Things I Want to Buy and the Three-Day Rule

A recent review of my personal finances has led me to once again list things I want instead of buying them with one-click on Amazon.

I don't need one-click shopping to get in trouble. I did this for a while some 15 or 20 years ago when I thought I needed a cool-down period before shopping.  It is a simple habit. When I want to buy something (other than groceries and other necessities) I write it down (on the memo on my smart phone), with the date, and refrain from buying it for three days. I'm not "postponing" a purchase. I'm giving an impulse a waiting period to see if I really want the thing in three days or have thought better of it.

I'm sure I picked this idea up from a helpful book.  Not the book shown to the right. It's here because it was a sudden keen desire for this book that made me suspect I need to slow down and finish the last book I bought.

I learned about this book in one of John Tarrant's generous pieces on koans. This one was, "If you turn things around you are like the Buddha," which Tarrant notes is found in the above collection.   I think you do it like this:

You have a thought ~
I waste too much money on impulse items.

You can turn that around and think~
I don't waste money enough.
or, in my case,
I don't waste enough time.

Actually, I personally do.  I waste a whole day every Sunday.  And I waste money enough, I believe. Yesterday my new UP24 arrived. This is a bracelet (like a FitBit) that coordinates with my phone and logs my steps, graphs my sleep, and vibrates every 45 minutes to remind me to get up and stretch. And logs my food, if I want it to.  It seemed like a silly luxury, but 24 hours with it has me feeling like it's the greatest thing I ever did. I think it will help me get back in shape and be honest with myself about what I eat.

from HenriettaAndMorty on Etsy

The above pillow, on the other hand, is pretty nonfuctional.  I added it to the wait list yesterday.  Buddha with a sense of humor. Really, I love it, and if I had to choose I'd probably get more joy from it than another book of koans.  I do like koan work; over the years it has nourished my general ability to feel joy.  Here's a personal koan I have often carried with me when I shop for clothes~

Does this make you want to do a little dance of happiness?

Actually, it does.

How to Get $200 With Just a Few Keystrokes

I could write a letter to my grandson about this, but his life is hard enough, with his Mom, Stepdad Chris, and me all friending him on Facebook - and keeping an eye on it, too.  And really, it's one of those rediscoveries that seems so excellent I want to share it worldwide. 

Scenic train

This really is about how to get easy money, though not $5 million dollars and acreage in Nigeria.  This is real.  I, an old grandmother on pension, do have $200 in a savings account at my credit union, and all I had to do was set up one monthly e-transfer from my checking account.

If I'm e-banking, I can only think everyone else who has any dollars at all is, too.  In the course of setting up my new checking account (having realized that credit unions treat people better than big national banks that spend a lot on advertising) I protected myself against late fees by setting up a transfer of $20 on the first of each month to my personal credit card.  So I learned how to do that.

When I joined the credit union, they'd required that I set up a savings account, too, with $5 in it.  That's all I had to do. But I thought, Hmm.  I could just have them transfer $10 a month into that savings account.  I could do that and not miss it.  So I did.  And that mounted up without me noticing it.  When it hit $100, I thought, I wouldn't miss another $10 a month, either, so I changed it to $20 a month.  And today it went over $200.

Two hundred dollars.  That was beginning to impress me.  I could buy - oh, heck - lots of different luxuries with that.  A weekend retreat, if you want to be spiritual about it.  If you don't, a distinctive Hermes silk twill pocket square (and have a few dollars left over - very few). You never see those at the thrift store.

I had the wild thought that I should start a similar account for said grandson, just having $10 a month transferred into it for the next ten years.  When he graduates from college he could come into it.  Figuring at 2% compound interest (savings account interest is low these days, even at the credit union), it would come to $1,326.16.  If I wanted to grow it faster, when it hits $500 I could invest that in the stock market, and add to it with the next $500.  Invest in something with high-growth-potential like Contrafund. Even if I didn't do that, just let it sit there safe in the credit union, the money would buy him a nice Eurail pass, with the 35% discount for young people who don't mind travelling second class.  He could stay at hostels, have some fun.  I wish I'd done it when I still could, except I never really was that young.  (Insert rueful smile.)

