Still the Flow . . .

Did I say double? I meant to say, since that was the beginning of something that was out of control, my credit debt began to grow exponentially. I had married this time to have peace in my life. Which translated into whatever it took to make her happy is what we did. New car, buy a house, three times a year trips to visit her folks in Canada or Florida,dance conventions several weekends a year,too. Not that I didn't enjoy it. I love to travel. I like the west coast of Florida in April and the snow in Canada on temporary basis. I liked feeling that I was a part of something besides my work which suddenly came to a screeching halt when I decided to retire early and get out on my own. But something had to pay for all this, even when your credit limit is $35K per card. One day I realized I was borrowing money to pay monthly minimums of $650. I was maxed out and so was she apparently. I discovered that she was more interested in her newly acquired inhertitance than in staying married. The credit debt was in my name. So long, sayanarra, and by the way, have you ever heard of bankruptcy?

Going With the Flow, continued . . .

At the time it seemed like the best plan. I had been living alone for years. My son grown enough to know what he wanted at 18 had moved to Santa Barbara several years before. And finally, I had packed up all my books and left the noise of the city for a small town on the edge of the ocean. I needed a change I guess. I needed something emotional maybe. I needed, at the bottom of it to be in something that mattered. Anyway, those turned out to be the wrong kind of reasons. I bought a car. I began to remember how a car actually owns you. Maintenance, repair, insurance, gas, parking fees . . . I hated it. I let my wife drive it while I still rode my bike to work 20 miles each way. But we had to have a house to live in. I'd always rented, like the main character in the John Barth's The Floating Opera, preferring to pay as I went rather counting on a future.

But rent for a two bedroom house is three times the cost of a studio. Furniture, hell, I'd done with just a bed, table and chairs, board and brick book shelves for years. Now we needed a couch, refrigerator, washer, dryer, things and more things, a second car. Then she didn't like her job primarily because she had to work during the summer while I still, now with the use of credit, hit the beach. By the time we split, I was $10,000 in debt and totally stressed. At least she took one car and most of the furniture, and of course my favorite albums.

I began a single life again with an extra room to rent and a futon to sleep on. Luckily, I had always ridden my bike so I found myself slowly finding my old level of comfort but with one significant change. I had gotten used to using credit to pay for things. While I wasn't paying attention, I had moved into a social world that necessitated clothes of a certain style. No more sandals and bare feet. I found that if I wanted I could maintain this life style and take my summers off too. Just use credit cards and pay the minimum. What was worse was in a couple of years I married for the third time. And all my expenses more than doubled.

This week I plan . . .

to go with the flow. I liked what I was doing and thinking about last week so much that I am going to keep looking at it this week too. But first I need to explain why I am taking this approach to Personal Finance blogging. I am never very comfortable telling people what to think or what to do. I can give advice but I'd much rather listen and then feed back questions that can help see the topic more clearly.

I don't can food, nor go out of the way to put together recipes, though I am an excellent cook. I prefer to keep things simple. Steamed veggies, I fill the pot and then eat the leftovers for lunch or dinner until they're gone. The same with pasta or with a beef stew in a crock pot. But here's the thing. I could pretend that you've never heard of this stuff and write about like Oh here's a great idea. But it would be a pretense. In life and in my cooking, I season to taste, my taste. I laugh when people ask me how I cooked such a great meal because for me everything is based in experience. First hand.

I read a lot of fiction, and, since T. and I started investing, I am discovering that non fiction writers have become much more literary in their style. Possibly because first person writing has, since the 1990's, been what has been taught in the public school English classes. Or maybe it's because memoir writing has become so popular. But I have found over the years that the more often I recommend a book the less often it gets read. I think its because most people don't like to be told what they should like. Either way, I prefer to tell people about what I'm reading if I am asked or if I feel the need to understand it better myself by writing about it here. Then people can take it or leave it be.

