Money

$ makes the world go round or so the song goes.

Several blog posts I’ve read in the last couple of weeks have been focused on saving money; either for retirement, for an emergency fund, for my child’s college fund( I didn’t have children so there is savings for me right there), to own my house free and clear, get out of debt, etc.

One of my favorites, Caitlin Kelly’s, The Broadside talked about “saving enough” and where she splurges. She also included a link to an article by Heidi Moore of the Guardian about women making less and living longer and asking the question “Are elderly women doomed to be poor?” Both made me consider where I splurge; coffee, my dogs and skin care (I figure the good skin care is saving me facelift money later – right) and where I skimp; canned goods, laundry detergent and underwear. There should be a lot more in the skimp category so I can save more, but there you go. They also made me assess my savings and spending habits: verdict = bi-polar. I do have a pension where I work which I know makes me lucky and provides a bit of security. But I am 20 years from retirement and social security and that provides a great deal of insecurity given the ups and downs of politics. I also have my IRA’s and emergency funds and it still doesn’t seem like enough, especially with the cost of health care and the inevitable increase in its use as I get older. Some months I am very good and save, spend with intention and feel great and other month I spend recklessly.

Debt is also a problem. I am still paying for some youthful indiscretion with my credit card in my younger days. Ah, but the fun I had and the trips I took. I read the Get Rich Slowly Blog to keep me focused on paying off those debts and building that emergency fund. But there was an article recently on the site that caught my attention; also about women and money, Money Mythbuster: Women Don’t Negotiate by staff writer April Dykman. She writes about her experience with trying to negotiate and the results she ended up with, as well as provides some links to studies about women and men and their salary disparity. Particularly disturbing was the negative effect on a woman who negotiates her starting salary vs a man who does.

“If a woman negotiates her starting salary, the employer might hold it against her. According to a 2006 study, when a woman negotiates her salary, both men and women are less likely to want to work with or hire her. The negative effect was more than 5.5 times greater for women who negotiated than for men.”

Some days all of these things can add up and make me want to crawl back in bed and say why bother. But, when I see my retirement statement, check on my latest contribution to my IRA and see my emergency fund grow I know I am working towards a more solid financial future and I am proud of myself, feel hopeful and know that I will be able to take care of myself.

How are you taking charge of your financial future?

Hope

A new writers hope.

I subscribe to the Daily Good and today’s or maybe it was yesterday’s inbox delivery included a link to the Amtrak promotion for 24 writers in residence. You have to apply, tell them why you want a chance to be a writer in residence, submit a sample of your work and hope that a panel picks you. If you are chosen you get a 2 – 5 day trip on one of their trains so that you can write. Sounds like bliss.

I took my first train trip when I was about 5 years old and have loved trains ever since. I enjoy the relaxed pace of train travel even though many of them travel very fast. It always feel like a lazy, vacation trip whenever I ride one even when I am not on vacation. This would be such a cool experience, so cool, I may have to pay to do it even if I don’t get chosen.

If you want to learn more about writing on trains and how Amtrak’s promotion was started, here is a link to Jessica Gross’s story “Writing the Lake Shore Limited” in the Paris Review where she writes about the experience that Amtrak gave her and how she was inspired to ask on Twitter.

If you are a writer and want to apply or if you want to read more about Amtrak check out their blog post on the residency program.

Geeking

Car geeks unite!

My husband is a Volkswagen car nut. I think we are on our 9th Volkswagen in nearly 30 years together. He has his favorite car dealer, Pignataro Volkswagen in Everett, Washington. That dealer is nearly a 2 hour drive from our current home, but used to be just a couple miles away from us. And he has remained loyal to them through the years, buying only one car from another dealer and swearing he would never buy from anyone but Pignataro again based on that experience.

This picture above is of my husband and a guy, who lived a few blocks down the street from us, who had just come home with a new VW. My husband had to stop the car, get out and check it out. He stood there talking about that car for 30 minutes with a man he never met before, both of them geeking out about that Volkswagen. The man moved away a few months later, I wonder if there is a correlation to his moving and my husbands stalking?

His face lights up, at even the thought of a new VW, a bit like mine does when I see a new tech gadget. The gadget story is for another time. He even drives to Everett for service on our Volkswagens. He is driving up there this morning and I haven’t seem him that happy in weeks, thrilled to be heading to his “mecca” and talk horsepower, mpg, navigation systems and sunroofs with his people.

