Should we BOTH work part time?

In this recent post, Parenting, work, and guilt, I talked about how I'm currently finding a balance between work and family by working part time.

Now here's a really radical idea for you.

Currently, I'm working about 15 hours a week at an hourly job and also doing freelance writing of various kinds. My partner is working full time for a nonprofit and he somehow manages to do a very small amount of writing around the edges. We have one son, age 3.

For years, I've been daydreaming about figuring out how BOTH of the adults in the house could work part time. The issue in our house is that we both like to do work that doesn't pay anything, or nearly nothing. For me, it's writing fiction. For M, it's writing articles about--well, if I told you that our anonymity would be shot, because he's one of the very few people in the world who likes studying this arcane subject in his spare time.

So far, I've been averaging about $300 or $400 per month in freelance income since I quit my day job 4 months ago. It's not bad, but it's not that much either. M makes about $500-$1000 per YEAR from his writing. Granted, this is the small amount of writing he can get done between working full time, being a very involved parent, and excercising. Most of it is royalty income for a book he published many years ago, and both of us get excited when royalty checks arrive mostly because it's proof that the book is still in print. The book has sold about 4000 copies to date, but it took many years to sell that many copies. He'd be the first to tell you that what he writes is not commercially viable and never will be, and he's not willing to be motivated by money in this part of his life.

What he really, really needs to be happy is to have a good chunk of time every week to dedicate to his writing. The way our lives are configured now, it just doesn't happen. He has learned to write during his 20 minute commute, or early in the morning before he goes to his day job, but he needs more time than that.

Our arrangement since our son was born has been that we would take turns working full time, and we have done that. At the moment, it's his turn to work full time. But I'm already looking ahead with dread to the time when it will be my turn again. So, I've been fantasizing about what it would take for us to get to a point where both of us could work, say, half time at day jobs, and spend the rest of our time caring for our son and writing.

I don't really know if this is realistic, but my vague idea is that when our son enters kindergarten about 2 years from now, we could potentially try this out. Until kindergarten starts, we have to pay for preschool. But if we send him to public school as we expect to do (nothing is guarranteed but this is our goal), he will be in someone else's care for several hours a day, and we won't have to pay for it. That's going to be like increasing our income by hundreds of dollars every month. Of course, there's summer, and camp is expensive, but allow me to paint this fantasy picture for now without thinking about paying for camp.

So. L goes to public school. I work 20 hours a week at my current job, which would pay me about $30K per year. M works 20 hours a week at his current job, which would pay him about $23K per year (they've let him go down to part time before but we have no guarrantee they'd go for it again). I do freelance writing, with a goal of making an average of $10K per year. M does his writing, with no financial goal whatsoever but with the occasional windfall from a magazine article or from royalties.

Would that be enough to live on? I think so. It's about what we've been living on for several years. Our income has been hovering around $60K for a long time. It hasn't really kept pace with inflation, but we've done pretty well with that level of income.

Is it absolutely insane to think of keeping our income steady over time and just working less and less? It's sort of like giving yourself a regular raise, except you'd be paying yourself more time, not more money.

I guess it means we'd be effectively saving less over time, too. If we save $10K in the year 2007, it's not worth quite as much as the $10K we saved in the year 2002.

Still, it's a nice fantasy.

What do you think of this idea?

Stacking electric cars?

This small electric car prototype, called the City Car, is being developed at MIT. The cars hold two people and can be stacked like luggage carts into a rack that recharges their batteries. They're built to complement public transit systems, and can be used for one-way trips in urban areas. You walk out of your office and pick up a full charged City Car, drive it home, and park it in a charging rack near your house.

I wish this system was already up in running in Philadelphia. We get by with one car, but it takes some planning, and we can only do it because M is willing to walk a couple of miles pushing a stroller occasionally. We are members (and big fans) of Philly Car Share, but you have to return the car to the pod where you picked it up. A smaller car like the City Car that could be used for one-way trips--now, that would be cool.

Unfortunately I think the liklihood of the necessary infrastructure being built any time soon is pretty low. Just look at the lack of necessary infrastructure for hydrogen fuel, which some people think would be a good replacement for fossil fuels as our primary fuel source.

Office politics

Today I got to work early, and the tension among co-workers made me SO HAPPY that I usually work in the evenings, when it's just me, the students, and a few laid-back part timers staffing the circulation desk.

Jeez, the he-said-she-said routine could drive anyone nuts.

Thoughts about writing

Today I handed out twenty copies of the seventh chapter of my novel to my fiction writing class. Next week we will workshop the chapter.

