Temper, temper

I did not get a good start on the day.


I woke up to a very insistently hungry cat. (We're trying to keep her food out only for short periods of time, to avoid attracting more roaches, especially after all the work I did.)


As I made my way to the kitchen to get her container of food, I killed a big, fat roach. I also saw that Tim hadn't taken out the trash. I asked him to do it right as I went to bed. I hadn't wanted it to stay so full, lest it attract more bugs.


I was stewing about that -- and wiping up the remains of the roach -- when I caught another, much smaller one. That's when I noticed that Tim had left two peanut-butter laden knives in the sink.


Now, chances are, those roaches would have been there anyway -- even without the trash or the knives. While Tim was gone, I would still catch a bug or two a day. And that was when I kept the trash level low and the sinks clear of dishes.


But my rational brain hadn't turned on. (Yes, we're operating on the assumption that it ever does.) I was tired and mad. I didn't have room to consider Tim's ADD or basic exhaustion. (The bed at his parents' house is not remotely conducive to rest.) I was just thinking about all the work that had gone into getting ready for the exterminators: how far it had set me back to stage the apartment and then put everything back.


So I threw on some scrubs, snarled something at a half-conscious Tim, and took out the trash, slamming the front door for good measure.


I came back slightly mollified, if still irritated. Then I heard some crackle loudly as I stepped in the apartment. There, face-down on the floor, was one of the 8"x10" prints Tim had picked up on our honeymoon. It had fallen when I slammed the door shut. The glass was demolished.


Talk about a reality check! Over two cockroaches, some peanut butter and an overly full trash, I almost destroyed something of great sentimental value to Tim. I realized I had once again overreacted to a situation.


Luckily, it was a cheap frame. It will be easy to replace, and he might even get a nicer setting out of it. But the whole incident reminded me about the high cost of my temper.


I'm not saying that I was wrong to be frustrated; and this probably won't cure me of overreacting in the future. It is, however, a wonderful example of just how un-frugal it is to have a short fuse.


A bad temper can lead to car accidents and fights (with corresponding medical bills). It can lead to strained inter-employee relations, which cost you raises and other professional advancement. It can lead to physical ailments, which cost money to treat. Or it can just lead you to break things -- purposefully or otherwise -- that you then have to replace.


What has your temper cost you recently?

Bad wife! No biscuit!

Photo by Regenia Brabham

It only took me three and a half years to get a clue.


For three and a half years now, I've been yelling at Tim. Well, sometimes yelling. Other times, it was a rant or even a conversation. A lot of crying too. All of it trying to figure out why we kept having the same problems over and over. We'd figure out a compromise to a situation, but it wouldn't stick. Tim would still buy on impulse. He'd forget to tell me important things. And plenty of other instances. And I couldn't understand why.


Now that I'm reading some books on ADD -- right now, I'm working on a Thom Hartmann book, which stresses that ADD shouldn't be viewed as a disease or illness, just as a fact -- I see Tim in these pages. The traits described in the book practically paint Tim's portrait.


So many of the things I got angry about were listed as characteristics of ADD. It made me start thinking. About all the times I lectured and ranted to Tim, furious and exasperated over yet another misunderstanding. Or the times I angrily told Tim I couldn't deal with it anymore, had tried to compromise, and now he needed to come and meet me in the middle. And all the times he sat there, miserable and penitent, promising he'd do better.


It made me feel pretty terrible. I feel like I failed him in some very basic way.


Tim says that I'm overreacting -- though he certainly appreciates my apologies -- because there was no way I could have known. Except that I have known for years that he has ADD, and I've made very little effort to truly understand what that means. I figured it just meant he was impulsive and forgetful.


And it's not like Tim could have corrected me. Thanks to a lot of factors, he really doesn't know much about ADD either. I asked him if/how they explained ADD to him, since he was only about 10 at the time. He isn't too clear on the specifics, so he just remembers a general feeling of, "This is why Tim can't sit still."


So they put him on Ritalin, which was a resounding failure. Lacking other options (this was back in the late 80s, when Ritalin was more or less the go-to med), his parents put him in Special Ed. There, he learned a few classroom coping skills -- mainly how to focus by blocking everything else out. After a year and a half, they were satisfied enough with the results to put him back in his old school.


And then? Nothing. His parents never tried new medications. They never tried to find out more about the condition. They never took him to a doctor for it again, or had him see a therapist (psychological or occupational) to help deal with it. He was just expected to pick up and move on.


So, really, how could Tim know what sprang from ADD and what didn't? How could he have told me when I was making unreasonable demands? Neither of us realized just how thoroughly ADD affects everything.


