family

A blogger at rest.

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It’s been a while. A really long while. I wish I could say that I’ve been off saving the world, or crafting a best-selling novel, or doing anything else that might justify a 33-day vacation from posting here.

What’s actually been happening is a mix of the usual reasons (holidays, winter challenges, the chance to do extra work) plus an end-of-life situation affecting a family member (and, to some extent, me).

The cumulative impact was that my off-duty writing slowed to a trickle (18 posts in three months) and ultimately stalled.

The longer I didn’t write, the more anxious I became that:

  • I’d run out of things to say, and
  • That I’d need to come up with a super-skookum topic in order to justify the lengthening absence.

Which, of course, led to performance anxiety. I can’t think of anything interesting to write about my own life, and no money-related topics are speaking to me right now.

To paraphrase Newton’s first law of motion, a blogger at rest tends to stay at rest unless it’s acted upon by an outside force. In my case, a pair of forces finally came into play:

My own conscience, and

Comments from readers, both here and on my daughter’s site.

 

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A festival of pie.

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Tomorrow we’re attending a Thanksgiving celebration hosted by DF’s son and daughter-in-law, and we’re not going empty-handed. He’ll be doing a turkey in the oven plus prime rib on the Weber, and I’m bringing three pies.

Not just any pies, mind you. These are Alaska pies, made with fillings grown less than three miles from where they’ll be consumed.

Specifically, they were grown in our own dirt. The apple pie filling was made mostly by DF over many days in August and September. He sliced the Norland apples and mixed them with sugar, cinnamon, and a dash of ginger and nutmeg, then froze the result in pie-sized portions.

Lots of pie-sized portions: We have enough filling for more than two dozen desserts. Although the trees are less than five years old, the weirdly warm summer had them producing like gangbusters.

The second pie will be raspberry and rhubarb, with a hint of cinnamon. The berries went nuts this year, too, producing nearly three dozen quarts for the freezer, a bunch eaten fresh, and still more picked by family members. (Especially DF’s granddaughters, who love eating a path through the patch.)

And the last pie will be the best pie: pumpkin. It’s one of my favorite flavors anyway, and this one is special because it was the first year we tried to grow pumpkins. Although it was a jack o’ lantern cultivar rather than a pie pumpkin, that didn’t seem to matter much. Frankly, I had my doubts when I made a test pie a couple of weeks ago, since the pulp was a bright yellow. (See the illustration above.) But apparently it’s the cinnamon, ginger and cloves that are mostly responsible for the orange/brown hue of pumpkin pie filling.

 

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Back-to-school shopping: Kids under pressure.

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Who among us has ever heard – or said! – something like this during the back-to-school shopping season:

“You don’t understand, Mom/Dad – everybody is wearing/carrying [expensive item] this year! Do you want people to laugh at me?”

Back in the day, you just knew that having the right jeans would determine the course of your school year. Having a parent overrule your choices felt devastating – especially if it really did make you the target of your school’s mean girls or rude dudes.

Right now, your kid might be pleading for a new smartphone or a pair of shoes that cost more than the rent on your first apartment. Remembering our own school days is one reason that our kids have a pretty good chance of getting at least some of what they want. (More on that in a minute.)

Another reason? Social media.

Not only are young people checking out their classmates’ social media updates and haul videos, they’re exposed to “an entire army of influencers telling your child what they ‘need’ to have this year,” according to Kelsey Sheehy of the NerdWallet personal finance website.

NerdWallet recently surveyed a couple of thousand parents on the subject. Six in 10 respondents said their kids are influenced by social media; slightly more than that (67 percent) said their children’s friends were major influences.

And just over half (51 percent) of the parents caved to the pressure and splurged. I can’t blame them. Much.

Caving is potentially self-destructive, with regard to family finances, and potentially setting their kids up for Entitled Monsterhood. But it’s also understandable.

 

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Savings.com giving $1k for back-to-school shopping.

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Win a $1000 back to school shopping spree!

 

 

Yes, the first day of school really is imminent. Here in Anchorage it happens on Aug. 20.

To help with your back-to-school shopping needs, the coupon and deal blog Savings.com is giving away a $1,000 back-to-school shopping spree.

Here’s the beauty part: You don’t have to have kids in school, or even have kids at all, to enter the #HallmarkBTSSavings giveaway.

The shopping spree is in conjunction with a recent appearance on the Hallmark Channel’s “Home & Family” show. Sara Korab, head of community development for Savings.com, showed up to talk about how to save money this back-to-school season.

Will the “spree” be in the form of $1,000 worth of discounts, or will you be limited to certain stores? Nope. The winner will get a $1,000 check, to use however he or she chooses.

 

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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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Ode to the junk drawer.

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During my recent errand of mercy to Phoenix, my daughter streamed some episodes of the dark and frequently hilarious television show “Speechless.” The program focuses on the DiMeos, a working-class family that moved to a dump of a home in a good school district. The goal was for oldest son JJ, who has cerebral palsy, to get the education and services to which he’s entitled.

