a product that exists, available whenever (if ever) someone wants to buy it.

Honestly, there’s no way I can simply translate the experiences of these early-retirement youngbloods directly into my own life. My particulars are too particular: being a woman; being olderish; being someone with a set of responsibilities that are a foundational given; being someone who is not afraid to do things that are hard, but also being aware that some percentage of these young dudes’ financial triumphs were due—I strongly suspect—to the bottomless, turbo-fueled energy of youth. I no longer have that, but I do have an awful lot of life experiences, and I am able to strategize and curate my energy. So while I can’t do a direct transfer from their lives to mine, I can glean inspiration and ideas that I might be able to tailor to my unique circumstances.

So the playbook isn’t quite gibberish to me, but this whole project requires a very specialized kind of translation and improvisation for me to make these ideas and actions my own.

Here’s Grant Sabatier on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CozVXyli824

Women And Undercompensation: Round 1

I originally wanted to title this:

How Are Women In The Helping Professions Compensated? Like Shit

But I decided I wanted to allow for a somewhat broader discussion, and not limit myself merely to what we call the Helping Professions.

Let me preface what follows by saying that I believe in the value of volunteering and sharing information freely. I grew up in a small town where men and women volunteered broadly and often, and it made life better for everyone. The Volunteer Fire Department; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; workshops at the library on quilting; staffing the weekly sales at the Historical Society--all of that and more was powered by positive volunteer hours and energy. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It all came together to make our little town a great place to grow up and to live.

That having been said, there are many instances in which work goes unpaid or underpaid. To me, it seems that much of this uncompensated work is done by women.

Thoughts and observations:

1.   Most internships are absolute bullshit. They’re great for employers, but deeply suboptimal for interns. In many cases, an employer gets full-time work for zero pay or for nuttiness like $2.08 an hour (e.g., with stuff like a quarterly $500 stipend for half-time work); the intern gets experience—and probably an intern often learns much of value--BUT he or she is frequently expected to work for free or almost free.  And yet, many professions require internships or periods of minimal employment—in some cases, for years—before licensure or certification or professional registration. Clinical counselors, music therapists, and horticultural therapists all have to intern for little or no $$ before they can earn whatever professional designation their field bestows. So it does turn out that a lot of helping professions, which women tend to gravitate toward, require internships, and thus by definition, they also require uncompensated or undercompensated labor.

2.   I started taking a Landscape Construction class last fall. The class was taught by an experienced Bay Area landscape contractor who has worked in the field for the past 30 years. In the first few classes, he emphasized the importance of drawing up a careful, thorough budget when one is submitting a proposal because if you forget something—uh oh! You can’t add it later without really pissing off your client. Anyway, this guy includes everything in the budgets he compiles to inform his bids. He amortizes the truck he bought for his business six years ago, and adds in a fraction of the cost of the new truck he will have to buy to replace this one after twelve years of use. He amortizes the cost of all his tools. I found this all really fascinating because in my field—horticultural therapy, which is largely populated by women practitioners—female horticultural therapists are doing hours and hours of prep work that they don’t invoice for; they are using materials and tools from their own homes that they are not compensated for; and their planning typically goes uncompensated. That’s just the way it is. People expect to pay their landscape contractors a lot of scrilla when they put down new pavers or build a pergola, but many women therapists of various sorts are expected to donate a lot of time and energy to whatever program employs them. Again, I’m talking about the helping professions.

3.   There seems to be an assumption afloat that women are available to volunteer; I don’t think the same assumption is made about men’s time. A friend of a friend had a long-standing association with a private school. When an administrative position opened up, the head of the school asked my friend’s friend if she would volunteer in the position!! (The man who had held the job before had earned well over $100,00 per year for it.) She said no, and they paid her--and well--but wow. Just the idea that he thought it was OK to ask her to volunteer boggles. Recently, I did a talk as part of a speaker series that a former colleague organizes. I knew I wouldn’t be compensated, and that was fine; I thought of it as a one-off and I was happy to do it. Then a guy in the audience who works for the county comes up to me after and says that he’d like me to do the exact same talk all over Alameda County, but he doesn’t have the “fiscal capacity” to pay me. I said I was open to the proposal, but the whole idea didn’t sit right with me. The more I thought about it, and after discussing it with friends, I decided that I really don’t want to spend my time volunteering in this way; my emphasis right now is on building business opportunities for myself, not lining up freebies that eat up my time and energy. Again, Dude: How come you think you can ask me to dedicate time and energy for free? And would you make the same proposal to a man without outlining what’s in it for him? Damn.