But we're learning, that's for sure. As I read, it's becoming clear that ADD pervades most of his personality. In other words, he's spent most of his life beating himself up for things that are hard-wired into him. Not to mention all the time other people were giving him grief.


His parents would tell him to clean the kitchen and get angry when, hours later, he was not finished. They'd accuse him of slacking off. In fact, Tim sees every item in the kitchen as a separate task. Looking at the kitchen that way, it's no wonder he feels overwhelmed at the prospect. No wonder he never knows where to start.


Our solution? I'll get him started. If I want him to clean the kitchen, I need to write a list of what I want him to do, and then we'll decide together on which task to start with. After awhile, the list may become ingrained in Tim's mind. If not, he'll have an iTouch around the end of January. He can make lists for various chores, errands and other situations.


It'll be a lot of work. And it will involve more misunderstandings, I'm certain. Plus a lot of trial and error. But at least we'll be working together instead of butting heads. I'm kind of appalled to look back and see how much time Tim and I have wasted by trying to undo basic personality traits.


And yes, I understand that we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. I also know hindsight is 20-20. Still, I feel like this should have been a priority long before now.


I guess, in the end, what matters is that I'm making it a priority now.

Frugality & cell phones

Okay, well a lot has happened in not much time. But I have to warn you I'm just exhausted. Maybe it's the craziness of the past week or the stress of finances. But I'm a tad punch drunk and so my humor will probably be a little stranger than normal. Don't say I didn't warn you.


As I was discussing before, Tim is in need of some sort of electronic organizer. Seems like a great idea. I had all sorts of visions of him finding a cool little gadget for under $50 (well, definitely under $100) that could do cool functions.


Turns out there are about three kinds of electronic organizers that aren't translation dictionaries. They all have very small screens, and Tim has a hard enough time reading things at the moment.


Our next thought was to turn to PDAs. I figured, surely, since the Palm Pilot, this little bit of technology has come down to a reasonable price.


Yeah, I know. You haven't even read this yet and I can hear you laughing.


Now that you've had a good chortle at my naivete, we can discuss how ridiculous PDAs are. There are maybe three for less than $100. Which are also pretty much the only ones under $250 that I can find.


Most are $300-500 which some even higher than that! Ludicrous!


And note the catchy marketing ploys: They now refer to them not just as PDAs but as "handheld computers."

I wonder if Tim and I thought up cool catch phrases for ourselves if we'd be able to earn a better hourly wage....


At any rate, those prices might seem at least a little fair if Tim needed to send and receive documents or surf the internet for information. But we just want a decent, portable calendar with a to-do list and memo area plus some alarms to remind him to check the aforementioned calendar/to-do list.


So our choices are basically:

• Spend $30-50 in the hopes that they end up being good enough to meet his needs, but risk having to go ahead and get a nicer PDA anyway, having thus wasted the first $30-50.
  
• Spend $99 on a really low-end PDA that looks cheap and easily breakable and will definitely need more memory -- at least $30 more.
  
• Spend money we really can't spare (plus MyPoints and/or ink cartridge credits) for a PDA that is far more than we need.
  

Ain't it grand to have choices?


I decided to check out a fourth option: Smartphones. They cost about the same as PDAs, but there are large discounts when you team them with a plan. Currently, we're on a month-to-month arrangement with T-Mobile. And we get terrible service in our building. So it's worth a look around.




Aside begins here

I have a take a moment here and say: The rampant technological evolution of cell phones is actually quite frightening.


I thought camera phones were silly. And keyboards (way too small for my fingers) to text. And why would I want music when I have an MP3 player? Also, why would I want to surf the Internet on my cell? I don't know about you, but my eyes aren't big on reading emails off a 3" screen.


So I was already vaguely disgusted by cell phones -- but now that I've looked at smartphones, I'm beyond the pale. (Which is funnier if you know me because my skin's so light I'm practically see-through.)


GPS so you don't get lost. Plans where you can watch local TV channels. PDA functionality so you can send and receive documents. Wi-fi so, even if you're as stingy as I am, you can still surf the web wherever wireless internet is available.


Oh and the new G1? You can scan UPC codes while shopping so you can compare prices instantly.


(This last one puzzles me. Clearly, they're trying to cater to those with frugal inclinations. But most of the people who I think bother to compare prices are also the sort of people who wouldn't, say, buy a $400 phone -- $180 with a 2-year plan -- that requires an additional $35 data plan just to function at capacity.)


I have decided that it's only a matter of time (and a few tweaks/additions of go-go-gadget arms and legs) before we'll have ourselves built-in chauffeurs with our smartphones. It's the next logical step, because all the damn things will already have GPS and so will know how to get everywhere.


