I'm developing a new theory that the more expensive the real estate, the fuglier it is. Check out this New York Times slide show: What you get for ... $1.3 million
Oh, great. Check out the title of this MSN article: Retirement? Good luck with thatThe retirement-savings system in the U.S. is "a failed experiment," said Teresa Ghilarducci, the Bernard Schwartz professor of economic policy at the New School for Social Research in New York.
The U.S. system is "headed for a serious train wreck," said John Bogle, the founder and former chief executive of the Vanguard Group, in testimony to a House committee hearing on retirement security in February.
Separately, Ghilarducci and Bogle have called for substantial changes to the current system, but even those who like what we've got now say it needs improving -- and certainly demands better financial education be offered to savers.
"Many people are very overwhelmed with the notion of retirement," said Gregg S. Fisher, the president and chief investment officer of Gerstein Fisher, a financial advisory firm. "How much do we need to put away? Where should it go? How should I invest?"
For some reason I found the New York Times' interview with the University of California president rather hilarious. Just ignore the part about his $120k/year housing allowance: Big Man on CampusThe word “furlough,” I recently read, comes from the Dutch word “verlof,” which means permission, as in soldiers’ getting permission to take a few days off. How has it come to be a euphemism for salary cuts?
Look, I’m from West Philadelphia. My dad was an electrician. We didn’t look up stuff like this. It wasn’t part of what we did. When I was growing up we didn’t debate the finer points of what the word “furlough” meant.How did you get into education?
I don’t know. It’s all an accident. I thought I’d go work for a law firm.Some people feel you could close the U.C. budget gap by cutting administrative salaries, including your own.
The stories of my compensation are greatly exaggerated.When you began your job last year, your annual compensation was reportedly $828,000.
It actually was $600,000 until I cut my pay by $60,000. So my salary is $540,000, but it gets amplified because people say, “You have a pension plan.”What about your housing allowance? How much is the rent on your home in Oakland?
It’s about $10,000 a month.Does U.C. pay for that on top of your salary?
Yes, and the reason they do that is because they have a president’s house, it needed $8 million of repairs and I decided that was not the way to go. Why the heck would I ever authorize $8 million for a house I didn’t want to live in anyhow?Why can’t you have architecture students repair the house for course credit?
Let me ponder that.
I used to feel pretty smug about not having a car because I never had to worry about maintenance. Then my bike started acting funny.
Here are a couple of home design extremes from the New York Times. First, a Brooklyn woman gives her loft a make-over for $5,000: A Place Fit for the Boss. Then, a couple do absolutely nothing to their 1890s Berkshire home: Where Nothing Changes. Ever.UNLIKE many owners of historic houses, Moses Pendleton and Cynthia Quinn haven’t hired specialists, consulted with experts or agonized endlessly over restoration techniques. Huge swaths of peeling wallpaper have been left untouched in their 24-room Victorian house, built in the 1890s as a “summer cottage” in the foothills of the Berkshires, and they have not modernized any of the eight bathrooms.
In fact, they are content to do as little as possible — it is their version of “less is more” — and are extremely proud of how little the house has changed since Mr. Pendleton found it more than 30 years ago.
Mr. Pendleton, 60, is a choreographer who is the founder and the artistic director of the dance company Momix, and he was looking for rehearsal space for Pilobolus,
a dance company he co-founded and belonged to at the time.
A real estate agent showed him a barn ideal for his needs, and then pointed to a large house across the road, telling him the owner would “throw it in” for a little extra. Although Mr. Pendleton was not looking for a house — he was then living in Vermont — the offer seemed too good to pass up, and he bought both buildings and the eight acres they sat on in 1978, for $162,000.
“In the beginning, I didn’t think of it as a house so much as a fantasy,” he said. “No one seemed to have done anything to it for a hundred years — and that’s just what I loved.”
This is perfect since we're gearing up for our kitchen remodel! We'll need a new stove and a dishwasher -- the first dishwasher we've ever had in our adult lives. And depending on how the winter feels in the mansion, we may also need some sort of pellet stove.After almost three years as chief household officer, my husband is back at work. That means domestic duties have been reassessed. And guess who is getting her hands wet? Right. Suddenly, we needed to buy a dishwasher yesterday.
Just as I was about to hurl myself at the Lowe's appliance section, I learned that a $300 million Cash for Clunkers-type rebate program is gearing up this fall. It's to encourage consumers to replace older appliances for new, energy-efficient ones.
Some details:
- It's a rebate program, not a trade-in. You purchase a new appliance -- e.g., a furnace, water heater or washing machine -- and as long as it has an Energy Star rating, you can apply for a rebate.