4.   I appreciate that Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is talking about the hours of unpaid labor that (mostly) women do in our country raising children, caring for the elderly and ill, and taking care of and nurturing loved ones with disabilities. This conversation comes up in the context of interviews where Yang discusses his Freedom Dividend idea—the most prominent plank in his political platform that proposes that every adult in the United States receive $1000 per month from the government. He always cites the unpaid work his wife does raising their children, one of whom has autism, pointing out that that work is important and should be compensated. I agree, Andrew Yang. And I like that there is no proving worthiness or need with his Freedom Dividend; it’s just something every adult would get, without a lot of cumbersome bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

5. I spend a lot of (uncompensated) time doing other people’s jobs, or pointing out where they have failed in doing their jobs. Two examples: Yesterday, I spent a total of 2.5 hours on the phone (I am not making this up) in two separate calls, one with the IRS, one with my health insurer. We got a letter from the IRS last week telling us that we owed an additional $3,603.37 in taxes over and above what we had already paid for 2018. They “found miscalculations” on our 2018 return having to do with the the child tax credit; credits for other dependents; and my student loan interest deduction. The IRS 1040 form has space for four dependents; if you have more, you need to attach an additional sheet with those other dependents’ names and social security numbers. After waiting half an hour to talk to someone, I learned, over the course of an hour on the phone, that whoever had keyed in our tax information (I mailed our form in, didn’t e-file—my mistake) neglected to include the information about the dependents on the additional page. So that explained the discrepancy with the child tax credit and the credits for other dependents. The student loan interest deduction, which my lender sends to me and the IRS every year, was completely unaccounted for. So we don’t owe them extra money, but now I need to xerox our whole tax return; copy my worksheet for the child tax credit and credits for other dependents; print out the student loan interest form from my lender; and write a letter explaining it all for the next person at the IRS who takes it on, because I can’t simply send it to the person I talked to for 60 minutes today. I also need to schlep it to the post office and mail it out, with a proof of mailing, on my dime. Meanwhile, I got a bill from a doctor I saw last March saying that I owed him $75. Except my highest copay is $35, so I was puzzled. I called Blue Shield, spoke to someone fairly quickly, but then spent a total of an hour on and off hold as that person sorted out my case. Turns out this doctor’s office had submitted the claim twice to Blue Shield. Blue Shield paid up the first time, and denied the claim the second time because they had already paid. So I owe that $35 copay, not $75. Tomorrow, I need to call the doctor’s office and set it straight with them. I can tell you that, as the mother of a child with a lot of medical needs and therapeutic interventions throughout his childhood, I have spent more time than I care to calculate sorting out shit on the phone and through the mail with Blue Shield over the years. In this case yesterday, they were not at fault, but gracious, it took so long to get to the bottom of the issue, it raises a lot of questions about their recordkeeping. I HATE spending life energy and taking up mental real estate with this kind of buffoonery. I’m not going to say that this junk is always the exclusive purview of women, but I know many households where it is, or where it mostly is.

There’s a lot more to say on the topic. Let’s call this Round 1.

Beck’s song, “Soul Suckin Jerk,” while not exactly about the situation I’m describing, captures a kindred feeling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTZd8dq2iGI

The Continuum Of Financial Independence

I really admire all these cats that retire at age 30, age 35 with enough money saved from their good salaries and their wise decisions and their frugal ways. I’m not being facetious here.

But what I want to say is: Getting even some control over your finances can be a big win. I’m not financially free, but I’m free-er than I’ve been in 30 years. I didn’t retire at age 35—or even age 50, for that matter—but I’m moving in a direction of my choosing where I feel like I’m an actor and not simply acted upon.

Somehow, the pivot is what is most important here. At least for me. At least at this point.

Off the top of my head, here are three ways that moving in the direction of financial freedom has made me freer:

         *Because I’ve accumulated a little bit of money this year, I don’t have to panic every time something breaks and needs repair. It’s a really different feeling to hear your car make a weird noise and feel that’s a pain in the neck but it can be dealt with instead of feeling like: “Oh no. Oh no. Oh God no.”

*I’m remembering the fine feeling of challenging myself to grow in a new and important way.

         *I work a very particular muscle every time I interrogate a purchase and decide against making it. It feels good to watch that muscle become stronger.

But I’ve still got a long way to go. Nina Simone captures the sentiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfQNdwgvJMw

"Extreme Cheapskates" Gets You Thinking

Because I’m on this saving money thing, my daughter Nina thought I might benefit from watching a few episodes of a TV show called “Extreme Cheapskates” on YouTube. Being a TV show and all, it features people whose frugality leads them to do things that are gross or cringey. Like the guy who re-uses mouthwash (blech). Or the other guy who bullies his Tinder date into splitting a sandwich with him to save money even though she clearly wants her own pulled pork. Or the mom of four who serves roadkill for dinner. It seems that the show often emphasizes how other people in these cheapskates’ lives feel embarrassed or humiliated by the cheapskates’ actions and habits. Although sometimes the whole family appears to be on board, like when the husband of the roadkill mom sings a roadkill collecting song while the family scans the roadsides for carrion.

