The Dog Ate My Wallet

The Dog Ate My Wallet

Personal Finance in a World of Excuses

Article

Sunday Evening Post #21

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

$43.44

Gas

Car

Tuesday

$5.00

Fiction in 50

Allowance

Wednesday

$21.70

Chinese

Eating Out

Thursday

$80.00

Christmas Gifts

Allowance

Friday

$30.00

Thai

Eating Out

$25.00

Christmas Gifts

Allowance

Sunday

$34.27

Fred Meyer

Groceries

$15.00

Christmas Gifts

Allowance

 

About $255 in spending this week, and that includes $75 in Christmas gifts for my family and $25 in gifts for those who will be at our house on Christmas day. My family got donations to charity in their names (since they don’t need anything) and everyone who comes to our house on Christmas day gets a $5 gift card for a local used book store.

The $5 for Fiction in 50 is the monthly prize I give in my micro-fiction contest every month and it comes out of my allowance.

I am hoping this next week will have more days where we don’t spend money, not necessarily that we’ll spend less (my birthday dinner on Wednesday will be $60-100), just that we’ll spend less often. Even when we’re not spending a lot of money, I feel a bit out of control when we’re spending frequently.

The biggest grocery expense this week was the New York for Christmas dinner. C also bought the makings for a butterscotch cheesecake, I’m guessing for my birthday. When I went out to scan for the NCP, he complained that there were no surprises.

 

Again, there’s no meal plan for this week. Last night C made sausage corn chowder and that will be dinner tonight. It might be our dinner for Monday and Tuesday, too.

 

I joined Twitter this week- @dogatemywallet. For now, it’s going to be the Twitter account for all of my blogs, so there will be links to my daily blog and my pet blog as well as this one. I haven’t decided it I’ll do automatic posts from the mico-fiction contest or not.

 

I also added a contact page and the RSS feed button to my sidebar thanks to Andrea at So Over Debt’s post 10 Ways to Make Sure No One Reads Your Blog. Hopefully my writing is not all as boring as the Sunday Evening Posts. 😉

 

Goals for this week:

Blog round-ups here and on Life by Pets.

Write a guest post for a pet blog (That Mutt), that talks about when it’s okay to give pets as a gift (partly inspired by Derek at Life and My Finances post What? We got a new puppy!)

Get advanced posts written for my blogs so I don’t have to think about them between Tuesdays. (I have Wednesday-Monday off.)

Stop feeling like crud (though sleeping for 10+ hours the last two nights has helped tremendously)

Enjoy my birthday

Date: 18/12/2011 Author: Tags: , , , , Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Blog Swap: What give you the most value?

It’s a Blog Swap! Today, we’re answering the question “What do you spend money on that brings you the most value.” Below is  a guest post from Erika at Newlyweds on a Budget. Erika blogs about managing finances in a relationship. Make sure to hop on over to her blog to read how I answered the question.
For more fun, go on over to Narrow Bridge Finance for a round up of all the posts in this blog swap. And be sure to comment and let us know what you spend money on that gives you the most value.

According to our budget records, I have spent $763 on our furry child this year. Something tells me the number is actually a lot higher. Perhaps I forgot to account for a few vet visits or dog food purchases. $750 to spend on someone that doesn’t contribute financially at all to our household is a big chunk of change in my opinion.

But I love this eight-year-old Wheaten Terrier to death. There is no monetary value I could place on the love I have for this dog.

About five years ago, I met Bentley for the first time. He belonged to a family we babysat for. His hyper and energetic personality was endearing and I soon fell in love with him. I dogsat for him when the family was away, and several years later when the family said they could no longer keep him because of personal reasons, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to take him into our home.

Before Bentley, I never understood people who would get upset over the loss of a pet. It’s just a dog, I would think to myself. Having him in our life has made us feel like a complete family: my husband, me and our pup.

There are many downsides to having a dog:

monetary costs
emergency trips to the vet
time lost
picking up dog crap
having to walk them in the rain
having to walk them in the early morning
altering your schedule because you have to walk them
when they mistake the indoor carpet for grass
when they wake you up in the middle of the night because they have to go to the bathroom

But nothing compares to the feeling of coming home to a happy go lucky dog, wagging his tail and licking your face because he’s just so darn happy to see you.

