Donna Freedman

15 things I like to do.

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My blogging buddy and former* Get Rich Slowly boss J.D. Roth recently posted an article called “How to find purpose in your life: 12 powerful exercises to help you discover purpose and passion.”

Among those exercises was one called “20 things you like to do,” which is just what it sounds like: Make a list of 20 things – and it must be 20 – that you like to do.

With those items you’re supposed to create a chart with columns like “when did you last do this thing,” “is it free or is there a monetary cost,” “solitary or social,” “planned or spontaneous” and several other descriptors.

J.D. admits he could list only 16 things he likes to do. Even better: “Playing computer games” was the first one he thought of, whereas “sex” was the second thing to come up (as it were).

Not only does he admit it (not sure I would have!), J.D. pokes fun at himself before the readers had a chance: “Kind of sad (and hilarious) to note that this list is in the order I thought of things.”

I decided to bounce off his post and give a list of 20 things I like to do. Trouble is, I couldn’t make it to 20 things either. Maybe that means my tastes are refined, or maybe it means that I’m a pretty boring person.

Note: These are in no particular order. In fact, one of the most important things I like to do is found at the end.

 

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Giveaway: “Frugality For Depressives.”

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Greetings from sunny Phoenix! I’m visiting my daughter and meeting some deadlines. While I do have to finish the paying work, I also wanted to put up a new post. Yet why come this far south and spend my non-work hours writing?

The solution came to me this morning: Do a giveaway post! Haven’t done one in a while, after all.

And why not make the prize a copy of Abby’s book? That’s a hostess gift she can really appreciate. #virtualetiquette

One lucky reader will get either a paperback or Kindle copy of “Frugality For Depressives: Money-Saving Tips For Those Who Find Life A Little Harder.”

Of course a mother would think her kid’s book is awesome. But I’m not the only one who thinks the book can help depressives and the chronically ill (and maybe others — more on that below).

 

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Five fast financial fixes.

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This post is a second-generation copycat post. Specifically: My daughter wrote “5 fast, easy ways to improve your finances” after being inspired by a post from the Bitches Get Riches website (whose title is not ready for prime time, but definitely worth a read if you’re not averse to salty language).

Hey, if it worked for their readers, it should work for mine.

 

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Hey, Josh Radnor: You’re frugal.

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The other day I read an article about Josh Radnor, the actor who played Ted Mosby on the television series “How I Met Your Mother.” Now 43, he talked about staying in his $750-a-month sublet for the first two years of the show, even though it was a megahit.

“You don’t know, as an actor, how sustainable things are going to be, how long things are going to last,” he told CNBC.

Finally he bought a house – the last person in the cast to do so – and by the end of the series he’d made the Forbes list of the highest-paid television actors, earning $10 million (salary plus syndication bucks).

Normally I don’t write about celebs, but I want to highlight something Radnor said in the article:

“It’s not that I’m frugal. I don’t mind spending money if I believe in the thing. (But) there’s not a lot of stuff I look at in the world and say ‘Oh, man, I gotta have that’.”

As long as we’re doing TV today, I’m going to paraphrase Eleanor Shellstrop* from “The Good Place”: Josh Radnor…Ya frugal!

 

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Stormy Daniels: Rabbi Ruttenberg explains it all for you.

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Today I found a series of tweets about Stormy Daniels from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, an author and speaker. Rabbi Ruttenberg put into words the irritation I’ve been feeling lately about the furor surrounding Daniels and the U.S. president.

Short form: What Daniels does for a living isn’t the issue here. Stop making it about her, and stop thinking that her job choice makes her testimony somehow less true.

But the rabbi says it so. much. better. than I did, so I’m reproducing her thoughts here.

Note that she’s calling out those on the Left as well as on the Right.

I want to say a thing about the slut-shaming language I’ve seen around Stormy Daniels. A few words about why what she does for a living doesn’t matter in this story, and then a few more on when it does.