And then there’s some puzzling stuff, like the “cheapskate” who finds his coasters in dumpsters. Nina and I were both like: “Coasters! What self-respecting cheapskate needs coasters? Just use an envelope from the IRS or an old water bill or something.” Save that precious dumpster-diving time for essentials, like sneakers and bed linens.

It all gets you thinking though. I found “watching” (I skipped around in about five different episodes) this stuff pretty uninspiring. Because the cheapskates I saw on the program—and there may be other deeper, more analytical cheapskates on an episode that I just didn’t see—didn’t really have meaningful goals or intriguing underlying philosophies. When asked why they do what they do, the cheapskates I saw said things like, “I just don’t like to spend money” or “I like to see all those zeroes in my bank account.” They didn’t talk about accumulating money for the sake of freedom or for the ability to be as generous as one would like. There was no exploration of thoughtless consumption as a force of evil in the world.

The money bloggers, podcaster, and YouTubers I follow all espouse interesting, compelling philosophies that are centered around personal freedom and responsible resource management. That’s what I’m after with all this: freedom and choice. Not seeing zeroes in a bank account for the sake of. It’s about valuing my time, my life energy, my liberty, and my serenity enough to explore how to spend less and save more.

Here are links to the four money-related media I follow that I have found consistently thought-provoking, challenging, and positive:

 Early Retirement Extreme:

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

 Mr. Money Mustache:

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

 Afford Anything Podcast:

https://affordanything.com/podcast/

 Our Rich Journey:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChObmEJP3bgGUXJGc2ePP3Q

U.S. Department Of Education Stafford Loan 650676247010205: RIP

On Tuesday, August 20, 2019, I finally kicked my Stafford Loan’s ass. This feels very good.

I am so grateful to have been able to earn this money in 2019.

The Stafford decimation is the result of shunting nearly all the scrilla I earned and diverted this year into the repayment of this debt: money from everything I sold; money from the Ohm Connect program (Thank you to all the Californians who signed up for Ohm Connect through my link! Very much appreciated.); money from my Horticultural Therapy job; money from filling in for other horticultural therapists on vacation; money from the Words & Color workshops; money from my Wellspring Writing groups; money from paying less on food, on utilities, on water, on gas. I couldn’t have done it on this timetable without my husband making most of the money this year for fundamentals, so big shout-out there.

BUT: No rest for the weary.

Part of the Struggling Goddess project is to get right with money, and extinguishing this loan was a vital Step 1. Now I have two personal loans--one from long ago and far away and the other more recent--that I want to address. The first has been on mind for a long time now, and it will feel very sweet to resolve it.

After that…well, there’s my 10-year plan with multifold end goals that I’ll share soon.

Dee-1’s video, “Sallie Mae Back,” really captures the feeling of throwing off the shackles of those student loans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G383538qzQ

Shopping The Garden First

When you’re trying to eat out of your garden, it becomes less practical to prepare, say, two pounds of green beans, rather than to use each handful of green beans when it’s at its best. Because of the timing of things ripening. There’s definitely an all-at-once with some things—always a lot of tomatoes coming ripe in unison at a certain moment, and a lot of zucchini. But before that moment, there will be a few tomatoes, a few small zucchini, some kale, some shiso, some sorrel, some whatever that’s ready when you walk out to the garden. My goal this summer has been to shop my garden first: What’s nice to eat right now, today, that I can call a meal or a portion of a meal? Then I can add in avocados (which I don’t grow) or chicken or something.

Unless you have a really giant garden (many of us in urban areas don’t), which would allow you to plant enough pole beans and pepper plants and strawberries so you have lots of everything all through the season, shopping your modestly sized garden for a diversity of bits and pieces offers a good method to make use of what you have.

All those ways to use a smidgen of this and a trace of that—soups, stews, salads, stir-fries, and frittatas—can become our best friends in the kitchen in the summer. Personally, I make and eat a lot of salads and stir-fries this time of year, as I like to minimize the cooking when it’s hot out. I also get a lot of pleasure out of just munching stuff straight from the garden.

Eliminating An Entire Budget Line Item

I wash my hair and I kid myself I look real smooth. —Joe Jackson, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”

When I decided to turn my finances around, pay off cumbersome debt, and (I hope), at some point, begin to accumulate some retirement $$, I knew I had to earn more money and spend less money. Spending less meant that I needed to interrogate all my expenses. Most often, this resulted in spending less in a given category, for example, spending less on food, spending less on gas and electric, spending less on water. The categories remained, but the expenditures shrunk.

Except for one category, which, I’m thrilled to report, I (almost) completely abolished: Hair.

I was spending a lot of paper on my hair. And frankly, it wasn’t even looking that great. So it made sense to wrestle this one to the ground.

