Remember about a year ago, when I lent (gave) my New York mom and dad $6000?
Today, they paid me back in full. The check came in a card that just said "We love you."
I don't care about the money; I never expected to see it again anyway. I know what changed to make it possible for them to repay me, though. I hope it will keep them solvent for the rest of their lives.
[Blowing off cobwebs]
Hi there, internets. How's it going?
This is the first time I've visited this blog since, well, since whenever I last posted. Haven't checked the email account, haven't done squat. Instead of writing about my financial life, I've been off living it, and that's been pretty groovy.
A few things have changed since I last posted. Here's a brief roundup:
--I fell in love, big, big love. It wasn't with the Australian guy I started seeing last May: He's very charming and we had unbelievable chemistry together, but among other things, he turned out to be completely crackers. After a few months that started out great and then got very, very bad, I pulled the plug. We tried to evolve into friends a little while after that because we missed each other (remember, chemistry), but he just can't function without generating drama. In the end he began interfering in my new budding relationship, so I cut him off entirely.
I met someone else in August, an American this time. We had a shaky start, but somehow it caught fire and now I can't imagine life without him. There are so many things I could say about him, including the facts that he's six feet tall and very handsome, but the most compelling for me are that he's a good man and a grounded one, with a heart the size of Texas. We've cautiously started circling around the idea of moving in together once his lease is up in November. November's a long way off, but right now shacking up is on the table as one of a number of different options to consider as the time draws closer. I think he's thought a bit beyond living together, but I'm not really ready for that conversation yet and I don't think he is, either. There's no rush, anyway: We're in our forties and neither of us has or wants kids, so there's no reason to make life-altering decisions prematurely. In the meantime, the relationship continues to grow at a pace and in a direction that feels like home for both of us.
--My mom's health took a dump. She is now nearly blind, in a wheelchair, and showing the onset of dementia, and all of it was triggered by a series of infections. Some days are good and some are bad, but I'm so thankful that she has onsite 24-7 assisted living in her retirement community: She will never live independently again. I wasn't actually sure she would make it to her 86th birthday, but she did and has been doing incrementally better since then. She gave up her townhouse (ever moved a lifetime of stuff in six days? I have), which makes visiting as often as I do both expensive and logistically complicated.
--Knocked off another marathon, for ten total. I have three lined up for this year and I'd like to do a couple more after that, but my body's starting to tell me that I need to make some changes. I've been rehabbing a couple of chronic injuries in physical therapy for months now, and I'm going to have to find a way to manage them because they're not really going to heal.
--My job became my angry job on steroids. It's harder than heck because of all the politics and I'm putting in huge hours, but it's good in a way: Somewhere in the dysfunctional shards of what was once a pretty good organization until it was restructured into god-knows-what a few years ago, I've finally found my niche. I'm in a two-year sweet spot where my pension grows at an unusually fast pace, so I'm determined to stick it out for a while yet. Thirteen more years will give me a decent income from age 60 onwards, and it's harder and harder to contemplate walking away from that.
--I spent a whole lot of money last year. After a tough couple of years at work and with my mom's horrible stroke in 2010, I thought a little more engagement with the present took precedence over the future planning I was doing, at least for a while. It was fun. I'm pulling it back into balance in 2012 because I feel like I'm out of whack on the wrong side of the save-spend equation, and that's not a comfortable place for me.
--Goal setting. I should get back to that sometime. My one concrete goal for 2012 is to save $65,000 and invest $70,000.
--Other than one or two I pop in on periodically, I don't follow blogs anymore. The landscape has changed: I think a lot of people who started around the same time I did have dropped by the wayside, and that's okay. I haven't looked for new blogs to follow; it's just not a priority.
--Last but not least, and thanks to a strong stock market recovery in the first two months of the year, I reached one of my major financial milestones today: Once the sum total of my cash savings and investment portfolio hit $650,000, I became a Fake Millionaire. I call it that because once the approximate value of my apartment after transfer fees and flip tax are deducted is factored in (my conservative estimate is that I'd clear about $350,000), my net worth is a million. The reason why I think it's a false construct is that although I know a lot of people count the value of their primary home as part of their net worth, I don't. To me, it's a place to live and I'm always going to have to live somewhere, so I don't think of my home as an asset that I'll ultimately cash out.
