Debt Reduction 101

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I read this article today over my lunch break and had to share it with you guys. It’s from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and documents the “back to basics” approach of Dr. James Eelkema who quit his job at a large family medicine clinic and set up his own shop. While this isn’t unheard of, Dr. Eelkema took it a step further … if you want to see this doctor, you have to pay cash.

http://www.startribune.com/business/83165347.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1OiP:DiiUiacyKUnciaec8O7EyUr

I’ll be honest – even though I have insurance (the Pinto of a plan that it is), I would be tempted to make the drive to Burnsville to pay $54 for stitches if necessary. What about the rest of you? Do you think this is smart business or should we be satisfied with the status quo of health care?

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This week, I made a big decision that will impact my future, my finances and likely my overall sanity.

After over two years of working weekends and the occasional weeknight at the local cab company, I asked my boss yesterday if I could cut back to just working every other weekend.

“I’m not surprised,” he emailed me. “I was wondering when you were going to pick your personal life over greed.”

I very professionally and very maturely wrote back: “Pfffffft!”

Despite Todd’s jests, I think we both knew that after two years of non-stop work, it’s a miracle that I still have hair and that it hasn’t turned white yet. I don’t want to sound too self serving, but damn – with the exceptions of holidays and getting out of town for the occasional weekend, I have worked entire weeks without a break. And I’m beginning to feel it. I mean – I get tired and I daydream about what weekends off would be like, but I have very quietly reached the end of my rope when it comes to not having downtime. Given how crazy my life is with my full-time job and given some of the goals I have set for myself in 2010, I need more time.

There are things I know that I’m going to miss. There’s this one lady named Julieta who calls in every Saturday morning and gets a cab to work. Every time I pick up the phone, she sounds so happy to see me – “Meee-chell! How are you doing today?” For every little old lady who calls in on Sunday morning, I know what church they go to. Some of the guys I work with are like brothers to me … In the 16 hours that I work in a weekend, I have read novels, I have addressed wedding invitations, I have clipped coupons, I have taught myself how to play free cell (very valuable, you know …).

Here is what I’m looking forward to: Finally having time to launch a freelance writing project that I’m doing with my old friend Chuck. I look forward to learning how to make my own bread. I’m going to make my husband pancakes in the morning and we’re going to attend church on the Sundays where I’m not working. I’m going to take time to do nothing. I’m going to take time to do several things that have been pushed back on my mind’s back burner for two years.

It’s a good thing.

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This article was in the January 22, 2010 edition of the New York Times: “Ready to Spend Bonuses, but Not to Boast.”

It’s bonus time for many of Wall Street’s elite and according to luxury retailers, these folks are shaking off their “frugal fatigue” and getting ready to spend their bonus money – discreetly, of course, because the rest of America is still staggering under unemployment rates, rising taxes, foreclosures, etc.

While I don’t ever see myself randomly dropping money on $5,000 earrings, I can see the dissipation of “frugal fatigue” in my own little life. Now that I don’t have every extra cent going towards credit card debt, I see myself making purchases that I wouldn’t have made a year ago (my recent vacation, concert tickets for an anniversary gift for my parents). Instead of being relieved that I have extra money, I find myself looking forward to February when I have no plans for my money past my usual grocery expenses and college debt.

What about the rest of you? Is the economy loosening enough that you’re shaking your frugal fatigue or are you being vigilant and still fighting the good fight.

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No, I’m not making some social commentary in the cool alliteration of my blog title – I’m just recapping the sentiment of a New York Times op-ed piece that I read this morning called “My So-Called Wife.”

I found this article interesting. By no means am I the breadwinner of the family, but I am amused by the writer’s commentary on how household roles have changed from the 1950s to 2010. When you have both partners in a household working 40-plus hour a week jobs, who is the “housewife?”

Or as the writer succinctly put it: “In the end, we all want a wife. But the home has become increasingly invaded by the ethos of work, work, work, with twin sets of external clocks imposed on a household’s natural rhythms. And in the transformation of men and women into domestic co-laborers, the Art of the Wife is fast disappearing.”

So how do other couples handle this sort of thing? In my home, the husband and I have a pact – I cook, he washes dishes and we both do our own laundry. We both hate dusting – I’d rather clean a toilet and he’d rather clean the darkest corners of our basement. In the end, we somehow make it work – even if the bookshelves are populated by killer dust bunnies.

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I cannot lie – I have been waiting for this day for awhile. As certain as death and taxes, I knew that my (free) love affair with the New York Times online couldn’t last. And now the news is certain, starting January 2011, I will have to pay for my love of the eloquently written word.

The New York Times is not the first newspaper to charge for online access to read their articles. Heck, the first company that I work for was one of the pioneers of this trend – much to my chagrin when I’ve tried to get some of my old articles from their online archives. In that case, I am still good friends with the editor and weaseled a free log-in out of him. Will I be able to do the same for the New York Times? That’s pretty doubtful.