- States have until Oct. 15 to set up their programs, including which Energy Star appliances are covered, how big the rebates will be and how to apply.
Another year down means it's time to check in on my retirement savings. Theoretically I'd be rebalancing this time of year, too, but currently all my assets are in a Vanguard Target Date fund. No rebalancing necessary! (Note to self: must research more specific funds.)
I was a little skeptical when I went to a free screening of No Impact Man, the documentary about the guy who gave everything up in NYC for a year, documented it on a blog, and got a book deal. After watching the movie, however, I liked the guy more than I expected. But I also felt annoyed at times.
I was feeling a little cranky after an encounter with an obnoxious car driver this morning (WTF? Did I teleport back to NYC? Stupid fat, frumpy, passive aggressive Midwesterners...). But then I saw this awesome write-up about bike commuting in Minneapolis and I felt a million times better: An All-Too-Brief Look at Minneapolis Bike CultureLast week, I was able to travel with my family to the great city of Minneapolis for a family obligation. I hadn’t been there since 1982, and since then a LOT of things have changed — including Minneapolis’s growing reputation as one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the United States.
That reputation is well-earned…there are bicycles EVERYWHERE. Heck, I even saw bicycle parking at the airport! Cyclists of all shapes, sizes and disciplines were present pretty much everywhere I went around the city — from sleek fixies and hip young riders to kids to hardcore commuters, roadies and everyone in between. Ah, what a refreshing change from my own city, where I mostly see “guys on bikes” and myself.
Anyhow, we shot a bunch of pictures and stopped at some of the hotbeds of the Minneapolis bike “scene”…concentrating on the vibrant neighborhoods in the Lyn
Lake/Uptown area.First off, this is a typical street scene in south Minneapolis: bikes locked up everywhere. There were bikes on racks, bikes on poles, bikes on porch railings, in yards and every other conceivable location. My friend and tour guide Laura insists that “it’s like this all year-round”, not just when the weather is nice!
Here's a depressing series from the Wall Street Journal called The New Rules. Predictions include higher taxes, living within your means, lower stock market returns, and houses that can't be used as piggy banks. Okay, so maybe it's not all bad.It's time to face facts, if you haven't already: sometimes your house is just a home.
For most of the last decade, Americans treated their homes as sources of ready cash and as brick-and-mortar retirement plans. Overleveraged at purchase with no down payment, no documentation and negative-amortization mortgages, homeowners also mined equity with home-equity loans and lines of credit.
At the end of the second quarter, about 23% of single-family homes with mortgages were "underwater," with owners owing more on their homes than they are worth, according to Zillow.com. And analysts for at least one major bank expect that share to rise as the housing market bottoms out in some areas.
Foreclosures and short sales, where homes are sold for less than the debt outstanding on them, comprised 31% of total sales in July, according to the National Association of Realtors, helping depress prices for all. Buyers and sellers are at loggerheads in many markets, as home sellers refuse to accept the reality of lower prices. Depressed values and tighter credit in turn have reduced everyone's ability to borrow against their houses for remodeling, refurbishing, college tuition or other purposes. The lockup has caused people to feel poorer, even if they're employed and don't need to move. This feeling has, in a reversal of the boom's wealth effect, curbed consumer spending.
I was going to blog about this popular story from the New York Times, Seven New Rules for the First-Time Home Buyer, or even this story, Cautiously, Small Investors Edge Back Into Stocks. But then I came across the cutest real estate story of all time: Meow Spoken HereIF you love cats, kitten heaven is the old-fashioned bathroom in Tammy Cross’s apartment in a Beaux-Arts building on the Upper West Side. In this small space, five balls of fluff, none bigger than a fist and some just two days old, are napping, reclining or rolling about in various states of adorableness.“This is the nursery,” explained Ms. Cross, who has been saving needy animals ever since her childhood in Florida andConnecticut, where she retrieved baby squirrels that had fallen out of their nests. “This is where they stay when they’re on the bottle.”As many of the city’s cat fanciers know, Ms. Cross is the guiding spirit behind Kitten Little Rescue, an organization that does exactly what its name implies — rescues sick, abused or abandoned kittens and shows them off on summer weekends at 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue. The hope is that by being so enchanting, they will attract adoptive families or at least foster parents willing to house them temporarily.