Let the geeking begin!

Do you geek out about anything?

Joy

Joy and Happiness.

This is an old picture of my little brother and me on his third birthday. I laugh and feel happy every time I see it. His joyful, excited expression and my terrible haircut and snaggletooth grin. Just getting ready to light the candles, to sing and to eat cake!

Some Day

I married an older man. I mean classic cradle robbing older man younger woman kind of older man. I have loved him for nearly 30 years now and hope to love him for 30 more.
This week our lives changed, not in a major, sudden or dramatic way from an accident or an unexpected area of our lives, but from something we have been facing for nearly a year. I knew it was coming, really knew it would happen some day. Still, when “some day” actually arrived, no matter how much I thought I had prepared and planned for it, run it through my mind, it still made me catch my breath, stopped my heart a bit and unsettled me.
I have been on the verge of crying most of the week. Crying for my husband who is handsome, smart and very special who now will have to carry an oxygen tank with him everywhere he goes, who on hearing the news asked to cancel our impending road trip, doesn’t know how to deal with the questions that will come at work and I think is just plain scared about the path ahead in these “f’ ing golden years” as he likes to say. But also on the verge of crying a little bit for myself and feeling guilty for it, because it’s not me with the lifestyle alteration, it’s him with the tank, not me. But it feels like it is me, with the limits being put on my life too. Now I’m tethered to my home, my world shrinking, options and doors being closed.
Like I said, I knew this day would come, it was inevitable. I planned for it, was warned of it, recognized it and still I am in a daze.

Start

“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.”

I have been re-reading a lot lately, time to flip to the next chapter.

I saw this on another blog on Tumblr and wanted to add it here! here is a link to the sources blog http://fromherheartapocalypse.tumblr.com

Grain for the Grinder

I like the old, it’s vintage, well read, historical and crap the under 30 group can google it!
But I look forward to your 2014 of “Grist for the Mill” – Maybe some “Junipers for the still” “Bud for the pipe” – come on – I live in Washington.

Todd Baker

I’ve finally hit rock bottom. It’s time to make a change. It won’t be easy, but I can’t avoid it any longer. I need to update my idioms.

My use of outdated expressions was first pointed out to me at work during a meeting with a supervisor and her staff. The supervisor is a friend of mine and she enjoys pointing out my flaws, especially if there is an audience. I was explaining the purpose of the meeting to her staff. I said I wanted to get their ideas about a particular topic and I told the group that I was looking for “grist for the mill.” My friend giggled. I looked at her confusedly, as I was sure I had not said anything funny. She turned to her staff, all of whom were younger than 30-years-old, and said, “Do any of you know what ‘grist for the mill’ means?”…

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The movies I watch over and over and over — Jason Bourne — and why

Really enjoying Caitlin Kelly’s Blog – “I suspect all of us are, in some measure, running fast and away from something: a fear, a hope, an unrealized goal, an unrequited love, or racing toward a future we can’t quite see, but which we hope lies on the other side of a border we haven’t yet reached — whether the Greek island where Bourne re-finds his love, Marie — or something closer to home.”

This really resonated with me, but more from the struggle to either lull into my current life and accept the job, the daily tasks and relax or to risk to create the life that I think I really want for myself.

Broadside

By Caitlin Kelly

A great post from Slate about why we love Jason Bourne:

Why do we love Jason Bourne? Why does this brooding nobody command our immediate allegiance? Because his mission is not to take down a cartel, destroy an undersea fear factory, or cripple a billion-dollar interstellar weapons system. It’s not even to save a beautiful woman. His mission is the essential human mission—to find out who the hell he is.
Plucked nameless from the Mediterranean, a floating corpse, by the crew of an Italian fishing boat (water: mother-element in the Bourne movies); rebirthed on the wet deck, his twitching hand eliciting gasps of atavistic wonder; tended to—healed—with gruff inexhaustible charity by the ship’s doctor (“I’m a friend!” insists this heroic man, as a panicked Bourne rears up and starts choking him. “I am your friend!”); recuperating on board, at sea, strengthening, doing chin-ups, tying fancy…

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Random & Rhyme

Monthly Archives: March 2014