modern life

Charity overload.

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I’m drowning in end-of-the-year charity solicitations. Social causes, political action groups, health-care organizations, educational advocacy agencies…Some I’ve never heard of, some I’ve helped in the past. All of them worthy.

Thanks to texting, social media and e-mail lists, marketing departments have more ways than ever to reach out to us. “They know that we have a tendency toward (giving) at this time of year, and they really double down on it,” says behavioral finance expert Dr. Ted Klontz, co-author of books like Mind Over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health.

You’re aware that need exists, and would like to help. But giving without a plan could potentially turn you into a charity case.

“If you harm yourself financially, you’re creating the same kind of problems you’re trying to solve,” says Manisha Thakor, vice president of financial education for Brighton Jones and author of On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Personal Finance.

I talked with Manisha and several other money experts for an article on a new website, Considerable.com. All of them told me pretty much the same thing:

 

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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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Do kids still do these things?

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Happy Throwback Thursday! This piece originally ran on April 29, 2014. Given that so many of these pastimes were summer-oriented, I decided to post this because summer is nearly over. Sorry to be such a buzzkill.

Today I noticed a Facebook posting about talking into the fan “to hear my robot voice,” complete with a picture of a windblown little girl facing a fan and either talking or singing. That is, if robots sing.

“Admit it…we all did this,” the caption concludes.

Duly admitted. However, DF says he never did any such thing. Perhaps that’s because he grew up mostly in Alaska, where fans aren’t a common household appliance.

Do kids still do that – talk into a fan to hear their voices oscillate? Or is that too lame for words, given that they can download apps to make their voices sound like Darth Vader or, yes, a robot.

How about this one: Do kids still let the fan blow bubbles for them? Show of hands if you’ve ever held a dripping bubble-blowing wand in front of a running fan to watch bubbles shoot out.

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Average salaries haven’t gone up (much) in 40 years.

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Having trouble making ends meet? A beer income rather than champagne tastes could be the reason.

That’s because real average salaries – wages adjusted for inflation – today aren’t much bigger than they were in 1978, according to the Pew Research Center.

Lately we hear a lot of rah-rah about low unemployment (3.9 percent), and the fact that the private sector has been creating jobs consistently (101 straight months as of July). However, the Pew study indicates that not only has wage growth dawdled, most salary gains have gone to higher-paid workers.

Workers in the private sector averaged $22.65 per hour, a gain of about 2.7 percent from last year. That’s the new normal, according to the study; in the past five years workers have seen salary gains of 2 to 3 percent.

However, average hourly earnings tended to go up by 4 percent in the time period before the Great Recession. In the 1970s through the early 1980s, it wasn’t unusual to get wage increases of 7 to 9 percent. Those were high-inflation times, however, so the money was desperately needed.

Here’s where it gets depressing, though: Our inflation-adjusted salaries haven’t gone up by much. In January 1973, average hourly wage was $4.03. Today, that would be $23.68 – and as noted above, private-sector wages currently average $22.65 an hour.

 

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Wedding crashers.

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The sun came out this evening, after five or six days of gloom and/or rain. DF suggested we ride over to Kincaid Park and enjoy a view of the water, or at least a view of anything other than our own yard and our own four walls.

The parking lot at the Kincaid Chalet (actually a former bunker for nuclear-armed Nike missiles) was fairly crowded. Not unusual, since a lot of special events take place there.

“I think it’s a wedding,” DF reported when I returned from getting my sunglasses from the car.

The chalet is probably the number-one place for wedding receptions in Anchorage. You get a great view Mt. Susitna (aka “Sleeping Lady”), Fire Island and Cook Inlet, plus tons of trees and, sometimes, moose and bears.

We heard music and laughter and a DJ’s booming voice, and saw nicely dressed people milling around outside the chalet, whose doors were open. We intended to walk on by. But then Louis Armstrong’s voice arose, singing “What A Wonderful World.”

I pulled up short. “Let’s dance.”

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Newspaper is magic.

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I spent a few hours at the public library yesterday, researching an upcoming article and working on a preliminary outline. Being me, I brought along a snack (peanuts from a giant Costco can) and a soft drink* that I’d partially frozen and wrapped in newspaper (diet sodas taste better very, very cold).

