Indecent Proposal: We all have a price – what’s yours?

This question has been brewing for a few days now, and the strangest things have unfolded…

I mentioned in a past post about how I’ve been offered $1000 for sex by a couple of clients (all massage therapists experience this, it’s not a reflection of my behavior!) and dismissed them immediately without the slightest twinge of temptation. I then proceeded to have some hysterical conversations with assorted people in my life about what it would take to get you to cross that line. After all, we’d all do Robert Redford for a million dollars – even you straight guys would, if you’re honest! In fact, wouldn’t we (men and women) do just about anyone for $1 million? But the real questions are:

What is the minimum you would do it for?

How did you come up with that figure?

The people in my “real life” had some fascinating answers and reactions (bear in mind that this question was asked of most of them about 4 years ago)…

Bridezilla:  About $15,000 because that would cover tuition for nursing school.

Mom:  $500 as long as the guy wasn’t too old or smelly or ugly. I was all ready to call her a cheap floozy, until she explained why: that would be enough to pay for a ticket to visit her daughters in Aspen and treat them to dinner a couple of times. Aww.

Extremely Moral Best Friend:  A year’s salary, about $100K, which at the moment would wipe out her car loan and most of the remaining balance on her mortgage. She was at a business conference at the time that the Elliot Spitzer escort scandal came to light, and remarked to one of her fellow conference attendees at the bar one night, “How can she be worth $3500? What is she doing in those 30 minutes??” The guy looked her dead in the eye and said “I’d totally pay that much for you”. She thanked him for the compliment!

Stock broker client:  Said there wasn’t a single woman in his sphere of acquaintanceship who’d say no to that $1000 and thought I was a dumbass for walking away from it.

Older, slightly famous client, after telling him about my family’s responses to the question: “So, can I book your mother for a massage?”

Disclaimer:  This is all hypothetical, philosophical and hopefully highly entertaining – it in no way should be interpreted as solicitation!

55lbs of Groceries on Public Transportation

I’m officially insane. I have taken couponing to such an extreme that I took assorted subway trains over to Jersey City to clear their shelves on a Saturday night. I didn’t really think I’d be able to pull off all the deals I wanted to for lack of stock or hassle from cashiers, but I got all but one thing on my list. In summary, I spent $17.50 for $95 worth of groceries – and that’s based on sale prices, not full shelf price – and I’ve got $8 in register rebates to spend on anything in my next order. Now here’s the fun part: the items meant for me are the ground beef ($11 for 6.5 lbs), 6 yogurt ($.60 – yes, total), 2 boxes of Cheerios ($2.88) and 6 blocks of cheese ($5.94) … that’s a little over $20. So I actually saved money by getting all the other stuff that I’m giving away – about $11 if you include the $8 I get to spend this weekend. Here’s what my haul looked like (aren’t massage tables terribly handy?):

Can’t see it all? Here’s the boring list: 11 boxes of General Mills cereals (Cheerios, Total, Cascadian Farms), 14 Yoplait yogurts, 3 sets of Betty Crocker cake mix and icing, then that huge stack of 18 Pillsbury Crescent and Cinnamon rolls, 6 x 8oz blocks of MacAdam cheese, 2 flavored CoffeeMates, 8 Gum toothbrushes, 2 Lysol cleaners, 6.5 lbs of ground beef.

I had brought my small wheelie suitcase to pack the heavy stuff into (tubes of rolls, meat, Lysol, cake stuff), and my free reusable eco-tote from Earthbound Organics that held about 7 of the 11 boxes of cereal. I strapped another bag of cereal to the telescopic handle of the suitcase and headed home… 7 minute walk to the Path train for my 15-minute ride back to the city, then transfer to the subway, and then the hideous climb of 5 stories’ worth of stairs to street level right outside my building. That part was really unpleasant. Plus, I sat next to a worried looking young woman, whom I assured with big fancy vocabulary words that despite appearances, I was not a bag lady.

