Category: Finances

Retirement Arithmetic

I’m opposed to raising to 70 the age at which Americans can begin collecting our social security retirement benefits. If we weren’t funding war and destruction against our alleged enemies then this money could go to propping up the social security retirement trust fund.

The fact is too many Americans are forced to work in their sixties because they can’t afford to retire. This is no joke. Going to diners with my mother she remarked that the senior citizen waitresses surely must need to work. That they weren’t waiting tables because they wanted to.

Who knows. There are people who want to keep working in their sixties. So be this.

The issue to parse is how exactly you and I can retire at 65 or 67. Like said funding a 401(k) or 403(b) can enable us to do this. Relying solely on a pension as stated before is not the way to go.

Take heart. Our finances don’t have to be complicated or laborious.

My take is that staying out of debt counts more than adhering to a strict budget. I’m no fan of budgeting. I think what makes more sense is spending less than you earn. Funding with your paycheck the things you value. Prioritizing spending on those items. Cut down or cut out spending on everything else.

Yes, I’m all for fast fashion if you can’t afford clothes that cost more. Simply take care of your clothing items and keep them in good condition. To delay having to buy new clothes frequently.

I’m just as guilty of having gotten items online from SHEIN at a ridiculously low cost. I don’t really recommend this as the fact is the clothing is likely churned out in a sweatshop.

Only I can understand what it’s like to be crunched for cash. I’m not going to judge. My life motto is: No Judgement.

A person doesn’t need to buy things to be happy. Enjoying free or low-cost experiences is the better route to pure joy.

Finding joy in each day can be possible when you live on a low income. It’s called not comparing ourselves to people who seem to have it better in life.

After I run through this blog entry carnival on finances I’m going to return to talking about DEI topics.

The Truth about Buying Lattes

No, I don’t recommend reading and following the Automatic Millionaire book by David Bach who trademarked the tern The Latte Factor(tm), There’s a 20th Anniversary edition of his book that I read when it first was published.

Bach claims that by not buying a latte every day and saving the money you’ll become rich. There’s a false comfort in this assertion as when you analyze the mindset it’s shot through with Swiss cheese holes.

First, why would any of us want to become a millionaire if we have to scrimp in order to become well-off? Should having a million dollars in the bank be the goal for everyone to begin with?

We don’t need to accrue a million bucks to be happy and have a rich, prosperous life in terms of the meaning of wealth that is abundance.

We can have an abundance of health and happiness without needing a million dollars to live on.

Plus, if we saved up a million dollars what should we do with the money once we get it? Are we supposed to keep scrimping and not buy lattes once we’re rich?

And if the purpose of getting a cool million is to be able to use that money to buy lattes then technically we’d go broke again by buying lattes.

Far better to exercise and eat well to maintain our health. Because what’s the purpose of being in ill health if we have to use up this cool million dollars on healthcare and medical costs?

It’s true that money doesn’t buy happiness. Research indicates that up to an income of $75K people can be happy. Earning more than $75K per year doesn’t guarantee that a person will become happier. Our happiness level tops off at $75K.

The fact is that likely you and I will get tired of drinking lattes every day at some point. Those coffee runs might be initially savored. Yet drinking lattes all the time it wouldn’t feel special to have a daily cup anymore.

Even if we won’t become millionaires sipping coffee. Even if we won’t get palate fatigue tasting the same old coffee. The fact is the world can be cruel, and life can be hard. So, enjoying a 3:00 p.m. run to Starbucks shouldn’t be ruled out.

And hey, I’m not a fan of the unhealthy drinks served up at Starbucks. You might go there though.

The choice is your sand mine how we spend our money.

I say Cheers! To do what you want with your cash when elsewhere you’re cutting back on spending.

Best Personal Finance Books

I’m going to continue in the vein of talking about earning and saving money from a job. The guides below are what I think are the best personal finance books. My favorite of the bunch is Balance: How to Invest for Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Author Andrew Hallam mirrors what I think: You don’t need to adhere to a strict budget. You can have what you want. You just can’t have everything. So you need to cut down on spending money on things that don’t align with your values.

Choosing to spend money on the things and experiences and people you value is the difference.

Check out these books:

Balance: How to Invest for Happiness, Health, and Wealth. Andrew Hallam, 2022.

Good Money Revolution: How to Make More Money to Do More Good. Derrick Kinney, 2022.