I read on a blog post once–and I’m sorry but I can’t remember which one–that if you ever questioned whether your spouse or your dog loved you more, lock them both up in your car trunk on a hot day and after an hour, come back, open the trunk and see who’s still happy to see you.

Date: 16/12/2011 Author: Tags: , , , , Category: Guest Post, Inspired by, Pet Finances Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Volunteer- From the Comfort of your Computer Chair

This is the second of two posts about donating to charity. To learn how to give money when you don’t have any of your own, click here

You may have noticed that on Tuesday when I posted about donating to charity- for free, I didn’t mention the most common way to give without spending any money- volunteering. There’s a reason for that. Volunteering is often a pretty expensive endeavor. Your time is precious, and many, many people who can’t afford to give monetarily to charities also can not afford to give their time. They are already working two jobs or do not have enough time with their families as it is.

Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community, but we have to admit it has a cost.

I’ll be honest, I keep thinking about volunteering in different ways- being a “cat cuddler” at the local animal shelter, fostering dogs through Old Dog Haven, helping veterans with PTSD through animal assisted therapy at Rainier Therapeutic Riding, or even being on staff for Geek Girl Con. But I haven’t done any of it (though fostering is on the household goal list for 2012). Why? Time. I like being home. I like being with my dogs and hanging out with C.

I want to give back, but I also want to take care of me. I suspect I am not alone in this.

But what if I told you you could volunteer right from your home, right from your computer, for 15 minutes (or less) at a time?

We have micro-lending, micro-payments, micro-fiction (I had to throw that one in), and now, micro-volunteering from Sparked.com. I wrote about Sparked.com on my daily blog when I first found it, and I continue to love it.

When I find myself in front of my computer in the evening and one more game of Bejeweled (I am a total casual gamer) just is not holding an appeal, and I have read all the blogs I read, commented on the message boards, but I am not ready to surrender to the mindlessness of television, I can click over to Sparked.com and look through their challenges.

I’ll be honest, I do not always find a challenge I am interested in doing, or that I can do in the time I have available. But often I do. These are small tasks- help with brainstorming ideas, crowd sourcing new ideas, copywriting or internet research help. I have designed spreadsheets for volunteer tracking and spruced up copy. I have read student writing and provided feedback. Sometimes I spend a few hours on a task. Sometimes I spend 5-10 minutes.

I can choose tasks based on my skill set or based on the causes the charity supports. I choose the complexity of the task and the amount of time spent on it. Easy peasy.

So the next time you think to yourself, I would love to volunteer, but I just do not have the time or the desire to be out of the house another 5-10 hours a week, remember Sparked.com. Not only can you donate to charity through a few clicks of your mouse, you can volunteer from the comfort of your computer chair, too.

Date: 15/12/2011 Author: Tags: , , , , , , , Category: Free Things, Helping Others Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Give to Charity – for Free

This is the first of two posts about donating to charity. To learn about how to volunteer from the comfort of your computer chair, click here

It’s that time of year, when outside your favorite store there stands a person wearing a red apron, ringing a bell, and pointing you to a red pot. In your office or at your school there are angel trees and people coming around to ask you to donate to a good cause.

Most of us want to participate in the giving. We’ll give what change we have in our pocket, or pick a child the same age as our own, figuring one less gift under our tree won’t mean anything, whereas one gift under this other one will make a world of difference.

In my experience, most people want to help those less fortunate than they are. But what happens when you are barely hanging on yourself? When there will only be one gift under your tree as it is, or the change in your pocket is destined for the jar that will buy you the new tires for your car- the ones you really needed 6 months ago?

How can you give when you have nothing to spare?

 

We try to give throughout the year. Every time I go in to PetsMart, I choose to pay $1 extra to go toward helping homeless animals. But that still costs me money.

Two to four times a year, I go through my closet and clean out the clothes that I am no longer wearing. Most go to Goodwill. Some of my more professional outfits go to a charity that is dedicated to helping people with interview clothes.  But that requires that I have more clothes than I need, that there isn’t someone else in my family who could use those hand me downs.

We recently went through our linen closet and pulled out a bunch of old towels and took them to the Humane Society. Still, this required that we had an over abundance of towels, that ones we no longer used (because we didn’t like them) were still in good shape.