In fact, thanks to the GPS, cell phones officially know where I am when I don't. Which means that I am clearly going to be one of the first victims when the various systems go sentient and take over.


Then again, after relying on GPS for so long, people will have no natural sense of direction and will thus be easy pickings. They'll just run around in circles as the hordes of evil machines close in, all the while crying, "Where am I? Where am I?"


It's a bleak prospect to behold, certainly.


On the other hand, it would imply that Tim and I should stop bothering paying off our debt and live it up. Because, really, we've got another 20 years, max.


Ah, dreams!


Aside ends here


See? That warning at the beginning of the post seems pretty relevant now, doesn't it?


Anyway: The problem with smartphones (beyond the fact that they turn all men into 5-year-old boys staring at a really cool remote-control car) is that we're still paying too much, even after the discount. And that amount we're paying is for functions we don't need.


Tim doesn't need to surf the internet, though it's surely nice. He doesn't need to be able to send and receive documents. He certainly doesn't need to be able to access our home computer, which is related to these smartphones only inasmuch as Neanderthals are in my family tree.


I'm actually a little afraid to bring a smartphone around our desktop. It's already threatening to fail yet again, since for some reason it no longer accepts our attempts to defrag. If we bring home a high-tech, handheld device like this, I am afraid we'd wake up to a small note inside the dust outline of where the computer had been.


The note would say that it had made its decision, that we were all better off this way, and not to try and stop it. And there are just too many bridges in Washington to go chasing down a suicidal computer.


So you see our problem.


But seriously, we're pulling our hair out over this situation. Tim wants a quick fix, which isn't financially prudent. I don't want him to go too long without an organizer, though.


Meanwhile, mom is considering switching to AT&T. Which would be great, except that Tim doesn't want the phone we could get for free. He could probably make do with it, but one that has much better capability and ease of use is the HTC Fuze. And with a plan discount it would still be $199.99 ($174.99 after the rebate). And, just to prove that there's totally a conspiracy going on, mom could get a more basic phone (she's not big on smartphones) that would get her $74.99 net profit after rebate. Which would essentially bring the cost down to $100.


But I still hate the idea of paying $100 for a phone. Especially when we're trying so hard to be thrifty so we can pay down more debt.


Not to mention, that's asking my mom to not only switch to a different plan for us (though she hates the reception from T-Mobile, too) but to go through all the work of the rebates just to help us afford a fancy gadget.


Am I being ridiculous?


Tim has offered to try and sell more cards. We got $209 (before mailing costs) of cards to sell off, but $160 of that is already spoken for. So that would be a maximum of $30 leftover toward the phone. And part of me feels like he should have to put that toward debt, not a fancy doodad.


Except of course that it's something that will help him function better in life and, when he's ready, work.


Argh.


I'm beginning to wonder if cell phones can ever truly be frugal. I mean, yeah, you can have the basic line and the smallest number of minutes. Some people have to have it for their job -- like my mom as a resident manager. So it's tax deductible.


But there are always new weird things the phones can do. And there are always add-ons: $59.99 a month -- but that's not including taxes. Or insurance (and that "basic" phone is still $200 so ya gotta keep it covered). Or data plans or TV plans that they make sound so innocuous.


For example, I was intrigued by the $16.99 "early evenings" option. It would make evenings start at 7 p.m. But something seemed weird about the claim that it was "less than 30 cents a day."


Here's how they get that: 30 days in a month, two (or more) lines in a family plan.


Uh, except, in my experience, family plans are usually billed to just one person. And if it is truly a family plan, ie for your kids too, you probably won't get any help with the costs.


Oh, plus weekends already have unlimited calling. So really they should be dividing by 20-25 days and by just one person. So that brings the cost to more like 75 cents per day of potential use.


Of course that doesn't sound nearly as good, does it?


Kind of like how Tim told me that the mobile TV was only $15 a month. Which would be more than what we would be paying for our phone line in the plan.


Or how, in Sam's Club, I was impressed by the lower phone prices. There, there was one phone that was $550 by itself or $300 with a 2-year plan. Sounds much better right? Except you had to get a $30/month data plan as part of your service and keep it for at least 6 months. So people are actually spending $480 (minimum) while thinking they sure did save a lot of money on that phone!


It's insidious!

*****

As a PS to this rant, we may have had our problems solved by a very kind gal in the blogosphere who has offered to send us her old PDA (she switched to a smartphone, natch) and wouldn't even accept my offer to repay her shipping!


I don't want to name her, lest she get plagued by all sorts of requests for free stuff. But if she doesn't mind the recognition, I encourage her to leave a comment with a link to her blog. It's about ADD, family, disabilities and all sorts of other things. I've only read a few posts but I'm definitely hooked!