I’ve gotten so much free cereal lately that the pile in my closet was about 2 wide and 20 high, and the bottom boxes were starting to crush. And those Pillsbury tubes? My fridge was a disaster with the damn things rolling around of their own free will, shifting and clunking at strange moments. I called Unofficial Shelter Lady who takes care of 20 almost-adults, and she drove in to relieve me of this craziness. I just provided 2 weeks’ worth of breakfast! I’m also trying to give Mom-of-2-teens a care package because they really appreciate cereal and yogurt, but her computer is virus-ridden and so communication isn’t easy – she replied to my text on Sunday, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to meet up this week.

I’d like to give a very special shout-out to the lady behind WebHunting – she has access to multiple computers, is the queen of coupon trading, and is the whole reason I was able to do this. And she’s an awfully nice person who also shares her shopping-for-free booty with the less-fortunate. Without her diligent printing and mailing, I would only have 1/3 of the above and would not be sitting on $8 worth of credit to spend. And to all of my Robin Hood coupon fairies, this is what you make possible!

Saved Mom $450 – Have I redeemed myself?

*Updated at bottom 10/11*

Last month over Labor Day weekend, I was a Bad Daughter. My mom had a hacking cough that I just shrugged off even though my nurse practitioner aunt thought it was worth issuing 2 prescriptions for because, well, she’s a smoker, she always has a freaking cough. Turns out this one was bronchitis and she really wasn’t feeling well. What made me a Bad Daughter? She willingly shuttled me around for my shopping-for-free errands, but got really pissed that I took 20 minutes longer than expected at one of them while she sat in the car feeling crummy, waiting. She told me I should have put her first, not the shopping for other people, and walked out on the deals. She was absolutely right. I felt like a selfish little dookie. Well, I was a selfish little dookie. So I have big plans to shop-for-free on Saturday that would be indescribably easier to execute with my mom, but I’m not sure she’ll ever indulge my shopping habits again and it’s too soon to risk stirring up those rather fresh memories.

However, I did do something incredibly useful tonight. You see, one of the errands we ran during my last visit was a browse through the computer department of Best Buy so she could physically see and feel the difference between a netbook and a laptop. Her current desktop got rather badly infected with a virus/malware/ransomware that, left untreated, shut off her computer within 30 seconds of getting online. This week she asked me to search for a deal on a new tower unit that suited her user style. Uh…okay, like when did I become the tech smart one? I’m just the bargain-smart one, and so she figured I’d know what was worth paying for and how to set it up because I haven’t had a tech issue requiring professional help in 5 years. Okayyyy.

I called her tonight to discuss memory (or whatever the spec-formerly-known-as-RAM is now called) and how it affected the price of the HP systems she was interested in, when she mentioned the name of the malware: Windows Police Pro. I googled it while we were chatting and found sites with free downloads to fix it, but her computer was so far gone that she couldn’t get online long enough to access it. In fact, the virus had found ways to block access to a lot of the fix-it sites. I took the basic gist of what needed to be done and had her do one thing: go into the task manager and delete one file asap. It really shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did – the computer stayed on and online long enough for her to get to the .exe recovery files she needed. She also downloaded the free deluxe McAfee software provided by her ISP and set it to clear out the crap before she went to bed – trojans, backdoors, adware, viral pop-ups, fake task manager, etc.

One of my cousins was supposed to pass on her 2-year-old laptop (she just got an automatic replacement at college) last weekend but hadn’t transferred her music files, which meant no computer for my mom until maybe Thanksgiving. Mom couldn’t handle that. While I’m sure there’s plenty more to be done, she’s just happy to have the internet back and now has no great desire to replace her system. Would you believe she was about 20 minutes from having me order one for her on the spot? Preferably for local store pick-up so she could get back to normal this weekend, she had her debit card in front of her.