In both cases, donating what you already have costs money because there are replacement costs, even if you already have the replacements.

 

How can one give without it costing any money? Well, it may not make as big of a difference as being able to drop $100 into the Salvation Army pot, but if you have access to the internet, giving is just one click away.

Because my focus is so often on pets, the sites I click on every day are Freekibble.com, Freekibblekat.com, and The Animal Rescue Site. The first two ask that you attempt to answer a trivia question. It doesn’t matter whether you get it right or wrong, simply clicking an answer donates food to shelters. The third just asks that you click a button. And if you want to give more, you can click the button of one of their sponsors.

The Animal Rescue Site is also part of the Greater Good Network, where you can click to give to causes such as world hunger, breast cancer, literacy, child health, veterans and more.

So pick you cause, visit a website- you can get there from work or school or the library, or home, if internet is part of your budget –and give to charity, as often as every day. The only cost, maybe a minute of your time.

 

We can’t all afford to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Some of us are not even certain how we can spare $5 or even $0.55 from the budget. But we can all take 30 seconds and click a mouse button.

Date: 13/12/2011 Author: Tags: , , , , , , Category: Free Things, Helping Others Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Sunday Evening Post #20

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

$10.00

McDonalds

Allowance

Wednesday

$75.00

Flogging Molly

Allowance

Thursday

$26.00

Olive Garden

Eating Out

Saturday

$135.00

CostCo

Groceries

$28

Pedicure

Allowance

Sunday

$35.50

Gas

Car

 

Just over $300 in spending this week. And to make it even better, the Flogging Molly tickets (concert is in March) were actually paid for by the check my grandfather sent for Christmas. C paid for my pedicure out of his allowance. We’ll call it an early birthday gift, even though he doesn’t really need to get me one.

 

We followed our meal plan pretty well. On Thursday, we ended up going out to eat as C didn’t feel like cooking, but we had soup and an appetizer at Olive Garden, so $26 fed 3 of us. Not bad at all.

He then made the pork shoulder on Friday and the roasted red pepper soup on Saturday. While at CostCo we bought a pizza for dinner tonight, but C and I went to a friend’s house for board games and bbq (well, smoked brisket and smoked turkey) and ate quite a bit, so the pizza is sticking around for Monday night.

We did not make a meal plan for this week. Fail, I know. But, even if we had made one before leaving the house, it would have failed as CostCo did not have any of the bone in, skin on chicken thighs we usually buy. We did get ground turkey, so this week will be ground turkey and pork shoulders. Hopefully there will be more chicken next week.

 

J bought C Deus Ex 3 as a Christmas gift, but gave it to him Thursday after the quarter ended (since he goes back to school only one week after Christmas) and he’s been playing that as well as returning to his old favorite Mountain Blade.  That mostly means that he has little desire to go anywhere or spend any money, which works well.

 

I still need to get out and pick up some Christmas cards and figure out what I’m getting for my secret santa person. I need to mail my father’s birthday gift and order my stepmother’s Christmas gift and figure out what I’m getting my mother- probably a PetsMart gift card, as I know she’ll use it.

Date: 11/12/2011 Author: Tags: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
Article

The Other Side of the Table

When my boss, my department’s executive director, told me that he wanted me to take the lead on going through resumes and determining who we would interview for a director position we have open, I wasn’t thrilled. I know nothing about the work the director oversees, I’ve never hired anyone, and this is for a position at a higher level that I am. (I’m a manager.) I didn’t think I was really qualified to do this. But he’s really busy and doesn’t have the time, so my job it was.

We’re now in the phone interview stage of a nationwide recruiting effort, and I am thrilled to be a part of this. I have learned so much- some of which is useful in my actual job supportingHRand recruitment in our department, but also a lot that will be useful to me the next time I’m job hunting.

That’s right, forget being better at my job, this experience will help me get a better job in a year or two when I decide to make the switch, even though this job isn’t anything I would ever apply for. I just don’t have the skill set.

So how has reviewing resumes and pre-screening documents for a position that is nothing like I will ever be doing helped me? It’s reinforced the basics.