I know they'll hate it. I know they'll think it's wimpy and the characters are insipid and that I'm an old lady (most of them are 19 and have visible piercings and say "fuck" a lot and write angry fiction about killing their mothers or raping people or growing up in foster homes).

But probably I'll get some valuable feedback, and a little honest criticism won't kill me. My problem with having my work critiqued is that I have absolutely no acting ability. If somebody says they love it, I glow. If somebody says it sucks and I should never write again, I look stricken. It's very embarrassing.

In the meantime, I am occupying a slow moment at work in reading this very interesting essay by Po Bronson about writing.

He says,
"It takes an average of ten years dedication before you can make a living writing creatively full time."

So that means that if I hadn't chickened out and gone to library school instead of getting an MFA, and if I hadn't gotten a little distracted by parenthood and other things, my ship would be coming in right about now. Or not. He did say average.

Should I become a professional blogger?

Lately I have been seeing a lot of opportunities to write blog posts for sites owned by individuals or companies. Most of them pay a percentage of the ad revenue earned on your posts. I've experimented with writing for Helium (please email tiredbuthappyblog at yahoo for a referral), and I know people who have written for Associated Content. And this freelance job site often has intriguing opportunities.

I think it would be fun to write for some of these sites. But I don't have enough free time to write several posts a week for someone else's site. I'm a little tempted by the idea of making some money, but how much money would I actually make with a model that pays based on the number of ad clicks?

I've had pretty mediocre results from pay-per-click advertising on this site. My revenue was so low that it was taking me eons to reach any kind of payout minimum. I finally axed Adsense, Adbrite, and Kontera. Of the three, I liked Kontera best because it's in-line advertising (links within the text of your posts) so it didn't take up extra real estate, but even that one had such a low rate of return for me that it wasn't worth keeping. The only advertising on my site is now either direct (where advertisers contract with me directly for link placement), or through Linkworth. I do write paid site reviews, but I'm making a new commitment to review only sites that are relevant to personal finance.

I don't do well with pay-per-click ads on here, so why would I do much better blogging for somebody else? Sure, the sites I'd be writing for have a lot more traffic than this site. But if I were trying to make a living from blogging, wouldn't I be better off increasing the traffic to this site? As it is, I neglect this blog pretty badly. I should really do something about my template, should switch to my own domain name, should post more regularly, should include more graphics, etc. This site could certainly benefit from having a little more of my time and attention.

The other idea is to kill this site and use my time to write for other sites. That also has its appeal, but I've had this site for almost two years, and I'm kind of attached to it.

I'd be quite interested in hearing from people who have done pro blogging. How often do you have to post to make it worthwhile? What kind of income are you looking at? Do tell, either by sending me an email or by commenting on this post. I know my readers would like to hear your thoughts, too. I often get email from people who want to know how to get paid for their writing.

Update, Sept 28, 2007:
My Helium experiment paid off nicely. I got an unexpected email yesterday saying that an anonymous publisher wants to buy one of the two articles I wrote for Helium. They were willing to pay $60 for all rights to the article. It was a good return for an article that took me about 30 minutes to write, but I'm not sure that that experience would be replicated often enough if I put more energy into writing for Helium. I think pro blogging is not for me.

Golden handcuffs

Success can be a trap. When you start achieving success in a given career, it becomes much harder to change fields.

This post from Make Love, Not Debt strikes a chord with me. In the past few years, I have often wished that I could just look at the employment ads and apply for anything that sounds fun. I'd like to work for a landscaper, or be a buyer for a bookstore. Instead, I have to pull up my bookmarks folder full of library employment sites, because I can make more money as a librarian than I can doing anything else. Or at least, anything I'd be willing to tell my grandmother about.

Unless I manage to beat all the odds and make it as a fiction writer, I probably won't ever get off the librarian career track. Even if I do have moderate success as a writer, I'll probably need to keep working at least part time as a librarian so my family will have health insurance.

So here I am, in it for the long haul, helping people find books and articles and obscure statistical data until sometime in the 2040s. It could be a lot worse. I make decent, if not spectacular, money. I like my work. But I do sometimes wish I'd chosen something else.

Maybe it's part of growing up, waking up one day and realizing you can't quit and go become a river raft guide, you really do need to be nice to your boss, and you really do need that salary to keep coming in.

But there are always people who buck the system. You've seen the headlines--"Investment banker leaves Wall Street to teach fourth grade", or "Corporate attorney finds fulfillment as a pastry chef", or "Former CEO becomes scuba instructor in Cozumel."