Nevertheless, the idea of being worth a cool million is pretty neat.
I'm arriving at this goal a few months later than I had hoped, but after the economic bloodbath of the last couple of years, I'm glad I stayed fully invested in the stock market even if I didn't add to my investments as much as I should have last year.
My next financial goal is to hit a million in investments and savings alone, and I'd like to get there before I turn 46. I'm 43 now, so I won't hit my deadline without some pretty aggressive saving as well as continued positive performance in the stock market. I've engaged financial advisory services through one of my investment companies in hopes of getting some guidance on simplifying and streamlining what I have, and I have a second meeting with my assigned advisor next week. Should be good fun.
As far as blogging goes, I'll stop in here from time to time as I feel like it, but the spark I had before is gone. One day, you might find that the blog is suddenly gone as well. Part of it is that every day I feel a little more robbed of my privacy, and that bothers me. My first and last name together are a little uncommon, so it's easy to search on my full name and get meaningful results. I've received a couple of unwelcome contacts thanks to busybodies from the past digging through search engines, so I've had every identifiable listing I could get my hands on removed. (Those online "directories" are a disgrace: Public information or not, no one has any business aggregating personal data and spreading it out like a buffet table for any old crazypants stalker to find.)
Largely thanks to social media and online shopping, data mining is faster, more accurate, and a lot sneakier than it was just a year or two ago. I realize that privacy as a concept is outdated, but I have a hard time letting it go and embracing a world where no one has a filter and everyone knows everything about everyone. Knowing that I can't keep my identity from being outed makes me a lot less willing to write openly online about my life, and about my finances in particular.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't use social media or shop online. It's fun. To the limited extent that I do it, I really enjoy it. If you choose to use it, though, never forget this: Once information about you reaches the internet, you can't pull it back. In addition, if you use social media, always be mindful that you are what's for sale.
I don't want to end on a somber note. My mom is stable for now, and although it's been a tough transition for all of us, she's living in a place where she gets the ongoing care she needs. My sibling and I still have a contentious relationship, but for now we're mostly in a state of detente. I've taken a step back on a couple of friendships, but others have deepened. Life is rich and rewarding, and I'm deeply in love.
As always, I'm bullish on the future.
Yikes. It's July. How's your summer going so far? I've had some ups and downs over the past six weeks or thereabouts. In no particular order, here they are:
Family
I came out West for a planned working visit a few days ago. The day after I arrived, my mom's ability to function took a dramatic turn for the worse. She has Parkinson's and recently shifted from cane to walker, but overnight she suddenly became completely unable to walk or stand on her own. Sibling and I took her to the emergency room once it became clear that this wasn't going away, and we were glad to find out that there were no signs of another stroke. Mom did have a bad bladder infection, though, and unless the neurologist turns up something else today when he examines her, there's a strong probability that the bladder infection is the root cause of Mom's overnight loss of function. She's been doing better since going on antibiotics, and she reluctantly agreed to move to assisted living on what is hopefully a temporary basis. In the meantime, I'm working from 4:00 a.m. until early afternoon, spending the rest of the day with her, and then catching up in the evening. My sibling will be able to stay her longer due to a planned extended vacation/leave of absence from work, so I'll most likely be returning to New York this weekend even though Mom's not likely to be released from assisted living for some time.
Job
And why is it so important for me to get back to New York? We're going through another reorg at work, so I need to be visible even though there are no plans for layoffs in the works as far as I can tell. After nearly two years of constant reorganization, however, I'm pretty burned out and ready to accept whatever happens.
Relationship
A couple of months in, things are pretty good with the Aussie so far. We survived the first idiotic fight, and we're learning to catch cultural things that impede communication fairly quickly. One potential issue I see looming on the horizon is that we are very, very different when it comes to money. I'm not sure I'd call it a red flag at the moment, but its something to keep in mind if things start heading in a more serious direction. To put it succinctly, he makes a lot, but he also spends a lot. You know that's really not how I roll.
