Donna Freedman

Giveaway: “Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk.”

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Personal finance journalist Cameron Huddleston’s new book was written from painful personal experience. “Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations With Your Parents About Their Finances” came about after Huddleston’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

She learned a lot – and she learned it the hard way. Now she wants to help other people from having to go through the difficulties of dealing with someone else’s finances after the person is ill and unable to help sort things out.

End-of-life issues are never easy to discuss. With wisdom and compassion, the author offers a tremendous amount of expertise to take you through this touchy process.

Huddleston has graciously offered to sponsor a giveaway of two copies of “Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations With Your Parents About Their Finances.” If you or anyone else you know has aging parents, this book could save a lot of grief and wasted energy, and let you focus on what’s important: finding the best solutions for your family.

The book shows how to get the conversation started before your parents actually need any help. You’ll learn how to talk about things like estate planning, whether they can (or should) age in place vs. moving to a smaller home or to an assisted living facility, what kinds of documents and legal paperwork you should have just in case, how to bring siblings into the conversation and – this is super-important! – what not to say.

Suppose your parents resist any kind of talk at all? Huddleston has a chapter about that, too. These are invasive questions, after all, and your parents (who may still see you as “the kid”) might not want to talk about money– especially if it turns out they don’t have enough).

I haven’t yet finished “Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk,” but I can already say that anyone whose family hasn’t discussed later-in-life issues needs to read this book.

 

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How much can you borrow in student loans?

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Trick question! As in, wrong question.

What the student in your life ought to be asking is, “How much should I borrow?”

The answer, of course, being “as little as you must – and, if possible, nothing at all.”

That was the topic for a recent piece I did for the Experian blog. Student loans are a personal bugaboo because it’s so easy to sign up for life-hobbling debt when you’re too young to understand the true consequences.

Understand: I don’t think student loans are evil in and of themselves. I just think that too often people borrow without thinking it through. Learn more by clicking the link above.

Some readers have asked me to continue these roundups, aka “where I’ve been lately.” It’s been a while since I did one (thanks a lot, summer messing with my head) so this one will take a while.

 

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Saved Savings Challenge, Week 2: It adds up.

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My BFF has found a way to make money from Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi. It involves absolutely no work and will earn her more than $1,000 within a year.

You guessed it: She stopped drinking the stuff.

Linda B. had already been inclined to cut down on soft drinks due to various reports of their horribleness. Recently she decided to go cold turkey, both at home and at restaurants – and to put $20 in an envelope every week. That’s how much she figured the habit was costing her.

Watching the savings grow is fun, and it couldn’t have come at a better time: She and her oldest friend (think: going on 70 years) are taking a European cruise next year. A thousand bucks will come in handy during shore leave.

It adds up. Some of the Saved Savings Challenge participants would agree.

 

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FinCon 19: C.U. in D.C.?

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Once again I’ve been chosen to be one of the more than 200 speakers at . This year FinCon takes place in Washington, D.C., from Sept. 4 to Sept. 7.

I’ll be coming in a few days early for some sightseeing and to hang out with my daughter. And maybe with some of you, but more about that in a minute.

First, a shout-out to any other personal finance bloggers out there: How would you like to get free admission to FinCon19?

If you can meet a couple of conditions, then I urge you to apply for the FinCon19 scholarship. Those conditions are:

You started your money blog/podcast/website/YouTube channel after January 2018.

You haven’t already registered to attend FinCon19.

 

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Civil twilight.

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A little after 2 a.m. yesterday Anchorage entered a 28-day period during which the light never stops. Specifically, we will have 24 hours of either sun or something called “civil twilight.” That’s when the geometric center of the sun is six degrees below the horizon.

Even though we technically have a sunset, the sun is still within those six degrees. It keeps the darkness from taking hold – at least for the next 27 days.

Civil twilight is not to be confused with astronomical twilight or nautical twilight. But it sure confuses the folks on whom it endlessly shines. As I noted in “Breaking up is hard to do,” the increased daylight makes us all a little bit giddy.

Kids ride their bikes until well past 11 p.m., and ice cream trucks ply their wares long after what would be quittin’ time in the Lower 48. People fish all night and then go to work. Or they’ll play softball until they drop from exhaustion (and directly into the cool embrace of a bucket of brews).

 

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Saved Savings Challenge, Week 1: Define “savings.”

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In last week’s introduction to the Saved Savings Challenge, I declined to post specific, hard-and-fast rules. That’s to leave room for each participant to define “savings” in her own way.

As of May 16 I’d set aside $104.09, which I rounded up to $105 and transferred over to Ally Bank on May 31. Since then my savings haven’t been gigantic, but they have occurred – along with some additional questions about the definition of “savings.”

According to the bottom of a recent supermarket receipt, I saved another $107.06 in a single shopping trip. But that’s true only if you think that in a free country a box of Triscuits should cost $4.49 and eggs go for $2.49 per dozen, or that it’s acceptable for a five-pound package of ground beef to retail for $31.15.

This particular grocer generally has higher prices than the one at which we do most of our shopping. Just as department stores mark clothing higher than it should be in order to offer hot deals later on, the store offered a short-term sale and downloadable discounts to bring the Triscuits down to $1.69 a box, the eggs to $1.50 a dozen and the meat to $10.35.

To be clear: Those final prices were pretty darned good for Anchorage. But I don’t see the discounts as savings, because I would never have bought the products at that price. Instead, I’d have waited until they went on sale and then stocked up.

