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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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Meditation

Life

Life is crazy.

 “Really, Jason, that’s news?”
I spend so much time going in so many different directions.
Cleaning out our inherited hoarding house, managing the remodel, work, side hustles, kids, friends, family, relationships, maintaining our house, maintaining a relationship with my wife, garage sales, school starting, junior high football season, insurance policies, probate, rush hour, insomnia.
Some days, I feel insanely scattered.  I can’t focus.  I have a hard time making decisions.  I waste time.
Those days, I need to clear my head.
That’s where meditation comes in.
I don’t do the money hum. (Om mone padme, Om)
Instead, I have three activities that demand a total focus.  They drive out any scattered thoughts or unimportant concerns.
They have to because, quite frankly, they can be dangerous if I don’t concentrate.
1. I shave.  I use a double-edged safety razor, so bleeding for the throat is a real concern.   For 10 minutes, nothing else in the world matters.   It has only recently struck me how valuable this is.  That value makes me want to start shaving every day, with a straight razor.  More focus, more often.
2.  I ride.  For the past couple of years, it’s been hard to find time get my motorcycle out.   Small children seem to want attention every day.   It got to the point where I was ready to sell my bike.   This spring, it was seriously misbehaving.  Finally, at the end of the summer, a friend got it running better than it ever has.   I took it out for a couple of hours and came back feeling more clearheaded than I have in a long time.  I won’t be selling my bike until I have its replacement.
3.  I shoot.  Shooting involves a series of simple actions that require concentration to do well. Load the gun, line up the sights, which eye is dominant, breathe, don’t breathe, squeeze the trigger, hole in the paper.   Again, it’s not an activity that’s conducive to worrying about the bills or work.  It’s a way to shut out the world for a few minutes.
For me, a few moments or a few hours of shutting down everything except one thing is the way to stay sane and focused.
How do you deal with it when the world comes crashing in from every direction?
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Changing Our Situation

Finance

In September 2005, I bought my car, a Chrysler Pacifica.  I got it on a loan.   Two months later–seven years ago this month–I was told I’d be laid off at the end of the year.

Two weeks ago, we bought a Chevy Tahoe with a loan.   Last Monday, my wife was permanently laid off after 12 years with her company.   She was told that, if her department opened back up, she’d be welcome to reapply for her job and start as a new employee.

Car loans mean layoffs at my house.

Last Tuesday, I got a formal offer for a new job.  I accepted.

I am now a full month away from knowing exactly what my semi-monthly paychecks will be.  My wife is getting her final paycheck later this week, which will include a week of severance pay.

For the first time in a number of years, I don’t know what my income looks like.   I don’t have a clear long-term picture or a good short-term picture.

I’m not worried.

For the first time in my life, I’m not living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Having a couple of pay periods act wonky isn’t going to hurt.   Yes, we are going to cut back, but we can manage for a few months without worry.  We aren’t going to sweat over putting food on the table.

That is an incredible feeling.

 

My Favorite Present

Parenting

My favorite Christmas present this year was the one I gave to my 13 year old son.

Allow me to walk you through his evening….

First, he opened one of his presents.  It was just a small box, about 3 inches by 4.  A Japanese puzzle box.  Inside the box was a note that read:

Closed off in the smallest room you will find a clue to bring you closer to your prize.

When he checked the cabinet below the sink in our basement bathroom, he found another note that sent him to my business website one a page with a url that contained “the square of my children”.   When he eventually figured out that I meant their ages, not their quantity, he found a clue on my website.

This lead him to a section of his Minecraft server.  It’s effectively a no-man’s land because he and his friends set off a nuke and turned it into a giant pit.   They fall down and die there.   Inside the pit was a cave.  Inside the cave was a clue.  The clue read:

Grandma and Grandpa love you.

What do you do when someone says they love you?  You either get scared of the commitment and end a perfectly good relationship, or you say “I love you, too”.     When the kid finally called his grandparents to tell them he loves them, they told him to give his parents a kiss.

I’m a jerk.