Isn't this what I'm doing right now? I recently quit my primary job, the one that would help me climb some sort of ladder, and I'm doing more of what I want to do. I'm writing. I'm volunteering at my son's school. I'm taking a class. And yesterday, when most of the adults I know were finishing up their work week or fighting their way home on crowded commuter trains, I was sitting on my shady front porch, helping my little son draw with chalk and watching him learning to write his own name.

I'm fortunate that I have been able to break out. I don't have any debt. My partner is willing to be the full-time breadwinner for a while. My expenses are low. I have a good part-time job with benefits and decent job security.

What about you? Does your current salary make it hard for you to change careers? What kind of work would you do if you weren't ready for retirement but didn't have to worry about money?

Post script

Oh, in addition to all the snotty noses I've wiped this week, I also worked 17 hours at a very busy library reference desk, did umpteen loads of laundry and hung it to dry, shopped for groceries at 3 different stores, did homework for the class I'm taking, and convinced my son to eat something besides turkey dogs 3 meals a day.

On top of all that, I wrote two new pages of my novel! Woohoo!

The good news is, I'll have plenty of time to go on a book tour to promote it, because I'll be freaking retired by the time it gets published. That gives me about 35 years to get it done. I better get cracking.

But for now, it's time to go eat some ice cream and read something fluffy.

Co-operatives take their toll

I belong to too many co-ops. As a family, we're members of two different food co-ops, a childcare co-op, and our son goes to a co-operative preschool.

How many is that. Four? Jesus. No wonder I feel like I got hit by a cement mixer.

The result of all this cooperation is that I can afford to work part time, but I'm always exhausted.

This week, I paid less than $100 for over 30 hours of good quality care for my son, but I paid for it with my own sweat. I spent about 10 hours taking care of other people's children at my home, and I also spent about seven hours doing work for my son's school. There was some car pooling, too. And of course there were all the hours I spent taking care of my own son, which is wonderful but not exactly a restful way to spend time.

In the words of my son L, "I don't wanna cooperate."

Related posts:
Doing the co-op shuffle posted by Drob at This Examined Life.

Carnival of E, V and PF

Thanks to Penny Nickel for including my post on parenting and work in this week's Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance.

Eco-investing goes mainstream

The October 2007 issue of Kiplinger's Magazine is calling itself "The Green Issue". This entire issue devoted to eco-investing tells me that investors of all stripes are starting to look seriously at alternative energy and green business as a major money-maker. Last time I checked, an environmental focus in a mutual fund was considered socially responsible investing (SRI).

But Kiplinger's takes care to distance eco-investing from SRI. Their lead article in the issue, "Green is the next big thing", by Jeffrey R. Kosnett, has this to say:

"Don't confuse eco-investing with socially screened investing. Social screens typically rule out stocks because of the products a company makes or the way it treats employees. Many environmentally oriented advisers, portfolio managers and major investors, such as the state of California, are more interested in benefiting financially from breakthrough technologies than blackballing companies for one subjective shortcoming or another."

There is one so-called "subjective shortcoming" that I'm not willing to overlook in this new investing fad. Although I'm interested in the alterntative energy funds they describe in this issue, I'd only want to invest in funds that avoid companies that produce nuclear energy. I don't think that's a good solution to our current energy crisis because I think nuclear plants have huge destructive potential, and are more often built in areas where residents are poor, or disadvantaged in other ways, and don't have a lot of power. Show me an alternative energy fund that keeps this kind of environmental justice agenda in mind, and also has reasonable fees, and I'd probably try to make room for it in my portfolio.

Mushy mother moment

Last night, I got home from work at about 10:30, and went to hang up a load of wet laundry in our basement.

I was shaking out a pair of red shorts in a size 3T when I heard a rattling sound.

In the pocket: A handful of smooth stones.

It reminded me of collecting rocks and other interesting things on the beach and in the mountains when I was a kid. When she was L's age, my younger sister used to collect so many things that her heavy pockets would begin to drag her pants down.

Buying used computers

Some things you shouldn't buy used. Underwear. Toothbrushes. Computers.

But that's just my opinion.

My partner, M, has always bought used computers. He says computers are designed to be disposable, and he resents that the constant software upgrades force you to buy new hardware all the time. He thinks it's wasteful to dispose of old computers, and wasteful to spend money on new ones. When we met in 2000, he owned two computers. One was a Mac Classic, the kind my parents got when I was in elementary school. The other was a Mac he'd bought from our grad school computer lab when they upgraded their machines. He actively used both of them.