Money is short and the family is overwhelmed by just the activities of daily living so, yeah, the house remains a dump. In fact, it gets even dumpier because of their casual attitude about home upkeep. (Hint: A blue tarp over part of the roof is not a fashion statement.)

In one episode, JJ’s personal care attendant sings a song* about the DiMeo lifestyle, to the tune of “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).” Among other things, he notes that while most homes have one junk drawer, the DiMeos have multiples. In fact, pretty much all the drawers – like their house – is full of miscellany.

Which got me to thinking about the junk drawer in my Seattle apartment. It held stuff like safety pins, key rings (ever notice how those things accumulate?), USB cords (ditto), bits of ribbon, a clutch of shoelaces (which I saved when I tossed worn-out shoes), rubber bands and a tube of powdered graphite to squirt into balky locks (I managed the apartment house).

Tape lived there, too: Electrical tape, duct tape and a spare roll of cellophane tape. (Do people still call it that? I do.)

The junk drawer was also crammed with hardware and hand tools. A couple of former cream-cheese containers held nails, screws, bolts, brackets, washers and other bits of metal I couldn’t really identify. That’s also where I kept my six-in-one screwdriver, my hammer and the allen wrench I used on garbage disposal units – my own and those of other tenants. As apartment house manager I regularly got calls or knocks about a disposal that quit** mid-chew. Usually it just needed a few turns of the wrench.

My favorite thing about the junk drawer: It saves money.

 

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Financially dependent (adult) children.

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Feeling sentimental about your kids growing up and not needing you any longer? Take heart: They might rely on you for longer than you think (or want).

About one in three teenagers expects to remain financially dependent in some way until reaching age 30, according to a new national survey from Junior Achievement USA and Citizens Bank.

About three-quarters of them figure they’ll own a car before they hit the big 3-0. Way to keep the bar low, guys.

According to Jack Kosakowski of Junior Achievement USA, the survey results show “a disconcerting lack of confidence among teens when it comes to achieving financial goals.

“With a strong economy, you would think teens would be more optimistic,” says Kosakowski, president and CEO.

“It just demonstrates the importance of working with young people to help them better understand financial concepts and gain confidence in their ability to manage their financial futures.”

Only 44 percent say they’ll have begun saving for retirement by then, and about the same number hope to have paid off their student loans. At the same time, 60 percent of those surveyed think they’ll own homes.

There’s a disconnect there, I think, that may not be the simple optimism of youth: How do they plan to save for retirement, pay off all their student loans and still own a home?

 

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A few Polar Vortex essentials.

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Lately I’ve been amusing myself by searching “current temperature in Chicago (or Minneapolis, or Madison)” off and on.

Amusing to me, maybe. If the Polar Vortex made it 30 below zero outside my own window I wouldn’t be laughing at all.

That’s especially true this week, when the worst cold (as in “rhinovirus”) in living memory knocked me off my pins. Since Sunday evening I’ve mostly felt like homemade shit and, despite the relatively mild outdoor temperatures (low 30s) I’ve frequently had trouble staying warm.

That’s why I feel qualified to offer some tips on remaining at least moderately comfortable if you’re living through a cold snap (or even just a cold).

 

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About my daughter’s divorce.

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In a post on Nov. 14, I apologized for having maintained radio silence for so long and suggested that at some point I’d explain why.

That point is now. As the headline indicates, my daughter (whose blog some of you follow) was recently divorced. When I wrote the Nov. 14 post, I’d been back in Anchorage for only three days. Prior to that I’d been in Phoenix – for nearly three months.

Those were pretty awful months. Abby’s trio of posts on the process will give you some idea of why:

I’m divorced

I’m divorced, part 2

I’m divorced, part 3 (and the end)

It will take a bit of time to scan these, but I hope you will – because I can’t do justice to her side of the story. One reason that it’s taken me so long to tell my own is that processing it took time. The other reason is that I couldn’t think of a way to explain what happened without making it all about me.

But the experience did take a toll, so I’ve decided to present some of my own recollections the way a book gets a preface or an afterword.

 

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Christmas creep.

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It begins. For the past couple of weeks, at least, I’ve seen lights and ornaments, singing holiday trees, and even a life-sized Santa Claus at a Home Depot entrance.

Yeah, it was kind of cute that he wore an orange HD apron over his red suit, and that the words “St. Nick” were written on the “Hi, I’m…” tag. But for heaven’s sake, it’s not even Halloween yet. What’s with the Christmas creep?

Rhetorical question. The “rush” is that retailers need to make a certain amount of money or they become ex-retailers.

An excellent way to do that is to get people thinking ahead to the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Specifically, to get people thinking about this way ahead of time.

I admit it: Although I’m mostly horrified by the specter of Christmas creep, part of me does derive a certain frisson from those blinky lights on the periphery of the store. Does that mean that dark marketing forces have trained me to think that way? Good grief, I hope not. I much prefer to think it’s because Christmas was quite wonderful when I was a kid.

 

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