About a year before I got genuinely serious about money, I had already stopped paying someone to dye my hair. I had started to blonde-henna my hair myself. But I was still making a trip into San Francisco every three months to get my hair professionally cut. Between the cut, the 20% tip, and the BART ride, I was dropping $190 each time. I’m embarrassed to type that, but there it is.

So I called my hair-cutting guy at the beginning of the year and told him I wasn’t going to be coming any more. Cold turkey. My hair has been growing since without intervention. I’m looking forward to when it’s long enough for me to DIY cut it, like this young woman does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-GAilMmCqQ

I don’t even care how it turns out. I’m just after the buzz of doing it myself for free with scissors I already have lying around the house.

Also, there were all the costs associated with shampoo/conditioner/hair oil. I was buying high-end products in an effort to both make my hair look better and to avoid unhealthy ingredients. In February of this year, which was the last time I bought shampoo and conditioner, I spent $108 on two shampoos and one conditioner. Way too much money.

Then I learned about the people who wash their hair daily with water and occasionally with baking soda. I became one of those people. (I will also sometimes use an apple cider vinegar rinse after washing with baking soda.) There’s a lot of information on the internet about how to make this work.

I don’t really count baking soda or apple cider vinegar as hair expenses, since they’re just hanging around my kitchen anyway. I do count the blonde henna, which I use about every eight weeks, so my headline is a bit misleading—I haven’t completely eliminated Hair as a budget line item, but I have come very close. The henna costs $12.50 every time, so that works out to about $6.25 per month plus shipping.

The Ralph Nader Thing

My parents were big fans of Ralph Nader and his consumer advocacy. They were natural consumer self-advocates, and I remember phone calls (“This isn’t what we paid for and I expect a replacement or a refund”) and letters typed on a manual typewriter with a piece of carbon paper to generate copies. They were also consistent about communicating when services or goods they received were especially good. I grew up with a real sense that a single commercial transaction was not the end of the story, that there could be important information and sometimes various actions exchanged after the initial payment, that would fine-tune and improve the experience for the consumer.

I am very much on that bandwagon now.

In the recent past, when I paid for goods or services that were disappointing, I would often do a quick calculus and decide that I didn’t have time to follow up, so I’d just chalk whatever it was up to a loss. Once I decided that my money—all of it—was important to me and deserved respect, I began to take things like this a lot more seriously.

So when I bought three tuberose bulbs that I dutifully planted and cared for and none of them came up, I called the company, which issued a refund. From another company, I ordered ten Star of Persia bulbs but received nine. When I called them, they sent out a whole new batch of ten! Which I very much appreciated, and I let them know. A third company sent me ten plants in 5” pots. I planted them all out on the same day. One died. I phoned the company to report this and they replaced it. That replacement plant is now in blossom and thriving.

These are all botanical examples, but I’m using the principle all over the place. As I understand it, the Nader idea was that consumers, working individually but with a cumulative effect, could nudge companies and corporations to do the right thing and ultimately improve goods and services delivered, creating a life where there’s less settling for junk or inattentiveness, and less time spent doing these kinds of consumer advocacy letters, emails, and phone calls. So it offered an incremental approach to, in some small sense, a bit better world.

For me personally, I like doing this because it shifts me from victim to actor. And it means that, when I do buy something, I’m committed to actually getting my hard-earned money’s worth.

I Wish Someone Would Pay Me To Be Me

Left to my own devices, I keep busy, which is to say, if someone were willing to pay me to be me, they wouldn’t have to worry about me being lazy. Because I’m a lot of things, but lazy isn’t one of them.

I like to think I’m an interesting person (although clearly, self praise is no praise at all, so: caveat emptor), and I would keep occupied with learning and doing things. I have eclectic interests, so that would have to be okay. That is, I’m not going to drill down and learn everything there is to know about ancient Chinese philately. Right now, I’m experimenting with making herbal beers, about to roll out a new one made from roasted acorns and pine tips. I also like to make mead. I read a lot of poetry. I write. I’m learning about the symbols used in ancient alchemical texts. I’m sorting through the junk and crap and stuff that I’ve accumulated over the past 30 years and getting rid of it, slowly. This is a big, emotionally demanding task. I’m assessing my life and figuring out next steps. I’m spending as much time as I can walking outside in the woods. I’m learning about plants all the time: from planting them and killing them, from planting them and seeing them thrive, from books, from other gardeners, from friends and colleagues. Every week, I facilitate the writing and listening classes that I call Wellspring Writing. I’m working two days a week as a horticultural therapist with people with mental illness, which is valuable work to which I believe I am well suited. I’m lucky to be paid to do things that I enjoy and believe are meaningful and (I hope) valuable to others, but I find I should still be earning more scrilla. Thus my thinking wanders to this delicious, fantastical idea about being paid to do what I gravitate toward naturally.

