Category Archives: money

Learning Personal Finance

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We went to the farmer’s market in Hinesburg yesterday. I emptied my wallet. I didn’t even get all I could have gotten, but our bag was full and the kids were antsy. Next time I’ll bring two bags. And make the kids carry one.

This market was great. I arrived with my two children right when it opened, at 9:00. It was held in the Hinesburg Town Hall. There is a summer farmers market weekly but once the fall hits it whittles down to once per month. We missed the one in October so I was eager to be there for this one.

I purchased leeks, onions, potatoes, garlic, spinach and other stuff. I was happy enough. I was looking for food. My daughter, however, was looking to spend some money.

I had told her I would give her some money so she could buy some things herself. The space is small and I figured it wouldn’t be crowded first thing. So I gave her five bucks and told her she buy whatever she wanted. We did a lap to start us off, to see who was there selling what. We tasted a purple carrot and looped back around. At the first vendor she bought a delicata squash, a tiny one, but cute and just right for her. A couple of tables down she bought some popcorn. It was purple, still on the cob but dried, four ears for a dollar. She bought four. Then she bought some of those purple carrots. She considered a stone charm, but it was five dollars and she didn’t want to blow it all in one shot.

This was great for both of us. She felt a sense of responsibility and I felt safe with her learning some lessons in how to spend money. I really don’t think I could have said no to anything there she may have said she wanted to buy. It was a farmers market.  She wants to buy carrots and mini squash? I’m good with that. She wants to but some jewelry made by someone here in town?  I’m good with that.  She wants to buy honey, jam, hand spun yarn, fresh bread, eggs? How can I say no? It was ideal.

She is now the eager one, asking when the next market will be. There is one every Saturday somewhere around here. The next one is in Burlington, then Winooski, Shelburne, and back in Hinesburg again. And there are  others well into the winter. My daughter would gets the shakes if she saw all the vendors in Burlington compared to little old Hinesburg. I’m thinking we may have to take advantage of that. I can give up five bucks for this endeavor for several weekends if she is still into it. I have been wanting to go to these this fall and winter anyway. Fresh local food this late in the year? I can go out of my way for that.

The eggs we bought yesterday and way good, and I turned cauliflower, spinach, garlic and leeks into a fine dinner tonight. And the popcorn? Pops white, tastes great. And that was just one ear. That popcorn may have been the best deal of the lot.

Free Stuff, Pretty Much

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Recently we ordered a new computer, a Mac.  We also ordered an iPod Touch and a printer.  We are getting a pretty good deal, if you ask me.  If you don’t ask me I still think it is a good deal.  It is all sort of free.

How might you get a computer and an iPod and a printer for free, you ask?  Like this:  Apple has a deal right now for educators–if you order a new Mac you can get an iPod Touch for free.  Well not exactly free, but you can get a rebate for the cost of the thing, so it counts as free in my book.  So that was an incentive (aside from our aging computer showing some hints of age).  When you order a Mac you also can get a rebate on a printer.  The rebate is the same as the cost of the printer.  We did spring the extra 30 bucks so the printer will be wireless (and host a copier and a scanner) so we are out of pocket a Hamilton and a Jackson at this point.

The computer wasn’t directly free.  We have been saving points from our credit card for a while now.  We wanted to just use those to get a computer but that wasn’t an option.  You can use your points for a lot, but not that.  You can, however, use your points for a mortgage payment.  They make the check out to your mortgage holder and send it to you to send in as a payment.  You can get it for whatever amount, so we got one for the cost of the computer.  We pay for the computer instead of the mortgage and it’s a wash.

All three of the items on our order were shipped separately, from different places.  The printer was shipped first and arrived yesterday.  It came late, at 8:30, right when the children were falling asleep, of course.  I met the FedEx driver on the porch and he had three packages.  One was some unlrelated clothing my spouse had ordered.  Then there were two printers.  I asked if he was sure they were all for us.  “Yup, the two printers and this smaller package,” was his response.  Sure enough, both printers had the right name and address.

Right away I checked to make sure I had not ordered two printers by mistake.  I had, indeed, only ordered one.  The tracking number was only attached to one.  Our order status only reflected one.  Apple had made a mistake.  So we called.  Maybe you would not have called but we felt it would be the right thing to do.  Good karma and all that.  My wife asked “What if you made a mistake but we are happy with the mistake?”  The rep at Apple asked if we would use a second printer.  Then, with the answer affirmative, said we could just keep it.