I’m still researching the details of this “new deal” for NY Times readers like myself … supposedly, I can read a handful of articles before I have to pay a flat fee for the rest of the month’s access to my beloved Bitten by Mark Bittman. But what’s next – Facebook? Twitter? I am an online junkie, but I think I could overcome all of my love of social media if it started to hit my pocketbook.

But you, New York Times? I’m not sure that this love affair will end. Which is probably better for my brain than another game of Farmville on Facebook.

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Goodwill seems to be everywhere these days. My boyfriend George Clooney is hosting a telethon to help Haiti that will feature my other boyfriend Robert Pattinson. (Oh wait … this is a public forum read by my husband. There’s no one but you, honey …) Irregardless of my Hollywood crushes, disaster seems to bring out the best in each of us – whether its donating blood or going on a mission trip for Hurricane Katrina efforts or the current Haiti situation that is amassing millions of dollars for about a zillion different charities. So, before you get out your wallet – how can you tell if your money is actually going to relief efforts or if it’s being appropriated by random celebrities?

Here’s a couple of links – one is to Charity Navigator, which is kind of a clearing house for charities around the country. I’ve also enclosed this article from USA Today. It’s an oldie from 2004, but it’s interesting to see where people donated their money.

And for the record – I’m still uncertain where I’m going to donate for Haitian relief. I’m probably going to stick with the American Red Cross, but there’s still much research to be done.

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File this under random: Saw this Twitter feed from someone I follow in my realm as a food blogger. “What are your goals and dreams for this year?” Remember friends, if you dream it, you will achieve it.

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A few months ago, one of my cab drivers – a nice young woman who is a few years younger than me and has an infant of her own – asked me when my husband and I are going to start our own family. Ignoring the twinge in my ovaries when she said this I told her that we definitely want to start a family, we’re just waiting until we have a bit more money because having babies are expensive.

“No they’re not,” she said. “MinnesotaCare paid for everything when I had Junior.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my state’s system, “MinnesotaCare is a publicly subsidized program for Minnesota residents who do not have access to affordable health care coverage. The program serves an average of more than 100,000 people each month. It has been critical to Minnesota’s welfare reform strategy, helping people leave welfare and go to work without losing health care coverage.” (That’s from their website.)

MinnesotaCare is actually pretty nifty … like it says in the blurb up above, you don’t have to be unemployed to qualify – you can still work and still receive MinnesotaCare.

Now, being a cab driver doesn’t pay a whole heck of a lot here in my small town. Plus, it does not offer any benefits other than dental. So without knowing what my driver’s husband does for a living and why he doesn’t have benefits, it’s really great that my driver and her son are covered under this system.

But dammit – why is it that my husband and I have full-time jobs and we’re supposedly living the American dream, but we don’t feel like we can afford to make a baby? Well – mostly because I have really bad health insurance through my full-time job. It will save us from bankruptcy in case of an emergency, but having a baby is not an emergency and neither of us want to dip into my husband’s savings so we can give our in-laws grandbabies (sorry mom and mom-in-law.).

We are being very smart about this: When Hubby’s full-time job goes from temporary to permanent, he will have a Cadillac of a healthcare plan that will make mine look like a Pinto. He will also be making more money which will make it possible for me to work from home (that’s a whole other scheme). But it’s not easy. One of my motivations when I was paying off my bad debt was that we could start a family soon thereafter. Yup – can’t do that yet.

In the meantime, we wait. This is something that my husband and I are very good at. But I will not be idle. I/We have been given this time for a reason. I’m trying to start some freelance stuff up so I have a network to draw from when our first child is born. This will mean additional income in the interim and when I am staying at home. It also gives me time to save money. MinnesotaCare or not – you can’t tell me that babies don’t cost money. Even if I convince my husband (and my in-laws, and my folks, and my friends … wait, and myself) that cloth diapers are the way to go, there are incidental costs that come with babies.

So in the meantime, it is time to clean out my office. For over two years, it’s been catch-all for the physical chaos of my life. When it’s time for us to have kids, it will be our nursery. And it will probably take more than nine months for me to clean it.

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Here’s where I tell you something slightly embarrassing about myself – I really do not have attractively smelling feet. I know that there are things that I can buy for my shoes to remedy this situation, but I usually forget that until I’m sitting at my desk and can smell my feet or I am in some stranger’s home and leave my shoes by the door, praying with all of my considerable self that no one comes near my offensive Sketchers.

The other thing about me and my shoe life is that when I have a pair of shoes that I like, I usually wear them until they are not salvageable. I remember the $10 specials that I wore over 11 years ago when I was studying abroad. After six months of walking, I simply threw them away in Malta because a) they stank b) I had killed the backs of them by putting them on without untying them first (bad habit) and c) they were only $10. I had specifically bought them for my trip to Europe – they were blue suede and funky. Comfortable as all get out, but cheap. I would get new ones when I headed back to the States. I have had countless pairs of shoes that are like my blue suede ones – the Nikes I bought at the tail end of college – they got me through gym class, they took me to two Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts, they made it through a restaurant job, five years of journalism and two 5Ks until one of my friends bluntly told me that duct tape is not an attractive accessory on a tennis shoe. I still have my first pair of brown corduroy Airwalks. I wore those for about four years – they look like hell but are the perfect garden shoe. I am currently killing a pair of men’s Sketchers that are casual enough to pair with jeans, but professional enough to wear with khakis … I think I will shed tears when those get relegated to the garden.