I’m committed to becoming myself, because what’s the alternative? I die and then there’s a me-shaped space left behind in the world that was never properly occupied? That doesn’t feel like a desirable alternative.

However, on account of decisions made when I was younger, when I saw only bottomless opportunities and possibilities, I now have a slew of responsibilities that require me to constantly turn my attention to how to make more $$. Historically, I have not been that good at it, and now I face the very real possibility of working until I drop. Which means the things I feel drawn to—singing, collecting acorns to roast for beer, walking with my beloved dog Ivory—well, I have to try to shut all that off. Because no one is paying me to sing (believe me, I get why) or roast acorns or walk outdoors and note the change of the seasons.

I have no real compelling argument here. Why would it matter if I’m myself as much as I can be or not? What’s the impact—either way--and, given the world we live in I must ask this question although it’s abhorrent to me to do so: Can we put a dollar value on my being me? Because if we can’t--uh oh; I think probably we can’t--I don’t really get to do it, do I?

Except, I do think it matters. Every person that’s genuinely himself or herself, that gets to be himself or herself however he or she manages to arrange it, does all the rest of us a favor, adds some chartreuse and magenta to an otherwise often monochromatic world.

On Paper, It Sounds Like A Good Idea

I’m talking about selling my stuff.

Some stuff that I don’t want any more goes right in the trash. Some stuff I can find a good home for and happily give away. Some stuff is too worn or tired to sell, so I give it to EcoThrift, my local secondhand store.

But some stuff is in great shape, and I often believe it is still valuable. Coupled with the fact that I am trying to make and save money to slay my debt, it would seem like a win-win to sell these valuable items.

And I have sold some things, and always for a good price, because my goal is to get rid of this stuff, and a happy byproduct is somebody else getting a deal. I sold four metal music stands on Facebook Marketplace, a reading program on ebay, and a bunch of books and games and stuff on Amazon Marketplace.

But other things—I take photos of them, I post them on multiple platforms, I answer questions that potential buyers have about the items—and they don’t sell.

I have not been able to discern a pattern regarding what sells and what doesn’t. It all seems pretty random. Things that I thought would probably not move have sold immediately, while things that I’ve thought would fly off the shelf, so to speak, are still sitting in my family room, like forlorn residents of Rudolph’s Island of Misfit Toys.

My point? Selling your stuff requires a lot of curation and, in many cases, at least in my limited experience, ends up being a real pain in the ass. My friend Maria, who is also clearing out decades of stuff from her own house, says this process has to hurt some.

And it does. It’s all about the valuation of one’s time and energy.

The music stands sold quickly and easily, as did the reading program. Other things—well, someone on Facebook Marketplace messages me, saying they would like to buy something I’m selling, we set something up, then they vanish and I never hear from them again. Or scheduling the rendezvous for someone to pick up and buy an item can become very complicated. Or some people want to nickel and dime you to death. Or somebody wants to see a lot more pictures of a given something, and then they don’t buy it. Which is fair, but it means I just spent a lot more time not selling a thing.

There’s also this issue: Once I’ve decided I don’t want you in my house any more—you book or you bicycle or you math program or you organic cotton flannel fabric—I still have to store you until someone buys you if that’s my chosen route. And really, I just don’t want to see you any more. So inventory storage also poses a challenge, and can leave a kind of heavy emotional residue.

 It sounds so good in theory. Turn those items you no longer want into cash! Much more gnarly in practice.

MY POWER TRIUMVIRATE

This kind of thing is very individual, but I’m feeling the necessity, at this point in my life, to make progress in three areas. I also have the sense that, for me at least, they’re inextricably linked:

 1.   Get my finances in order. You already know about this.

2.   Get rid of the 30 years of accumulated s*&!%t in my house.

3.   Get much stronger and more aerobically fit. This kind of thing may be out of reach for me at this point in my life:

 https://www.instagram.com/p/BqbeZceBepa/

But I’m aware that there’s still lots of room for fitness improvement. Lately I’m noticing that I’m starting to make old lady sounds, like a forced exhale when I bend to pick something up, or a kind of grunt when I push or lift something heavyish. Plus my upper body “strength” is pitiful. Right now, my fitness program consists of walking the dog for an hour a day (most days; sometimes we go for a 20-minute mini-walk) and doing stretches because if I don’t my back hurts. So: lots of potential for forward progress.

I think the link is feeling capable, secure-ish, and more in control of some important elements in my life.

WHEREIN I DEFINE WEALTH

There’s always the old standby: Add up the financial value of your Assets and your Liabilities, subtract L from A, and the number you get—that’s wealth…or perhaps poverty, depending on what number you wind up with. Here are some other considerations, aspects of wealth defined:

1.  The quality and richness of a people’s soil, the cleanliness and availability of that people’s water, and the viability of their seeds.