As far as personal finance goes, I know what happened to me as I grew older. There was a time when money was scarce and we ate a lot of potatoes. That was when my family was a wife, a new son, then a new daughter and I was really stretching myself thin between trying to support us and finish college. Then we added a third son. I walked to work, we used the bus if we needed to travel around town, and lived with the entertainment of the radio. Luckily, for us, radio was really good in those days, with jazz hours and radio plays and sports announcers who could let you see the game through their words. And then we had FM before it went commercial. Just about the time I finished my schooling we got a car but I had learned a powerful lesson. You can do what you have to do especially if you are willing to finance it with your own sweat equity. Though I would have laughed in those days if anyone would have suggested such a term for what I was doing working three jobs and going to grad school too.

But though I learned that banks don't help poor people, credit lending companies do, I didn't learn the big lesson about finance all at once. I learned that something in my upbringing taught me to better myself, though I can't really pin down what the something was. After ten years of marriage, we decided that we had different plans, my wife and I, and we went our separate but equal ways. That's when I began to discover what kind of a parent I was, as one son, the oldest, stayed with me and the other two came to visit on the weekends and during the summers.

I grew up mentally in the 70's. I learned that I liked letting people make their own decisions as a teacher and as a parent. I learned that living with the consquences was the best way for independence to develop for all concerned.

Meanwhile, I began living a life from day to day. I worked ten months of the year so I could spend my summers on the beach. I fell back on the old days of no car, no tv, no phone. I rode a 10 speed bike or walked or hitched. I used Grey Hound. But I didn't save for the future beyond each year. I spent it all. Alimony, child support, rent, food and 20% of each monthly check into a savings account for the summer months. Carpe Diem!

Of course, that all ended when I decided to remarry.
To be continued . . .

The Man with the $20 Bill, pt. 2

But now that he'd thought about May, he couldn't get her out of his mind. He knew where he'd find her that's for sure. Down at the Mission, waiting in line for lunch that's where.

When he got to the corner, he deliberated for minute and then began the short trip up to the library. He always went there when he needed to think. Besides, it was as far away from the Mission and May as he could get.

Ms. Turner smiled when she saw the lanky older man pushing the door open and walking towards her counter. He always acts as though he's just here for the books but somehow he always found the comfortable reading chair section first. I wonder if he knows his friend May is already here, she wondered.

Whew!

They say that you need to be aware of tags and keywords in this blogosphere because if you use them incorrectly or without thinking of their meanings then no one will find your blog and then no one will read you. Well, I am sorry but I'm going to communicate the way I want to here and not the way some set of prescribed soi disant bloggers say I should.

Meanwhile, I am thinking that this is a good time to talk about how easy it is to let your current state of mind affect what you are trying to accomplish. I don't know about you but my moods and energy levels vary. Some days I know clearly what it is I have to say and exactly what I want to accomplish by it. But other days it is as though the climate changes outside have swept directly into my system and tornadoed me out. I flit from idea to idea, I want to say things slowly and coolly but instead they come out in a torrent.

How do I deal with this? Time wounds all heals. Exercise is best. Read a great book, even if it's one I've already read, sometimes especially if it is.
My favorite repeat books are by John D. McDonald. The Travis McGee series has been in my life since I was a teen. I'd ride my bike over to Carlsbad State Beach and after body whomping for a while, I'd pedal down to the paperback book store on Elm St. and pick out one to read. I loved the fact that he lived on the beach in a houseboat and that he worked when he needed money instead of because he needed money. Even then I knew that making do with less was always going to be my way of doing things. So now when I get particularly stressed I either read one of his books or pedal down to the beach and whomp a few.

Like clockwork . . .

they park their US Postal vans side by side, one pointed into the space, the other in the escape position pointed out. Ten minutes tops and they're out and walking, arms swinging, usually in shorts but as regular as clockwork except on Sundays and holidays. These two lady postmen. At first, I though it was just an occasion to talk. They were both in the same area and got finished the same time of day. But then I realized that every once in while a third person would join them so I knew that this was regular and organized. The way I see it they started out as letter carriers walking a route. Then as they got more experienced, they won or earned or just got promoted to the truck routes of businesses and apartment complexes and housing developments. But, and this is the part I like, they missed the exercise and the fresh air, plus who wants to get a big butt from sitting down all the time? So they got together or just happened to meet, and decided to keep up the legwork. Like clockwork, 45 minutes everyday, nothing's stopping these lady postmen from their decided rounds.