He came over and gave me a hug and a kiss.  I handed him a piece of paper.   When he looked at it, he asked if it was supposed to be torn in half.  I reminded him that he has two parents, so Mom got a hug and a kiss, too.   The resulting clue read:

The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

Naturally, this points to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the boy hadn’t read far enough into the book to understand the reference, so he had to hit google.    After spending time looking for chapter 42, he finally thought to look at page 42, which had this clue:

My Little Pegasus

Two steps to the right

Two steps forward

Two steps up

This clue started at the My Little Pony I set next to a Pegasus in my daughters’ room.   The boy was in dense mode because he had to ask his sister what a Pegasus was.  She also had to suggest he open the closet door when one step forward made him bump his nose on it.

For all of that work, he got the Ticket to Ride game.  He laughed the entire way through the treasure hunt, then decided he hated the whole process.  However, for two nights running, he’s stopped the video games to play his new game with his family.

It’s a present he’ll remember forever.

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The End of Litter

Finance, Life

In honor of Earth Day (a day late), I’m going to talk about ending litter.

kitty toilet training phase 3
Kryptonite?

Not the stuff you find on the street or throw from your car window.  I don’t mind that because, on a long enough timeline, everything is biodegradable.  Mother Nature is tougher than I am.  She can handle my McDonald’s wrappers.

No, I’m talking about the real scourge: cat litter.

We’ve got four of the things, and let me tell you, they make poop.  Everyday.  I keep telling my wife that they are going to continue making poop as long as we keep feeding them, but she continues to give them food.

For those of you who don’t know, most cats use a litter box, which is a fun pan full of a sand-like mixture of diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay, which trains your cat to use the neighbor kid’s sandbox if you let the little potsticker go outside.

Thanks for that.

So, everyday, our four cats crap in a couple of pans full of sand. Until the sand pans get too full of cat crap.  Then, they use the couch.

Who decided this was a good system?  Is it a conspiracy of Big Couch to force people to buy new furniture on a regular basis, the way Big Oil suppressed the 1000 mile-per-gallon carburetor, Big Pharma suppressed the cure-all hemlock pill, and Big Sword suppressed world peace during the Dark Ages?

There’s got to be a better way.

Right?

Enter the CitiKitty.  It’s the miracle cat potty trainer featured on The Shark Tank.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Move the litter box to the bathroom and start using flushable cat litter.
  2. Once the cats are comfortable with that change, put the CitiKitty on the toilet, under the ring and add litter.
  3. In a week or two, when all of the cats are comfortable with the setup, pop out the center ring of the CitiKitty.   This gets the cats used to doing their business over water.
  4. Every couple of weeks, pop out another ring until the cats are used to standing on the slippery ring and crapping directly into the water.  Praise the cat when it happens, because cats give a crap about your opinion.
  5. Throw the litter box away and brag to your friends.

Because I love testing things to make my life easier, and I hate cat crap, I gave the thing a try.

It worked great until step 3.  Apparently, pooping directly into water is similar to trapping a vampire with running water and causes the cats to panic and find somewhere else to poop, never to return to the bathroom.

There’s really nothing better than stumbling into the living room half asleep, turning on the news and flopping onto the couch, only to find a little lump, still warm, under your butt.

Don’t get me wrong, step 2 was a pain in the neck, too.  In order to use the toilet, you have to take the stinking sandbox off of the toilet without spilling litter all over the bathroom, find a place to set it that isn’t disgusting, do your business, put the litter pan back on the toilet, and wash your hands really hard.   If you’re a friend of my son’s sleeping over, it’s easier just to not notice the litter box sitting there and top it off in the middle of the night.

It’s a heck of an idea.  The best execution I’ve seen for getting a cat to crap in the toilet.

But it doesn’t frickin’ work.  If you’ve got a cat using the toilet, I’m guessing you had to sacrifice the neighbor kid to some kind of evil Lovecraftian entity to make it happen, because the CitiKitty didn’t do it.

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Failed Side Hustle: Scrapping

Business

Last week, the washing machine in our rental house died.  It was older than I am, so this wasn’t really a surprise.  It was one of just two appliances we didn’t replace before we moved the renters in.