So I totally saved her $500 tonight with my guesswork. I rock! And hopefully it will help her forget my Bad Daughter behavior 5 weeks ago so I can visit again one day soon.

10/11 Update:  My mom has decided that even if she’s able to fix the virus, she just doesn’t trust her computer to be safe anymore. She now thinks every scan and every solution she has tried just let in more spyware and ransomware, and she buys things, pays bills online and checks her bank account all the time. To be fair, the machine is nearly 5 years old. Anyway, I’ll be ordering her up a new one (it’s part of my loan repayment from August) through her United Airlines link that will get her 1-2 miles per $1, depending on which store she chooses. She’s fond of the $450 Dell, but I want to run a $250 eMachine with similar specs by her first.

Finally, Weight Watchers has gotten $mart

So I’m way better with my money than I am with my weight. But I’m not here to whine about my having a beached whale body rather than a beach body. I’ve tried quite a number of thing over the years … a few fads, a gimmick, a bunch of books, a few meeting-type deals, self-hypnosis CDs, totally on my own, with a one-on-one dietician, and I’ve lost track what else. My greatest success was doing it on my own, but mentally I was in a pretty good place for 3 years and then I hit the skids about 18 months ago. I can’t do it alone now, but I also can’t afford to experiment the way I have done in the past — and I really can’t afford to mess with my health. So I’ve gone back to the tried-and-true…

Not sure why, but when I don’t have the  – hm, not sure what to call it, strength? motivation? inclination? sticktoitiveness? – to do it on my own, I can still do it with Weight Watchers. I have always found WW to be a very thorough, healthy and at times even clever approach, but I never agreed with their payment system. Historically, you paid per meeting and if you missed a meeting, you had to pay for it anyway. Well, the weekly fee and the registration fee (waived 2-3x a year during promotions) were about the same, so a lot of folks would either postpone their return to make the extra fee “worth it”, or they’d just wait for the next free sign-up deal. Not only was WW missing out on all those fees because of this policy, but their lapsed members were regaining. Talk about a lose-lose scenario, right?

Just before I left for Colorado, I opened one of their many email newsletters, which I’ve been automatically deleting for years. Apparently they now have a monthly membership deal, which works out to be the equivalent of 3 weeks’ dues and allows “unlimited” meeting attendance, and until 10/17, it’s a “BOGO”, as in Buy the first month, Get the second month free. It’s also set up as an automatic payment that needs to be cancelled, so you have to make a conscious decision to quit or just throw away $39.95 every month…so maybe you’ll just keep going even through a plateau or other bad patch because, heck, you’ve already paid for it. Weight Watchers gets more consistency to their bottom line, and we get a decent deal in terms of both value and support. Now that’s a win-win scenario!

I’m not a big fan of throwing money at a “solution” so I’ll feel committed to making the change. Although I have always stuck with the really pricey things I’ve tried (e.g. personal training), the Return on Investment was never satisfactory. At some point I’ll do a whole post about weight loss on a budget, but I want to leave my lady readers with this quick nugget of wisdom: if you’ve got limited funds for weight management, spend it on solving the input (food) side of the equation rather than the output (exercise) side. Eating and eating behavior are 75% of the problem, so hit that first and hit it hard. For the other 25%, just walk more.

Should I start taking credit card payments?

I had a little chat with one of my cousins at the wedding rehearsal barbeque last week, and he has started a sideline that he’s hoping will take off so he can quit his dull-as-dishwater day job (he used to deal with subprime mortgage lending, loved that…but that gravy train came to an end for him about 18 months ago). He’s getting into the sale of little credit card machines and processing. Worried that I was on the unpleasant receiving end of a sales pitch, I told him right off the bat that the basic cost of a machine was too much to be worth it for a one-man band like me ($300-800), so by cutting the CC vendor commission from 2.9% through PayPal (which a lot of folks don’t like or want to use) to 1.47% wasn’t going to make up for the initial outlay. He looked at me like I was an idiot – “You’re family, I don’t want to make money from family, I’ll get you the machine for free”. Well, that doesn’t feel right to me, because the actual cost of the machine to him is about half of what he sells it for. Sure, he keeps a piece of that 1.47% and gets a bonus that would make up for the gadget once I hit $20K in transactions…but honestly, that could take many, many years.