A while ago, I wrote my . . .

Five rules for learning to be more independent.

1) Start with something simple like learning how to make your own bed and wash your own clothes. It seems simple but from the evidence available this must be one of the hardest tasks known to humankind. The more you rely on someone else, Mom or maid or life partner to do this simple task the less independence you have. And for me that is the secret of taking control of your finances and your life: to have a sense of independence or rather self-dependence towards whatever faces you.

2) Read, even if its just your daily dose of blogs. My life has been tied to books since I was three and hiding under a blanket with flashlight so I could finish reading a Classic Comic version of the Count of Monte Christo. Being able to make sense out of written material has been my savior many, many times, counting the GRE. Two years after I started teaching I decided to go back and get my masters. In order to score well on the GRE I needed to know my math as well as I already knew my language skills. So down to the library I went where I spent the next four weeks checking out and studying (reading) beginning math, algebra, geometry and calculus texts. I crammed into four weeks a lifetime of ignoring math while I covertly read any literature I could get my hands on. Still, I had confidence that I could read and make sense of what I read. And I did, which was proven by my 1350 total score.

3) Ride alternative forms of transportation to get to and from work. I was thinking about this yesterday as I rode my bike back from Borders books where I had been studying a new book by Matt Bai. I have been riding a bicycle for 40 years. I bought my first one as an adult when I sold my car and moved to within a mile of my new job. The thing I learned almost immediately, and have enjoyed ever since, is that a bike can take you off of the beaten path. It happens both physically, as you choose alternate routes, and mentally, as the routine of riding frees up your left brain for cogitation and rumination while your right brain takes over the guidance system. It great for working out problems and for coming up with new ideas. And as a philosophy it ain't half bad either.

4) Pay all your bills first. This too is tied to independence. Even if it's is just a pittance of what you owe, pay a little on each, use the snowball approach, starve yourself, live without, but pay off what you owe and you guessed it, you are free. Of course, Bobby McGee may have said it all when he pointed out the true freedom is when you have nothing left to lose. But I'd rather be able to say I owe no one.

5) Work no work, no work work. When I first started teaching, I came across this concept in a unit I was putting together about world religions. It struck me then and stays with me now. When work is work that you enjoy, then it really isn't work.

Seeming isn't being . . .

I tell myself that things are going well and that I am right where I want to be. But then it comes to me that things that seem alright may only be that way because I am really not taking the time to think about them in relation to what I had planned. It is very easy to slip into the state of mind that says a task is completed especially if I haven't written down the actual goal I set myself. It is at this very point that seeming isn't being.

Your money or your life?

This morning while noodling around two of my favorite blogs, I had cause to think about how important it is too really pay attention to the things you enjoy in life. Simple things, like the feel of spring time sun on your back as you step outside of your classroom or the rush of catching a wave just right and sliding through the water before you kick it out and start again or the wonderful feel of signing that check that pays off your last credit card debt. And complicated things, like working out a way to teach a seminar on personal finance to kids or figuring out how to control your urge to treat yourself by giving in to your wants instead of working on satisfying your needs.

The simple things are easy to enjoy but the complicated things quite often make us feel stressed and unhappy. Robert Kiyosaki points this out quite well in his RichDad series when he talks about how schools teach us. We learn to fear failure and thus set ourselves up for a life time of it. One thing my own education taught me was that it never hurts to ask for help is a difficult concept to keep in the forefront of your thinking as a problem develops. All they can say is no is usually the concomitant back up. But the truth is that it does hurt and sometimes they can say a lot more than just no. The key for me was in learning the concept behind these homilies. What others think about your ideas and plans doesn't have to matter especially if you are happy in working on the problem until it is resolved. And that brings me back to my original thought, letting life's complications be enjoyable can really be just as simple as waiting for that ninth wave even if it never comes.