English: Melting metal in a ladle for casting ...
English: Melting metal in a ladle for casting Deutsch: Metall wird in einer Gießpfanne zum Schmelzen gebracht. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My wife–bargain shopper that she is–found a replacement on Craigslist.  We got it in, then left the dead washing machine next to the replacement, as a warning to any other appliance that thinks it can shirk its assigned work.

This morning, we went over to pull the corpse of our washing machine out of the basement.

Now, I am an out-of-shape desk jockey, my wife is considerably weaker than I am, and a 40 year old washing machine weighs more than 200 pounds.

In the basement.

I’m Superman.  Although at one point, I did trade 10 years of the useful life of my right knee in exchange for not letting that thing tumble down the stairs on top of me.

What do you do with a dead washing machine?We could have the garbage company pick it up for $25.  Or we could leave it on the curb and wait for some stinking scrapper to take it.

Or…we could join the dark side and scrap it ourselves.

For the uninitiated, scrappers are the people who drive around looking for fence-posts to steal out of other people’s yards, or cut the catalytic converters out of  cars parked at park-and-ride bus stops, or steal all of the copper pipes out of your house while your on vacation.  Sometimes, they get scrap metal from legitimate sources, I’ve heard.

We decided to go the legitimate route and take the washing machine to the scrap metal dealer in the next town over.

It was pretty easy.  We pulled in with the washer in the trailer.  A guy on a forklift pulled up and took it, then handed us a receipt to bring to the cashier.  She paid us in cash, and we were on  our way.

$7.50 richer.

200 pounds of steel, and we made less than $10.

There are people who pay their bills by recycling scrap metal, but I have no idea how.   Driving around looking for things to scrap would seem to burn more gas than you’d make turning it in.

Some people scour Craigslist looking for metal things in the free section.

Some people have an arrangement with mechanics to remove their garbage car parts.

Some people are only looking to supplement their government handout checks enough to pay for cigarettes.

Us?  We’re going to leave scrapping to the scavengers.

 

 

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Can I Sell My Lottery Payments for a Lump Sum?

Finance

I took this photograph of a lottery document I own
I took this photograph of a lottery document I own (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a guest post.

Winning the lottery is everyone’s dream. You hit the lotto, cash in your ticket and kiss all your troubles goodbye, right? Actually, that might not be true. Just look at the number of lottery winners who’ve ended up worse off than they were before they hit it big. There are several problems here. One problem is that people often spend their money unwisely, without learning how to manage it properly. Lottery annuity payments were designed to help with this. However, those annuity payments might not actually be enough to make a significant difference in your life. If that’s the case, you might be wondering if you can sell your payments for a lump sum. The answer is, yes, you can. But there’s a catch. Actually, there are a couple of catches.

Buyers Matter

First, let’s talk about buyers. They’re the ones who’ll be paying you a lump sum for your lottery payments. Now, you can’t expect a buyer to offer the full amount you’re owed from the lottery, but you should be able to expect a significant percentage of the winnings. That’s not the case with many buyers. They recognize your desperation and have no qualms about taking advantage of your situation. That’s not true for all buyers, though. You need to recognize qualified buyers from those better left alone. Obviously, that’s tough to do on your own. Most people have never been in the position of having to sell lottery payments before, and it’s easy to get lost in a world with which you’re not familiar.

Sell Only Part of It

Another important consideration is whether you need to sell all of your lottery winnings or only a percentage of them. You can easily sell just a specific portion of your winnings, enough to cover your immediate needs, and retain the remainder as regular ongoing payments. This ensures that you have the money you need right now, as well as a financial cushion for the future.

Work with a Go-Between

The ideal solution to your quandary is to work with a firm that acts as a go-between. The company will vet and investigate buyers, ensuring that you only have the cream of the crop to choose from. Not only that, but working with a reputable firm will also ensure that you get the highest percentage possible of your winnings, rather than leaving you with a mere pittance.

Of course, not all such firms are the same, and you need to recognize a reputable company. Look for a firm that’s been in business for a number of years – one with an established reputation and a list of satisfied clients. Second, make sure the company doesn’t work for the buyers – the firm should work for you, the seller. This ensures there’s no conflict of interest. A company that works on behalf of the buyer has no incentive to go above and beyond to ensure you get a fair deal. One that works for you certainly does.