I admire M's frugality, and his willingness to inconvenience himself in order to resist being manipulated by big business. I'm grateful to him for making me question my knee-jerk decisions to buy a new computer every 3-4 years. And truly, every writer should be allowed to choose their own tools. I hate it when people buy notebooks and journals for me. And I don't think I should be allowed to choose what computer M does his own work on.

But I am just not a fan of this strategy of his.

Since we've been together, he's bought 3 computers, all used. The first one had a fuzzy screen and he sent it back. The second one had a loose connection, and every time you plugged or unplugged a peripheral, ALL the peripherals plugged into the USB ports would stop working. Modem, keyboard, printer, stuff like that. You had to wiggle the connections and swear a lot until it worked again. He kept that computer for about five years. He said that for him it worked fine. Me, I hardly ever went into his office because I hated the sight of that f***ing computer so much.

We had decided last spring it was time for him to buy a new computer, but we hadn't gotten around to it yet. Our hand was forced when his old computer stopped working completely at the beginning of September. So he shopped online, talked to friends, and found a used Mac G5 for a good price. And of course, it doesn't work. It has crashed within a few minutes every time he's tried to use it, and he hasn't even installed any software on it yet. According to the fine print, he can send the thing back, but has to pay a huge "restocking" fee.

This is terrible. On one hand, I feel vindicated, because he should have just gone down to our local Mac store and bought a new computer like I wanted him to all along. On the other hand, I feel mad at myself for not reading the fine print before he bought it. He did ask me to help him make the decision, but I was so annoyed that I was having to help him decide WHICH used computer to buy, when I didn't want him to buy a used computer at all, that I barely listened when he rattled off the specifics of the different computers he was considering. I just said "yes" to the one he obviously wanted.

But most of all, I feel bad because he doesn't have a working computer. He works full time. He has a young kid. He has a spouse who likes his company. And he hardly ever gets any time to do his writing. It SUCKS that he is having to waste valuable writing time on dealing with this computer thing.

I'm not even enjoying being right. All I want is for him to have a working computer.

What do you think? Do you think it's a good idea to buy used hardware? Have you had good experiences with it? How can you make sure you're not getting shafted?

Occupational hazards of being 3

This morning as he was waiting for his oatmeal to be ready, my son put a wad of play-doh in his ear. My fingers just seemed to be pushing it further in, so I grabbed a small strip of plastic that had been used to tie a bag together and gently extricated it. While both of his parents were lecturing him about not putting things into his ears, my son sat there looking dejected.

M: It's like when you put that bean in your nose, remember, L?

L, sighing: Yeah.

Me: What bean? When?

M: It was--what, L, a couple weeks ago?

Me: I never heard about this.

M: There was nothing to tell. It's not like it worked up toward his brain or something.

Me: But putting a bean in your nose is such an important part of childhood. I feel like I missed something.

M: Well, he was playing on the rug, and I don't think he was even playing with his beans, but he found one on the floor and--

Me: Were you scared?

M: No. I was concerned.

Green Life, Green Wallet

Check out this newbie blogger, Green Life, Green Wallet.

S/he is just getting off the ground, but I like the blog's premise and it will be interesting to see if s/he expands on the environmental theme a little more. So far, very few posts are about green living, but I'm looking forward to more good posts on this topic.

Feds to the rescue?

If you are in danger of foreclosure because your Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) payments went sky-high recently, you may be eligible to refinance with a Federal Housing Administration loan.

According to the FHA news release on the issue, homeowners who meet the following criteria may be eligible to refinance under the new rules:

A history of on-time mortgage payments before the borrower's teaser rates expired and loans reset;

Interest rates must have or will reset between June 2005 and December 2009;

Three percent cash or equity in the home;

A sustained history of employment; and

Sufficient income to make the mortgage payment.

This is just dandy, but my feeling is that folks who qualify for this loan are not the ones in the deepest sh**. If you had a stellar payment record until recently, have some equity, have a good work history and a healthy income, chances are you were able to refinance before you defaulted. I know private mortgage lenders aren't being too free with their cash these days, but I still think that folks who were truly victims of predatory lending during the housing bubble are probably those who don't meet the FHA criteria.

Still, I'm glad a couple hundred thousand people may be able to stay in their homes because of this change. Let's hope the other 1.8 million whose ARMs will reset by the end of 2008 (according to Mr. Bach) are busily looking for ways to weather the storm.

(photo ganked from Turbosquid.com)

Another parking ticket, dang it

11:35: Find a parking spot right by campus. Miraculous!