Money Strong: Your Guide to a Life Free of Financial Worries. Liz Davidson 2023.

Simple Money: A No-nonsense Guide to Personal Finance. Tim Maurer 2016.

Everything You Know About Money is Wrong: Overcome the Financial Myths Keeping You from the Life You Want. Karen Ramsay, 2001.

Happy Money. The Science of Happier Spending. Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton,  2014.

The Next Millionaire Next Door. Thomas J. Stanley & Sarah Stanley Fallaw, 2020.

The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read. Daniel R. Solin, 2010.

We Should All Be Millionaires: A Women’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power. Rachel Rodgers, 2021.

Conserving Cash

Conserving cash is possible while you’re employed so that you can add paycheck money to your 401(k) or 403(b). This requires compromise on what you choose to spend money on.

Years ago I read that it’s OK to bring lunches to your job from home only 3x per week not every day. This is practical as it can be hard to bring lunches 5x per week for years and years.

In my life I know that eating the same lunches every single day causes a person to get bored of the food after years of that lunch being the sole option.

In here I’ll take a departure in a coming blog entry to give recipes for lunches you can take to your job.

Other ways to conserve cash so that you can transfer the payments to a retirement account.:

To Save Money

  • Choose-Your-Own cable channels.

In New York City Spectrum and other cable providers nationwide offer a lower monthly fee if you pay for only fifteen channels that you can choose linked to your favorites. Does any of us really require 100 channels?

  • Use coupon codes to buy from retailers like Macy’s on the internet.

You shouldn’t have to pay full price unless the item doesn’t go on sale.

  • Use a floor standing fan instead of an air conditioner.

This will lower your electricity costs. Unless of course your energy supplier jacks up their fee.

  • Rent an apartment in a walkable neighborhood.

With everything nearby you won’t have to use a car and buy costly gas.

  • Investigate whether your city or town has a reduced fare transit option for individuals with disabilities.

In New York City you can interview for Access-a-Ride. If you’re eligible you can take a private car or van for the cost of the cheaper regular bus or subway fare. Or simply get a half fare discount for the bus or train.

In New York City too the Fair Fares program gives a half-fare payment option to individuals on a low income even without a disability.

  • Buy and use only one dinnerware set.

Get white dishes as they’ll go with any table décor. Or get plates in a color you’ll enjoy and limit this to one set.

  • Take out a Costo membership.

The market even sells quality eyeglasses at a cheaper cost. The frames are attractive too.

  • Find out when your area’s senior citizen discounts kick in.

This might be as early as sixty years old. Non-matriculated college courses might be on offer cheaper too.

  • See where you live if you can get a student discount.

In New York City certain museums offer free admission for college students.

  • Go to museums in your city that might offer “pay what you can” or a reduced price for others.

At the Brooklyn Museum in New York City individuals with disabilities can pay a lower admission fee. Their caregivers get in free.

  • Cut out processed food and other “products” with unnatural ingredients.

You’ll save money on future medical costs by eating healthy today.

  • Give handmade gifts.

If you’re crafty or culinary inclined, knit a scarf or bake a batch of cookies.

  • Freecycle items with other neighbors.

Create a free exchange of goods that everyone can use instead of donating them to charity.

  • Host a clothing swap with friends.

Make it a fashion show with everyone trying on each other’s castaways. Each person picks a new outfit.

  • See if you’re eligible for free or low-cost cell phone service.

For victims of domestic violence or individuals on a low income you might be able to get a cell phone at no cost or a minor monthly fee.

  • Attend events at a public library for fun.

Programs are offered for free unless at an author talk the writer is selling copies of their book.

  • Frequent a food pantry or attend a communal church supper.

In Brooklyn, NY one church hosts a monthly dinner where walk-ins can dine for free. No interrogation of income level.

  • Get your haircut at a beauty school.

If you’re game for this a student will cut your hair for a cheaper cost. They might even color your hair too.

  • Buy produce in season.

See if your local farmer’s market offers a discount for individuals collecting SNAP or food stamp benefits. In New York City you can get health bucks at the Grow NYC markets and use your benefits to buy produce.

  • Refrain from buying in bulk.

Get food or other items in bulk only if you’re confident, you’ll use them before the expiration date.

  • Stop buying magazines.

See if your local public library system has online databases. There you might be able to type in your library card barcode and pin number. Use this if they have Flipster to read scores of magazines for free on your device or computer.