So we had to pay an extra 30 bucks but then we got an extra printer.  We may actually be ahead after all this.  We aren’t sure what we will do with the extra printer yet.  Use it at home?  Sell it?  Give it to someone who could really use it?  Like a nonprofit agency?  We will have to decide at some point.  That thing is taking up space.  And it is a good printer.

The Touch came today and I am taking precious time away from exploring its features to write this.  But it is a good story, no?  The computer is scheduled to arrive on Saturday.  I can’t imagine they would make the same mistake twice.  But one can hope, no?

Thinking About Integrity

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I continue to spend a bunch of time painting when I can fit it in.  I had the idea that I might paint all the trim on our house this summer, but that is clearly not to be.  There is too much left to do and my flexible time is about over.  One week and I am back into the swing of things with work full time.  So it goes.  I’ve got weekends, right?  I got up early and painted this morning.  I removed the doors from our deck yesterday, took them right off the hinges and set them up in the garage on sawhorses.  I scraped and sanded them and primed them yesterday.  Then they had to dry for a day so we had a night without doors onto the deck.

Of course, we had some intense thunderstorms last night.  Heavy rain and wind and those big flashes of lightning that make everything seem more dramatic in the dark.  I hung a couple of towels at the base of the doors to at least catch the splashing.  That worked out just fine.  This morning I got up early again to paint the doors lying down in the garage.  They were waiting patiently for me.  That is done.  Now I still need to scrape the windows, clean the glass, reattach the clips for the storm glass, rehang the doors, and rehang the storm glass.  Almost done with that task.  All that needs to get done by this afternoon when we have visitors coming.

Anyway, with all this time prepping and painting, I have some time to think.  I spent the other day thinking about my brother and the path his life has taken and the opportunities he has not in front of him.  This morning I thought about morals and integrity.  The book of the summer for me has been John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent.  The plot of the story revolves around one man’s struggle with his principles.  Under pressure from his family he winds up making his fortune, but only after making some decisions that are morally questionable.   While I slapped on latex I thought this.  The book was, according to Steinbeck, written in part to address a decline of integrity in American culture.  That decline has not been stopped.

I was thinking about how we prize money in our culture over most anything else.  We don’t think long term.  We don’t look at the big picture.  Have a loss this quarter?  The company must be in trouble.  But what company can grow every quarter.  That seems an impossible thing to ask.  But this pressure to make profits means that companies, meaning the people who run them, think more about dollar profits than they do about costs to the environment, to health, to workers.  The people who run companies often compromise moral principles for short term gain.  That is too bad, since I would prefer to shop from companies that are simply, well, better, not just who offer better products.

OK, I’m generalizing, but can anyone, conservative or liberal or anywhere in the middle, really believe that our moral compass is pointing us in the right direction?  Our cruel and polluting food system is a tragedy, yet food companies work to hide that fact (see Food Inc.) and we seem to truly want to be ignorant of where our food comes from;  otherwise we might have to make a moral choice.  Many of us hardly know our neighbors.  We fill our homes with stuff without regard to how that stuff was made or who made it or what will happen to it when we toss it.  We accept layoffs of a thousand people as just the cost of business.  What gives?

Right now, our health care system is an embarrassment.  What we need is a system where everyone is covered and we don’t spend billions of dollars on advertising for prescription drugs or on overhead to run insurance companies.  I know that many people just don’t want to rock the boat, but come on here people.  Medicare and Medicaid spend far less on overhead that any insurance company, yet we think the insurance system we have now just needs a little tweaking?  Maybe this just makes me sound like what conservatives like to disparagingly call a liberal.  If being a liberal means asking questions and thinking about what makes the most sense for “we the people” (remember them?) then I guess I am one. When I hear people criticizing a bill that would help improve our health care system (at least it would move it in the right direction) by denouncing its support of euthanasia, which isn’t even in the bill, then I have to ask, what is wrong with us?

So I get Steinbeck’s ire at a declining sense of morality, of a loss of principles, and that was 50 years ago.  What would he think today?  What would he write today?  Not that it matters.  he was trying to point it out in 1960 and things haven’t changed a whole lot.  Some would say things have gotten worse.  And this brings me back to thinking about my brother.  He has tried to do the right thing and has made lots of sacrifices for his daughter, who is a teenager.  He has lived in his home town his whole life and did not move, although he wanted to, in large part to do as much as he could for his kid.  And now, despite his desires, she is moving with her mother half way across the continent.  That move isn’t right or wrong;  it is the situation to be had.  My brother has tried all along to do the right thing.  I respect him for that.  It often is not easy to do.

In Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, Da Mayor tells Mookie, “Always do the right thing….That’s it.”  That has stuck with me for 20 years.  One can’t really be sure much of time what the right thing is, but that shouldn’t be a barrier to doing it.

Does all this make sense?  Maybe so and maybe not.  It’s what I have to offer from my musings while painting.  I was in the garage, and the circulation was limited, so there may be some fume-addled ideas here.  In any case, it’s what you get, at least for today.

Up Too Early?

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I couldn’t sleep.  The clock said 5:30.  Then my son stirred and I went in to see him.  He went back to sleep.  I didn’t.  I considered sitting outside for a while.  It’s too wet.  It rained and rained last night.  More rain.

I finished reading Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent recently.  It takes place in 1960.  A different time.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  The story line is not particularly complex but the characters are so deeply drawn that the story is a deep one.  Our hero leads a happy life, one of simplicity and ease but his family and others, and himself, point out how his family was once a great one in the town and how he once had a fortune.  This leads him to make some choices to “get rich.”  I figured, half way through, that the story would have one of two endings.  Either he succeeds at getting rich and shows everyone that being a good guy can pay off, or he crashes and burns and we learn how only the ruthless can succeed.

Like life, the ending isn’t so simple.  He does manage to overcome some challenges and find a way to increase his financial resources.  He “gets rich.”  The story, however, tangles with two big questions for me.  What is really important in life?  And what is the nature of morality?  Before he began to make any changes to make his new fortune, our hero is a grocery clerk, the only one in the local store (remember this is 1960 and the interstate highway system that feeds today’s supermarkets is in its infancy), and he is happy, mostly.  His relationships with his friends and neighbors are genuine and positive.  Those become complicated and darker.  He keeps secrets from his wife.  His son, who already has the idea that one can make it in the world by cheating, sees that maybe hard work isn’t necessary after all.

The hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, has two teenaged children and a devoted and loving wife.  I couldn’t help imagining my own life when my two children grow just slightly older.  What will my relationship with those three most important people in my life be like?  How will the choices I make affect them?  What will I teach my children with the choices I make about work, money, love, friendship?  Ethan makes some decisions that today would seem acceptable to most people, almost 50 years later, but he struggles with them so much he considers suicide.  Can one get rich and maintain a true moral compass?  Can one do business with someone and still remain friends?  Why do we need to get rich anyway?

I guess part of the reason Ethan stands out for me is that he is a thinker.  He really thinks about all the pieces of his life.  He carefully considers how every decision, every act, will affect otehrs.  When his world is the simple one of a grocery clerk, the answers are simple ones.  Once he starts making big changes, his thinking becomes tangled.  He still thinks a lot but it means lots of mental wrestling, rather than mental play.  Things aren’t so simple.  I guess I can relate to that.  I tend to think a lot as well.  If I were the one opening the grocery store, I can imagine myself, like Ethan, sermonizing to the canned goods.  Talking aloud helps me think better, as it does for our hero.

I keep thinking now, about the book, about my own choices, about where I might be headed.  I think about morality.  What is good?  How does one live the decent life?  And what is that anyway?  I am going away for a week with my family.  I will have some time to ponder these questions.  My children are awake now.  Water still drips from the eaves.  Time to make coffee.  This day, at least, will be one filled with thought, but hopefully, no great choices to make.  Drip drip, the rain falls.  Then everything dries.  And then, at a time no one can say, it will rain again.

Some Positive Economic News, At Least for Me

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I used to listen to National Public Radio a whole lot more.  When we moved to this house we did not put a radio in the kitchen, and that is a place I like to listen.  When I am whipping up some tasty meal, I can hear what they have to say.  This morning I was whipping up four-berry muffins and I wanted to listen.  But no radio.

Actually, that is not true.  We have a radio in the kitchen.  It is a wind-up generator radio.  Wind the crank and it charges the battery.  It works great, but the battery does not last long.  I need to keep winding it.  And winding it.  I want to use this radio.  I like the idea of listening to an electronic device without using electricity from the grid.  But, I admit, I rarely do.  I don’t want to keep winding.