Some people would say, “Hey, point is you wound up paying $1.69 – that’s a pretty skookum deal for Anchorage! If the regular price was $4.49 you really did save $2.80 per box.”

Maybe you would agree. I don’t buy it.

 

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Join me in the “Saved Savings Challenge.”

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A few months back I asked readers to join me in a No-Spend February Challenge. It went so well that I figured we’d do another one at some point.

That point is now. As of June 1, I’d like to invite you all to take part in the Saved Savings Challenge.

That is, any money you don’t spend gets squirreled away (in a jar or in a special savings account) for 30 days.

After all, it’s not savings unless you save it.

Next time someone tells you he saved 20 percent on holiday shopping or $40 on a great pair of boots, ask this question: Where’s the money you saved? Chances are that it, too, got spent because suddenly there was this “extra” cash.

Of course, sometimes people are thrilled to save money on something absolutely necessary. As in, “If I don’t cut the grocery bill by 20 percent, we won’t have enough to eat this month.” Or they’re grateful to have found affordable winter boots, or a coat for the kid who outgrew his previous one sooner than expected.

But for the purposes of this challenge, “saved savings” generally means stuff like:

  • Money you were going to spend before you talked yourself out of it.
  • Money you saved on an essential purchase thanks to sales, traded-in scrip at CVS or Walgreens, discounted gift cards, or coupons/discount codes (CVS, et al.) or the use of store credit or coupons.
  • Refunds you got from a cash-back shopping site like Mr. Rebates, Dollar Dig or Ebates.
  • Money that showed up in some other weird way (more on this later).

I did a dry run for this challenge in May, after my daughter – whose own saved savings example is pretty epic – suggested that the two of us take a trip to London. Although this trip probably won’t happen until spring 2020, I want to start setting aside the funds now. That way I can pay out of pocket, i.e., without incurring debt or interfering with my other financial goals.

 

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Salary vs. the “right” job.

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My least-favorite job ever was working at the glass factory, right after high school. Great salary, for its time and for my age. But it was hotter than the hinges of Hades (thanks, glassmaking furnace!). Loud music (mostly country and western) blared nonstop. We stood on concrete floors throughout our eight-hour shifts.

Well, eight hours for some people. That summer I did a lot of double shifts. Here’s how my regular schedule looked:

Work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. for five days, then get a day off.

Go in at 3 p.m. the next day and work from 3 to 11 p.m. for five days, then get two days off.

Go in at 11 p.m. and work until 7 a.m. for the next five days, then get two days off and go in at 7 a.m. the next day.

Labor, rinse, repeat.

Except, as noted, I worked a lot of double shifts. Normally I might have grossed anywhere from $163 to $171 per week, depending on the shift. In two months of work, I grossed a little over $1,800.

 

While the job stank on ice, it was a good example of what I didn’t want to do for a living. It wasn’t that I was too good for the work, but rather that I wanted something different. Some people got married, bought homes and raised families on glass-factory salaries (which increased as you gained seniority). That was fine for them. It just wasn’t a good fit for me.

Lately I’ve been wondering whether I’d say “yes” if Company X asked me to return to the world of full-time work. After all, I’ve still got some years left before retirement and wouldn’t mind goosing my Social Security check a bit. Thus I decided that if the mythical Company X offered me a job, I might take it – provided there were an obscenely large paycheck attached to the gig.

How large? Not sure. But certainly more than the $77,000 annual salary cited in a recent study from the fintech company Self Lender.

 

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The lettuce tree.

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It’s been 11 days since my last post. Not dead, just dazed: by work deadlines, by the ever-increasing daylight and, lately, by the lettuce tree in our living room. (See photo at left.)

Yep, that’s lettuce. It began its life late last year as a romaine seed in a pot in our kitchen, because DF wondered whether it would grow indoors.

Spoiler alert: It did.

Initially the pot stood by a big window on our kitchen table. The lettuce likely wouldn’t have made it on daylight alone, thanks both to short days and low winter light levels.

They can get pretty darned low; as this Facebook post from Alaska Climate Info notes, on winter solstice the sun was 5.5 degrees above the horizon. Compare that to winter sun angles in Florida, which are as high as 38 degrees.

Fortunately, the lettuce stood right next to the Aerogarden hydroponic setup in which DF was growing Tumbling Tom cherry tomatoes. This setup features lights that are on for as long as we are up.

Although the romaine wasn’t directly under those grow lights, it got enough to survive. As you can see.

 

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Spring, and cake, and springy cake.

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Spring has sprung,

The grass has riz,

I wonder where the flowers is?

That’s a little poem my dad used to recite when I was a kid. He was also fond of:

Spring has sprung,

The grass is riz,

The bird is on the wing.

Isn’t that absurd?

I always thought the wing was on the bird.

Trouble is, spring hasn’t sprung – not reliably, anyway. As I noted in “Snow and soup,” we’ve been having back-and-forth weather. One day it’s so sunny and mild that it’s 95 degrees in our closed-up greenhouse. Then it drops into the 30s at night and only grudgingly inches back into the 40s the next day.

Today my niece sent a photo of a strawberry blossom in the bed next to her foundation. Woo hoo! And when will our less-protected beds follow suit?

While snow meant soup, sorta-spring has meant cake. I may have a new favorite. And it’s frugal cake.

 

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