  • Use an aluminum water bottle to take with you.

Refrain from buying single-use plastic bottles.

  • Use a water filter device for your kitchen faucet.

Instead of buying and using bottled water spring for the one-time cost of a water filter. This might require a regular outlay of money to replace the filters in a counter-top model. So this would be for a person who can afford the outlay for this. Still cheaper than buying water bottles in bulk every week.

  • Volunteer at festivals. Often event volunteers get free admission.
  • Automate savings.

With direct deposit to a savings account out of your paycheck. This will make it easier and convenient to save.

  • Set a short-term goal to save money for at first.

Chances are “saving money just to save money” won’t motivate you to squirrel away the cash. Link your first attempt to a concrete goal—like attending a summer concert if you start budgeting for it in January.

  • Add to an emergency fund at the same time.

Instead of auto-saving $100 or whatever amount is too restrictive. Start out by adding $25 to your emergency fund and $25 to your “have fun” account.

  • Shut the lights.

If you’re not in one of your rooms shut the light in that room.

  • Set up a home gym.

Instead of paying for what could be a costly monthly fee for a gym membership.

You can start out with two-pound dumbbells if that’s all you can lift. After that try for sets of five-pound, eight pound, and ten-pound dumbbells. Add ten pound and fifteen-pound kettlebells. A ten-pound body bar can be good. And a resistance band with a lower weight can be adequate just starting out too.

You can watch YouTube videos to see how to do exercises and their correct form. In my health and fitness blog I have a Home Gym Routines category. You can click on this to view upper and lower body exercises.

  • Keep a grateful journal.

This will require a small ongoing cost.

You can write in it two or three times a week. It doesn’t have to be every day. List why you’re thankful for whatever happened. Not just record the events. Just know that it’s okay to itemize ordinary things. They don’t have to be spectacular accomplishments.

  • Write in a life journal.

Should you not afford a therapist at $150 per session? Record your thoughts and feelings in spiral-bound notebooks along with your goals, dreams, and needs.

Pizza Parlor Economics

To be able to tell your boss see you later as a free person not chained to a desk requires just enough cash to break free of your job.

I recommend that if you get a job that has a 401(k)–or a 403(b) if you work in a nonprofit–you open up that retirement account. And fund it right when you start your job.

It could mean the difference between not having two nickels to rub together after you’re no longer working. And having enough dough to buy a slice of pizza once a week at your favorite pizza parlor.

The saddest thing is that even veterans of the U.S. military who served our country can be forced to get a minimum-wage job corralling shopping carts together in a parking lot of a retail store. They had a career to protect and defend Americans. Then when they retire they could be living on pennies and counting every coin.

In fact I will tell you that even if you’re lucky to have a job that gives you a pension when you retire: to fund a 401(k) or 403(b) in addition to relying on the pension.

In my experience retiring with only a pension to live on a person will come up short for the cash they need to live on. In the coming blog entry I will talk about how to conserve cash while you’re working so that you can afford to skim money off your paycheck for this retirement account.

You can have fun while you fund your retirement. And in a future blog entry I will reinforce that us peers are OK just the way we are regardless of the balance in our bank accounts.

Recovery Redefined

I’ve written elsewhere that you can use your pain as the catalyst for figuring out your life’s purpose.

In one section of a chapter in Working Assets I talk about opting to have a purpose-driven life.

People who exert their time energy and labor on “Keeping Up with the Joneses” are less happy. They go into debt buying things that make them appear rich.

In the Andrew Hallam book Balance: How to Invest and Spend for Happiness, Health, and Wealth he talks about the four quadrants of success:

Having enough money.

Maintaining strong relationships (with yourself and with others).

Maximizing your physical and emotional health.

Living with a sense of purpose.

It’s living with a sense of purpose that is key to flourishing in recovery.

I recommend you buy Balance to have on hand. It’s one of the great personal finance books.

Whether a person can hold a full-time job or not the difference is in doing things that give you joy every day.

One person might bake a cake. Another person might ride a skateboard.

I’ve come to redefine recovery not as only possible when a person returns to having a normal life.

Hello–I worked in corporate insurance offices in the 1990s and wasn’t thriving. Even though I technically recovered.

My purpose as I see it that gets me going is to advance my vision of recovery in two ways:

From whatever illness or distress or trauma is in a person’s life. In whatever guise recovery comes to them as.

Healing is possible and there’s hope for healing.

