If Thursday Styles was an opera ...

... it would have to be called Gottendammerdumb.

Two stories had me rolling my eyes today:"Cost Cutting, aka Mooching," in which two media professionals decide to nickel-and-dime their budget to offset the panic over their big expenditures (a house in Marin county, their retirement accounts). Entire passages read like a collaboration between Goofus and Gallant:

We decided that the only way to get a handle on our expenses was to swear off credit cards. The all-cash diet meant pay as you go, for every single thing except, of course, the dress I secretly planned to buy for the Los Angeles party. We allotted a daily budget of $100 — we wanted to ease into this, after all — to cover food, clothing, gas, gym, dry cleaning, entertainment, our daughters’ weekly allowances and the footlong rawhide bones to which our dog, Otto, was contractually entitled.

As for the mooching mentioned in the title, if you were hoping for any insights on the fraught interactions between friends with money and friends without ... well, we should all live in hope.

However, the article provides an underscore to the second piece that made me go "Hmmmm," a personal-finance piece titled "Failing Home Economics." The basic premise:

As Americans attempt to perform cost-benefit analyses of their needs and behaviors, they are whittling pennies from cable bills only to squander dollars on gas driving miles to discount stores, or on coupon-spurred splurges for nonessential items, like Cheez Whiz or organizing supplies.

Please read the opening anecdote about EconoWhiner founder Jill Andresky Fraser going into vapor lock at the grocery store and overstocking on one item while overpaying for another; the piece is studded with further examples of irrational spending behavior. Apparently, people get weird and self-jutifying about money. Who knew?

I read the first piece and thought, "Why didn't the Slatalla/Quittner household use Quicken and the envelope system for better budgeting?" and then I read the second, and I wondered, "Why not put together a price book during one week's shopping, then use those numbers to gauge bargains in subsequent weeks?"

Both pieces underscore something that I expect to see get a lot more play in the coming months: many self-identified (upper) middle-class people have no personal finance skills. I look forward to seeing the inevitable Hipster Guide to Personal Finance.

Comments

[Kerry]

What gets me is these are supposed to be personal finance experts, and when they make these publicly boneheaded moves we are supposed to empathize with them because it's all so hard. Example--MP Dunleavey and her new house and Jill Andresky Fraser. Good grief, no wonder we're in a macroeconomic mess. No one can be trusted to have a brain in her head anymore.

I do think it's a shame that they've completely girled out Slatalla with this new column. I mean, she was always trivial, but when her column centered on technology and web stuff it was somewhat relevant.

Or maybe it's just the Times doesn't think women have a serious thought in their heads.

[Auntie Maim]

One hundred dollars a day? Are they effing joking? I allot myself $120 dollars a week, and that includes all the groceries for my and my boyfriend as well as coffee, lunches out, movies, music and shows, yoga class, etc. Yeah, I only ever have enough money for maybe one or two of those things a week after buying food. Cry me a river, hosebags.

I should admit that I posted this before reading the linked article, because I blew a gasket. Going to read the article now.

[Polly]

Some people will obsess about drops of detergent and others will want to buy in massive quantities.

That quote is funny because I mentioned to a friend of mine that when I feel poor, I hoard. And she was like, Me too!

But it turns out that we hoard totally differently. She hoards money--she won't spend any when she's feeling poor. I hoard stuff, buying lots of, say, toothpaste in preparation for the day when I run out of money but still need to brush my teeth. So I kind of have keep a rein on my hoarding impulse when things get tight, whereas she can simply indulge hers.

[Stephanie]

*Daily* budget of $100? Does that include, say, the mortgage?

Even counting things like rent, cable, PG&E, and phone bills along with gas, food, and clothing I *still* spend less than $100/day. And that is Menlo Park rent. Last month I spent around $2700 total. And that included a surprise $900 car related bill (120,000 miles maintenance included some things that just made sense since I want to keep the car another 5 or so years).

[drunken monkey]

Daily! $100! I am bad for my discretionary spending, and I can imagine *a* day where I spent $100 -- maybe I went shopping and we went out for dinner, or I did a huge grocery stock-up. But every day? And that was cutting back?

Also, now I want to submit a book proposal for The Hipster Guide to Personal Finance. I could make a fortune! Which I would then spend on daily trips to the dry cleaners and pet toys.

[drunken monkey]

Also, this:

I guess, if I had to pick a moment when my “friends” really turned against us, it was when Joan suggested that we go out for lunch. “Should I bring my wallet?” I asked politely. You could have air-conditioned a 45-foot Winnebago in the chill.

Dude, I'd have sent her a chill too.

[Lisa S.]

Also, now I want to submit a book proposal for The Hipster Guide to Personal Finance.

Dibs on co-authoring!

[Polly]

Dude, I'd have sent her a chill too.

Oh, yes--gastly people, without question. I don't know how you ask a question like that politely--the polite thing to do is to bring your damned wallet or don't go out. Anyone whose first response to the need to economize is, "I can mooch!" is someone I would prune from my social circle PDQ.

[amy]

Apparently Jill Andresky Fraser goes into vapor lock when anyone questions her credentials, too. That blog is chock-full of the worst advice I've seen for making it through a recession, and a ten-minute googling through her interviews and LinkedIn page explained why: Jill rode out the last two recessions with a husband to support herself, kids, a pad in the city and a summer house in Montauk. Yes, she worked freelance throughout, but not enough to interfere with family life, apparently. Her current project's a PR business she owns with a friend in New Canaan, run out of the friend's $2.5 million house. In other words, she's a rich lady, and not a self-made one; and here she is giving out rich lady advice. "Think about who we can blame. Take some time off to rethink yourself. Engage in plenty of therapy and have some box wine and prosciutto." Nothing in there about GET A JOB or "Read what you're signing before you sign, honey." Which is helpful advice in a recession when you don't have a rich guy backing you.

Well, I had the temerity to point all this out on the blog, which promptly got me accused of stalking and then banned.

Personally, I think the whole thing is a scam -- I think she's just fishing for quotes for her next book about how much more the govt ought to be holding our hands. Not that she'll compensate the people she lifts the quotes from. I guess it's only exploitation when guys in suits do it.