I know that there are people out there who are like me – who lace up their shoes as lovingly as they once held their childhood blankies. And luckily because of the recession, an ancient trade is getting fired up again for people who pay more than $15 a pop for shoes and try to make them last as long as they possibly can. Cobblers are back!

What’s interesting about this article is that shoe cobbling went out of vogue for awhile in the United States. Sure, you could find shoe cobblers, but you had to look for them. Nowadays, you still have to look for them, but you might actually have to wait a little bit longer to have your shoes fixed because people are savvy to the new trend – you don’t have to buy a new pair of shoes just because the heel came off of your favorite pumps – you can get them fixed and fixed well!

For the record, I’ve never been to a cobbler. I’ve never bought shoes that actually warrant being fixed. But I remember being in Europe and accompanying a friend to a cobbler to re-sole the bottom of her favorite boots. It was just the thing that people did over there.

Any of you guys have a shoe fetish? Do you buy spendy shoes or are you like me scouring places like Payless?

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I should preface this piece by saying that I have only told off two of my employers in my 10-year history of working … wait, that’s actually three times although I don’t think the first time really counts because I got all teary while doing it. While I feel like I have a strong personality, I still realize that there are certain people who a) sign my paycheck and that there are certain situations where you b) you have to pick your battles. If I got cocky and insolent every time I felt like a boss was waving a red flag in my face, I’d be a real pill to employ. I have a spine, I like to flex it every once in awhile but deep down I’m a worker bee who has a job to do and does it better when no one is bothering me because I’m a troublesome employee.

However, the Daily Beast featured a blog piece today about a situation where it has been profitable for a few individuals to tell their boss off and by “individuals” I’m talking about the late night dramedy between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. For the record, I am totally Team O’Brien, but I’m embarrassed for both men who are hard workers and good comedians.

One of the things I’ve learned from this debacle? Know your worth and stick to your guns when it is time to flex your spine. It would be so easy (never mind the money) for Mr. O’Brien to just have said “sure, NBC peeps, I will take the “Tonight Show” and go quietly into the 12:05 spot.” But O’Brien knows that he’s better than that. He also knows that it’s going to hurt the “Late Night” franchise with Jimmy Fallon (never mind what it would do to Carson Daly – husband is rolling his eyes. “For what that’s worth,” he said).

Sure – there are more important things going on in this world (Haiti anyone?), but it’s interesting to predict what the ending will be and when I see how Leno’s and O’Brien’s ratings have boosted over the past week, it’s interesting to see how telling your boss off can be profitable.

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Well, I’ve written this inaugural 2010 post about a dozen times and to be honest … every day that I’ve encountered in January has brought something different – some things good, some things bleh and some things that have caused me much speculation.

Here are the things I’ve been thinking about:

Work – I can’t say a lot about this right now because I’m very much in deep negotiations with my brain regarding what I want to do with my professional life. And so far, my brain is equal parts wary, chicken-sh*t and weary, to be honest. I have some really great days at work, but they are far outweighed by the days where I’d rather shove a dry-erase marker into my eye.

Haiti - I’m an ex-journalist, so I usually have more than just a passing interest in what goes on in the world around me. However, there have been so many tragedies in the world, so many natural disasters, etc., I’ve only glanced at the headlines. Then I found out that a alum from my alma mater is missing and presumed dead from the rubble. He was a seminary student and both of his parents were pastors at a church in my hometown. I can’t be an observer when I “know” this kid who was only 23 or so and leaves a widow on this earth – all while doing God’s work. Are any of you donating to Haiti relief efforts? What are your thoughts on this?

Money – I still suck at saving money, I’m fresh off of Christmas though and just got done with an extended weekend vacation. As soon as the vacation part is paid off (it was a girl’s weekend and the organizer took care of all the details – I still owe her for my portion of the vacation), it’s back to building up my savings account. I’ll write more particulars later.

Resolutions - I can’t say that I don’t believe in them, because I do. I’m just trying to be quiet about it this year because I’m quietly trying to make some changes in my life and as free as I am about the details of my life, I don’t want to fail. So if you see me munching on apples obsessively, you can put the pieces together – I’m trying to control my weight and in terms of the fabric I’ve been eyeing lately – I might be trying to be more creative and spend more time in front of a sewing machine (second-hand and a gift my parents found me from an auction!) and less time in front of the TV.

I remain optimistic about the future. I had the determination to pay off my bad debt in 2009 – the world is my oyster in 2010. I still believe that I can accomplish anything that I set my mind to and can accomplish anything with hard work.

How is 2010 treating everyone out there?