Still, I remembered a conversation I had with my financial adviser a few years ago, when he was establishing how I ran my business. He deals with a lot of little guys like me and he didn’t push hard, but he advised me to take credit cards because if you’re in a business where they’re rarely taken, that payment option alone will attract customers. He mentioned that a client of his who owns a dry cleaners nearly doubled his bottom line when he started taking cards. I found that interesting because it’s easier to pay a $20 dry cleaning bill in cash than it is to pay cash for a $100-200 for a massage. It also occured to me that I might be able to attract more female clients that way, since studies show that we distinctly prefer to pay with checks and debit/credit cards while men lean more towards cash.

So I followed up with my cousin, who texted this afternoon to say he was putting together a really great deal for me. Huh? As long as the machine is free and the vendor commission isn’t more than PayPal, as discussed, it was a phenomenal deal for me already (which is darn near word-for-word what I texted back). Maybe it’s the suspicious “no such thing as a free lunch” New Yorker in me, but I’m wondering what’s really involved here. I mean, I had it in the back of my mind that if taking credit/debit card payments had a significant impact on my ability to attract new business, then I’d send him a check for the wholesale price of the machine in a few months. And if it didn’t, one of us could resell it on eBay or craigslist for the going market price (which he keeps an eye on and knows is still above cost). 

So I’m trying to think through the possible ”terms” that won’t work for me right now. First and foremost, I can’t afford a big initial outlay, as I sit in the middle of my fourth week out of the last five of making less than my “survival” level income. I really want to pay my mom back ($2K) without hitting up my savings, which is why I borrowed from her in the first place, and I’d love to buy the set of Myoskeletal Alignment DVDs from that course I took two months ago (about $250). Second, I don’t want to tie myself into a contract longer than 4 months. Third, I don’t know what kind of fees are involved that my cousin can’t waive. And fourth – which I mentioned to him by email – I’m self-employed and not incorporated, and I don’t know if that’s a qualification for taking plastic. He’s looking into that one.

Now if all of the above are in place…what else should I be worried about? My cousin started talking about services that their competitors don’t do so well on, like how long it takes for the money to be processed into your account. I should also ask how disputes are handled. But beyond that … well, does anyone out there have any experience with this? Because I’m a little bit clueless, and it’s just not in me to blindly trust anyone with this sort of thing.

10/2 Update:  Heard from cousin – his boss thinks I’d be better off using an online CC form instead of a handheld gadget, which would save me $100 one-time cost for the machine (because I won’t be putting through $5K a month in charges – hah, I wish!!). The fees he got me are 1.59% (3% for AmEx or reward cards) + .19 per transaction. All set-up fees and things like that are being waived because I’m family – sounds like that saved me about $200 right there - and apparently there’s no such thing as a contract in this particular industry, anyone saying otherwise is lying. All I need to get this up and running is a blank voided check and my business card. Oh, and get this – they process the payment into my account in 24 hours, woohoo!

Helpers: New coupon requests

For some upcoming deals that’ll keep my bizarre Retail Robin Hood activities going…

.75   Mom’s Best Naturals oatmeal (fill in form, no spam, print twice)
$2 Any Tylenol Cold product
$2 Sudafed Sinus & Pain 12Hr & $2 Sudafed Triple Action
$1 Wheat Thins
$1 Wet Ones
$1 Tone body wash or bar soap
$1 Cheerios - might not work
$1 Pillsbury Crescent rolls - NEW LINK as of 10/7
$1 Starbucks Frappuccino (bottled) - as of 10/6, no longer printing
Hellmann’s & Knorr – in Spanish, may require a form to be filled out but it’s all Unilever and totally trustworthy
.50/2 Libby’s vegetables – need to download coupon printer (easy, trustworthy)

All of these printable coupon links give you 2 prints using the back button (usually have to go back 3 screens) and are meant to be used in Internet Explorer.

