Compromises & Quandaries: Scheduling, Sleep & Profiteering

Last night I got a call from a woman who was referred to me by my massage therapist friend Bluejay. Bluejay needs 4-5 appointments a week to break even with her basic expenses, and she’s had some pretty bad weeks lately. In fact, after speaking to her this morning, I know that she fell short by [...]

A lesson in the definition of “Working Poor”

Yesterday evening, I met up with Ayten, the single mother of two girls, 13 & 15, who isn’t quite making it paycheck-to-paycheck. She wouldn’t let me buy her a coffee, just sat with me while I sipped an iced tea to justify taking up a table. I’ll spare you the sadder details of her story [...]

Teach a woman to shop…

I’ve got a ridiculous stockpile of stuff I’ve gotten for free from all of my couponing and rebate adventures. I have more than the teen shelter needs, but not enough to make a dent in the needs of bigger organizations. Plus, I don’t like bigger – it’s very impersonal, which might be what most people want from [...]

A morning of customer service fun

Over the last few days, I’ve been accumulating customer service issues to deal with. Magically, I found myself in the mood to deal with them all this morning…maybe because I got started last night with the snotty email to that massage school I’m hoping to attend next month. Anyway, here’s what I’ve got on the [...]

Finally, some progress on professional training

January through March, I contacted a massage school in NJ every week by voicemail (they never answer the phone) and email about their Rolf Structural Integration program.  As if it wasn’t bad enough waiting 7 weeks to get nothing but a “we’ll let you know” email, they didn’t let me know. I kept in touch [...]

Weekly-Patterned Thinking

I spent a few hours yesterday with my massage therapist friend, Bluejay, teaching her the CVS system and dropping in on her friend’s barbecue in a riverside park. Of course we touched briefly on our personal economics, and she mentioned how much she needs to earn each week to scrape by. Interesting, she thinks in terms of weekly [...]

This Week in Freebies, Both Giving & Getting

Here’s an odd little round-up of all the giving and getting of freebies I’ve partaken of in the past week. What can I say – I have quite a bit of downtime these days, and this gives me something to do…
- An elderly couple was working a few deals at CVS, including two little containers [...]

New respect for our billionaires

Not that I’ve ever had a low opinion of them – in fact, the ones on this particular list don’t even get bad press. Or if they do, it’s so minor that I don’t even notice. But a couple of weeks ago, a whole bunch of the world’s richest secretly got together to discuss what [...]

My Micro-economy: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

I’m in a little bit of a tizzy this morning (see The Ugly below), but yesterday I reviewed my income and investments so far this year and, I don’t know about the future, but the present is a little less bleak. I gave up two things – haircuts and travel – which, taking into account [...]

Getting my hair cut on the barter system

I haven’t gotten a haircut since November, and it’s been looking downright ratty since March. I’ve been wearing it back in a clip all day every day, and I was planning to go to a cheap place on my next visit to my mother, where one of the stylists does a better-than-$15 job according to both [...]