There is another option, however.  This radio has the option to charge the battery with electricity from the grid.  Plug it in and charge and off we go.  I could keep it plugged in and listen as long as we have power.  This morning I decided that I was ready to choose that option.  The problem, however, was that I haven’t ever used the power cord.  And I had no idea where it might be found.

This took me to the basement.  Our basement is still full of boxes and baskets and bins from when we moved to this house two and a half years ago.  We slowly empty them and slowly bring new ones down.  The result is clutter stasis.  So when I go to look for a power cord, and I know I just saw the box full of them down in the basement recently, I get stymied.  I can’t find doodly-squat down there unless I get lucky.

I searched and searched to no avail.  I did bring up a mason jar to use for the bulk popcorn I just purchased at Healthy Living, so the voyage to the underworld was at least worthwhile for that, but I never did plug in the radio.  And, to bring this around to the point, I saw an envelope on the floor.  The envelope contained two $50 savings bonds.  Why it was on the floor was a mystery, but I figured that was not the ideal storage location for paper that had any value, due to the occurrence of mildew on such floors.  And so, in my wisdom and readiness to take action, I picked it up.

Now I was fully distracted from finding the power cord.  I had a jar to wash and some savings bonds to check out.  With the savings bonds in the envelope was a letter from the Hartford Courant.  It noted how my service as a newspaper carrier was superb, blah blah blah, and here was a token of appreciation.  I only received one savings bond with that letter, as I recall.  The other came later.  I decided I should find out how much they might be worth these days.

I turned, as is the norm in our house, to the internet for answers.  Ten years ago I might have just wondered about it and found a better spot for the envelope, but now I’ve got Google.  Google led me to the government web site with information on savings bonds, including a calculator to tell me the value of my investments.  As I have mentioned, two of my traits are wisdom and readiness to act, so I used the calculator.  I found out the bonds’ values and also learned a few things.

One of the bonds, issued in 1981 (have I actually held onto the thing for that long?) is worth $131.  The other, issued in 1986 (same question) is worth about $85.  That seemed a big difference for issue dates only five years apart, so I read more.  It turns out savngs bonds earn interest based on when they were issued, and the interest rates can vary quite a bit.  I couldn’t find interest rates for the earlier one but I did learn that the one issued later has a minimum rate of return of 7.5%.

That made me look twice.  Did it really say 7.5%?  Who gets a guaranteed rate of return of 7.5% these days?  You’d be lucky if you could earn 4% on a CD these days.  The rate chart only went back to 1982 but the rate on the bond from 1981 must be higher.  Get this–the highest rate I saw on the chart was from 1982 at 13.05%.  And this is supposed to be a safe investment.  Safe indeed.

So the good economic news is that I have $216 worth of savings bonds, and I have two years before the first one stops earning interest.  Considering these were purchased for half face value, that is a fine rate of return, especially since I didn’t purchase them myself.  Now, we’re not talking a huge amount here, but by 2016 I can cash them both and do something with those earnings.  Of course I will probably just reinvest them.

So it is good to know that I’ve got something, a little buffer, sitting in that envelope.  I keep reading bad economic news.  Here, at least, is some good news, if only for me.  Now I need to go get that fireproof safe I have been considering for years.  Then I can really stop worrying.  At least about a few things.  Then maybe I get on top of all the crap in the basement and, finally, I’ll be able to listen to radio while I make muffins.

“Night” Skiing

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We went up as a family to Bolton Valley this evening for one last bout of night skiing.  The last time I did this was with my daughter, just the two of us, before the daylight savings shenanigans; we skied under the lights and had a blast.  The children were disappointed that there was still plenty of daylight tonight.  We left just after 7:00, the sun setting as we walked back to the car.

Since we lived up at Bolton Valley, we have known that this time of year one can find some of the best skiing to be had.  There is plenty of snow by now and the days are warm enough to soften up even the gnarliest ice.  And now we have sunlight so late that it is more enjoyable than working with the shadows of the bright lights.  In December scores of people are on the mountain.  Often it is icy and thin and crowded and that, I can tell you, is not what I’m talking about.

People get sick of skiing once the warm weather hits.  School skiing programs end.  I think a lot of people kind of forget about it.  They start biking and skateboarding and whatnot.  Spring activities get underway.  Who wants more snow?  At least it seems that is the question that gets asked.  But it really is the time to hit the slopes.  Spring skiing means warm air, fewer people and lots of snow.  What’s not to like?

