I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘musings’ Category

One of the front page below the fold headlines in my local Sunday paper this past weekend was “Fear drives hordes to gun shops”.  In a word, what went through my head was “Whoa.”

I read the article, and basically the owners of local gun shops in my area said that when the economic times are bad, they see a corresponding rise ingun and ammunition sales.  One gun shop owner is quoted as looking at 38 years of data from his own shop to confirm this link.  This relationship is attributed to an idea or feeling that guns equal safety.  When people feel uneasy, it makes them feel safer to take their protection into their own hands - by buying a gun.

Now of course, this isn’t everyone’s reaction.  And however uneasy it makes me personally feel to read that my neighbors are arming themselves (because it does) I find it an interesting perspective to consider.  If times are bad, we feel unsafe.  And we (the collective we, not a specific person) arm ourselves to take back that safe feeling.

If nothing else, I learned from the article that no matter how much the news tries to calm me down about the economy and tell me things aren’t that bad and they’ll get better - the average person doesn’t believe that.  The article pointed out that gun sales are at record highs for all the stores in our area.  I live in the midwest, so we have quite a few of them.  And they are consistently selling out of ammunition and many of their shelves are emptied out as soon as shipmets come in.

I do feel unsafe and uneasy - which is why I am trying to hoard the little we have and save for a rainy day vs pay down my remaining debt as aggressively.  So I share the feelings, if not the reported action.

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Sunday was my birthday, which is wholly irrelevant except that it was the reason I was watching TV in the first place.  Because it was my birthday, my spouse took care of the kids for the most part and let me be mellow and do whatever I wanted.  Which is how I ended up watching an episode of Celebrity Apprentice while folding laundry in my bedroom Sunday evening.  Not everyone (or maybe most anyone’s) idea of a fun time, but for me it was fun.  I don’t know why the Celebrity Apprentice appeals to me - I was never a big fan of the regular Apprentice series for the most part, but I enjoy watching semi-famous (for the most part) people prove to Donald Trump how important they are.

So on this episode, the celebrities were running a hotel for 24 hours or so.  I kind of only half-watched a lot of it, so I’m not exactly sure why, but it was a very fancy hotel in downtown New York, that part I remember.  At one point, a guest was very angry with Joan Rivers (who was the concierge) because she hadn’t told them that having a manicurist come to your room vs going to the manicurist incurred an extra charge.  Which was unremarkable in and of itself.  The part in which I learned about my own assumptions came from that - in an interview the guests talked about how the extra charge had really blown their budget.

And I found myself surprised.  For two reasons - one, I assumed only wealthy people stayed in hotels like that, and two, I assumed that wealthy people don’t have budgets about things like hotel stays, I guess.  Because I was surprised at the blowing the budget statement.  And then, I was surprised at myself for being surprised.  A vicious circle, I know. 

But of course - neither of my assumptions holds water when brought up to light.  For one, I know for a fact that regular people sometimes stay in fancy hotels - for example, my spouse and I honeymooned in a hotel that was much more expensive than we have ever stayed in before or since.  And two - how do I think many people became wealthy if they didn’t budget.  Big companies budget.  People budget.  I believe in the power of budgeting.  And yet, I was surprised to find out someone who I assumed has means has a budget.  Heh.

I have a long way to go in understanding wealth, reality, assumptions, and myself.  But I am glad that people budget.   Any people.

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I keep hearing stories of how bad things are right now.  I have friends who have been laid off or had hours cut in their jobs, interest rates on savings accounts keep going down, and I have been purposely avoiding listening to news about the stock market.  Closer to home, I’ve had some of my various sources of part time income decrease as things are cut back due to less demand or less funding.  We’ve made a commitment to some savings goals for this year, specifically increasing our emergency fund and saving for a new-to-us car.  At the beginning of the year, I was optimistic that we’d be able to do both those things by halfway through the year and then focus on eliminating our last non-mortgage debt, my student loan.

But here it is, the middle of March, and with a combination of personal tragedies and less income, we’ve not made any progress on saving for a car, and the emergency fund is at about $1500 (goal of $2500).  The first goal still is to increase the emergency fund to $2500, which is my primary March and April financial goal.  But saving $10000 for a new-to-us car will not happen by June, and may not even be feasible in 2009.

Which makes me want with all my heart to change that goal #2 to “eliminate student loan debt” instead of “save for new-to-us car”.   This last non-mortgage debt is like an albatross around my neck.  I hate that I even have it, and I sincerely want it to go away.  Part of simplifying our life is to simplify our finances, and one less obligation to pay is another step towards that.  But of course, my head says “If the car dies, then you’ll just add another debt instead of getting rid of one if you’re not prepared.”  And with the country on such shaky financial ground, I should want, rationally, to hoard my cash at hand just in case things become even worse for us financially before they get better.  But instead, my heart wants to be free of this last non-mortgage debt and accomplish my debt freedom goal.

So my heart and my head are at war.  Until we’ve met the $2500 emergency fund goal, I can continue to let them war it out, and see which ultimately wins in the end.  Do you have a savings vs debt elimination debate of your own?

