The blog was quiet in February, but that doesn’t mean I had stopped writing altogether. Below is a post that was mostly finished in January, but had to wait for its final edit.
When you think and write about personal finance, every day life provides plenty of grist for the mill. Here are a few examples I noted from the end of the month.
Give the gift of…Home Ec?
Sadly, for several days in January, Mr. PiN had to leave town, meaning that I was in charge of the entire house. Since he does most all of the housework, that meant that I saw some of the inner workings that have been opaque to me for years.
Props to him for making tasty, healthy, fresh meals for both of us every day.
However, when left to my own devices, I rely more on leftovers.
Cue my last morning on my own. I was tired of leftover oatmeal, and decided to make oatmeal pancakes.
I remembered some very tasty wild blueberry jam we had picked up on vacation in Maine, and thought it would go very nicely with my breakfast. I knew we had only opened the jar relatively recently, so decided it was time to find it in the fridge.
I could no longer avoid the obvious: the refrigerator was not very organized.
During the time it took me to finish preparing my dozen tiny pancakes, I cleared out the refrigerator. I found plenty of expired items, some of which I pitched. There are a quite a few more containers of dubious age, which we will go through together on his return.
As I threw out icky produce, I thought about all the tips and tricks I see across the internet for saving money. While it’s true that cooking your meals at home will save money (especially if the alternative is ordering out, which I almost did a few times while on my own), buying food only to throw it out is definitely not going to save you money. It’s also bad for the environment.
My mother, who hasn’t worked for a salary for decades, spent a lot of time running our home. She likes to say that she has learned a lot, and is probably an expert, on housekeeping–which, unfortunately, no one respects these days.
While she is proud that her children all earn good money at professional jobs, she made sure we know our way around some aspects of house management.
Unfortunately, Mr. PiN was raised in a different type of household. The type where his mom proudly displayed her T-shirt that read “F* Housework,” and his dad occasionally gives himself food poisoning by eating food that has been sitting in the fridge too long.
For all those parents who want to help their kids to financial success: yes, encourage them to do well in school, find a good career, be self-reliant. But also make sure they learn a few practical life skills. When food is the 3rd biggest monthly household expense, learning how to manage a larder will pay huge dividends!
Thank you, Pete Buttigieg!
I, like many other travelers this past December, got caught up in the Southwest meltdown.
Happily, my plans weren’t totally derailed by having to postpone my flight by 2 days. I had to work remotely, and pay for another 2 nights in a hotel, but I did get to hang out with my brother and support our mom for a little longer in person.
I ended up choosing to fly a different airline home, since I wanted to be sure I would actually get to my destination that day. [As it turned out, that flight had a 1-hour delay during staffing, but the airline was clear to put the blame on the airport, rather than their own operational team.]
I was pleasantly surprised, after having been rebooked by Southwest onto a flight I didn’t want to take, to see my flight cost refunded within a few days of my canceled flight.
Within the week, I received an email from SWA, letting me know they were working on my request to be reimbursed for my hotel costs; my money hit my bank account less than a month later.
This is the first time I ever thought to see compensation from a US airline, and it was reasonably smooth.
We are living in the future
This past week alone:
- My friend turned on her robot floor cleaner during our video call. Who knew growing up that we would have robots cleaning the house?
- By the way, I was visiting with friends (who were in different states) by video! I grew up with wall phones and long-distance rates that were billed by the minute.
- I didn’t feel like going out to the store to buy something silly. I clicked a few buttons and it was delivered to my front doorstep 24 hours later. This is a luxury I could not have imagined in the ’70s.
- Mr. PiN had to fly last minute, twice, this week. Instead of costing an arm and a leg (by which I mean thousands of dollars, in today’s money), it cost much less. Maybe twice the advance purchase price. Airfare used to be ever so much more expensive. It may be bad for the environment to fly so often, but it’s lovely to be able to do so.
How about you: any interesting money thoughts recently?