health

Coronavirus: An object lesson.

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This isn’t a post about or whether our country’s belated reaction to the coronavirus is in fact an overreaction. I’m not writing about whether or not we should self-isolate*,  or whether schools and public venues should have closed, or whether we’ve lost our collective damn mind in terms of toilet-paper hoarding.

I just want to point out that frugality (or intentional living, or whatever you want to call it) positions us to outlast both minor and major emergencies. Personally, I think that the coronavirus is both minor and major.

It’s minor (thus far, anyway) in that relatively few people are actually sick. If the epidemiologists are correct, “flattening the curve” may keep the medical system from being too overwhelmed to provide care for all.

It’s major in that many people’s livelihoods (both regular jobs and side hustles) are being hammered. When your finances are already chancy, losing a couple of weeks’ worth of work doesn’t just hurt – it might actually take you down.

Which brings us back to intentional living. If you were able to reduce/pay off your debt and build an emergency fund, then you are now better-equipped to handle the coronavirus troubles.

Facing reduced hours at work or even outright layoff because customers have disappeared? No longer able to pick up those extra 10 hours a week walking dogs or selling hot dogs at the basketball arena? Or maybe your job hasn’t gone away, but you now need to pay for weeks of childcare due to school closure.

That stinks, to be sure. It won’t be fun to use some (or all) of your EF to make up the difference. Instead, try thinking of it this way: I’m very glad I took the steps to build this cushion. And when this is over, I’ll get back to rebuilding.

 

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Life hack: 9 uses for a rice sock.

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Recently DF committed to giving his older granddaughter a ride to school every morning. She’s in a charter school, i.e., no buses.

The booster seat required by state law is chilly, and she let him know. The next morning he warmed up our biggest rice sock (we have several) and put it on the booster, to create a kind of poor man’s heated car seat. Thus her narrow little butt stayed toasty-warm all the way to school.

Now that’s service. DF also brings along a banana and an old Altoids tin filled with bacon. This kind of thing could give Uber and Lyft a run for their money.

For the uninitiated, a rice sock is a classic life hack. Simple, too: a cloth bag (sometimes an actual sock) filled with uncooked rice. Heat it in the microwave and you have a steady, lasting source of heat.

You can also heat it atop a wood stove: During a prolonged power outage some years back, DF put a rice sock in a clay pot atop the fireplace insert. Until the heat came back on, the rice sock was as good as a hot-water bottle. Better, maybe: If it had leaked it wouldn’t have soaked the bed.

As the headline of this post indicates, that’s not the only use for a rice sock.

 

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Breakfast in a straw.

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I’m fighting some kind of virus: mild sore throat slight headache, fatigue. That’s never fun but in this case it’s particularly dismaying: I have to get on a plane* on Sunday night.

Bad timing.

No fever and no super-serious symptoms, so I will not try for an appointment with the physician’s assistant who is my primary care provider. Most likely he would say, “Looks like a virus, so stay home and drink a lot of liquids” – advice I can give myself for free.

My usual m.o. is to feed a cold, starve a fever – and drown a sore throat. Thus I’ve been pouring in all the tea and water I can stand without developing water intoxication.

My appetite, usually spot-on-and-then-some, has dwindled. It’s not as though I can’t afford to miss a meal, but rather that if I don’t eat something I feel light-headed. Besides, my other theory is that you have to feed the machine if you want to fight off/recover from an illness.

Hence: smoothies. For the past few days I’ve been hitting the blender hard: frozen raspberries (grown in our yard), a banana, some homemade yogurt, a raw egg and a scoop of ground flaxseed (paid for with Amazon gift cards I earned from the Swagbucks rewards program).

Today, though, I took it to a new level.   

 

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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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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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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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At FinCon – and this year it’s MY turn to be sick.

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At last year’s FinCon, my daughter became seriously ill and wound up hospitalized. This year it’s my turn.

Not to be hospitalized, I hope, but to be sick. On Monday night I came down with the same bug that DF had just before it was time to leave for FinCon in Dallas. Spent a big chunk of Tuesday* at one of those doc-in-the-box places and then picking up three prescriptions and some food for the room.

Slept from about 4:30 to 11:30 p.m. yesterday, got up to take the last of the day’s meds and went right back under. Today I did something I haven’t done since, well, forever: I stayed in bed for the entire day. It felt weird, but I have to admit that it’s helping.

The three prescriptions probably also had a hand in my improvement. The fever and pounding headache are gone, I haven’t retched in 24 hours, and while I’m still barking like a seal the cough is what my physician terms “productive.” (Eeewww.)

All of which is a roundabout way of saying: I really, really hope to be well enough – and non-contagious enough – to do a Dallas reader meet-up.

 

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Grateful for sun and berries.

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I’ve been sick for several days now, apparently with the same virus that laid DF low last week. We share everything, including headache, sore throat and general malaise.

Since I’m not often ill, it always comes as a shock just how boring it can be to lie around all the time: too tired to hold a book up in bed or, when in a recliner, too brain-fogged to read seriously.

(Have watched the hell out of videos on MyPoints.com, though. If I’m gonna be sick, I might as well earn points.)

The weather outside has been as glum as my reasoning: gray skies, temps in the 40s, sideways-spitting rain. Blech. It was the kind of late-summer (read: early fall) weather that made naps mandatory yet not terribly successful. I kept dropping off and then popping awake; when I did sleep, my dreams were weird (baking a series of cakes? decorating and living in one of New York’s smallest apartments?) and made the sleep unsatisfying.

Today the sun came out and DF suggested a turn around the yard. The fresh air would do housebound-for-days me some good.

Was he ever right.

 

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A sick-day roundup.

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Some people who visit Florida bring back postcards, or ashtrays made out of seashells. I brought a virus: sore throat, chest-tightening cough and general malaise. I’m achy and wheezy (two dwarfs whom Snow White never mentioned) and the switch in time zones messed with my sleep both there and back at home.

Worth it, though, because I got to see my father and stepmom plus my sister, brother great-nephew. I even met a reader named Cheryl, who lives in the area and met me and Dad at Dunkin Donuts for a stimulating discussion about money and life.

Finished the rough draft of the new Playbook For Tough Times while I was there, too. Now all I have to do is edit it, work with the formatter and the cover-design guy, write a press release and start in on promotion.

At that point my inability to take a deep breath will, with luck, be figurative rather than literal. However, if this crud is the same one everyone else has been talking about I could be stuck with it for weeks.

 

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Autism: 9 things I learned. Plus: A great giveaway.

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Last September, the Dollar Dig cash-back site sponsored a giveaway of $150 worth of Amazon gift cards. This was a real win-win, since I like giving things away and you guys like the chance to get them. (The giveaway garnered more than 140 responses.)

Now site owner Rich Chrobak has asked my daughter and me to do posts to call attention to Autism Awareness Month. Since a giveaway does tend to get more eyeballs on a site, Chrobak is sponsoring giveaways in both places.

Here you have a shot at winning an Amazon Echo Dot. On Abby’s site, you’ll be in the running for a SamsungVR headset.

But that’s not the only way Dollar Dig is involved with Autism Awareness Month. Chrobak is putting his money where his heart is: All net profits for the month of April will go to POAC Autism Services, a New Jersey nonprofit that offers support, education, training and activities for families experiencing autism.

And if you like, you can be part of this effort.

 

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