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As I talked about previously, my mom was just hospitalized for several days due to a bad combination of asthma and the flu.   Because my father recently passed away, she had had to change insurance companies from the plan she was on through my dad’s work to one offered by her own employer.  Also because of this, she had to find a new primary care physician.

Luckily, she met one in the hospital that is in her plan’s network and she felt comfortable with.  She made sure that he was accepting new patients, and then put him down as her new primary care physician.  The hospital told her to follow up with him in 1 to 2 weeks to check on how her new medications were working, and she went home from the hospital.  She then called the new doctor’s office, only to be told that they couldn’t see her until May.  She tried to convince them it was important she be seen sooner, and she had nowhere else to go instead, but they were inflexible.  My mom is not the most assertive of people, so she said okay and then talked to me, in tears over her predicament.

Luckily, I have enough assertiveness for the both of us, so I called the doctor’s office back, and after talking to several different people, got her an appointment for next Thursday.   Why was I successful when my mom wasn’t?  Because I go into things like this with the mindset that no is not going to be the final answer.  It takes some assertiveness (which I promise, you can fake if you try hard enough) and a willingness to spend some time on the problem, but in many cases, it can be done.

1.  Know if no really means “not for you”.    Calling a doctor’s office, I just basically assume that they really do have appointments available before May, they just aren’t willing to give them to a new patient.  If there is a possibility there, I’m going to do my best to convince them they need to let me have that possibility.  Which leads to…

2.  Have reasons why you are the exception that makes the rule.  Know why they should make an exception for you when they didn’t for the 100 other people.  In this case, I used the events of the past few months, my mom’s fragile emotional state, and other health factors to make my case.  Whatever the situation, be prepared with a list of factors that push you to the front of the list.

3.  Be reasonable in your expectations and approach.  I wasn’t asking to be seen today, or even tomorrow.  I was willing to accept any appointment they offered within a reasonable time frame.  My expectation was that they could fit my mom in within the timeline the hospital wanted her seen at, which I felt was medically appropriate.  Don’t go into a negotiation expecting no compromises on your side.  Know what’s important to stand firm on and what can be adjusted.

4.  Get them on your side.  Empathy will get you a lot farther than hostility.  I never told them they were unreasonable.  I put them in my shoes and asked them to look at things from my perspective, and used that to bolster my position.

5.  Ask for the next person up the chain.  Sometimes whoever you start speaking with can’t really help you, because they lack the authority.  Move up the chain.  Ask for a supervisor.

6.  Expect that the final answer has to be yes.  I went into things expecting to succeed.  If you expect to fail, you will.  Every new person I spoke with, my first sentence was I am making an appointment for my mother for a followup from her recent hospitalization, and the followup needs to be in the next two weeks.  Eventually I was transferred to a person who simply scheduled my request.  I’m not sure the person I talked to before that one knew that was going to happen. 

Now, does this always work?  No, of course not.  There have been times I truly went into things expecting to succeed in my endeavor and after a long frustrating time, didn’t achieve the desired outcome.  But for every time that has happened, there has been a time where I’ve changed no to yes by being reasonable, persuasive, and persistent.  

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Or, how to bounce back from adversity and keep on trucking.

I was thinking to myself this morning, that if three months ago, I had had any idea of what lay ahead in the next few months for me, I might have just crawled under my bed and refused to come out.  Just three months ago seems like a lifetime ago now.  I was a completely different person in a completely different place in my life in a lot of ways.  I’ve lost one parent, the was hospitalized for the past 4 days for severe breathing issues complicated by the flu, and we had to abandon our car on our 1000 mile drive back from visiting family (although we were eventually able to rescue it).  I remember that two months ago, I thought the car dying on our trip was so awful - now it seems trivial compared to what happened next.

My mother is continuing to recover, and I thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.  She had a pretty massive asthma attack Thursday morning, and my brother originally was taking her to the emergency room but decided to call 911 instead.  the EMTs got her breathing under control for the moment, and was in the hospital until Sunday, getting IV antibiotics for the flu/bronchitis as well as breathing treatments and other such things.  She is resting at home now, and continuing to get better with a new asthma control regimen.

Every time I seem to get things sorted out and under some kind of control this year, something new happens.  I’ve completely lost touch with the goals I set just a few short months ago at the beginning of 2009, and I honestly feel like my world is spinning ever so quickly out of any semblance of order it might have had.  But restore it to order I must, and figure out how to get back on track (or at least, find the track to get on!).  I am a fan of lists, and I’ve made myself a list today of steps to get things right-side up again.

• Reevaluate my 2009 goals.  What makes sense?  What doesn’t?  The purpose of goals is to motivate and help you, are mine doing that or are they hindering my progress?
• Organize my current finances - where are we in March?  What’s been spent, what is coming in, what needs to be spent or saved?
• Set short term goals for March and April.  Since any long term plans I make right now have a tendency to be mucked up, I think it’ll be more motivating to set some short term goals as well.
• Remember that all plans are subject to change.  I get a little hung up on things going according to plan.  But, sometimes, they don’t.

Basically, it all boils down to refocusing.  It is easy to just bury my head in the sand and claim that I can’t cope with reality.  Be that as it may, the smarter thing to do is to refocus and get started on something.  The faster I get started on getting back into the swing of things, the easier in the long run it will be.  Now to get started on the list….

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