Sabra wins but do we?

So You Think You Can Dance ended Thursday with the big surprise being that neither Lacey nor Danny nor outside chance Neal won. Sabra did. All of them deserved to win somehow but that ain't the way competitions work, right? One person wins and everyone else is second. But the real winner was we viewers, anyway, so why quibble about the one that ended up with the $250,000?

I quibble because I can. Terri and I were talking on the way to work today about her difficulty in staffing the market she manages. She can't find help. The high schooler's all want to take vacations even after they sign on and the college age kids aren't even applying. She points out that if you look around you'll see that all the businesses seem to be hiring - counter help, barristas, clerks, cashiers - the signs are everywhere and have been all summer. Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that the state of California lost over 8,600 jobs in the month of July.

My response to T. was that in a culture that popularizes reality tv shows where you can pursue your dream and win millions just for opening the right suitcase, where the lottery and sports betting and Indian gambling casino signs flash from every freeway what we are seeing is what we should expect. VISA is a way of life right? Don't slow down the purchase line with cash. Don't slow down at all. Run those red lights, yellow lights, push yourself forward and grab for all your worth. Who knows, you might come up with a new show idea.

Meanwhile, the fed is being forced to lower the interest rate to save CountryWide or the government from having to bail out CountryWide and we get to sit on the edge of our seats and see how it all plays out. Hmmm, maybe we will all get to apply those frugality lessons our great grandparents used during their great depression after all, instead of the whoopee isn't this fun of doing it by choice way we seem to be adopting here in Personal Finance land?

Changes . . .

I see him every morning as I drive my truck around the fairgrounds to our stand. In the mornings cool, he carries his wash bucket and towels from one Footsie Wootsie to another. His daily rock is to set themup bright and shiney for the new fair day. He looks up and grins as I motor past. His shoulders are slumped, his hair grey with years but his cheerful recognition is hard to ignore. Basil Rathbone face, like a street character in a Dicken's novel, Jim is his name.

Only, I see him in my mind's eye because this year as the fair opened we got the news that he'd passed away.

Tuesday, the 18th

Well, here’s a new idea. Since I don’t feel the same about writing to this blog in a crowded bookstore, why don’t I write it in my notepad and then just copy it in later? I know you’d think I would have thought of it before but I didn’t, so there.

Meanwhile, let’s get back on topic. It takes a certain kind of spirit to work as a vendor/carney on the fair circuit. Independence slathered with flexibility. Obstinance and durability and the ability to smile through the pain. And like many of the personal and financial choices you make in life, choosing to work as your own boss in this manner can reward and punish you in equal measure. You beat up your body for six months and then you’re on vacation until the circuit begins next year. But when you are up close and watching the turtle like intensity with which these men and women slog through each day so that they can answer the question, "Didja' make any money?" with a sure and sly smile its hard to see past the pain of sore backs, swollen joints, and sleepless nights. I know for myself it takes at least a week to get in shape. My hands ache and my shoulders are as tense as the cat lady's tail. But not many quit. They stick around and even though their children now run the show the old ones are there in the background ready to help or join in on the complaining with stories of their own.


Volumetrics: About that cottage cheese, I haven't gotten to the part in the book where it's explained how something that is 45% fat grams can be a low energy food but I am taking thier word about it until I find out different. It is fun though to do the math on so called health foods and diet drinks and see where they are really at.

It's going to be wild

This fair bodes to be a wild one. First, and foremost, we have an almost new staff. Of 22 employees only six have worked for us before. Second, the new fair management has seen fit to rearrange the layout. This means that the traffic pattern will change and, most importantly for us, it means that our competitors may have been placed in front of us. The only thing we still have going for us is that our product is unique. We sell fresh fruit and all natural smoothies to which we have added a whole line of chocolate dipped products. Oh well, at least the set up is done almost. And we are experienced at this. But on the other hand, as we've gotten older we have grown to like the idea of managing rather than working the fair.