2.  Easy access to wilderness.

3.  Time, both a comfortable quantity of it and an easeful, unrushed quality to it. Time for deep rest; time to walk and sit outdoors, through woods and along beaches; time to spend with precious loved ones, unhurried, not sandwiched between appointments and engagements; time to sink into and become lost in creative expression; time to sing; time to dance; time to notice the hummingbird and the daily changes in the leaves of the trees that are near you; time to make things with your hands; time to prepare and share foods that matter to you; time to engage in activities that demand a respect for time, such as gardening and knitting; time to celebrate and participate in ritual; time to think and imagine; time to dream; time to do things that you’ve always wanted to do.

4.  Abundant connection. Connection to family and close friends; connection to a community of peers; connection to your neighbors; connection to a special tree or two; connection to a pet and/or livestock; connection to a place, such that moving would do damage to your taproot; deep connection to the natural world; a connection to God or god or gods or Goddess or The Goddess or the goddess; connection to thinkers and artists throughout time that touch you, move you, feed you; connection to the ancestors, both the blood relatives and your artistic and intellectual predecessors; a connection to the transcendent and the numinous; a connection to stories and narratives that nourish.

5.  Much love. Love that secures you to your people, your place; love for the natural world; love for what you do, for the moments of your life and how you occupy them; deep love for the sun and the moon; love for your dog and your cats; love for your goats, and sheep if you have them; a love of music and birdsong; a love of art so big that certain paintings, musical compositions, and poems stir you, move you on a deep soul level; a reciprocal love between you and God or god or gods or Goddess or The Goddess or the goddess; the experience of falling in love, across a garden, with a flower, or a fragrance—who hasn’t done that?

6.  Gratitude. Deep, deep gratitude, felt daily and often, for the beautiful world you inhabit and share; for the people you get to love, who love you; for the works of art that you are lucky enough to encounter and to make; for air, water, sunlight, all plants, trees—especially that coast live oak in the backyard, red-tailed hawks, the ocean, moonlight, snails; for life.

7.  Being alive. What a preponderance! What an extravagance!

Struggling Goddess Dilemma #1

You all know that I need to work to get money in order to pry myself out of this tight financial spot I’m in. The thing is, the way we’ve conceived of work and its compensation throws a wrench in another important project of mine.

In the months I spent recovering from cancer and its treatment, I identified and developed ideas and practices that I believe contribute to good health, and in my case, decrease the likelihood that I will develop cancer again. There’s a lot to say about this, but for our current purposes, suffice to say that these efforts fall into six large categories:

1.   A really clean, nutritious, and fortifying diet.

2.   Lots of good quality sleep.

3.   Spending a lot of time moving, outdoors in nature.

4.   Engaging with the enlivening and numinous and fun—encountering mind-blowing ideas, nourishing spirit and soul in various ways, and challenging myself into growth.

5.   Managing stress—this is huge and varied.

6.   Spending time with people I love and like.

 There’s other stuff too, but let’s stick with these biggies.

So a day in which one honored all these needs might look like this:

Wake up and do yoga poses to transition into the day

Meditate

Walk outside in a beautiful natural setting

Prepare and eat a nutritious breakfast. This will include chopping vegetables.

Read poetry

Write

Go swimming in an outdoor pool

Read your book

Prepare and eat a nutritious lunch—more vegetable chopping because Vegetables! Yes!

Meet a friend for tea

Spend time working in the garden

Practice deep breathing

Prepare dinner for yourself and others—and eat it. Lots more veggies.

Short evening walk

Sing with the people you ate dinner with

Take a hot bath

Pray

Note your many blessings

Sleep

In keeping with the optimal self-care theme, one might want to schedule periodic massages and dancing and visits with the Feldenkrais practitioner—all part of stress management. One also needs to squeeze in laundry and cleaning and home maintenance and all that shtick.

Uh-oh!! Hardly any time left for paid work!!

This is the Struggling Goddess Dilemma #1. I want to stay optimally  healthy, but when we throw financial health into the mix, meaning I have to trade my time for $$, I have to sidestep certain things that I know are good for me, or cut large corners. There’s certainly a wonderful satisfaction to working with others if you like what you do—and I do—but it means I’m eating frozen pizza because it’s there and I’m starving when I get home and I didn’t prep foods on the weekend because I was driving my son around and I get to bed later than I would like because I have to do laundry and there’s no time for a hot bath I just collapse into bed by the blessed end of the day. I’m doing good if I walk the dog in the morning and eat a salad.

SNATCHING VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT

A thing that has failed can, if you change its place, be a thing that has come off.

         —Robert Bresson from Notes on the Cinematographer

The very first episode of “Chef’s Table” (on Netflix) features Massimo Bottura, a three Michelin star chef, and his Modena restaurant, Osteria Francescana. During the show, the chef tells the story of how a signature Osteria Francescana dessert was developed. Bottura and his sous chef, Taka, were plating the last two lemon tarts in the kitchen for diners that were waiting for them. Taka dropped one of the tarts; it fell and broke on the counter. Recalling the moment, Taka says that he wanted to commit hara kiri. He obviously felt heartsick about the fumble, and Bottura knew he was miserable.