I have a good friend who I go to for career advice. Even though she works in an entirely different industry (I’m in health care, she’s in video games), her advice is solid because some things just apply across the board. And that’s what’s happening here.

For example, I intend to join APICS, the Association for Operations Management and to get one or both of their professional certifications. The position we’re hiring for requires to professional certifications. We have had people who don’t have either, only have one, or are still waiting for the test results from one to apply. In some cases, we have moved forward with people who don’t have both the required certifications because of other factors, but for the most part, if they didn’t have both certs, they got moved to the bottom of the pile.

What that means for me? I need to join APICS and take the tests a year or so before I start looking for positions. That way, when I go to apply, I will be able to put those certification letters after my name to keep me at the top of the list.

By reading the pre-screening interviews from ourHRdepartment, I’m learning what I look for in someone at a director level (which is the level I’ll be aiming for on my next job hunt). I know what type of experiences I want to focus on, and am learning the best way to present myself. I tend to stay in positions 3-5 years, which can seem like a lot of job changes. I’ll know to highlight the fact that I’ve been with the same organization for much longer and that I’ve received promotions and worked specifically toward a higher level position (by getting my MBA). I know not to give “excuses” as to why something didn’t work, and to focus on the effect I made on the job, not the effect the job had on me.

 

It took me two years after getting my MBA to get the position I have now. Part of that was the job market (I graduated in May 2008), and part of that was choice. I didn’t need to leave the position I was in and was able to hold out for the right new opportunity. During those 2 years, I learned a lot about being a job candidate. Per someone I interviewed with once early in the process and then again over a year later, my interview skills improved greatly during that time. I gained confidence in the way I presented myself and became more comfortable promoting myself. Those are great skills to have, but everything I learned, I learned from the perspective of a candidate.

Now I’m learning the process all over again from the perspective of a hiring manager. Knowing the ins and outs of both sides of the process can’t help but give me an advantage the next time I’m back on the other side of the table. And honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Date: 08/12/2011 Author: Tags: , , Category: Interviews, On the Job Bookmark: Permalink
Article

We’re a Neilsen Family

We are currently member of the National Consumer Panel- basically, we are a Neilsen family for what we buy. We’ve been doing this for about a month now, and it’s going alright.

It’s a bit more work than I thought it would be. Scanning everything we buy isn’t that big a deal. Scanners are fun, after all. But if I shop somewhere other than a traditional grocery store, I have to enter the price I pay for everything. Since we do most of our shopping at CostCo, this is a bit of a pain and also caused some conundrums for me.

You see, if I shop at Safeway and buy 2 gallons of milk, I scan one gallon of milk. I tell the scanner I bought 2 gallons of milk, and then I enter the price that I paid per gallon. But at CostCo, when I buy two gallons of milk, I am not charged per gallon. Still there isn’t a bar code for 2 gallons, there is only the bar code on each individual gallon. So, I scan the bar code. I tell the scanner I bought 2, and then I enter the price for both gallons- because that’s the price on my receipt, and if it ends in an odd number (and all prices end in 9) I can’t divide it evenly in two.

For some things, the big package has a singe bar code I can scan and that’s easy, but milk, the pasta we buy, etc- I just don’t know if I’m somehow skewing the results. Oh well, I have to tell them I was shopping at CostCo first, so maybe their computers figure it out.

Still, even after major shopping trips, the scanning and putting in information takes 5-10 minutes max, and I often do it while we’re putting stuff away.

 

I think we might be supposed to be entering more stuff than we are. It comes with a pre-printed card with bar codes for things like fruits and veggies or deli products. It includes a bar code for gas. I have yet to scan the gas bar code. Partly this is because me mostly don’t use gas- we use B99 biodiesel, but honestly, it’s more because we never get a receipt from the pump, so I have no idea how much we spent on gas until a couple days later when the charge hits the bank account.

I also sometimes don’t get purchases entered when J does some quickie shopping on his way home from work. He often leaves the receipt in his truck, or I don’t even know he’s been to the store until I see something new in the fridge or cupboards.

Still, I don’t think they can expect me to be perfect.

 

My biggest issue so far is with transmitting the data. You see, the scanner plugs directly into our cable modem and auto transmits at preset days and times. The times are almost always 11pm or later (sometimes like 3am). I am certain this is because it’s when they expect the “lines” to be the least busy. The problem with this is that the scanner beeps multiple times during a transmission. And our cable modem (and therefore the scanner) is in our bedroom. The way our house is wired, there isn’t another option.

