The Rage Diaries

Pick-a-fight Wednesday ... the giving tree

One of my favorite holiday-related errands is to buy toys. Phil and I always pick up a few things for Toys for Tots, and I'll hit the Family Giving Tree for a donation or two as well. I love reading things like:

Hi, my name is Jason and I am 9 years old! I love to eat spaghetti and play football. My favorite animal is a monkey. My favorite part of the holiday is spending time with family!

That's his artwork at left, by the way. He asked for a football and a basketball.

One of the reasons I like the Family Giving Tree is because the requests remind me how humble many of our wants or needs are. This is not necessarily the case with all giving trees -- occasionally, I read something about someone who's taken aback at the brand-name and big-ticket requests some of the needy make.

I can understand thinking, "I can't afford [Big Ticket Item] for myself -- why would I buy it for someone else?" But I wonder if it's just a slippery slope down to the sentiment "The needy should be grateful for whatever they get -- it's better than nothing at all." I can't get behind that. I may not always remember that gratitude ought never be expected, but I can not back the idea that it should be compulsory in any charitable transaction.

So I do not have it in me to begrudge anyone their desire for nice things, for things that make them feel as though they belong in the ranks of "normal" Americans kids and families. And to sidestep the whole complicated issue of generosity and reward, I now avoid non-virtual giving trees.

But let me throw open the floor to you ... Giving trees: Do you participate? What -- if any -- limits do you place on any participation? And do you think there should be limits on what people ask for?

This could be a very good idea

McDonald’s Corp. is offering a money management program to its more than 500,000 unit-level employees in the United States, company officials said Thursday.

McDonald’s partnered with Visa Inc. to offer the “McDonald’s Practical Money Skills” program, which includes a budgeting guide to track expenses and access to an instructional video and an online resource center at www.practicalmoneyskills.com/mcdonalds. The materials, which are also available in Spanish, are based on Visa’s financial education program, "Practical Money Skills for Life."

-- "McD Offers Budget Advice to Workers," Nation's Restaurant News, Dec 4, 08

Given the paucity of personal-finance classes in most U.S. public school systems, and given the tremendously diverse nature of much of McDonald's workforce, this could end up being a very good way to educate several different segments of American society. I've been poking around the online resources, and they include a budgeting journal and some helpful loan calculators.

I'll be curious to see how McDonald's promotes the program among its employees -- it's one thing to offer it, but another to make your teenaged workforce think realistically about money.

Time is money -- and this recession year, we're shorter on both

The median number of leisure hours available each week dropped 20% in 2008, from 20 hours in 2007, to an all-time low of only 16 hours this year. This continues a trend which has seen America’s median weekly leisure time shrink 10 hours - from 26 hours per week in 1973, the first year we tracked it.

-- The Harris Poll: Leisure Time Plummets 20% in 2008 - Hits New Low

The factor cited in the reduction of leisure time:

We have a theory. As the American economic situation worsened, people who were worried about their jobs spent more time “just checking in” via computer or wireless device. While our respondents didn’t consider this as time spent working, they also didn’t count it as leisure time and landing instead in a nebulous grey area.

Also, as leisure time shrinks, Americans appear to be indulging more in solo activities. Four of this year’s top five choices are typically done alone: reading, watching TV, exercising, and computer activities. Reading, watching TV and exercising all increased this year, while computer activities dropped 2 points. While this may seem counterintuitive, since our research indicates that US Internet penetration is at an all-time high, it does add credence to our theory that Americans may be spending just as much or more time on computer activities, yet are considering this time as neither work nor leisure.

So we may be goofing off just as much as usual -- we're just doing it all online, alone, between surfing job listings and articles on staying employed. Ah, Internet -- perforating the boundaries between work and play for us all.

A rare blip of common sense?

Another recent poll of more than 39,000 [Gasbuddy.com] members showed that 54% were still limiting their driving and combining multiple errands into single trips. An additional 16% said they had reduced their driving speeds and weren't planning to speed up again. Only 18% said they hadn't changed their driving habits to save fuel, and 2% said they had gone back to their old ways of driving.

-- "Gasoline Is Cheap But We're Still Saving It," LAT, Dec 1, 08

We recently resumed a weekend trek to a farmer's market we really like that's 30 miles away, but we've cut back our driving in many other ways, so we're still on an every-other-week trip to the gas station. What about you all? Did you alter your driving habits this year? What's the effect been like on your wallet?

You're making it hard for me to sympathize

There is an emerging trend among national newspapers to try and depict the so-called "average" person in the midst of financial crisis. The appeal of such a story is obvious: it's meant to grab you by the lizard brain and whisper into your fearful little ear, Two missed paychecks and that could be you.