11:39: Use my parking card to put 4 hours on the parking meter.

11:45: Run errands on campus, forgetting to eat lunch.

12:30: Go to my class.

3:35: Get out of class. Snarf peanut butter and jelly sandwich before I even make it out of the building.

3:36: Start walking toward a nearby gourmet market. I need Sunflower butter to replace peanut butter, so my son's school lunches will be nut-free and his allergic classmates won't keel over.

3:38: Remember my parking meter, which is now 3 blocks behind me in the other direction. Debate risking it and going one more block to the store. Remember that the parking folks around here are super on-the-ball. Turn around and speed-walk back to the car.

3:45: See the parking ticket on my windshield as soon as I turn onto the block where I'm parked. The time on the ticket is 3:40. Have a small internal tantrum, invisible to passers-by. WTF? Did the meter-reader stand there and watch my meter turn over to zero? Ticket will cost $26. Worse, I'll have to tell my spouse, and he will tease me because I get parking tickets at least a couple times a year.

3:50: Walk back to the store, quickly, and buy Sunbutter.

4:15: Get back to campus, and change into my librarian costume before it's time for me to start my shift at the reference desk.

First day of school

School has started at long last. I don't know how stay-at-home-parents do it. My son's camp ended two weeks ago and school didn't start until today. I love that kid, but it's been a long two weeks.

Today he went to his new preschool. Before we left the house, he asked me to paint whiskers on his face. So he went to school today not as L, son of TBH, but as his alter ego, the "big black dog". When we arrived, his best friend was there before us and helped L find his hook and his cubby. I chatted with teachers and parents. There were several parents standing around, anxiously trying to work up the nerve to leave. For most of them, it was their kid's first school experience.

I was planning to stay for as long as L wanted me to stay, within reason, but at a certain point I realized I hadn't seen him in several minutes. He was off playing pirates with his friends. I tracked him down, said goodbye, and got a rushed and rather smeary kiss (the whiskers ended up partly on my face) before he ran back to walk the plank on the pirate ship.

All day people kept asking me how I was doing, and whether I cried when I dropped him off. Hells no. I did my crying when he was 3 months old and I left him at daycare for the first time. Okay, I've cried since a few times, when he himself was crying because I was leaving him at daycare. Today, though, he was so happy, and I was so excited to have the morning to myself, that I didn't feel remotely like crying.

I'd like to tell you that I went straight home and wrote a new chapter on my novel.

But I didn't. Instead, I went grocery shopping, came home and checked my bank account online because I can't find my checkbook and I wanted to make sure there wasn't any suspicious activity. Then I did a load of laundry, hung it to dry, and made myself an artichoke and a turkey hotdog for lunch. I also did a bunch of homework for the class I'm taking.

The one thing I'm wondering is why the heck is school starting so late? I remember it always started the day after Labor Day. What's this September 10th business? Us parents have things to do. We NEED school to start. Besides, the semester at the college where I work started last week, so I've been working for a week already.

Now that preschool's started, I can get into the swing of the school year. I hope it's a productive year, for L and for me.

Parenting, work, and guilt

I've been thinking lately about paid work. Specifically, I've been thinking that I don't like to do too much of it. Oh, I like my work. Being a librarian is fun and challenging. I like the slightly altruistic feeling I get from working in a service profession. And I like getting paid to write. I want to write for my own sake, but I want to be published and get paid for it, too.

What I really despise is working full time, having a day job. I've magaged to avoid it for long stretches, and I would be perfectly happy to never ever work full time again.

I worked full time for a little less than two years right after college, doing the kind of work that is tiring and low-paying and slightly demeaning. Then I went back to school, and when I graduated got a full time library job for two years. Although I like being a librarian, and I liked my coworkers in that job, the job itself was not a good fit and I was really miserable. And I worked nearly full time (about 35 hours a week) last year while my partner was home a couple days a week with our son.

Now I'm working part time again, and it's great. I get to be outside a lot. I putter around the house and the neighborhood. In the afternoons I do the dishes, and then I rest for 15 minutes or so while my son watches a video. I can run errands during the week. Laundry doesn't pile up until the weekend. I'm becoming more involved at my son's school, and I'm taking a writing class for the first time in many years.

Since things are going pretty well for us financially since I quit my other job, I've found myself thinking, hey, this is pretty good. I could get used to this.

But I feel guilty too. I'm 30 years old. I'm five years into a career as a librarian. I should be working full time for a big-name university library, earning seniority and looking for ways to move up, presenting at conferences and serving on professional committees, using my contacts to become a grant reviewer at the state or even the national level, publishing professional papers and reviewing books in the trade journals.