So once a week or so, we get woken up in the middle of the night by this thing beeping. It’s annoying and we’ll take it off it’s base and shove it in a drawer so we can go back to sleep. But of course that means the transmission failed.

No problem, I thought at first, because there’s an option to manually transmit. I figured I’d just manually transmit each time after entering purchases. And leave the scanner off the base at night. Sadly, this doesn’t really work. I don’t know why. I have a cable modem, there, in fact, shouldn’t be any time of day that is significantly different in terms of capacity that any other time of day. Why my scanner claims it is unable to transmit, I have no idea. This means that I do end up leaving the thing on the transmitter. So at 11pm on a Monday night, when it starts to beep, I tell C- if you’re going to be up a bit, just leave it be. I’ll try to ignore it and fall asleep anyway. And at 2am on Monday night/Tuesday morning, when it starts beeping again and wakes me up, I listen to see if C is snoring through it. If he is, I leave it be and do my best to fall back asleep. If I can’t, or if it wakes him up, up I get and throw the thing in a drawer. If only the thing could be silent during it’s transmission, I don’t think the fact that it lights up would wake us because we have so many other electronic lights in the room.

 

Supposedly, we are earning points for this, kind of like credit card reward points. You don’t actually get that many from the transmissions. Most seem to come from a willingness to do surveys. And still, I’m looking at maybe 1,000/month. And it seems like most things in their catalogue cost around 18,000. 18 months before I can see a substantial reward for being woken up weekly in the middle of the night?

I’m not certain we can stick with it that long.

Date: 06/12/2011 Author: Tags: , Category: Tracking Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Sunday Evening Post #19

The Week

 

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

$125.73

Medical

through

Allowance

Friday

Eating Out

Groceries

Saturday

$21.88

Target

Allowance

$20.00

Cash

Allowance

$99.44

CostCo

Groceries

$32.00

Gas

Car

Sunday

$5

Starbucks

Allowance

 

Format is a little different this time because I bought C’s Christmas gift this week. Since he sometimes looks at this blog in order to be a supportive husband, I’d rather not publish how much and where he gift came from. But since I still want to be transparent about our spending, I put the total we spent during the week and the categories it falls under.

In addition to getting C’s gifts, I got MS Office Pro 2010 for only $10 (plus tax) due to an agreement my company has with Microsoft. It was just too good a deal to pass up. In addition, I ordered a copy of Windows 7 Home via a friend of mine who works for Microsoft, which should prevent me from purchasing a new laptop.

 

Thanks to a post from Squirrelers way back on November 9, I remembered to purchase a grande tea (instead of a venti) this morning, and just went back for a couple of hot water refills. This saved me like $2.00. That might not seem like a big deal, but I’m at Starbucks roughly 26 times a year, so that’s $52 dollars of my allowance money that can be used on a mani/pedi or massage instead of tea.

 

The other thing I am proud of us for doing this week is we created a meal plan. We really have never done this before. Of course that meant that while we were coming up with our plan, C mentioned that his problem with it was what if something we wanted wasn’t on sale or at a good price. I countered with the idea that people who are good at this meal plan thing actually have the sale ads in front of them when making their plan.

Anyway, because I’m so proud of us for doing this, here’s our meal plan.

Saturday- chicken burgers and fries

Sunday – chicken with mango curry and rice

Monday – bourbon chicken served over rice

Tuesday – leftover curry

Wednesday – leftover bourbon chicken

Thursday – pork shoulder with sautéed bell pepper over penne

Friday- leftover pork shoulder with roasted red pepper soup

 

Yes, our main protein is chicken, though part of this also comes from the fact that we wanted to empty out our chest freezer in order to defrost and clean it. Next week we’ll start stocking up again. Mind you, variety wise this pretty much adds ground turkey to the mix.

 

The Blog

So on Friday, The Consumerist linked to my rant against giving cars as gifts. I had no idea. I didn’t get a ping back message about it. I did get a ping back message that led to one of those “ghost” sites – you know where the blog title is in Russian or Thai and the only post appears to be yours – that was a ghost of the Consumerist post, but since it didn’t identify, I simply marked it as spam and moved on.