DH says I'm not allowed to complain about this to him anymore so I have no choice but to turn to the blogosphere. It's about pancakes.The remote location of outlets is not merely a defensive, cost-saving maneuver. It is also a deliberate strategy. In the public mind, convenience is a trade-off for price, and price is traded off for convenience. Inconvenience connotes cheap, while convenience connotes pricey. This is why restaurant valets can get away with charging $20 to park your Honda on the street and why "convenience" stores can charge $3 for a can of condensed chicken noodle soup. In a very real sense, outlets are the anti-convenience store. Visiting the outlets demands an investment in time, deliberation, and energy beyond what we invest in most other leisure activities. And because the effort required to reach and shop at them is substantial, even extraordinary, the experience of going to the outlet is elevated in our minds to "special occasion" status. A trip to the outlet mall is not passive, not simply a matter of popping in to pick up a few things. We have to work to get there, piling up hefty "sunk costs." All that time! All that gas! "I gave up my entire Sunday afternoon and even missed the game to come here!" Psychologically speaking, all this and more must be repaid in the form of purchases made. In making that long trip we are actually engaged in a transfer of power away from ourselves to the outlet itself. The mall has extracted a price, and in demanding repayment, we are in fact taxing ourselves. Our expectations are raised at the same time that our guard is lowered, and in making this bargain we are willing to forgo many things that we once demanded from a satisfying shopping experience: variety, serendipity, aspiration -- and fun.I remember when I lived in New York that my former boss would constantly encourage me to take a trip to some outlet malls in New Jersey. Apparently this was her town's claim to fame. I never bothered to make that trip.
In 1997 I was twenty-seven, teaching a writing course at N.Y.U., publishing in a variety of national magazines, and earning about $40,000 a year after taxes. (The teaching job, incidentally, paid a paltry $2,500 for an entire semester but I was too enamored with the idea of being a college teacher to wonder if I could afford to take it.)That pretty much sums it up.
Here's an interesting debate in the New York Times: Is Gardening Worth It, Financially? (I love the Minnesota State Fair references!)I was especially interested in the state fair vegetables this year, and not just because I believe my butternut squash could have taken a ribbon. In a society where very few of us raise our food for basic sustenance, gardening satisfies a variety of appetites. We grow our own food because it’s green–unless, say, you’re washing excess fertilizer into the waterways. Or we grow our own food because it contributes to a healthful diet—although precious little research exists to prove that local produce is more nutritious than what comes from the grocery store. Or maybe we grow our own food because fresh garden vegetables taste better—a proposition I am planning to test.
When I began sowing seeds in the snow-white nights of March, I had a mind to test whether kitchen gardening is a thrifty pursuit. To that end, I pledged to tally my expenditures, and then also calculate how much my produce would cost at premium, Whole Foods prices. Well, my harvest is a little less than half in. Some of my vegetables, such as the peas and lettuce, have been devoured. Others, such as the winter squash and carrots, have barely been picked.
To date, I’ve harvested roughly 66 pounds of fresh produce, with a retail value of about $190. By my last calculation, I’ve spent $940 on equipment rentals, supplies, seeds, mulch, and fencing.
Here's a handy article from Donna Freedman at MSN about DIY: 5 life skills you can learn for freeThe skill: Basic home repair
Once upon a time, Bret Goble, 39, called a plumber for what turned out to be a simple repair. The price tag was anything but simple: "It cost about a hundred bucks to replace a 99-cent part."
Goble and his wife, Rita, started watching "This Old House" on TV. Always mechanically inclined -- as a kid, he took his toys apart to see how they worked -- Goble quickly learned to do jobs like replace a basement staircase, insulate the attic, rework a brick patio and steps, dig a swale to improve backyard drainage and install windows in their suburban Chicago dwelling.
"Bullheadedness" underlies Goble's DIY passion: "Why (should) I pay somebody for this when I can do it myself?"
Becky Blanton, 53, is another "This Old House" fan but has also learned from library books and from watching her uncle, a general contractor. And from the Internet: Recently Blanton typed the words "paint your car at home" into a search engine.
The result "looks like a (professional) paint job," says Blanton, who is currently blogging about her cross-country travels in a newly refurbished van. (She also built living quarters inside.) Blanton has attended free Home Depot seminars, which she says are a great way for beginners to get comfortable with tools "even if you're just building a birdhouse."
"The first time you do something it's not perfect, but after several times you get better," she says. "At least when you're self-taught, no one else sees all the (mistakes)."
Some suggested sources: About.com, the DIY network, "This Old House," HGTV, Toiletology 101, free how-to seminars at Home Depot, and "The Reader's Digest New Complete Do It Yourself Manual."
August Expenses:
Total Income: $3,359
Total Expenses: $3,065
I appear to be ahead by $294. Not bad.
Once again, the money pit, er, mansion takes a toll on my bank accounts. My September net worth dipped another $3,500 as I shelled out money to incompetent contractors. And we haven't even started the kitchen yet!Liabilities:
Total Assets: $474,588
Total Liabilities: $291,444
Net Worth: $183,144
