Tag: Money

WWJD in practice?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Quakers advise living in simplicity, but it can be complicated.

For example, how do we feel about heated car seats?

Especially if the car already came equipped with them?

And, for extra points, was purchased used?

As another example, how about eating fresh scallops in season? Sure, they’re expensive but also so heavenly. Cooked at home, a dinner can be priced out around the cost of a meal at McDonald’s these days and will likely be healthier. The morsels are also so simple to cook, if you’re paying attention.

If you’ve worked through the Money Talks exercises on my Chicken Farmer blog, you know I’m a believer in simple luxuries, things my frugal wife labels as Quality of Life improvements. These can be as simple as a great cup of coffee savored in the morning, rather than a full pot gulped habitually. Or a fine sweater purchased at a yard sale that still gets compliments a dozen years later.

Looking closely also points to many conflicts we see as First World problems, things that upset spoiled Americans and Europeans and the rich in other realms but are utterly beyond the reach of most of the world’s people. You know, even having a car.

Those could prompt a Tendrils here at the Red Barn, but I’m passing for now. I mean, some folks are upset having to eat leftovers while the majority of the global populace is going hungry.

My most recent round with this arose over the funeral arrangements for someone who was not exactly in our family but still being handled by one of us rather than one of hers. As I was saying about complications?

Without getting into the details, I can say that hers, shaped by family and friends’ expectations, easily cost many times more than a Quaker burial would have – and the memorial service itself would have been free and far more personable.

When I go, I definitely want any earthly wealth to go to my family and worthy endeavors than being poured into the ground. OK?

Now, back to those car seats. How do we feel about air-conditioning in the car?

Election reflections

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

These shoulder elections, where nobody’s running for national office, are still important.

In small places like Eastport, getting someone to run even unopposed for local office can be a challenge. We had all the bases covered, although the surprise was when a write-in candidate won one of the two city council seats.

I can’t imagine that happening in a bigger setting, but who knows. A write-in for president? My!

Statewide, a radical proposal to take over the two widely hated electrical utilities failed. Big money is hard to comprehend, even if we’ll be paying it one way or the other. The frequent storm outages won’t be going away, nor will the continuing higher-than-national bills customers here receive. Somehow, I don’t think the issue will be going away, despite the lopsided tallies.

Just how much do those emergency home generators cost altogether, anyway, as insurance against the current setup? It’s not that many households before we’re talking billions.

Otherwise, the initiatives moved in a progressive direction, including the right-to-repair measure.

I am relieve to see opportunities for right and left to come together at a local level, however gingerly.

 

Maine voters face two hot issues 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The Pine Tree State has a tradition, so I’m told, of placing complex issues on the statewide ballot because many of the elected state representatives and senators are afraid of negative reactions in a controversy.

Normally, public officials are expected to thoroughly investigate the issues and come to a reasoned decision. That’s why we elect them. Instead, shifting this responsibility to a general public that is rarely fully informed can be like rolling the dice.

This year, there are two issues of special note along those lines.

One is the so-call Right to Repair Act, which would prohibit manufacturers from keeping replacement parts and technology from independent repairmen. I’m still bummed by HP’s ink replacements policy – your machine shuts down if you try to use over-the-counter cartridges. Apple computer users have their own experiences. I know the list of big businesses’ proprietary efforts is growing.

The other issue is Pine Tree Power, which would have the state take over Maine’s two largest electrical utilities. Mainers have some of the highest electrical bills in the country accompanied by some of the longest and most frequent outages. Folks are still worked up over being cut off for weeks years ago after some storms before Central Maine Power got the lines working again. Despite the already high rates, CMP and Versant, the utility in our part of the state, both received permission this past summer to hike the bills another 20 percent. The utilities have lined up 15 times as much money for advertising than the grassroots effort has, no surprise there, and the campaign has a lot of emotional scare. What should be obvious is that somebody’s expecting to be repaid handsomely by staying in power (sorry for the pun). They’re not doing the customers any favors there, either.

So, when you’re checking the news reports tomorrow night or the following day, check the Maine results. They could be enlightening. Or, should we venture, shocking.

Living on $10,000 a day. Or even an hour.

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

The thought crept upon me the other morning as I was pondering simplicity and frugality.

Yeah, look at the flip side.

I remembered reading a recent New York Times piece on a Long Island boutique that catered to billionaires and noted the owner’s insight that they spent differently. I shrugged it off then but come back to it now.

Suppose your after-tax income came to $3½ million a year? That would be nearly $10,000 a day. (I did miscalculate and put that at $100k a day, a more interesting figure. Still!)

For perspective, the median pay for S&P 500 chiefs was $14.5 million last year, in contrast to an average $56,000 earnings for American workers.

The No. 10 guy on the list, Tim Cook at Apple, came in at $99 million in salary, benefits, and bonuses. More than $240,000 a day. That is, $10,000 an hour.

Ahead of him were the CEOs of companies like Alphabet, Peloton, Live Nation, Sarepta Therapeutics, and CS Disco, plus four I recognized. Please, can somebody tell me what the head of Pinterest is doing to make him pocket $123 million for the year? A tad under $337,000 a day?

As one scion of affluence told me a half century ago, there isn’t much real difference between a $20,000 car (today’s prices) and a $200,000 vehicle, as far as everyday performance goes. Let me add, today’s median family car is far superior to the luxury vehicles back then. Air conditioning? Seat warmers? Cruise control?