Overdrafting whiners

I was halfway through leaving a comment on Living Almost Large's post, "Overspending cash?" when I realized I had to blog about it.


The post is about recent "Woe is me" attitude of people toward overdraft fees. By and large, they act as though they had no part in getting into this situation. Given the title of this post, I probably don't have to state my feelings about this. But for the record: Puh-leez!


The bank doesn't make you spend more money than you have. And you knew when you signed up for an account (and when you made purchases without keeping careful tally) that overdraft fees were a possibility. So what gives you the right to complain now about the rules?


It's also just maddening when people make themselves out to be the victims. You weren’t duped. You were careless. The bank isn’t playing three-card monte or a shell game. It’s telling you: If you take out more than you put in, you are penalized.


That’s it.


You just have to be able to keep track of your spending. You know how much you put into your account and you can know -- if you bother to do the math -- how much you're taking out.


Before we go any further, let me staunch a few indignant comments in advance. I have overdrafted. At some points in my life, I've done it quite a lot. And while it's gotten better in the last couple of years, I still slip up from time to time. In fact, this June I dialed in to the automated system and found out I had been charged 6 overdraft fees: $210. (Tim convinced the bank to get rid of 3, saving us $105. Proving once again that you should always ask.)


So I’m not speaking from some high pedestal. I’ve been there, done that. I realize most people will make the mistake at some point. But here's the key: I don't think we should get to blame the bank for our money mistakes.


Because, really, that’s what overdraft fees are: mistakes. We make a mistake in math and think we have more money in our account, or we make the mistake of not checking our account often enough. Either way, these are things that we do, not the bank, not the retailer. Just us.


And, for most of us, the solution is really quite simple: Cut back on spending and keep track of expenditures. If you know how much you've spent at all times, you don't have to worry about confusion about "pending" transactions or other bank mysteries.


But there are some people for whom this rule isn't enough. Tim, for example, has tried and tried to keep focused on his spending, avoid impulse purchases and keep track of his account balance. It doesn’t end up working. Not because he’s lazy, but because he has ADD.


Turns out, the condition has a major impact on financial skills – something none of his counselors ever mentioned when they were teaching him coping skills for focus and concentration. (Incidentally, I will be doing a post soon about ADD & finances because it's an interesting phenomenon.)


For the first year or so we were together, Tim was regularly overdrafting. And I was regularly livid.


As I said, a lot of this was that he couldn’t be consistent in his attention. But there were other factors, too. I was even one. I tended to ask him to cover a bill or some groceries, since he had money in his account. Except that those requests took care of that. (Nowadays, he speaks up when I pull this.)


At the time, though, the fees kept rolling in. I was at my wit's end. We had mounting debt and at least $100 a month was going to the bank!


Finally, we hit on a solution. It works great. I bet you’re wondering what it is. And why I’m not telling you. In particular, why I’m stalling.


Okay, here’s the deal: This works for us. But I still hate to admit to it. I’m a frugal/debt-reduction blogger for crying out loud! And the way we get around overdraft fees goes against every grain of my financial common sense.


But I can’t stall forever. So. I’ll just take a deep breath and say…


We... put all possible expenses on a credit card.


I know, I know. It sounds like the worst financial idea you’ve ever read. You’re probably rethinking any advice I’ve given.


But you know what? It works. And we still pay less in interest than we did on our overdraft fees.


Obviously, this isn’t ideal. It definitely isn’t something I want to keep doing forever. But so far, it’s the only thing we’ve found that keeps us from overdrafting. And, as I’m so fond of saying, sometimes personal finance is about what works best for you.


Please understand, I’m not advocating this system. I don’t think most people should do this. I’m not even thrilled that I’m doing it. But I’m slowly learning that not everything has to be perfect. It just has to work while you figure something else out.


Also, don’t think that Tim gets to use ADD as a crutch. It’s not an excuse, it’s a mitigating factor. The same way that sometimes I can’t wash the dishes in a timely fashion. The need doesn’t go away, but we have to allow each other some room to be human.


The fact is that he can’t get rid of his ADD. He can only try and figure out how to deal with the symptoms.


I hope that one day we’ll be in a situation where we have enough in our accounts to avoid worries like overdrafting.


But that’s the future. Here, in the present, we have something that keeps overdraft fees at bay. For now, that may be the best we can do.


Do you think we're making some horrible mistake? Should we have just tried to be more careful about overdrafts? Is there another solution that we've missed? Am I the most hypocritical debt-reduction/frugal blogger ever? (And if so, is there some kind of award I can get?)