We were not up there long tonight.  We did a few runs, ate the light dinner we brought, shared a waffle from the waffle cabin and headed home in the fading light.  We will head up again tomorrow to ski with friends.  We are now debating whether or not to purchase season’s passes for next year.  My daughter is now old enough that we need to purchase a pass for her.  With the current prices (“low” for now, soon to rise) it would cost us over a thousand bucks.  Is it worth it?

If we go as many times as this year, and take advantage of discounts and deals when we find them, we might come out even or even ahead when it comes to the bottom line.  The problem is that without passes we will likely go less.  Every time we consider going it will become a financial decision–Do we want to spend a hundred bucks for a couple of runs? Some of those times we will decide not to go because our answer will be no.  Do we want to decide whether we go today or wait until tomorrow?  Or do we want to decide whether we go skiing this weekend at all?

It is a tough call.  I get that we are fortunate enough to be in the position of parsing the details of this question.  I want our kids to learn to ski or ride and choose for themselves if it is a sport they want to pursue.  That means getting them out when they are young.  Just going a handful of times would be fun, but to really learn it they need to do it a lot.  Whether we get passes or not we are talking some bucks.

We had a good time tonight.  Since we spent the money on passes months ago, we had the incentive to go so we get our money’s worth, and we also could feel fine with just a few runs.  Next year could be a different story.

Bouncing Interest Rates

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We have been thinking about refinancing lately.  You know, get a lower interest rate and save tens of thousands of dollars over the next way too many years, not to mention pay less every month.  We are one of the lucky few to be eligible for the best rates so we have been on the lookout.  It hasn’t worked out quite yet.

Our current interest rate is 6.125%.  That isn’t bad.  We were certainly happy with it when we got that big old loan to begin with.  But then rates dropped.  The first time I really looked, about a week ago, the best rate for our loan holder was 4.75%, according to the web site.  That was less.  I got on the phone to talk to someone about what all this means and what it might cost and while I was on the phone the rate rose to 5.125%.  Of course, I had to wait about 20 minutes on hold, but I didn’t think it would change that much while I was listening to the muzak version of Journey’s greatest hits.

I asked about this, of course, not being one to simply accept that things are the way they are.  The customer service rep told me that interest rates get posted four times each day, and so might change four times on any given day, or not.  She suggested I sign up to get an email when rates drop to the lower interest rate.  I thought that might not be a bad idea.

Interest rates did go down.  I never got the emails telling me this because they got sent to my spam folder.  So the email I most wanted to receive and had asked to get were being junked, while the ones from Melissa Jane Mastel promoting events in upstate New York keep getting through even though I have labeled them as junk scores of times.  I guess I need to accept things are the way they are more often.

Anyway, rates dropped, then dropped again.  They went down to 4.625%, which meant we would save 1.5% off our current rate.  Sign me up.  I called last night to nake it happen and got a message saying the wait would be an hour and a half.  That was bad timing, given the need to get the children to bed and then eat a large bowl of chocolate ice cream.  So I waited.  By the time I was ready to call them back  it was 8:01 PM.  They closed at 8:00 PM.

So I looked again this morning.  Rates were up to 4.75%.  I called and got a wait time of 20 minutes.  After 40 minutes, I had to go, so I hung up.  Then rates rose to 4.875% and ended the day at 5.125%.  What’s up super ball?  Stop bouncing around so much.  So we are right back where we were when we started looking.  Do we do what we can to take this rate now?  Or do we wait to see if rates go down again?  What if they go up?

I know they won’t change until Tuesday, since the markets will be closed, so we have some time to think about it.  We don’t want to change our lender.  They seem to have the best deal, and they certainly have the best customer service (aside from the long wait times).  I guess we wait and see.  We missed out on a way low rate and I won’t let that happen again.  Now that I have been paying attention for a couple of weeks, I understand things a little better.

I just hope that rates keep dropping.  The national average dropped to its lowest ever yesterday, so I am hopeful.  But whatever.  It’s only tens of thousands of dollars we’re talking about.  It’s not like I plan to retire.  Ever.  Or send my kids to college.  I’m thinking that maybe I can harness the power of the cold to make some extra cash for those things.  It was -20 this morning so if I can do that, maybe the kids can avoid the low-paying job after all.