I got next to nothing useful in my last batch of inserts – seriously, if they’re regional for NYC, why do we get stuff for septic tanks? Anyway, I’d love to get my hands on the following manufacturers’ coupons that came out in the Sunday newspaper inserts in the last few weeks (the ones with * came out 9/27, while I was away):

*Vicks $1
$2/2 Kellogg’s cereal
*Speedstick
*Palmolive
Bic razors
*Colgate (paste + brushes)
Tetley
Aquafresh
*Robitussin
$2 Tylenol 8hr
Johnson & Johnson
$2 Sudafed PE
Starkist
Fancy Feast Appetizer BOGO (for my little sister’s cat, who saved her life – woke her up when her living room went up in flames)
$1 Herbal Essences
*Halls
*Gillette – $4 Fusion razor, $2 deodorant, $1 body wash, $1 shampoo/conditioner
*Crest assorted toothpastes
*Secret deodorant
*White Cloud toilet paper
*$2 Venus razor

Due out this weekend are the following coupons that I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to parlay into some great freebies:  $1/2 Dannon Light & Fit yogurt, $3 & $1 Glade candle, .35/1 Dial soap multi-bar or hand wash, Yoplait, Bengay, Tylenol, Dove (I never get any, and there’s a special coming up at Walgreens), Gillette razors, Kelloggs Eggo waffles (never get any of these either), Sudafed, $1/3  & $1/1 M&M/Snickers/etc.

I realize some of these look odd for donation and care packages, but bear in mind that a lot of them make a product free or nearly free and help fill up a $5-off-$25 purchase (or similar) order for little more than sales tax. For example, I did a couple of deals with just such a coupon yesterday at Walgreens, which allowed me to use the “free money” on milk, 3 dozen eggs and 6 cans of tuna – very popular and healthy items. And yes, you see a big focus on OTC meds for colds and coughs because ’tis the season to be sneezin’ – and I help out 25 teenagers & adults plus another 10 kids.

Back from the Wedding in the Wild West

There are people who love weddings and people who hate them. This is only the 4th one I’ve ever been to, and the score is even between love and hate. This one, I loved – and that’s despite constant altitude sickness (migraine-like headaches, nausea, moments of gasping breathlessness, fatigue). I had three drinks the entire 5 days I was out there: champagne toast at the rehearsal bbq, champagne toast after the wedding ceremony, and my personal favorite – the shot of tequila with my fellow bridesbitches on the way from the ranch house to the outdoor “aisle”. Mom caught us (we’re 29, 37, and 39!) and hissed. Highlights included a rap battle between the bride’s BFF and one of the band singers (tall leggy blond girl v. short badass blond boy) and a ceremony written by the “preacher” (the friend who introduced them) and approved by the couple. It was a sweet roast – apparently they met when she shot him in the head with a paintball, then they became roommates a few years later, and the groom apparently has a track record of turning roommates into girlfriends.

Looking for a financial angle? There was one in the ceremony – “And with a single kiss, J got himself a girlfriend and M saved $600 a month rent” (which isn’t quite true, but it was a cute line). And in the Best Man’s toast, there was a joking reference to J being a multimillionaire based on his large amount of toys (snowmobiles, bikes, etc), so when it was my brother’s turn to make a little speech, he started off with “I’ve learned so much about them as a couple from their friends, and the best part was that J is a millionaire. Love ya, bro!”