Instead, I'm working part time and I've got a fabulous tan. My son and I go to the library, meet friends at the playground, go to the science museum, garden, play word games, listen to CDs (his favorite song is called "Dinosaur, Dinosaur" and it's by Sandra Boynton). We spend enough time together that we have a chance to drive each other crazy. When I was working more, I was starved for his company all the time, and he was always acting out to get my attention. Wait, he still acts out to get my attention.

Anyway, for the first time since my son was born I feel like my life is actually mine again. He still needs a lot of care and attention, but as long as I'm only working part time, I can give that to him and still do my own thing.

Financially, we're coasting along okay. We are staying out of debt, and saving an adequate if not a spectacular amount. But it would probably be better if I was earning more money so we could have a few more options. Our house needs work, our car may die on us one of these days, and our emergency fund could use a little revitalization.

But like Penny over at Money and Values, I don't really want to let money be my motivation beyond a certain level. I want to earn enough money to support myself and my family in a reasonably comfortable manner, and to save adequately for retirement, college, and the larger expenses that will come up along the way. But I don't really have much desire to earn more money than I need to do those things.

Who cares if I work part time, as long as my spouse is enjoying his full time job? Plenty of women really want to be home much of the time or even ALL of the time when their kids are little.

Why is it so hard for me to justify it to myself?

I really don't know.

(Another long, rambling post brought to you by the librarian at the deserted college library on a Saturday afternoon.)

Round the world with frequent flyer miles

Although it can be a huge pain in the neck to use frequent flyer miles, when they pay off, they sometimes pay off big.

My mother just told me she's cashing in 200,000 United miles on a round-the-world trip. She's spending $119 in fees and surcharges.

Her trip will be about 2 months long. It includes a 3-week stop in Asia, a 2-week stop in Europe, and 4 separate stops in the continental US, each ranging from 3 days to a week in length.

My mother's experience will be hard to replicate, however. She's been accumulating miles for years, both through a rewards credit card and through her frequent trans-continental trips (we have family on each side of the Atlantic, as well as on two different Pacific Islands).

United used to have a policy that as long as you either earned miles or spent them in a 3-year period, your miles wouldn't expire. However, they've recently changed that policy. At the end of this year, you'll need to have some account activity every 18 months in order to prevent your miles from expiring.

The last few times I've tried to use frequent flyer miles, it has been a headache. I often fly with one of United's partner airlines, and have frequently not gotten credit for my flights. But lately it hasn't seemed worth it to pursue getting the mileage credit, since I've found it so hard to redeem my miles.

But now that I'm hearing about my mom's upcoming trip, I'm going to try harder to get credit for all the flight miles I can. Maybe some day I'll have a chance to get a free round-the-world ticket.

Professional baseball on the cheap

Last night we took L to see the Camden Riversharks baseball team play the Long Island Ducks. The team is part of a small professional league, but it's not affiliated with a Major League team.

Of course, we could have gone to see the Phillies. The cheapest seats in the nosebleed section at a Phillies game is about $15. Instead, we paid $10/ticket and sat about 3 rows behind first base. We were able to see the players without having to watch them on a big TV screen. At Major League games, I usually end up watching the game on the screen and glancing at the field every once in a while.

Campbell's Field is situated right under the Ben Franklin Bridge, and has a carousel and a rock-climbing wall. It was a beautiful evening. L was in raptures, not over the baseball, but because he could see the PATCO trains going by on the bridge, and watch planes flying past on their way to land at PHL. The only fly in his ointment was that he didn't get to see a shark in the river.

We had told him we were going to see a baseball team called the Riversharks, and that the stadium is right next to the Delaware River. He was convinced that he'd get to see a real shark in the river. His frighteningly good memory produced a snippet from a shark video we have gotten out of the library a few times, and he started telling us all about how bull sharks often swim up rivers. We did walk down to the river before the game started, made friends with some of Camden's friendly homeless people, and watched the tugboats go by. But I'm sure you won't be too surprised when I tell you that we did not see a single shark. During the baseball game, the conversation went something like this:

Me: L, look! The pitcher is winding up. See the pitcher? He's the guy standing on that little hill, which is called the pitcher's mound.

L: Let's go look at the river.

Me: Watch the batter now, L. He's about to swing. Foul ball! See those white lines, L? The ball has to be inside--

L: A train! Look, a train! Daddy, do you see that train?