The more immediate challenge is that he's has had a steady stream of family visiting over the past few weeks, and although I've been invited to lots of things with them, the limited time to talk and spend time one on one has made things a little harder. I started feeling a rift that probably isn't actually there, and I think it's both because of the lack of time together and because while he's swamped with family obligations, my mom's problems are taking a heavy toll on me and affecting how I'm perceiving everything at the moment. We'll see what getting back to normal living brings.
Health
Ran the Boston Marathon in April; I requalified for 2012, but wasn't happy with my time. I signed up for a second marathon only six weeks later, and in that one I ran a personal best of just over 3:30. I promptly got sick with a respiratory infection right before an out of state relay in June, which made that run all kinds of interesting. I'm over it, but still coughing (thanks, asthma!). I also gained a few pounds, and the knee problem that has been hanging around for the past year and a half has become much more acute. I'm supposedly doing a marathon in early October, but my mileage and fitness level have both dropped precipitously. I'm still planning on doing it but not expecting any miracles, especially with knee problems, lack of training, and the fact that this will be my fourth marathon in twelve months.
Money
Haven't been saving as much as usual. Part of that is because of the unexpected expenses I wrote about in my last post (a $6000 "loan" [really a gift] to my New York parents and well over $2000 on a new washer and dryer), but I've also been traveling a lot (six trips since January, five of which involved airline tickets). Spending time with the Aussie has also meant much more eating out than I'm used to, but he's one of those guys who strongly prefers to pick up the check. There is a very big difference in our incomes, but it's still very hard for me to let someone else pay all the time when we go out. I do grab the check on occasion (never in front of his friends), but I can tell that he's not particularly thrilled about it. In any case, while going out for dinner frequently has been decidedly bad for my waistline, it hasn't had a lot of impact on my bottom line. Travel and the unexpected expenses I described are by far the primary culprits.
That sounds a lot more Debbie Downer-ish than I meant it to. I'm actually fairly optimistic that my mom will recover enough to be able to resume independent living, though I don't think it'll happen as soon as she expects it to. As for the rest of it, the big picture is that I don't have a lot worth expending energy worrying on, so I'm doing my best to focus on the important things and let go of the rest.
What's going on with you right now?
It's been a while, so I thought I'd drop in again and give you the highlights about some things that have happened recently.
First, I took two reasonably significant financial hits. Remember my New York Mom and New York Dad? They're an older couple I rented a room from as a grad student, and I secretly bailed New York Mom out some years ago with a few hundred dollars when she overspent. (This couple has never been able to manage money.) New York Mom also had a major, major health crisis and nearly died a couple of years ago, so I pitched in with a lot of logistical and emotional support during that time.
Well, I got a call from New York Mom and New York Dad a number of weeks ago. They asked if they could borrow some money because of a cash flow problem. They inherited an apartment from a friend they cared for when she was ill for a number of years, and it's been on the market without selling for quite some time. They never changed the way they spend, and I think they also made some sort-of investment decisions with property in Florida that are inappropriate for how they live and how much money they have. They hit the wall and ran out of cash, and from what it sounds like, they were about to lose property as a result.
I asked how much they needed, and New York Dad said "Ten thousand. . . maybe twelve thousand?"
In other words, they had no idea what they need.
I needed 24 hours to think about this and talk it over with my sibling, who is really good in these situations. In the end, I decided the following:
1. I offered $6000.
2. It's a gift, not a loan.
3. This is a one-time deal and it never happens again.
They accepted and insist that they'll pay me back, but I know it won't happen. I'm actually fine with it; the only thing I find slightly galling is knowing that some of it will go to support their slackass daughter (Grifter), who still has no real interest in getting a job even though she's getting divorced, since it's a lot more fun to be a mommy.
(By the way, what does it say that this nice couple came to me for money and not their own two adult children??)
I know I'll probably be pilloried for doing this, but there have been times in my life when people have helped me out, i.e. my parents giving me the boost I needed to pass my co-op board financials when I bought my apartment. I have enough to help them, and my gut is telling me it's the right thing to do. We'll see if that's how it really plays out.