Today, by the way, is the fourth day of my use of the fair as a way to diet and exercise. Volumetrics. Lets see how its gone. I started out with weighing myself. 201 at 5'11''. We have been working every day, lifting, sweating, and putting in 10 hour days. Unfortunately, the eating plan has been sketchy. Since we're busy setting up, someone usually just runs to a fast food place and then we scarf down whatever we've ordered and get back to work. Then there are the old friend's meals. Since we only see these people once a year, we usually spend our evenings with one group or another eating a big meal and drinking a lot of iced tea. So four days in and I'm at 200 lbs. But no worries mate, at least I'm thinking about it.

And on another tack, there have been some more interesting developments in the real estate purchase we are pursuing. As everyone knows the lending market is in the throes of resizing itself. What this means is that the loan offers keep coming but the guarantees are less valuable. Almost every thing the lender promised at the beginning of this process has been restated to the lenders advantage. The lock-in rate is really not locked because our finances have to be verified at least twice. It seems that we will need extra insurance even though we are putting 20% down and the rental property we are buying is for sale way under appraised market value. And now that the wheels of the deal are moving, we are fair bound and less willing to spend extra time renegotiating what we thought was a done deal. I keep saying we've done our part and now lets let escrow do theirs but T is a worrier so I have to let her. Oh well.

Some days . . .

I've just been hopping around the blogosphere this morning trying to decide if anything is worth my time. Wrote a leapfrog response over at Helium, then dropped in own my emails to check out GRS and The Simple Dollar. Trent seems to be increasingly concerned about his children, while J.D. can't wait to head to Europe. Next, I came over here and looked at the Carnival listings, and decided that fitbuff.com and the wealth building one had some interest for the future though I'm really not interested at the moment. And finally, I picked up my copy of David Liss's The Coffee Trader and started thinking about the review I'm getting ready to write.

Setting a goal

I've come to the conclusion that looking inward may be the best way to prepare a person to look forward. As a child, I developed into a loner. Whether it was caused by being a service brat who was in a new school every one of my first 7 years or because my parents were of different religious origins, she was Catholic, he Baptist; different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, she was a city bred Italian, he was farm bred Southerner; or because I discovered the world inside books when I started reading at the age of six, doesn't really matter. Whatever the cause, the effect has been to leave me very short sighted when it comes to goal setting. Ask me my goal at any time in my life and the answer would have been the same. To be alone with a good book.

The result is that I've always sought jobs, entertainments, and yes, even friends, that would leave me alone to organize my activities so I could hurry back to my reading. Hurry being the operative word here. I didn't so much plan the future as I did try to control it so I could go back to my books. The odd thing is that this shaped my eventually becoming a teacher of English and it foreshadowed my decision to retire early and go off on my own. The thing is that teaching was never my goal. An occupation that gave me a license to read was. Later, when I discovered how much I really liked teaching, I had already retired so that I could get back to my privacy and my reading.


The point here is that I never really set my goal. It set me. When I look back at the jobs I've had, truck driver, coach, teacher, concession manager, dance teacher, and now computerist, I see how they all were choices that fit my personality and that I gravitated to naturally. But I remember distinctly in every case I pursued or took the job because I wanted to be in control of my time so, you guessed it, I could have more time to read.

So I have this to say to those of you who are about to sit down and list your short term and long term goals, goal setting is a forward looking activity. But a look inside at who you are and what you do with your own time now may serve you very well as you plan for the future.

The fair season starts . . .

Today, our summer fair season starts. We'll drive up to OC and meet with the fair manager to sign the contracts. We've been in the concession business now for 14 years. When we started out it was just us. Me and T. Eighteen hour days, sore bodies, doing it all. We can really say we built it piece by piece. At first, it was just work. Work hard and we will make some extra money. We rented one of the family's stands. Sold organic fruits and vegetables from the stand and from tables arranged in front so the people could walk through and pick what they wanted. We were a little farmer's market and a total alternative to the usual deep fried atmosphere. Then the second year, we commissioned T's brother to build a stand that represented the ideas we wanted to sell. An old fashioned store with a porch from which the customers could see an array of our mixed fruit bowls.