values

Hey, Josh Radnor: You’re frugal.

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The other day I read an article about Josh Radnor, the actor who played Ted Mosby on the television series “How I Met Your Mother.” Now 43, he talked about staying in his $750-a-month sublet for the first two years of the show, even though it was a megahit.

“You don’t know, as an actor, how sustainable things are going to be, how long things are going to last,” he told CNBC.

Finally he bought a house – the last person in the cast to do so – and by the end of the series he’d made the Forbes list of the highest-paid television actors, earning $10 million (salary plus syndication bucks).

Normally I don’t write about celebs, but I want to highlight something Radnor said in the article:

“It’s not that I’m frugal. I don’t mind spending money if I believe in the thing. (But) there’s not a lot of stuff I look at in the world and say ‘Oh, man, I gotta have that’.”

As long as we’re doing TV today, I’m going to paraphrase Eleanor Shellstrop* from “The Good Place”: Josh Radnor…Ya frugal!

 

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Stormy Daniels: Rabbi Ruttenberg explains it all for you.

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Today I found a series of tweets about Stormy Daniels from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, an author and speaker. Rabbi Ruttenberg put into words the irritation I’ve been feeling lately about the furor surrounding Daniels and the U.S. president.

Short form: What Daniels does for a living isn’t the issue here. Stop making it about her, and stop thinking that her job choice makes her testimony somehow less true.

But the rabbi says it so. much. better. than I did, so I’m reproducing her thoughts here.

Note that she’s calling out those on the Left as well as on the Right.

I want to say a thing about the slut-shaming language I’ve seen around Stormy Daniels. A few words about why what she does for a living doesn’t matter in this story, and then a few more on when it does.

Yes, I’m really a rabbi.

Stormy Daniels is a human person with whom the President of the United States evidently had an affair, and then paid off, and also (if I understand correctly) intimidated and threatened.

Our focus should be on his actions. His breach in his marriage (I’ll note below why that matters), his attempt to buy her silence, why he’s so invested in that silence, where the money came from and how it got transferred, and very much about these possible threats.

How she has chosen to earn money in order to pay for her groceries and whatever else (provide for sick family? set aside money for someone’s college? pay for decadent spa days? I don’t know, not my business) is irrelevant. She is news only because of what he did or didn’t do.

 

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Living “poor” and loving it.

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Happy Throwback Thursday! This is the original version of my second article for MSN Money. Given the popularity of the reboot of my first-ever MSN piece – the one about surviving and thriving on $12,000 a year – I’ve decided to post its successor.

Some of its sentiments about the Us-vs.-Them mentality are still relevant. (Unfortunately.)

Incidentally: I didn’t write the headlines; they were thrust upon me. My own suggestion was “How to be poor,” but the editor liked his version better. I’m leaving in the original because I’m masochistic like that.

 

I don’t consider myself deprived, although I can see why some people might think so. I don’t own a laptop computer, television, DVD player, stereo, iPod, video-game system or  many of the other things marketed as necessities.

But I have food, shelter, family, friends, a radio, a bus pass, a library card and the chance to attend a respected university. How could I consider myself “poor” when so many people have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep and no chance to improve their situations?

Yet there is another reason I hesitate to call myself poor: the cultural baggage associated with the word. Poor people are lazy, stupid, immoral, shameless and incapable of making smart decisions. Poor people are losers; our country loves winners. We want poor people to trade their rags for riches. We want them to embody the American dream.

 

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Cheryl paid off her mortgage.

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When I visited my dad in Tarpon Springs, Fla., last year, he and I met up with a reader named Cheryl. The three of us sat in a Dunkin Donuts talking about life and money. One of the things she mentioned was a rapid mortgage paydown.

Recently she wrote to say she is now completely debt-free, 14 years ahead of schedule.

Cheryl also included a letter she wrote to her niece, a mid-20s newlywed who’s trying to vanquish student loans. While I’m loath to throw around the word “inspirational,” this note fits the bill. That’s why I’m excerpting it:

 

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Labor Day musings.

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A press release received today had this clickbaity line in the message field: “If you are not doing what you love…You are wasting your time!”

Huh.

I understand the likely intent: Be all that you can be! Reach for the stars! Follow your bliss! Yet my own inference is a little darker: If you aren’t a super self-made success in the high-profile career of your choosing, you’re kind of a loser.