I started my first savings account when I was about 12.  I don't remember much about that, except that interest was reliably 4% then.  This was the fifties, before credit cards became popular, so that's what people did - they saved until they could afford a new stove, or whatever.  I know, what a weird idea.  Getting along without something until you could pay for it.

I get the impression that these days a lot of Americans don't have any savings at all, that that's what's meant by living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Always a really bad idea.  It would make me very nervous.  I am convinced that anyone can save something.  The trick is, get it started.  Make it regular and automatic, and don't withdraw it the first impulse you get.  Save it for an important dream or a third notice from the gas company.

I'm not saving for anything right now.  I just enjoy watching it mount.  You never know.  There - "you never know" - that's a word of Zen.

The no-frills life

The cat's feeling blue

Reading Len Penzo Dot Com, an intriguing post about living "a no-frills lifestyle."  Well, we do that, though with a lot more medical expense than he has, despite pretty decent insurance.  So it got me thinking about frills and no-frills.  A frill - charming word, say it - say it slowly, draw out those lll's - okay, a frill is an ornament, an extra, superfluous.  Aha.  In our life that would be travel; new clothes (instead of thrift store); eating at good restaurants; going out to movies, plays, concerts; consuming recreational substances; re-decorating when those chairs are perfectly good. . . .

We are thrilled (another fun word to say, roll the r) to be getting a lot of small electrical updating done in a couple of days, due to a coupon in Angie's List, which is not, strictly speaking, essential to sustain life, so maybe subscribing to it is a sort of frrrilllllllll.  But you can't just let a house fall down around you.

Where was I?  Of all these things, it is travel that hurts me.  It's my fault I read the NY Times and yearn to go to art exhibitions of all kinds.  And have a number of facebook friends who just travel their ass off and post the pictures from their smart phones.  Sigh.  But I do have a Droid now, and worth every penny to me.  You can actually live without even the most basic cellphone - I just talked to a woman the other day who doesn't have one.  No kidding.  I said, "You go out in your car at night without a phone?"  She nodded happily.

Here's the thing that it seems Tom and I picked up from our parents, who were Great Depression kids: there is a difference between what you need and what you want. I remain astounded at the number of people who don't understand that.  I knew a woman, single, working a modest white-collar job like me, whose washer broke or something, and she HAD TO have a brand new washer.

I said, "You could use a laundromat."  Did she shudder, maybe? or just look at me like I was crazy?

"My laundry is important to me," she said.  And indeed, her clothes were too, and kept her perpetually worrying her debt.  Buy new clothes to take your mind off your debt, wash them in your very own brand new washer.  I am serious - that woman believed she had to have that brand-new (not rebuilt like we bought) washer.  Had to.

I have been encouraged to write about how in olden days (the sixties) I washed on a wringer washer - it was nice, electrified - and hung clothes out in the summer, or in the furnace room in winter.  The house was previously owned by an old Italian lady, so the furnace room had these wooden things you could lace clothesline on, ready to go.

Yes, it is possible to live that way.  Though I was young and hey, I live here too, and I saw the commercials, so in time I, too, had an automatic washer and dryer, and still do.  And fancy?  The damn thing can tell when the clothes are dry.  Then it keeps tumbling them on air and calls for me.  It annoys me.  I have to stop playing Angry Birds and go fold the clothes.  And put them away, sometimes.  Why doesn't it do that for me?

I do sulk about that.  It's been a marvel to me how progress has not yet given me a life of uninterrupted leisure.  But as my mother would say, you'll get to rest soon enough.

[image: That is the color of Tashi's fur in the original photo. And BTW, she is a decidedly expensive frill.]