The other financial hit I took is that my washing machine finally died, and in a most dramatic fashion: It flooded my bedroom as well as the basement. I was extraordinarily lucky that there was no permanent damage to the electrical panels in the elevators, as that would have been my responsibility to fix. I stayed up late researching compact washers and dryers (since the dryer is 27 years old), and the next morning I sailed out to a store in the neighborhood and bought Bosch replacements. There's not a huge market for compact units and these have the best consumer reviews, much better than the Maytag, LG, and Whirlpool equivalents I looked at. The two machines plus taxes, installation, new outlet (Bosch hates US outlets), unexpected extra costs based on the old dryer not being up to code (!), and removal of the old units came to $2360. Ouch.
I tapped my emergency fund for both of these major expenses, so there was no question of either racking up debt or liquidating investments. It means I've had to divert new money into rebuilding my emergency fund, but the fact that I had the money is peace of mind like no other.
And finally, the third major event: I met someone. For some reason, I have (ok, the right word is probably had) a lot of readers from Australia; I hope you folks in particular will be pleased to hear that he's Australian. He came here a few months ago on an expat assignment with a one-year visa that's renewable indefinitely. It's early days yet, but so far it's been fantastic. That's about all I want to say about him for now, but the spark is definitely there, and it's there in a really big way.
If anyone's still reading, I hope all is well and that your own personal economic recovery has legs. Back again when there's something else to report.
Hi. How have you been?
Looks like I haven't posted since 16 January. I don't really have an explanation for that other than that I just ran completely out of steam.
The time away has been nice. Sorry, but it has.
In no particular order, here's some of what I've done over the last eleven weeks of radio silence:
--Turned 42
--Broke a rib
--Made a really good new friend
--Deepened a couple of other budding friendships
--Visited my mom out West
--Signed up for a 200-mile relay in Utah this summer
--Saw live music
--Went to a lot of neat places I've never been, including an absinthe bar
--Started going out with friends much, much more
--Maintained my lower weight/smaller size
--Learned to bake the very challenging French macarons
--Continued shopping unrepentantly for smaller clothes (I spent a crapload of money on things that look great and fit beautifully, and I don't regret it one bit.)
--Bought a load of moderately priced and very beautiful craft jewelry from independent artists
--Finished heavy training for the Boston Marathon
--Worked up to 100 push-ups a day, split into two sets of fifty
--Started dating online (and oh my, is THAT ever a freak show at my age!)
--Got my job reclassified as a much bigger position with more responsibility (no extra money, though)
--Arrived within striking distance of my unofficial end of 2011 net worth goal
Things I did not do over the past eleven weeks:
--Blog
--Check email for this account
--Read any blogs other than two or three I've followed for a long time
--Set any goals whatsoever other than maintaining my weight loss and saving $65,000 this year
My unofficial end of 2011 net worth goal is unofficial because it depends less on my own diligence in savings than it does on a robust stock market. Thanks to the market recovery, however, I'm close to hitting a major milestone early: Savings and investments plus the estimated value of my home add up to just shy of a million dollars.
Some people count equity as part of net worth, and some don't. I don't, so I don't count myself as someone approaching millionairedom. If all goes well, that'll happen in the next several years. For now, though, my perspective is that things aren't as hard as they used to be.
I don't know when or if I'll feel like coming back to the way this blog was before, but I'll check in from time to time. When I hit a milestone, I'll definitely post it. For now, however, I've got an avalanche of work coming down on me, a very full social calendar, and a marathon in two weeks.
Anything neat going on in your life that you want to share?
After I posted my weight loss photos, a commenter asked me to write a post about what I eat. The answer is pretty simple and probably pretty boring: Mostly whole foods that I cook myself. I've found through trial and error and error and error over the years that I'm very sensitive to sugar and other simple carbs, and that they cause my blood sugar to whipsaw all over the place. I simply function better on a moderately low-carb eating plan.