I’m fond of using the skateboarding analogy as a recovery lifestyle that could suit a person.

In Working Assets I also make the case for doing volunteer work when you can’t work at paid employment.

In my view we must expand the definition of what constitutes recovery.

If you ask me the four quadrants of success should be achievable for everyone regardless of what we’re in recovery from.

This is because It’s Not About the Money. It’s Not About Acquiring Material Things.

Plain and simple recovery is about finding what gives us joy and going and doing that.

On and off the job.

Finding the job that is the right fit can enable a person to recover.

Pandemic Life Lessons

Showing up to a job through the pandemic has taught me life lessons about the nature of work.

Sadly emotional labor is often relegated to women. Working in a “pink ghetto” you’re often not paid what you’re worth.

What I’ve learned is that starting to fund a retirement account as early as possible–ideally by the time you turn 25–is the difference.

This is the difference between retiring when you’re 65 with a wad or cash. Or having to wait tables when you should be winding down all paid work.

The goal should be to be able to retire by the time you’re 65. The current age to take your SSA retirement benefit checks is 67. Signing up at 62 for this monthly check you will receive a reduced SSA income.

Watch out for a cheery letter from the CEO or President or Executive Director praising you for your hard work and dedication at the job through the pandemic.

Where is the hardship pay you might ask when you read this flowery email?

Part of being tied to our jobs is the result of engaging in consumer culture. Books have been written about this extensively.

While I don’t drink tea I intend to heat up hot chocolate in the winter.

Little things can perk us up and give us pep when we come home from the daily grind.

I intend to write more in the future about having gratitude in the face of working at a grueling job.

Coming up insight into how doing spring cleaning in January can help us beat the winter blues and blahs.

Letting go of the things that no longer serve a purpose in our lives is the start to setting our intention for the New Year.

Getting a Performance Review

Getting a yearly performance review at your job can seem if not capricious at least stacked against you.

At one corporate insurance job in the 1990s I wasn’t given a pay raise. At all. Zero. Zip. Nada in compensation.

At the job in the law firm library I wasn’t given a promotion. That’s when I obtained my union job. Here the pay raises are set via negotiation for all employees in the union.

Going over my performance review printouts was a case study in how to earn what you’re worth.

It’s been my experience that if you have a union job it’s hard for you to be fired. Unless you have a city job and low seniority and the city is experiencing a financial hardship. Like the coronavirus pandemic that shut down New York City. Then there might be “LIFO” layoffs of the Last in First Out.

Reviewing the performance reviews of two different supervisors can be illuminating.

How is it that one person can give you only a “Satisfactory” overall rating and another person gave you a “+” rating which is better with a few “Superiors” checked off?

You need to have a stronger constitution to deflect not getting a positive performance review.

If you don’t work in a union your job might be on the chopping block in the future if you keep getting sub-par performance reviews.

See: Kennedy Rolland, Florence. The Persuasive Negotiator: Tools and Techniques for Effective Negotiating. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2020. and Dawson, Roger. Secrets of Power Salary Negotiating: Inside Secrets from a Master Negotiator 3rd edition. San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2010.

Ideally, you will negotiate a higher salary when the company makes you the job offer. They wanted you and only you. So getting into the habit of negotiating up front is key.

Role-playing this kind of negotiating with a friend or therapist or practicing if possible with a professional could help you become comfortable asking for the money you’re worth.

In the coming blog entries I’m going to talk about creating a side hustle for yourself. I recommend having a second job or income stream to bolster the pay you get from a “day job.”

This is because any time you work for another person your career–and its trajectory and eventual success–is often in their hands.

Creating a Weekly Routine

I find that imposing a structure to each week is a way to feel like you’re in control.

Creating a routine on Sunday for the coming week is my strategy for getting through the pandemic and beyond.

Automating recurring tasks can help.

I have my groceries delivered the same day every week. I budget in a set amount to spend on this food delivery so that the cost doesn’t fluctuate.

As I might have talked about before in here and in my Flourish blog it’s imperative to take care of your mental and physical health in a time like the pandemic.

The outbreak is still in effect in most cities and towns in America.

If you ask me this is the perfect time to create a routine.

I recommend the Julie Morgenstern book Time Management from the Inside Out 2nd Edition. She gives readers ideas for breaking each day into time zones.

In the coming blog entries I”m going to talk about setting up a weekly routine in more detail.

In August I would like to return to career topics.