When I unwrapped the drink my eye fell on the newspaper’s date: June 20, 2016.

Aside from a little fraying around the edges the section was as readable as it ever was, although I’ve been using it fairly often for more than two years now.

Oh, newsprint: I will miss you when you’re gone.

 

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Heat wave? It’s all relative.

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The mercury edged over 80 degrees yesterday, the second or third day of the heat wave. Anchorage residents moaned and sighed and even jumped into local lakes. For my great-nephews that meant Jewel Lake, whose waters are somewhere between 50 and 54 degrees.

By comparison, the water off Cape May, NJ, averages 73 degrees in July. No swimmer’s itch, either, although there might be jellyfish from time to time.

I grew up in a hot, humid place, and remember lying awake wishing that the box fan in the window would magically find cool air and send it my way. My jobs in that region – a commercial greenhouse, a bakery and a glass factory – were not terribly comfortable, either.

In hot-and-humid Oak Park, Ill., our place had two air conditioners: one in the bedroom and one to cool the rest of the apartment. The bedroom cooled off just fine when the door was closed. The other rooms were never really cool, though. They were just a little less hot.

When I lived in Seattle the temperatures went over 100 from time to time (and my south- and west-facing windows grabbed every available ray). I’ve spent time in Phoenix in the summer, and last year encountered both dehydration and, I believe, a touch of heat stroke. (Thank goodness for air conditioning, tile floors and that jug of iced tea.)

I’ve even been in Death Valley in the summer. On purpose. Even so, I have to admit that an Alaska “heat wave” is startlingly uncomfortable.

 

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Enchilada sauce and the domino effect.

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On Sunday I finally cooked the red enchilada sauce I’d been planning to make for ages. Generally I do a double batch and freeze half, because the recipe calls for three ounces of tomato paste and the cans are all six ounces.

Make ahead and save, right? Especially when you see how much you save: The red enchilada sauce at the store cost $2.79 to $4.49. By comparison, this recipe cost me maybe 50 cents (and probably not even that much) for more than four cups of the stuff. In part that’s because I used clearance-rack tomato paste (29 cents a can) and cumin and chili powder from Costco-sized jars.

Better still: I can control how much sodium goes in, and I can tinker the recipe a bit. For example, I added a little unsweetened cocoa powder for richness and replaced the water with broth made with chicken bouillon. But since both these additions had also been found on the clearance rack, they didn’t boost the total cost by much.

Naturally the flavor of the homemade stuff is so much better than the canned variety. No preservatives, less salt and it’s amazingly easy to make. We’re taking 10 minutes, start to finish. The recipe is from a delightful cookbook called “Budget Bytes: Over 100 Easy, Delicious Recipes to Slash Your Grocery Bill in Half.” (You can also access it at the BB website.)

Bonus: Finally making time to do the enchilada sauce led to all sorts of shenanigans. In a good way.

 

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Alaska’s worst garden pest? That would be moose.

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Gardening where I live, part 117: Last night I was  reading at the kitchen table when a brown blur crossed my peripheral vision.

A moving brown blur. A really big brown blur.

Turned my head to the left and yep, a cow moose was walking into our yard, followed by a tottery little calf. Right toward our garden full of young quinoa, lettuce, celery, tomatoes, strawberries and other plants.

 

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College is optional. Education is not.

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(FinCon and the Center for Financial Services Innovation are sponsoring the #FinHealthMatters writing/podcasting contest. Here’s my entry.)

A recent Facebook post about college featured a couple of 20-somethings. One was a slacker dude lamenting, “I spent $60,000 on a worthless degree and no one will hire me.”

The other was a clean-cut young man happily announcing, “I spent $6,000 at a trade school and make $85,000 a year.”

Obviously things aren’t that simple. Some high-cost degrees immediately lead to high-paying jobs, and not every skilled tradesperson automatically rakes in the bucks.

But its core message is one I’ve been espousing for years:

There is more than one road to postsecondary education.

If you’re unsure what you want to do with your life, college might not be a good fit. And even if higher education is in your future, it might not look the way you imagined.

 

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