There's a little more background to my eating habits that I should explain. Because my mom experienced dangerously high cholesterol in the late 1980's, my entire family adopted what was then called the New American Diet plan and eliminated egg yolks, oils and fats, and any kind of meat other than poultry and fish (and I rarely eat fish myself). In grad school, I was too broke to afford chicken or turkey on a regular basis, so I started following Dean Ornish's vegetarian plan. This turned out to be a mistake, as I was hungry all the time and became severely anemic. After a year and a half of mostly miserable struggling and weight fluctuation, I went back, more or less, to the still carb-rich New American Diet plan.
You know, that one just never worked for me that well, either. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who function great on high carb intake, but I'm not one of them.
After coming to the conclusion a few years ago that I feel better with more protein and fat in my diet, I relaxed my categories of food intake considerably. I like eggs, nuts, and avocados, so I eat them in moderation. (Unlike the Dean Ornish days, there's medical evidence to suggest that the heart-healthy benefits of these kinds of fats overwhelmingly outweigh any dangers.) I like lean ham and the occasional slice of bacon, although I only cook the turkey kind. I've never cooked red meat, but I'll eat it at someone's house. Similarly, although I only ever ate whole grain bread, I've cut my bread intake way down. I used to bake bread every week and I love the taste of it, but I have a good friend who convinced me that I have an undiagnosed food allergy to something in it, because more than a couple of slices per day makes me puffy all over for several days. Since cutting way back on bread, I can't deny that I'm much less puffy all the time.
My real food bugaboo, however, is sweets. I gave up sweets for a full year in 2009, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. The first time I had refined sugar after that, it was like I had never stopped. I've found, however, that the cravings are manageable with a higher protein intake (and if I don't indulge, they drop to non-existent within a day or two) unless I have PMS. PMS results in much worse sugar cravings and usually one to two bad days of indulgence, so the only answer for that is to make it as difficult as possible to give into them by not keeping any sweets at home.
So, back to what I eat. Here's a typical day for me:
Breakfast: 1/2 cup of old-fashioned oatmeal (which *can* be cooked in the microwave) with either 1 cup of blueberries or 1/2 cup of pomegranate seeds
Snack: One hard-boiled egg with salt
Snack: One peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, using one tablespoon of peanut butter. (This is my entire bread consumption for the day.)
Lunch: Four to five ounces of grilled chicken (or ham, or one chicken sausage, or several small turkey meatballs - whatever adds up to about 200 calories), with raw carrot sticks and raw red, green, orange, or yellow bell pepper - preferably a mix since the colors are so appealing
Snack: One large apple, or three clementines, or one banana, or one other similarly-sized portion of in-season fruit
Snack: 1/4 cup of almonds, pecans, walnuts, or mixed nuts. (I try to skip this one, but I always have it with me at work in case I need it.)
Dinner: It varies, but usually something like spicy vegetarian or chicken chili, pot pie, whole wheat pasta with green vegetables and sauce, turkey burgers and vegetables, turkey meat loaf and vegetables, or something else that I've cooked and frozen in advance so I can just grab it out of the freezer the morning I need it.
When I was losing weight, I stuck to 1500-1700 calories per day, bumping it up to 2500 once every week and a half to two weeks to accommodate dinners out with friends, bad PMS days, or days when I was just absolutely starving for no apparent reason. I also worked out a LOT, primarily running and weightlifting (thank you to the commenter who mentioned my arms, by the way. I was so gratified to see my guns come back so quickly!), with a little yoga thrown in when I had time.
Since then, nothing has changed other than the fact that I'm eating around 2000 to 2400 calories most days. Some days I go overboard, especially since I've been eating more sweets than I should over the past couple of weeks. (More on that in my next post.) When that happens, I usually pull back the next day to balance out my intake. My weight has been hovering between 138 and 142 but I'm spending more time at 142 than I'd like, so I'm actually going back to lower calories for the next couple of weeks to bring my average down to my original target, 140.
That's my food life. There are some other things I did to lose weight that made a major impact on my progress, and those are worth sharing as well. They were:
Stop hitting the candy bowls at work
There are many of them, and they are always full. When I start indulging, I can't stop. One of my best friends at work is a guy who perennially has ten pounds to lose, so we made a deal: No candy at work for either of us, and we each get to keep the other person honest. Believe it or not, it worked and is continuing to work.