Then I started getting comments- real comments, not spam, from people I don’t know and aren’t Yakezie members. I figured maybe they were coming from one of the other blogs that had linked to that post and didn’t pay much attention to it.

Then this morning I checked my blog stats. Previously, my busiest day had been 35 views- 35. On Friday, I had 1,390 views! On Saturday 266, and 124 so far today!

I don’t expect this keep up this volume, but it sure is cool.

 

And since I do have more viewers than usual, I thought I’d take this opportunity to mention the other blogs I maintain on this site.

 

Life by Pets is my pet blog, where I write mostly stories about our dogs, or the pets of family and friends, but I’m looking to improve it. (Suggestions much appreciated.)

 

100 Words On… is my daily blog where I talk about pop culture, science, technology, what I’m reading, and life in general, all in exactly 100 words. I’m thinking of adding a regular weekly feature where I write about and link to one of the blogs (pet, finances, etc) I read regularly.

 

Fiction in 50 is a weekly/monthly micro-fiction contest. Each week there’s a new picture to use as inspiration. Entrants write a story in exactly 50 words and submit it as a comment. At the end of the week, I pick my favorite and post it above the picture. At the end of each month, the weekly winners get listed in a poll and the readers get to vote for their favorite story of the month. The winner gets a $5 amazon.com gift card. Right now is a perfect time to check it out as the first December inspiration is currently posted and it’s the week to vote for the November winner.

Date: 04/12/2011 Author: Tags: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
Article

“Will Work for Food”

Reading Money for College Project’s post about his Carnival Cruise: A Lesson in Wealth Distribution reminded me of the first time I noticed a homeless person. (I know, my mind works in odd ways. You just have to go with the flow.)

 

I can’t say for certain it was the first time I saw a homeless person.

Growing up in a small town, we had the well known strange folks- the green & purple lady (because she always wore green and purple, and even her house was green with purple trim) who wandered through the grocery store, shoplifting all sorts of things. Because it was a small town, the store just had a bag kid follow her around and make note of what she took, and her son would come by at the end of each month and pay for everything.

We also had the guy who thought he was the second coming. Maybe he only thought he was the prophet of the second coming. I don’t remember for certain. He was scary. I didn’t talk to him. But he was a veteran, and my father was the veteran’s benefits counselor (as well as the CO of our Guard unit), so he would go talk to him every time we saw him on the street. It’s possible he was homeless. I really don’t know.

But after my parents’ divorced, I moved from small town eastern MT to Reno, NV. Given that my mother and I spent a year living in low income housing, I am certain that sometime between the August before 8th grade and the January of freshman year, I had to have seen at least one homeless person. But I don’t remember seeing one. For whatever reason, I never noticed.

 

But on a January day my freshman year of high school, I saw a guy holding a “will work for food” sign. And it made an impact.

Part of it was the timing. I’d been an extra in a made for tv movie and had gotten my check that day. My mom was making me deposit half of it into savings (which is what I had to do with all money I earned). The rest I was going to spend on a going away part for my best friend who was moving toFlorida. I had been complaining to my mother all morning about not being able to spend more of my money and what I wanted to spend it on.

Then, right after leaving the bank parking lot, I saw the guy.

8th grade had been a tough year for my mom and I. She worked two jobs. I saw her in the morning, when I went into her room to say goodbye before heading to the bus stop, and then again when she got home from her second job, generally at the time I was going to bed. 10 minutes a day, if we were lucky.

But we had food, a roof over our heads, and clothes to wear. My babysitting money paid for me to go to my first ever concert, and I could buy the tapes I wanted. I knew money was tight. I didn’t ask for much, but I never lacked for anything I really needed.

My freshman year, we moved in with my step-dad, and with two incomes, things were better. Still, I thought I knew what it was like to not have much.

And then, I saw a guy holding a sign saying “will work for food”.

 

I felt guilt- not for what I had, I had earned that paycheck. But for complaining that my mother was only letting me spend half of it on a going away party. I’d like to say I rolled down the window and gave the guy $20. I didn’t. I had plans for my money. And I doubt my mom would have let me, anyway. But it still made me more aware.