FLIGHTS: It was a shockingly cheap weekend, considering this all happened in Aspen. Sure, it’s technically off-season, but they had six weddings going on that weekend, so the Denver-Aspen flights were packed and the hotels were happy. I booked my flight 3 months in advance, and it cost me less than it ever has in the 10 years I’ve been travelling out there – $270 including taxes, plus $30 for checked luggage. I flew Frontier, Denver airport is awesome, only one hiccup that could have been disastrous for getting me there, but magically they had a spare plane (does that ever happen with such a small airline? wow, lucky).

AIRPORT TRANSFERS:  Getting to LaGuardia airport cost me a lot less than expected. Normally I’d take a taxi for $25 + tip, but with all kinds of unpredictable frozen zones on the eastside, I opted to take the subway out to Astoria for $2.25 and then take a taxi the rest of the way, usually $10 including tip. However, the M60 bus to the airport was right there when I got off the subway, so I took it (free transfer). Got picked up by little sister Starfish at the other end. Would have taken the free public bus to the airport to fly back, but it didn’t start early enough for me to make a 7am flight so I splashed out on a taxi, $22. Then back in NYC, the woman who runs the almost-official shelter for young adults about 10 mins from the airport picked me up and drove me home – wouldn’t even take gas money! I’m not sure she realizes how much that meant to me.

HOTELS:  I suppose we were staying at the budget end of things, but the cute cabins at L’Auberge d’Aspen were pretty awesome – kitchenette, comfy bed, and a jacuzzi-tub in addition to the communal hot tub outside. Including taxes, that ran $85/night for 2 nights (shared with my Mom, but I paid). A month earlier, the bride reserved the 3BR ranch house at Avalanche Ranch and I paid my $100 share ($50/night per person) back then. I spent my last night at Mountain Chalet in the center of Aspen for $77/night including breakfast – very plain room, but great amenities, service, and 7am-10pm coffee/cookie/lemonade buffet (Mom paid for that).

RESTAURANTS/FOOD:  Extended family kept picking up the tab for non-wedding meals together, we cooked breakfast at the ranch house, I arrived so late on Wednesday that eating out wasn’t an option and when I got to the cabin, Mom was at the stove boiling me up some tortellini from the supermarket (cuteness!). And my last night I was so whacked with altitude sickness that I spent the evening in bed – Mom brought me back her Mexican leftovers but no utensils, so I scooped rice, mashed beans, and 1.5 delicious enchiladas with my paws. Attractive, I’m sure. I spent maybe $10 in tips and $2 on an iced tea? Oh, and because everyone kept buying the meals, I left the big room tip at the ranch house – one cleaning (upon leaving), 3BR…$15, and we ran the dishwasher for them.

WEDDING APPEARANCE:  I wasn’t openly bargain-hunting for a dress, but the only one out of 20 that I tried on that looked decent on me happened to be on Clearance at Lord & Taylor, and I had a coupon for 20% off any one clearance item: $148 reduced to $88, paid $70. Given the outdoor venue, I deliberately cheaped out on the shoes – $20 dark silver flats, and it was a smart move because as soon as the sun went down, most of the girls ditched their dressy shoes and pulled on their Uggs. But I did splash out on having the hairdresser do my hair – $75, not a “wedding up-do”, looked pretty snazzy! None of us are particularly into make-up, so we did our own.

OWED:  I think I owe my mom about $30 towards food and incidentals that she, for simplicity, paid for on my behalf, but she owes me about $50 towards the difference in hotel bills. Eh, I won’t ask her for it, but I suspect she’ll figure it out and pay me anyway.

GIFT:  I’m planning to pick up the tab for some aspect of their honeymoon, which they’re tentatively planning for January/February (she’s only been in her job 2 months, needs to put some more time in to earn 2 weeks). How much I spend will depend on how much I manage to earn over the next few months, anywhere from $200-$500.

TOTAL:  $670 + Gift ….. Considering that it was a destination wedding, 5 days in a resort area, and I was in the bridal party, I did way better than expected. I wasn’t intending to cheapify anything but the airport transfers and the shoes, so all the other stuff was an unplanned bonus!