Dark, I know. But I do wish that the people who define success would realize that we can’t all be startup successes or crowdfunded darlings. I wish that “success” could be redefined.

Specifically, I wish that fame and fortune weren’t the things we all apparently should want. Not only is this untrue, it’s a notion that tells a whole bunch of working-class people that they aren’t measuring up.

 

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If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?

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money © by 401(K) 2012

(Happy Throwback Thursday, everyone! This article originally ran on Oct. 25, 2012. Its sentiments are as valid to me today as they were back then. The comments section is pretty lively, too.)

My daughter didn’t want to start a pissing match when she responded to a post called “There is no monopoly on being rich.” She knew it was a possibility, however, and turns out she was right.

The site’s author, Sam, responded with an oblivious chirp of a comment that stated, among other things, “I have set backs [sic] and disabilities too, but I’ve decided to always look on the bright side. Why does something optimistic on my blog insult and aggravate you? If this short and sweet post makes you angry, then I fear your life is going to be even more difficult than normal.”

And one reader growled, “Who would want to hang out with someone like you? No wonder why you are having such trouble! … Why not create a blog as big as (Sam’s) and generate online income, that way, you wouldn’t feel as financially constraint. [sic] I’m sure it takes a lot of work, but if Sam and what looks like many others can do it, why can’t you? Finger cramping?”

So Abby wrote a piece for her own site called “Flame war, party of two!” It asks readers to weigh in on her comment, which says there kind of is a monopoly on being rich.

 

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Coupon ethics.

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A couple of young women in Williston, North Dakota were recently busted for fraud after running a coupon scam in the Albertson’s supermarket where they both worked.

They managed to get at least $21,000 in “overage,” or money owed to them for having coupons that were worth more than the on-sale product (in this case, Tide detergent).

These chumps give couponing a bad name.

Worse, when people indulge in fraudulent behavior it winds up costing all of us.

So tempting to think, “Giant Corporation makes billions a year – it’ll never be noticed.” Don’t think that way, unless you’d also be fine with taking money out of a store’s cash register when the clerk’s back was turned. Coupon fraud steals from the retailers (which may not be reimbursed for fake Qs) and from the manufacturers (if they pay out unwittingly).

The money that retailers and maunfacturers lose translates to price increases for consumers. Everybody loses, except the cheaters – and they might, too, if they get caught.

For those who are new to the Q, I’m offering a coupon ethics primer on how to do it right – and also how not to mess it up for everyone else.

 

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Vanilla finances.

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Many LOLs were LOLed once I discovered a post called “Vanilla sex: Here, have another helping” on the How To Write Better website.

Writer, coach and humorist Suzan St Maur posted the piece as a way of poking fun at the idea of “vanilla sex,” i.e., conventional, ordinary (subtext: boring) physical love.

St Maur (not a typo – she doesn’t use the period after “St”) wondered if the adjective could be used for other things.

Apparently it can. A few of her examples:

 

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Living the ‘pre-solvent’ life.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday, everyone! This article originally ran on July 3, 2015. Its sentiments are as valid to me today as they were back then.)

Here’s today’s neologism, and it’s a great one: “pre-solvent.” It comes from a comment on a Money Talks News article called “The real reason Americans struggle to save.”

The article cited a couple of surveys that put the fault not in our stars, but in our cards: “Lifestyle spending” and “lack of financial discipline” kept anywhere from 44 to 71 percent of respondents living paycheck to paycheck and/or prevented them from achieving financial goals.

I’d like to point out that underemployment, lack of education and impossible-to-pay medical bills can also hinder the ability to save. But I agree that the “buy now, figure out how to pay for it later” attitude is definitely nudging some folks toward insolvency.

Which brings us to pre-solvency. A commenter named “Y2K Jillian” writes that she and her husband lived paycheck to paycheck for years and loathed the lifestyle. But change happened.

How? “Gradually, gradually.” Which is how I’d bet it happens for a lot of people.

 

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Found money in 2016.

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I waited a little longer than usual to count my found money. For those unfamiliar with the concept: All year long I pick up coins from lots of places: stores, sidewalks, parks, the return bins of Coinstar machines.

Usually I add up my found money around Thanksgiving, then add some more and donate it to the Food Bank of Alaska. This year I decided that the holidays are when people most like to donate to food banks, so why not wait a while?

Here’s what I found this year:

 

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