Me: Yes, I see the train. Do you see that guy standing on that white square? He's trying to run from square to square. Those are the bases.

L: An airplane, Mommy! I see an airplane. Can we go look at the river now?

Me: Okay, forget it. I don't much care about the game either. Look, L, somebody lost a red balloon. Shall we go and get a balloon for you?

One of our friends even caught a foul ball for L, which he was momentarily interested in. Perhaps he'll change, but at the moment I think my kid is more of a science geek than a jock. Oh, and he likes vehicles. That's fine with me. I'd rather spend my weekends watching him try to catch pollywogs in the nearest pond, rather than attending endless Little League games.

M likes baseball, but he's more interested in the statistics than in watching the actual game. In spite of our lukewarm feelings about baseball in general, I would definitely go back to see the Riversharks again. It's such a wonderful stadium, and it's fun to be so close to the players. And we went with some folks from M's workplace, which was nice. I chatted with the spouses, and when I remembered to pay attention to the game I enjoyed that too.

A good way to end the summer. Now, if only the summer would actually end. School starts at last on Monday, and I'm hopeful that the weather will not stay in the high 80s for too much longer.

HMOs: A rant

Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment to figure out a long-term strategy for managing my endometriosis.

I just remembered that I don't have a $%#$!*@ referral.

Gosh darnit.

This is only about the tenth doctor's appointment I've had this year, and I've forgotten to get a referral for at least half of them. For some, I didn't remember that I needed a referral until I was physically standing in the doctor's office checking in for my appointment. For others, I had to call on the morning of the appointment and plead with the harried staff at my primary care physician's office to process my referral immediately. This is going to be one of those times.

What is my problem? I've only had an HMO for about 3.5 years. You'd think I'd have learned how to function within the system by now. But no, I'm in la-la land, acting like I still have Personal Choice, the dreamy insurance plan where you don't need a referral, like, ever, and practically every doctor is in-network. But alas, that was several jobs ago, and I need to get with the HMO program.

And another thing. After my surgery I got a letter from my insurance company stating that they had not paid the entire hospital bill because the surgery was "self-referred."

WTF? I'm sorry, but when my oncologist tells me she's concerned about the worrisome symptoms and test results that have not resolved after six months, and that she wants to take a look at a couple of my internal organs, I don't consider that I'm having an elective procedure. This was not a facelift, people.

A phone call to the insurance company revealed that the procedure was being billed as self-referred because the original authorization did not have the same diagnosis as the final bill. This was a laparoscopy, and it was by nature an exploratory surgery. They wanted to do it to see if I had cancer. Instead they found endometriosis. So in order for the insurance company to change their ruling that the surgery was "self-referred", the doctor has to go back and rewrite history--change my original authorization to say that they're doing a laparoscopy to treat endometriosis.

This system is so screwy. Unfortunately I think nationalized health care would be even harder to navigate.

September 2007 net worth report

I'm a little behind on figuring out my monthly spending reports, so I'm going to post my net worth update without waiting til I have my August spending report finished.

Our net worth this month is $178,140. That's up from $174,859 last month, but not back up to our all-time high of $179,248.

There wasn't too much of interest that went on in August. Our cash accounts took a small dip due to some home repairs. Retirement accounts recovered somewhat from the market's shenanigans. Otherwise, it was just business as usual.

Looking forward to the coming month:
I'll have more freelance income than usual in September because I will hopefully be paid for my recent writing assignment. I am also picking up a couple of shifts at my part-time job.

My annual cost-of-living increase went into effect today, and I just submitted the paperwork to have my 403b contributions go up to 12% from 10%. The company puts in 5%, so that's 17% total. It's not too exciting, however, because it's only a part-time job so the amount of money actually going into my accounts is pretty modest.

Saving money on textbooks

This semester I'm taking a college course for the first time in years. Although my employer is paying the tuition, I was asked to shell out more than $60 for a skinny little paperback book!

I don't think so.

If you haven't bought your college textbooks yet, here are some tips to take the edge off.

Check your library. Now, please understand this. Most libraries do NOT buy textbooks. Textbooks are expensive. A new edition comes out every five minutes. And we'd need to buy hundreds of them to satisfy the student body. Instead, many libraries have a reserve system where your professors can leave their personal copy of the textbook at the library's reserve desk. Students can use it for a limited period of time without taking it out of the library. This means you have to schedule enough time to do your homework in the library, but it sure beats spending hundreds on books you'll only read once. If the librarian tells you that your instructor has not put the textbooks on reserve, email your professor and ask them to do it. Get your classmates to ask as well. It will benefit everybody. Well, except the publisher, that is.