As I played with the $100,000-a-day figure, nearly twice the yearly earnings of real workers, I realized how little of that was needed for everyday expenses, even at inflated expectations – how many houses does one need, anyway, or how many hotel suites while traveling? What came into focus was the vanity opportunities: collections of antique cars, paintings, sexual playthings, political hobnobbing. Just name it and claim it.

And that’s where it gets scary, even when you scale back to $10,000 a day.

Conservatives like to quote Lord Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” while they pursue the maximization of their personal wealth, which intensifies their power and, thus, corruptedness. Per the logic.

Renting a luxury yacht – $100,000 a week plus expenses, last time I looked – is peanuts in comparison. As is a private jet. They might even be business expenses, paid by the company.

Well, F. Scott Fitzgerald did quip, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

But I am wondering what he’d make of today’s mutations.

What would you do, given that much at hand?

 

The Maine image versus reality

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“Life as it should be,” as the billboards proclaim in welcoming visitors aka tourists, is a slick slogan ignoring the economic realities most working adults in the state face.

The recent death of a new high school graduate in our county who was about to enter the prestigious Maine Maritime Academy is a harsh example.

He was out lobstering, solo, and got caught up in his gear and dragged overboard.

More common is the hobbling together of three or more jobs, mostly part-time and/or seasonal and lacking paid benefits.

~*~

Yes, the state’s landscape can be breathtaking, especially in summer. But much of winter is brutal, as are the black flies come late spring, and we do have more than our share of trash weasels.

Just want you to keep your impression in balance.

Wealth and fine housing along Midcoast Maine

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

So much of what you see driving along is picture-perfect New England, reminding me of Cape Cod, if you’ve ever been there. Or maybe looked at a coffee-table photography book or colorful regional wall calendar.

As admirable as I find it, the landscape also stirs up a tinge of depression when I consider all the wealth this represents along the Seacoast well up into Maine these days. No home in neighboring Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for example sells for under a million, no matter how modest. And then there’s all the new construction, too. Even a half-million for a new condo in what looks to me more like fancy tenements. What a leap from the $13,000 waterfront home one friend bought there 35 years ago!

Moreover, as I think about all of the poverty and decay in much of Maine up my own way, I’m stuck wondering:

Who can afford this?

Just what’s their secret to living?

The joy of paying bills online

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers of the Red Barn know my identity as a neo-Luddite, someone who resists many technological advances for ethical reasons. You know, let’s keep people employed.

But after some of you encouraged me to move ahead on the banking front, and heeding your advice, I’ve made the leap. And now I’m asking, “When is the last time I wrote a check?”

Actually, it was for cash, only because I’m still resisting the ATM option. I do like face-to-face, especially in a small town, OK? And I believe an awareness of personal spending is important.

That said, among the unanticipated consequences of the shift is the fact I no longer need to keep a separate ledger, except for the checks I actually write, and my wife has instant access to those numbers, too, for our shared expenses covered there. (I won’t get into the details of our domestic bill-paying, but it’s worked for us.)

It’s also led to my using my credit card in many small-transactions instances, much like my younger daughter,  rather than cash. As she does for a cup of coffee.

But now there are new questions, like what am I going to do with all of these commemorative postage stamps I ordered as a bargain online? In response to Donald Trump’s destruction of the U.S. Postal Service?

On the continuing toll of the Internet on the livelihoods of creative souls

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Fellow blogger Gary Hart recently had an eulogy for Outdoor Photography magazine, which prompted this comment from me:

“Your post mortem is one more story of the toll the Internet is taking on the income of many creative individuals. Freelance writers were devastated early on when their secondary markets for republication withered (anyone could already find the piece online). In professional photography, you lost sales to people who found your images posted online and were content with copies they printed out at home.

“Magazines faced a double whammy as content moved to the Web. Not only were sales and subscriptions shrinking, so was advertising, which paid most of the bills. In the case of photography, the products themselves were being rendered obsolete. Film, chemicals, papers, enlargers, darkrooms, and so on became ancient history and then, for the most part, so have cameras. What I’m getting with my cell phone, for instance, is unbelievable (though I know its imperfections, too).  As a parallel, you can discuss what happened to the professional wedding photographer.

“Finally, as much as I love paper, I’m using far less of it as either a writer or a reader. Downsizing is one reason but not the only one.”

It’s been a slow season for tourism, and even the summer rentals are down

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From the start of our travel season, things here have felt slow. I haven’t seen as many cars as I have in the past or as many states represented in their license plates, for one thing. While there are people on the streets, they’re not crowds.

Even down on Cape Cod, summer homes are available rather than reserved long in advance.

Somehow, we’re hearing that retail sales have been holding up, but we’re also seeing more vacancies in the Airbnb options, too. (The latter hits us as good news, considering how the investment buyers have been skewering the home market away from working families we desperately need.)

Still, visitors are the key to retail businesses in our part of Maine – our version of Black Friday has already passed or soon will, unlike the day after Thanksgiving push elsewhere. Maybe the visits by cruise ships in the foliage season will provide a much needed boost.

Could much of this reflect the reality that inflation is finally pinching family budgets?

Sitting down to do our annual donations

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Rather than making most of our charitable contributions ad lib during the year, we’ve adapted a new strategy since moving Way Downeast.

This is the time of the year when we decide what we’re supporting and then make those payments.

The process means deciding between giving smaller amounts to a wider range of organizations or instead sending somewhat larger amounts focused on a few recipients.

Mailing those checks off always feels good, though we also wish we were sending more.