My problem with these stories? I'm likely to respond with No, it won't.

Pick-a-fight Friday ... Fast food. Yes or no?

For the past two-and-a-half months, my Mondays and Wednesdays have been crazy: I work all day, ferry home, sprint across the island, cook and gulp down dinner, fling on a Speedo, then sprint back across the island to lifeguard night-time lap swim. This last Wednesday, the delicious pizza Phil was preparing wasn't ready in time for me to have any before I hit the pool, so I sped out the door and hit McDonald's for dinner. Total cost of my meal: $1.83. I paid for it using the change in our car.

Now, I'm pretty good with our food budget, but I am not good enough to get us down to an average cost of $1.83 per person per meal. As I ate my hamburger and watched the lone lap swimmer scream in surprise upon jumping into the icy depths of the outdoor pool ... for a moment, I was like, Why do I bother? Why do I bother tracking grocery prices, or shopping loss leaders during weekly sales? Why do I beat myself up over buying turkey bacon full price when I could just ditch any consideration of balanced nutrition and feed myself for $6 a day at McDonald's?

Then I remembered I liked vegetables and the moment passed. But it did raise a question. Like many other people, I have spouted the "Just bring your lunch to work!" party line without question. I've done the calculations for food budgeting based on premises like, "Well, if I'm eating lunch, I'm eating at Cafe Centro, and that's seven bucks a pop" or "If we're eating dinner out, it's at Toomie's, so we're looking at $35 for the two of us." And then, yeah, it's cheaper to buy groceries and eat in.

But if you throw McDonald's into the equation ... well, it's a different argument.

So my pick-a-fight-Friday topic, the one that's been bouncing around in my head since I picked up dinner on Wednesday night, is this: Fast food -- a way to stretch the food budget, or something to be avoided as a regular part of your economic diet?

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.

Pick-a-fight Friday ... Mix-in-a-jar. Yes or no?

In this month's Fiscal Fitness theme post, Kip wrote something that had me nodding along vigorously in assent:

If you are just batching up something for the sake of giving out a "homemade" gift, please don't bother. I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I really hate those dang "gifts in a jar" where hotcocoa mix, milk powder and marshmallows, or Jiffy cornbread mix, or whatever is layered into a mason jar. That doesn't say "Christmasariffic! How innovative and delightful!" to me; that says "Someone needed to check the box on thirty acquaintances so she went to Costco and bought ten pounds of Swiss Miss."

Have any of you ever read Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, wherein she expounds on "toecovers," or those gifty items that seem to exist for no other reason than to be inflicted upon someone else in a spirit of generosity (or obligation)?

My definition of toecover includes the mix-in-a-jar gift. (One year, I got seven-bean soup. Anyone who knows me is snickering, but I assure you, I was gracious.) Or those bottles of mystery oil in which some radioactive red peppers are suspended -- those are toecovers.

Or bath salts. As a militant non-bath person (oh, God, the idea of poaching myself in my own scum ... shudder), I include schmancy bath salts or those weird jelly-textured marbles of bath oil as toecovers.

But I get that for some people, receiving some beans in a jar channels the very spirit of Christmas. Or for some people, lovingly ladling pancake mix into jars, then hot-gluing ribbons to the lid reminds them of what really matters for the holidays.

So I'm throwing it open to you, the people. What are your toecovers? And what seemingly toecover-like gifts do you secretly love to receive?

Fiscal fitness -- November's theme ... and a pick-a-fight Wednesday

... is linked to this WSJ story, "Glum Tidings: Santa Gets Sacked as Cities, Companies Look to Save" (Nov 10, 08) and this Business Week Story, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Recession" (Nov 6, 08).

Yup -- we're talking holidays. The questions for the month:

Are there any external factors affecting your holiday spending?

My answers and more after the jump.

The perils of catering to the demimonde

In these, our times of economic trial, I've  noticed a lot of people casually talking about scaling back on the ol' impulse buys. ("The Latest Style: Self Denial," WSJ, Nov 6, 08) Hmmm, I thought. I also know many people who bemoan the Target Effect: going into one of those stores and coming out with $150 in impulse buys. I wonder if we'll see less of that?

As it turns out, we already are: "Target October Same-Store Sales Down 4.8%." (Marketwatch, Nov 6, 08) At the same time, WalMart's same-store sales are up 8.3%.

There are a number of factors at work here -- WalMart's got a thriving grocery base, it's been blanketing media channels with ads hammering home the message that WalMart's your place to go to maintain your standard of living for less. But I also wonder how much of Target's downturn can be attributed to its yupscale devotees deciding they don't need to blow another $65 on cute Halloween decorations this year.