 At this point in the story, Bottura holds his spread, extended pointer and middle finger of one hand perpendicularly over the spread, extended pointer and middle finger of his other hand, forming a kind of trapezoidal frame. “Taka, stop!,” he told his assistant. “Look through my fingers. That is beautiful!” Bottura took lemon zabaglione and flung it across the plate, then placed the fractured tart on top. For the second tart, Bottura and Taka purposefully recreated the zabaglione graffiti topped with an intentionally broken pastry. Bottura smiles as he recounts the story. “That was the moment in which we created Oops! I Dropped The Lemon Tart,” the famous Osteria Francescana dessert.

 Then Taka says this: “That day, I learned something. A person who wants to move forward in life learns from mistakes.”

 Uh-oh! Wrong lesson, Taka! This event wasn’t some hold-your-nose-and-take-your-medicine-learn-from-your-mistakes-maybe-you’ll-do-better-next-time thing. This was much more positive and radical: Stand in a different part of the room, and get a different angle on your “mistake.” Frame it in various ways. Keep moving around until it looks beautiful. Mistake recast as Victory, not Mistake As Puritanical Yet Necessary Life Lesson.

 I’m so grateful to Bottura for this perspective! This is my Struggling Goddess challenge. I can certainly identify past financial errors and missteps. And sometimes, a mistake may be just a mistake and it may be folly to cast it as beautiful. (Maybe not, though; I’m not sure about this, remaining open.) BUT, certainly, sometimes one can assume a different perspective and see the beauty. At the very least, I can acknowledge that every decision had its own logic in its own moment—an internal, contextually specific beauty, let’s say—and somehow, this sequence of events and decisions has landed me where I am now: grateful to be alive, juiced by the challenges I face, and ready to step forward.

Playlist To Soften The Pain Of Tax Time

I hate doing the taxes, and so I always leave it until the last minute, which was this past weekend. I have a money-themed playlist, developed over the years, that I allow myself to play only when I’m working on the 1040 and all the schedules are done. Then I play it over and over until I hammer it into the finish line.

This year, the 1040 was changed by the sadists at the IRS, so I found my playlist particularly nurturing as my brain throbbed from this kind of nonsense:

If Line 32 is greater than Line 15, multiply the number on Line 498 by 0.9837 and write the result here and on Line 4 of Schedule Z.

If Line 32 is less than Line 15, muffle your screams and write the lesser of Line 89 or Line 105 here and, if you retain consciousness, on Line 70 of Form 896 (see Pub 7468 for instructions).

Here’s my list:

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks

—Where’s the money?

James Hunter

—Don’t do me no favors

Aloe Blacc

—I need a dollar

Blu Cantrell

—Hit ‘em up style

Destiny’s Child

—Bills bills bills

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

—Money

Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli from Cabaret

— Money makes the world go ‘round

Johnnie Taylor

—Last two dollars

Pink Floyd

—Money

O’Jays

—For the love of money

William DeVaughn

—Diamond in the back

Barenaked Ladies

—If I had a million dollars

Flight of the Conchords

—Inner city pressure

Abba

—Money money money

Barrett Strong

—Money (That’s what I want)

Beatles

—Taxman

Johnny “Guitar” Watson 

—Ain’t that a bitch?

Dire Straits 

—Money for nothing

Cage the Elephant

—Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked

George Harrison 

—Got My Mind Set On You

Travie McCoy

—Billionaire

THE SIMPLE FORMULA

After far too long of not paying good attention to money and its movement in and out of my life, I am now working with the simplest of formulas:

 1.   Make money.

2.   Spend as little of it as possible.

For this initial period (2019), my heat-seeking-missile goal is to extinguish 31,123.81 remaining dollars of educational debt. This is a Stafford Unsubsidized Government Student Loan--the kind that sucks the marrow out of your bones. Between the time I type this:

 A

 And this:

 B

I’ve accumulated interest. Between every inhale and exhale, I accumulate interest. Great Lakes Education Corporation—a company the federal government uses to service student debts, and the one that got assigned to me, by what process I know not—tallies the flesh and blood I owe them each day and adds it to the flesh and blood owed from the day before.

Since December, I’ve been paying the debt—it’s actually two different loans, with different interest rates—aggressively, or as aggressively as I’m currently able: $4,000 in December, $3,000 in January, and later this month, another $3,000. This is money that I’ve earned and saved by shaving and eliminating expenses, and I bundle up as much as I can each month and hurl it at the student debt.