Share with a friend. Get to know your classmates, or send an email to the whole class through your college's course management software. See if anybody lives in your neighborhood or has another class with you. Perhaps one of you gets the book from Wednesday to Saturday and the other person gets it from Sunday to Tuesday.

Buy an old edition. This is tricky, but in some cases the newest edition just has a different forward, or has other very minor changes. You won't be able to use the teacher's page numbers in the assignments, and if your field is a very timely one like medicine this may be a bad idea. But in some cases you can get away with an old edition, and find a used copy for a fraction of the price.

Buy it online. If all else fails, see if you can get the book from an online bookseller. Half.com, Amazon, and Froogle are all tools I've used to help students track down cheap textbooks.

And how did I do following my own advice? I bought my book from Amazon for $54, including express shipping, instead of paying $67 in the college bookstore. Not a huge savings, but worth it to wait 2 days before I can start my homework.

Taste in clothes

This morning, we all loaded our old push-mower into the trunk of the car to take it in for service. I was driving. L was in his carseat in the back.

L: "Mommy, I love your shirt."

Me, looking down at my plain white T-shirt: "Um, thanks, L."

L: "I just love that color. It's one of my favorite colors."

Me: "Yeah, I know you like white, L."

L: "My favorite colors are green, orange, um, wait. Green, orange, pink and white."

Me: "Well, I'm glad you like my shirt."

L: "Mommy, will you wear that shirt again on a day when I don't have school?"

Me: "So you'll be around to look at it?"

L: "Yeah."

Me: "Okay, L. If you want me to."

Review of NewRetirement.com

It's always more fun to write a positive review than a negative review, and I'm pleased to say my reactions to NewRetirement.com were almost all positive. Sure, it's geared more to my parents than it is to me, but there is a lot of useful information in this site that will help me plan my own future.

There are a number of really great features on this website.

General info on retirement. This is a large collection of short articles about retirement topics, ranging from early retirement to long-term care to reverse mortgages. My favorite article in this section is the one about working during retirement. This page on employment opportunities for seniors is especially good.

Retirement calculator. This retirement calculator is pretty minimalistic (I'm used to the looong ones on my online brokerage firm's site) but it has a few bells and whistles that make it worth playing with. The two main things I see that set it apart from other retirement calculators are these. First, it takes your zip code into account and raises a red flag if it looks like your income in retirement will be significantly lower than the average income for your area. Second, it actually gives you specific suggestions to remedy any problems in your numbers. For example, when I plugged my numbers into the calculator I left my projected retirement age at the default age of 65. The system spit back a response saying it doesn't look like I'll have enough income in retirement to meet my needs--and suggested that I wait to retire til I'm 66, the age that people born in my year will be eligible for full benefits. The biggest problem I see with this calculator is that it's not real clear whether I'm plugging in my current income or my income immediately before retirement. That wouldn't be too much of a problem if I was a boomer, like the site's main audience, but the fact is that I'm not even half way to retirement age, so my current income is pretty meaningless unless you assume regular raises and inflation and so on. If this calculator figures these things in, they're not too transparent about it.

News feed. I think the news section is one of the most useful parts of the site, and I will definitely be back to check it out. Here you can keep tabs on what is being published about retirement issues in myriad print and online publications. A quick browse showed me a lot of great articles I would have missed.

Discussion area. Registered users of the site can post a tip from their own experience planning for retirement, or they can ask a question. There are some really great tips here, and they're from real people. This part would be more usable, though, if it was formatted like an online forum (in the style of Saving Advice or Kiplinger Community), so that each person's comment was the beginning of a thread. I think this would foster more interesting discussions and grow the site's traffic. Right now, the tips are mostly accesible through a short list of keywords, but a change of design could make this section much more user-friendly.

Additional resources. This extensive list of links is accessible from the menu at the bottom of the main page by clicking on "other resources". There is a lot of good stuff here, from government websites to advocacy groups. The list includes resources geared toward women, and toward low-income retirees. They also have a section for retirement-related blogs, but only one blog is listed there so far. If you write a blog about retirement planning, you may want to submit your site using the form at the very bottom of the page.

Site map. This site map is dreamy. It's a collabsible tree format. Very professional.

Other strong points of the site include the Better Business Bureau Reliability Program seal, good privacy assurances, and general ease of use. This is a clean, clear site. If my own parents are any indication, the boomers who the site is hoping to reach will be able to navigate around this site pretty easily.


Full disclosure: I was paid to review this site, but my opinions are my own.