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Monday miscellany: Debt hangover edition.

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About one-third of U.S. residents took on debt for the 2020 holidays, according to a study from the Magnify Money personal finance site. Breaking it down further, there’s good, bad and worse news about these findings. The good news: Fewer people (31 percent) borrowed this year than last year (44 percent). The bad news: Those … Read more

Bride of s#!t my boyfriend says.

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(Note: Surviving and Thriving is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.)

One of the many reasons I adore my dearest partner is that he not only endures my puns, he collaborates with them. Another reason is that he constantly comes up with his own – some germane to what’s happening in the moment, others that appear out of nowhere.

Can’t help lovin’ that man. Or writing about him: Previous pun compilations (see below) have encouraged groans but also appreciation from readers.

Those recaps were inspired by the fellow who posted some of his father’s pithy pronouncements on Twitter under the name “Shit My Dad Says.” Ultimately it became a best-selling book and even a short-lived television series called “$#*! My Dad Says.”

Sorry, folks: As long as he’s going to come up with these things, I’m going to write them down. Well, I’ll write some of them down. Some are too personal, too smutty or too deeply obscure to translate in this space. 

 

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Frugal stimulus spending.

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My fiscal stimulus* check got deposited a day earlier than the projected Jan. 4 date. Thus far I have used some of the money to:

Award $25 each to my great-nephew and great-niece, asking them to go forth and support the local economy.

Donate $25 to a GoFundMe for a Fairbanks woman in a tough situation.

Give $50 to the Food Bank of Alaska.

Buy $300 worth of gift cards at a small local restaurant. The young cashier was startled when I asked. “How much?” she said, and when I confirmed the figure she ran to get her boss. The supervisor thanked me several times and when I told him I’d done the same thing with the previous stimulus he said, “You’re helping us keep the lights on.”

Not sure where the rest of the money will go. But it will definitely go, i.e., it will definitely be spent. This is despite the advice I keep hearing to “invest it” or “save it.” Back in 2008 I resisted spending the fiscal stimulus, because I was anxious to rebuild savings depleted during my protracted divorce.

But that’s not what this money is intended to do. The idea is to give struggling businesses (local or national) a bit of a goose.

To be clear: I understand why some people would much rather build their own savings, or give the landlord a bit against the back rent, or pay down their credit card debt. I was there myself. But now I want to play some small part in helping others.

Some of you probably want the same. And I’d like to point out that it doesn’t all have to be bonbons and pretty shoes. You could also opt for frugal stimulus spending. That is, spending with an eye toward getting not just the most bang for your buck but also the most value from the result.

 

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Extreme Frugality: Post-holiday sales edition.

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Each year retailers set out millions of dollars’ worth of holiday presents, décor, cards, wrapping paper and foods. And each year there’s always some (or a lot) left over. Hence the annual post-holiday sales, where we can save some (or a lot) of money.

I wish I’d written this for Dec. 26, when stores were fairly bursting with red and green bargains. But it’s not too late. While holiday retail inventory is down, it’s not out: Sales are still happening both online and in-store. The discounts are deeper, too.

Sure, some of what you’ll see went unsold for a reason. It was tacky. It was garish. It was expensive. It was mystifying (see “corgi-butt bottle opener”). But plenty of perfectly good stuff simply doesn’t get bought, and post-holiday sales can stretch next year’s holiday budget and certain year-round needs as well.

For example, if your winter boots have started to let in snow at every step, you’ll likely find screamin’ deals on replacement footwear at this point. Or if someone you know is going to graduate from college, get married, move into a new home or have a baby in the coming year, now is the time to go shopping.

As always: If you don’t need it, it’s no bargain. Why buy another 10 rolls of wrapping paper when you’ve already got two dozen? Or extra holiday ornaments when every inch of the tree is already crowded? And you can display only so many nutcrackers or old-time Santas before your family stages an intervention.

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Christmas in the time of COVID.

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I wasn’t really feeling Christmas this year due to my dad’s death. But I found some workarounds.

A couple of weeks beforehand I tried to jump-start old memories by visiting the city’s largest nursery and walking among the Christmas trees that were all lined up and waiting for new homes.

That evergreen smell usually does it for me, and I did start feeling a bit Kris Kringle-y. This time, however, the fragrance of the season was at war with the fact that for decades my dad raised Christmas trees as a side hustle.

That made me feel a bit weepy, but I fought to counter this with good memories of those trees: helping plant them for a couple of years as a teenager, and doing tree-related chores with him during visits as an adult.

That helped, which is something I should remember when I feel like raging against the COVID that took him away. One of the platitudes people like to bring up when you’re grieving is, “Think of all the good times you had together!” Turns out that this is true and in fact entirely rational, but it doesn’t always help when you’re in the thick of dammit-this-isn’t-FAIR.

This time, it did, and I am grateful.

Bonus: My teen-aged great-niece* accompanied me. We enjoyed looking at the trees, inhaling the fragrance, and clutching imaginary pearls when we looked at price tags. Live trees** are a mania with some Alaskans and they’re willing to pay big bucks for evergreens that have been transported up from the Lower 48.