I took on this loan while I was a graduate student. But it wasn’t to pay for my master’s program, as I went to an affordable state school. I used it to pay my daughter’s tuition at her fancypants East Coast undergraduate institution.

My goal—through earning and not spending—is to slay this blood-sucking monstrosity by the end of 2019. Then I will turn my attention to Operation: Mary Gets To Retire Before She Croaks.

I do need to say a couple of additional things about this. I knew what I was getting into when I took on these loans—to some degree. For example—and shame on me for this—I knew the interest rates of each of the two loans I took on, but I didn’t investigate precisely how interest was going to accrue (daily). And while I knew interest was going to accrue while I was still in school, I didn’t crunch the numbers, so it was a surprise to me when I graduated and found that the $37,000 that I had taken on in loans had swelled to over $40,000.

While most undergraduates should be able to get subsidized loans, some of their financial aid package may very well include these unsubsidized products. And, in terms of loans, graduate students are typically only offered the unsubsidized creatures. The colleges and universities that facilitate the handing out of these loans do not provide a lot of information along with the offer of the money. I had young classmates in my graduate program who took the loans offered and used the money for a down payment on a new car. So when they graduated—as music majors, not the highest-earning field of study—they had the monthly payment on these loans AND monthly car payments! Ouch!

Why do we have this usurious, vampirish system that sucks the life and plasma out of young people just when they’re getting started in their professional lives?  How can this possibly benefit our country? Why can’t educational loans be very low interest—no more than 2%? And why can’t we require financial literacy classes for any student before he or she takes out an educational loan? This would be a place where students could seriously crunch the numbers—have a good idea of starting salaries possible given their educational choices; consider cost of living in places where they would like to live; and understand, eyes wide open, how long they will be paying off their loans and how much it will cost them over time. (I am currently in what Great Lakes calls “Extended Level Repayment,” which is the 25-year plan! Although you and I know that I’m really on the 1-year plan.) Maybe they could also calculate what would be different in their young lives if they didn’t take on the loans they’re considering. And finally, maybe a class like that could include some alternative financial viewpoints—e.g., a debt-averse, savings-oriented perspective.

Here We Go

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on my life in its entirety, and finding it hard to connect the dots. I can’t really pull a simple narrative thread from my youth and childhood through my adult years into my now. What I am finding is that certain habits of mind, perspectives, and values that I grew up with are bubbling up again as important parts of myself that I’ve overlooked for a long time. One area where this is true-true is money.

My parents did not believe in credit, thought it was a trap and an illusion, and bought things only when they had the scrilla accumulated to buy outright. I remember going with my dad to a car dealership and watching him peel green bills off a wad to buy new wheels. My parents paid cash money for the acre lot I grew up on and then proceeded to design and build the house themselves. I grew up thrifty and careful with money, was taught about the importance of savings, and how It’s not how much you earn, it’s how much you don’t spend. I took it all to heart and diligently built savings in my passbook account.

Then stuff happened, and I’m not even sure what all. My husband and I adopted a much more reckless relationship to credit and money. We both certainly bear responsibility. Very long story short, we now find ourselves—by any calculus—well past middle age; neck deep in mortgage and educational debt; and with very real financial responsibilities for the education and care of certain of our children.

My discomfort with all this has evolved to the point where I no longer want to live like this, and I absolutely abhor the thought that some of the debt we’ve taken on might actually outlive us.

So I’ve re-entered the workforce after 15 years away, during which I cared for an ill child and then lived through my cancer diagnosis and treatment. I’m also working hard to cut expenses in all categories.

This emphasis on cutting expenses has led to my discovering some blogs dedicated to early retirement and related money matters, specifically Early Retirement Extreme and Mr. Money Mustache. Both are interesting blogs with interesting comments and a lot of valuable info, but both are also written by men younger than I am; each of them retired at age 30. (At this point, I would be PSYCHED to retire by age 70.) There’s also an interesting and valuable blog, Afford Anything, by Paula Pant, a 30-something woman who has thoughtfully managed her money so she now lives on passive rental income. But I haven’t found blogs by older women who need to dig out of a hole, and feel determined and willing to do so. Thus the Struggling Goddess was born.

So here I be. As a result of my experience with cancer and my recovery from its treatment, I believe I have had access to some of the most foundational truths about what it means to be a human being, e.g., Love is everything. All life is interconnected. We still don’t understand or have language for some of the most important things, such as, What does it mean for every cell in your body to feel the cold water of the ocean or the warmth of a September breeze? At the same time, I’m a complete novice, taking Baby Steps on my Money Journey, trying to learn from people who have done a much better job with all this than I have.

I feel very vulnerable talking about money issues. Is this the ultimate taboo? Especially when you’ve botched it, and your Money Story is a cautionary tale, not a triumphant Hero’s Journey? These issues and my current work with them occupy a great deal of my waking hours.

Big thanks to Nina and Peg for naming this section!