Bye bye, landline – Hello, $70!

I’ve actively dithered over it for nearly a year, passively more several more than that, but when I checked my bank balance online yesterday and saw that the monthly price for my cable TV/internet/phone package had not so much crept as JUMPED up by $14 to $148, I got a little pissed and called RCN. Got chatting with a nice customer service lady in Pittsburgh – they’re gearing up for that G20 meeting next week so I shared my tales of snipers and sniffer dogs while she waited for the system to update my changes.

In the ridiculously fiddly “rules” for bundled services, dropping my landline would actually make my price higher – unless I kept my Mach 10 internet service instead of downgrading to the regular Mach 3 one. So by agreeing to that $10 premium, it somehow saved me $60 of the base price because I could retain assorted discounts. I grumbled something about, “yeah, plus all those stupid fees and surcharges and taxes”, so after suggesting that I cross the street and give our president hell for such things (what can I say, she was fun to shoot the breeze with), she mentioned that most of those dumb charges were associated with phone service, so that $68 price would not magically inflate to $90. In other words, not only am I saving over 40% on the base price, but I’m dropping disproportionately more on the taxation part of the bill. That should put my monthly bill between $75 and $80. I really thought I’d at best save $20, so of course I’m kicking myself for not doing this sooner. Ah well, at least it’s done now. I’m looking forward to keeping $70 more of my hard-earned money every month!

My ‘hood is the biggest bull’s eye on the planet right now

Every year, Bill Clinton holds his annual Global Initiative conference at the Sheraton New York across the street from me in a timeframe that overlaps with the big pow-wow at the United Nations. Well, our current prez was in the ‘hood yesterday afternoon for the Letterman taping, and now he’s back – along with all the other Heads of State - for the opening of CGI.

I have a front-row seat to all the security hullaballoo because they all arrive at the side door, which is EXACTLY across the street from my door. However, no one gets to see any of the bigwigs. They put up a huge tent on the street for the cars to pull into, close the flaps, let the VIP out, open the tent, pull away. They’re never exposed to the light of day – or the cameras of random spectators.

I saw the change-of-shift for the snipers on my roof on my way out to the bank. Around the corner was a staging point for the NYPD, with over 50 uniformed officers lined up for instructions. Passing tourists jumped in for a photo op, I kid you not. The street is crawling with earwigged agents from the Secret Services of many nations. I never felt safer walking the streets of New York City with a large amount of cash in my purse! 

Since I wasn’t going to actually see anyone because of the big tent, I decided to head upstairs while my lunch was still hot. The doorman did call me back for a moment to witness the antics of the bomb-sniffing dogs checking out the big planters at the entrance. He told me that when “the big guy” himself arrives, it’s like someone hits the Pause button on the world. Very electric atmosphere, and what can I say, just very entertaining to live exactly where I do.

Sorry for my Inconsistency

I really want my blog to be directed towards personal finance, but I’m not doing a whole lot of weighty stuff because it’s a little hard to focus when my work patterns have disappeared and taken massive chunks of my income with them. I’m a little freaked out that we’re a year into the financial meltdown, with the news spouting crap about the recession being over and the Dow flirting with 5 figures again – and for the first time ever in my life, I will probably have to hit my savings to meet my expenses this month. It’s also painfully disheartening that over 3/4 of new business inquiries are men looking for some minor prostitution activities – it makes me wonder what I’m really selling here, e.g. a jumped-up lapdance?

So if you’re wondering why most of my posts are about coupon games and donating the stuff I accumulate, just know it’s a $10-a-week hobby that gets me out of the house, connects me with people who think I’m good for something other than fantasy material (I’m old and chubby, wtf!), and distracts me – perhaps to my detriment – from dwelling on the insults and uncertainty. Besides, everyone else is writing about The Latte Factor, credit card grievances, and debt-busting – it’s not like I’ve got anything new to add. Hence my sporadic posting…sorry