Yes, I’m really a rabbi.

Stormy Daniels is a human person with whom the President of the United States evidently had an affair, and then paid off, and also (if I understand correctly) intimidated and threatened.

Our focus should be on his actions. His breach in his marriage (I’ll note below why that matters), his attempt to buy her silence, why he’s so invested in that silence, where the money came from and how it got transferred, and very much about these possible threats.

How she has chosen to earn money in order to pay for her groceries and whatever else (provide for sick family? set aside money for someone’s college? pay for decadent spa days? I don’t know, not my business) is irrelevant. She is news only because of what he did or didn’t do.

 

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Life in the Entitlement Zone.

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Today I spent several hours in the main public library, working at a long countertop that holds a sign saying “QUIET ZONE.”

To be utterly clear, the sign also features “no” symbols placed over a cellphone and a talking head.

Pretty straightforward, right? That rules-enforced peace is the reason I work here* fairly regularly.

And fairly regularly I’m accosted by cell yell. Today was one such day.

Hey, can you hear me?

I look up and a guy, maybe 19 years old, is approaching. Can you hear me? Yeah, what’s up? And naturally he plunks himself down in the Quiet Zone and opens up his laptop while continuing to talk.

 

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The inadvertent Pi Day.

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Yesterday found me waxing housewife-ish because DF was on his way home from a nine-day trip. After long trips I love walking into our home to find out he’s cleaned or boiled up some whale chunks. Thus I make it a point to return the favor when he goes out of town.

For starters, I washed the sheets and hung them on the line, along with the blanket and comforter. Next I opened some windows and briefly aired out the place, taking advantage of high-30s temps and a mild breeze.

Finally I baked one of his favorite dishes: homemade turkey pie. It’s kind of a pain to make because it has so many moving parts (more on that below), and this one was even more challenging because I used a bigger, deeper pie pan than usual. Since I had pastry dough left over I decided to make a raspberry-rhubarb pie as well.

Believe it or not, I’d completely spaced that today is Pi Day.

 

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Pinterest won’t cover your credit card bills.

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According to the “Generations Ahead” study from Allianz Life, millennials aren’t doing too badly, financially speaking.

They’re building good savings habits, thinking about retirement, etc. However, social media is doing a number on their good intentions.

Almost 90 percent of the millennials surveyed believe that social media encourages people to compare their own lives with the way other people live.

You don’t say.

More than half (57 percent) of those millennials cop to having spent money because of social media influence. That’s why I wrote “Social media will try to bankrupt you: Here are four tactics to stay solvent” over at The Simple Dollar.

 

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Even the Tooth Fairy is cutting back.

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PF how much the Tooth Fairy paysWhen I was a kid the Tooth Fairy would bring a nickel or a dime for each lost tooth. I sorta-kinda remember getting 25 cents once, but that’s probably wishful thinking. My parents had four kids and not a whole lot of cash.

Possibly one of my classmates bragged about getting a quarter per cuspid and I dreamed it would happen to me as well.

The annual Original Tooth Fairy Poll from Delta Dental says today’s kids are getting an average of $5.70 per first tooth lost. Dang.

That’s actually a slight drop from last year’s average of $5.72 per tooth. Even so: Dang.

 

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Eat the cake.

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Last week I saw a Facebook meme that said, “Life is short. Take the trip. Buy the shoes. Eat the cake.”

I’ve set up a trip, to the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference in New York in mid-May. And I baked a dessert that my mother used to make for us: Sour Cream Chocolate Cake.

Two out of three ain’t bad.

 

The cake recipe was already on my mind, because of a batch of homemade yogurt gone awry. The starter was on the very edge of nope-buy-a-new-one. Because I wanted to believe it was okay, I used it. Magical thinking wasn’t enough, however, and the yogurt turned out smelling something like bread and something like beer. It shouldn’t smell like either of those things.

 

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