We also got a great kick out of the nursery’s gift shop, rife as it was with displays of fancy textiles, soaps, lotions, glassware, chocolates and Department 56 holiday village collectibles. The trip was a balm for our gray-winter-day eyes. That close to solstice, we would take any color we could get.

We also noticed that Department 56 now makes Halloween village collectibles, including a subset of Harry Potter stuff. I suppose it was only a matter of time. 

 

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Monday miscellany: Sleazy scammer edition.

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Lost your job due to the pandemic or looking for a side hustle through a work-at-home job? Be careful where you click. The increase in work-at-home jobs is a perfect fit for an Internet scammer, reports Kathy Kristof on the SideHusl blog.

“Crooks hide in the crowd, making their offers appear so similar to real ones that it’s hard to tell the difference,” says Kristof.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, job scams have cost U.S. residents at least $150 million in the first nine months of 2020. I say “at least” because who knows how many people who were victimized bothered to file an FTC complaint, or who didn’t know they could?

Here’s what the thieves want:

  • Personal information, such as a Social Security number
  • Passwords to accounts
  • Access to your computer (for example, the crook might send you a link to fill out an application – but it’s a spoofed site that will infect your computer with malware)
  • For you to cash a personal check or write them a personal check

To be clear: There are loads of legitimate work-at-home jobs out there. But you need to be cautious about any offer, even if you think it’s legit. Kristof’s article can help.

In addition, the Internal Revenue Service reports a new text scam: Messages saying, “You have received a direct deposit of $1,200 from COVID-19 TREAS FUND. Further action is required to accept this payment into your account. Continue here to accept this payment …” 

 

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Giveaway: Gift card – your pick.

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I mailed some important paperwork to my brother on Dec. 4. It was so important that I used priority mail, both for the three-day delivery function and the fact that it’s easy to track.

Guess what? He still doesn’t have it. 

Typical online holiday orders + the additional online shopping thanks to the pandemic = one heck of a mess. In fact, FedEx and UPS have nixed new deliveries for some retailers, which means that packages ordered after that are being sent via the U.S. Postal Service. The Washington Post reports that this has led to “widespread delays and pushed the nation’s mail agency to the brink.”

“Postal employees are reporting mail and package backlogs across the country, and working vast amounts of overtime hours that have depleted morale during another surge of coronavirus infections nationwide,” according to the Post.

Which is why I hope that the winner of this giveaway opts for an e-gift card. That person still won’t get the card in time to do any holiday shopping, but they can:

  • Print out the gift card and give it as a present, or
  • Shop the hell outta the post-holiday clearance.

 

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Some frugal Christmas parodies.

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(Happy Throwback Tuesday! Yes, I know it’s supposed to be Throwback Thursday, but my sandbox, my rules. This article originally ran on Dec. 23, 2017. Get ready to sing along!)

This close to the holiday I’m still feeling the pull to buy, buy, buy. Even though we don’t have a television to deliver marketing copy six times per hour, consumerism creeps into our lives in other ways:

Ads on the classical music station (fun fact: a local shop packed and shipped more than 10 tons of Alaska king crab last Christmas).

Displays of holiday foods and gifts at the supermarket and drugstore.

Signs outside other stores.

Christmas decorations at restaurants and my neighbors’ homes.

Never mind that everyone on my list has been bought for and that all the gifts have been wrapped and either mailed or delivered. I still feel that I haven’t bought enough. That somehow I should be giving lots more. That maybe tomorrow on my way to a friend’s house I could just stop in somewhere and…

Noooope, as Lana would say on “Archer.” So I decided to banish those thoughts with humor.

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Giveaway: More stocking stuffers.

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I’m really enjoying these giveaways. That’s because I love giving things away almost as much as I love winning things myself. Okay, not 100 percent accurate right now: I’m hoping against hope to win a PlayStation 5 in time for Christmas. My great-nephew, like many other gamers, is obsessed over this new system. Some people … Read more

Looking back at the garden.

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My dearest friend brought in the first snowball of the season today. (Note: “Today” meaning Oct. 18, when I started writing this but got sidetracked.)

He had no intention of tossing it at me. Wise man.

“I just thought it was funny that I could make a snowball,” he said.

DF was also glad that he’d (mostly) finished putting the garden to bed. All that’s left is to thin out a few rows of raspberries, a task I want to observe. If I have to do it for him some year, or even if I simply want to help, I won’t accidentally kill any healthy specimens.

And healthy specimens they were: We froze about 30 quarts, I made about 16 jars of jam and his grandchildren romped through the rows, eating as many as they could hold. Which is, of course, one reason we do this: We want those kids to know where food comes from, other than Safeway.

I’d every intention of writing this article in late summer as “A walk through the garden.” I even took pictures. Due to various Reasons the article never materialized.

When I looked at the tiny white flakes falling to cover grass and the beds, I decided to go ahead with the piece. I wanted to see those summer pictures again, both as a reminder of what was and what will come again next year.

 

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