Stop hitting the vending machine at work
I got into the habit of grabbing a 3:00 snack when I got tired, and it was always something nasty like chips or a candy bar. Like the candy bowl situation, I had to go cold turkey. I started bringing a hard-boiled egg to work every day and eating it relatively early, and my blood sugar and energy levels are much more stable now than they were before I started doing that.
Bring lunch to work every day
I've done this my whole adult life anyway. It's something I started because eating out is expensive and not that healthy relative to what I can make myself, so this was no hardship. Bringing breakfast and lunch from home and cooking dinner at home most of the time are healthy (the way I do it, anyway) and save a ton of money, both of which are so very good for my frugal heart.
Plan
I plan my food intake (including calories) in a spreadsheet one day in advance. Sometimes I need to make adjustments, but seeing the big picture helps me know where I have room to modify. Doing this even though I'm not officially losing weight anymore helps keep me on track.
Weigh in daily
I weigh myself every day, and I graph the results. It's a crazy-ass line, sometimes shooting up or down four pounds in a day. Seeing the fluctuations helps me not get discouraged because I know it'll change a day or two later. Several days of sustained increase also serve as an early-warning system, telling me that I need to pull back for a few days or risk gaining again.
It was hard to acknowledge that exercise alone wasn't enough to keep my weight where it should be, but for me weight maintenance falls into the realm of Failing to plan is planning to fail. I'm really enjoying looking and feeling better all the time, and it's not something I want to let go south again. Just for fun, here's a shot of where I am today, featuring really awful hair and a dress I bought on clearance for $34 to wear at an upcoming formal event:
What tips and techniques do you rely on to manage your weight?
You know that January goals post I usually put together? Haven't done it yet. Still thinking about what I really want my goals to be as opposed to what I feel they should be. I think that's part of why they fell apart last year, aside from the major unexpected events that happened.
In other news, we have a stopgap solution of sorts cobbled together for my mom. Thank you so very, very much to everyone who responded with suggestions and concern. While I was out West, we got a booster for the toilet seat and had platforms built to go under the sofa and recliner so that my mom can get up more easily. I was so embarrassed: The workmen who custom-built the platforms refused to accept a cent of payment for either labor or materials. All we could do was send a thank-you card to their place of employment, and we did that right away.
We also worked very hard on the other piece of the puzzle, buy-in from my mom on making changes to help maintain independence. To that end, we got her to use a walker inside the house (which is a townhouse in a retirement community) instead of a cane when she's unsteady. She was in the habit of asking my sibling and I for an arm when her balance was off because she hated the walker, but we decided that instead of lending her an arm, we would bring her the walker instead. She didn't like that at first, but after realizing how much easier it is to get around, especially when she's alone, she got on board with the idea. She still won't use the walker outside the house, which is when she needs it the most, but we're working on it.
Similarly, we got my mom to wear the support stockings she's supposed to be wearing to keep her ankles from swelling, and the improvement was drastic. She doesn't like them, but she grudgingly acknowledges that they make a huge difference in lessening her ankle swelling, so she's putting them on most days even though it's a struggle. We also got her in the habit of putting her feet up in the recliner, although I'm not sure whether she's still doing that consistently or not.
Finally, my mom is supposed to be doing strengthening exercises for mobility, and she hadn't been doing them for quite a while. We got her in the habit of doing them while we were there by doing them with her, and now we follow up with her daily to make sure she still does them. She hates them because she feels they're too elementary, but they are appropriate given her age and physical condition.
Things we haven't succeeded in getting my mom to adopt thus far include Kegel exercises for bladder strengthening (she has no interest in these at all, despite her bladder weakness - which she's determined to ignore altogether at the moment), and an alert necklace in case she needs assistance and can't get to the phone. Since my mom had a couple of weeks of not having to use the phone to call either me or my sibling, she's suddenly having much more difficulty using it. As a result, we're hoping to get her to bend on the necklace next weekend.
It's not a great situation, but it's better - for now. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping nothing bad happens.
Going back to the goals part for just a second: Any suggestions from you on what goals I should have for 2011? I have a few in mind, but I'd like to hear what you think I should aim for. Thanks a bunch in advance.
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