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Moose on my phone.

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This particular moose was eating dried leaves from our clematis vine, which shows you just how nutrition-desperate Alaskan ungulates are at this time of year. Her nostrils were probably fewer than six inches away from me when I snapped the picture.

The amazing part isn’t the proximity, however. It’s the fact that if I call up the photo on my phone and press the image lightly, it starts to move.

And emit sound: I can hear the rustling of the clematis vine. All I can think of are the magic photos from the “Harry Potter” books.

(For the uninitiated: In the HP  universe, people in the photos can wave and smile.)

This moose wasn’t smiling, though. She eyed me narrowly and the hair on the back of her neck stood at attention. “This far, and no further, hooman.”

In other news: Yes, I finally got a smartphone. After years of using a dumbphone (pay-as-you-go flipper), I bit the bullet and joined the 21st century.

Frugally, of course.

 

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“The Walking Dead” and THAT SCENE.

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Spoiler alert: This post reveals crucial plot details from “The Walking Dead.” Read on at your own risk.

The Internet imploded last night with the winter opener of Season 10 of “The Walking Dead.” Not because a beloved character was killed (although two were put in dead-or-not?* peril), or because a villain got one over on the good guys (that had already happened, at the end of the fall season).

Much worse than that, apparently: Two arch villains (#NeganandAlpha) were shown about to have sex. Specifically, we were treated to a wide shot of the two, naked except for black socks, embracing in the woods.

Social media rang with screams of outrage:

“Whoever thought that last shot of Alpha and Negan would be a good idea should be fired.”

“My eyes. I will never recover.”

“And I thought the zombie in a well scene was nasty.”

“Negan and Alpha getting down and dirty was more disturbing and disgusting than Negan killing** Glenn.”

(The socks were mentioned, too, especially on the post-game wrapup on “The Talking Dead.” Hey, at least they weren’t wearing them with sandals.)

Here’s my admittedly biased theory: A bunch of these folks just can’t handle the idea of middle-aged, physically imperfect people getting it on. One Twitter commenter moaned, “It was like watching my parents have sex.”

Guess what, Kevin: Your parents probably do have sex. A lot of middle-aged (and older) people have sex.

And guess what again, Kevin: We’re probably better at it than you are.

 

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Found money 2019: Not a banner year.

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As found-money totals go, it was pretty dismal. The take was two $1 bills, seven quarters, 20 dimes, 7 nickels and 75 pennies, for a total of 6.85.

Last year’s total wasn’t much better: just $8.80.

Maybe it’s because people are using credit or debit to pay for their purchases. We’re not a cashless society just yet, but more and more people are opting for plastic. (Some people no longer carry any cash at all, which astounds me.)

Could be that people are experiencing personal economic downturns and thus picking up anything they drop – and anything that other people drop, too.

Or maybe I’m just not going out as much. In the past year I rarely walked to the post office due to weather (read: icy paths), busy-ness (not wanting to give up 40 minutes of a work day) or the fact that DF is now retired and makes a trip to the P.O. one of his daily chores.

I’ve found a lot less in Coinstar machines, too. Perhaps folks have wised up and are checking the coin slots when they run their change through – or perhaps other people have caught on and are checking the machine as they walk by.

 

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A blogger at rest.

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(Surviving and Thriving has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Surviving and Thriving and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses and recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.)

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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Don’t throw it out until you’ve smelled it.

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(Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Throwback Thursday! In honor of all the food that will be prepared — and perhaps wasted — over the next few days, I’m republishing this piece from May 12, 2012. It’s my hope that a little judicious leftover prep and/or freezing will cut down on waste.)

I didn’t get to the supermarket for a few days after my arrival in Anchorage. Until then, I used the milk and oatmeal my hostess already had. When I mentioned that I’d be replacing what I used, she looked surprised.

“Uh, that’s really old milk. I meant to warn you off it,” she said.

It had tasted fine to me. That is to say, it tasted about as good as nonfat milk ever tastes – like the water they used to wash a cow. All that mattered to me is that it loosened up the oats in the bowl.

I nearly changed my tune when I checked the “sell by” date: April 5. It was then May 6. I was drinking milk a month past its prime.

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Should you ask for money at Christmas?

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Recently I interviewed Melissa J. Ellis, a certified financial planner from Kansas City, for an article about medical debt. One potential tactic I’d asked her about involved holiday and birthday gift-giving. Suppose when relatives and friends ask for gift ideas we were to say, “Help paying my bills”?

Ellis thought this might work for some people. But some people are embarrassed to ask for money outright. It seems gauche or greedy. The CFP suggested framing it this way:

I really appreciate that you want to give me a gift, and here is something that I could really use. It will help relieve my stress and help me feel better than a new sweater ever would.

Is that gauche? Or greedy? Personally, I’m torn.

Part of me thinks it’s not polite to dictate a gift and that it’s particularly squicky to ask for money. But the rest of me thinks some people wouldn’t mind being misdirected. If your parents want to spend $100 on a sweater and some frou-frou bath bombs on your b-day, they might find it more meaningful to send that money toward your co-pay.

After all, they’d be helping their beloved child pay less interest total on the obligation. If other relatives/friends did the same, you could see some real progress on the debt. Besides, how many sweaters does one person need?

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Rage purging.

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(Surviving and Thriving has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Surviving and Thriving and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses and recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.)

A recent post on my neighborhood’s Buy Nothing Facebook page mentioned “rage purging.” The woman was getting rid of a bunch of stuff because she wanted to be able to park in her garage again.

Further down on the page someone was giving away a 16-quart tamale/seafood steamer – never used, she said. I wondered if it had been a wedding present that got set aside and forgotten, or whether she’d bought it herself while thinking, “Gosh, I’d use this all the time.”

These posts plus early hints of Christmas stuff in the stores made me want to write a public service announcement:

Stop buying stuff you don’t have room to store.

Stop buying stuff you will likely never use.

Stop buying stuff, period.

About that last: Obviously I don’t expect anyone never to buy stuff again, unless they’re absolute wizards at the Buy Nothing page and Freecycle. But soon we’ll be buffeted by massive marketing campaigns designed to part us from our dollars, so I’d like to suggest we all take a look at what we need – and, more to the point, what we want.

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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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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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What would you pay to relive your first kiss?

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Assuming it was worth reliving, that is. For some, the first kiss is pretty dreadful.

A company called Bid On Equipment decided to survey a couple of thousand people to find out what certain once-in-a-lifetime moments would be worth to them. A few examples of average payments:

Relive the birth of first child: $100,622

Attend a Tupac Shakur concert: $4,991

Be at the “Star Wars” premiere: $11,757

Hear the Gettysburg Address: $26,896

It wasn’t clear whether we’d get to relive childbirth knowing then what we know now about things like epidurals.

 

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