 

It’s not much, I know, but my first order of business with the homeless now is to never look through them. To be aware of the person standing there and to acknowledge their presence. I smile at them, nod my head in greeting. I went 15 years without noticing a homeless person. I won’t do that again.

I almost never carry cash, so I don’t have any money to give the panhandlers. C sometimes does, and will, especially if they have a pet with them. But if I happen to have a piece of fruit in the car, a granola bar, something like that- I give it to them.

We used to drive through an underpass every day on our commute where there was always someone- often people with young kids. During that time, we always made sure to have extra snacks in the car, sometimes an extra pb&j, to hand out.

 

I can’t help everyone. And sometimes I’m not certain I can even actually help one homeless person. But what I can do is treat them like a fellow human being.

And that’s my challenge to everyone this holiday season- as you’re out rushing around trying to get a million things done, don’t look past they girl with the sign that says “anything helps”. Even if you don’t have (or won’t give on principal) money to give, still see that person. Acknowledge them with a smile or a nod of your head. We’re all people, and none of us wants to be invisible.

Date: 01/12/2011 Author: Tags: , , , Category: Free Things, Helping Others, Inspired by Bookmark: Permalink
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Annual Rant: Cars are NOT Gifts

Every year I rant about this. (See the evidence from last year here and here.) And I will probably keep ranting about it.

I HATE the car commercials that indicate you should buy a car as a gift. HATE THEM. Now, these commercials are almost always Lexus (this year’s biggest offender so far), Acura, Mercedes commercials- you know, luxury cars, though last year there was the Buick commercial. But still, even if you’re “rich” why does buying someone else a car seem like a good idea to anyone?

I know what C’s dream car is. Even if I had the money to pay for it in cash, I still wouldn’t buy it for him as a surprise. I would want him to be involved in the decision. I would want to make sure every option was exactly what he wanted. And there’s always the chance he would say “Thank you for the thought, but there are better things we can do with our money.”

We watch the current Lexus commercials and he currently adds a line of dialog to the end “I finally got access to my trust fund.”

Maybe I’m just jealous that the commercial always depict people “younger” than me, and there’s no way we could afford a Lexus/Acura/Mercedes. I don’t think so, though, because unless they’re driving daddy’s car, I don’t know anyone under mid-40s who drives a new luxury car, and I’m able to separate out the myth of advertising from reality.

 

The worst part is that a lot of these commercials then go on to tout the financing or lease options. So is this your only gift for the next 2-5 years, since the giver will be paying on it every month for the terms of the lease/loan? Hopefully you’re in a very committed long term relationship (I don’t say married because that’s not the only long term committed relationship there is. And for some, it’s not that long term or committed.) And if you are, are you one of those couples who manages to keep all finances separate?

You see, if I bought C a car on a loan or leased a car, it wouldn’t be a gift from me. Our finances are not separate, so WE would be paying for it for the length of the agreement. That’s not a gift, that’s a mutual decision, and should be made that way, you know, mutually.

 

I do have to say that I am amused by the current Honda commercial with Patrick Warburton (who, IMHO, was the only good thing about Seinfeld) in which he’s standing next to a car with a bow and says “Unless you’re a millionaire, you probably don’t give cars as gifts,” pulls the bow off, and then goes on to talk about the current good deals on Hondas. At the end, he picks up the bow and puts it back on the car saying “except this one, this one is a gift for my niece.” I like the poking fun at the luxury car commercials, but also the admission from him that he is a millionaire (in a very subtle way).

Will this make me buy a Honda? No. They make good cars, but we’re pretty set on diesel engines, which Honda doesn’t do. Still, it doesn’t make me hate them. I would consider a Honda if they made a car I wanted. I will not ever buy a Lexus or an Acura, and even Mercedes is pretty iffy (except for maybe a late 70s/early 80s diesel that’s already had a bio-d conversion). But even that would be from a private seller, never a dealer.

 

So that’s my “don’t buy a car as a gift” rant for this year. I am certain I will have other holiday commercial rants as December wears on. Next year, I’m going to have to figure out a way to put this rant on my pet blog…

Date: 29/11/2011 Author: Tags: , , , , , , , , , Category: Advertising Bookmark: Permalink
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