AskDong

Over at CNNMoney, they’ve put together a portraits of the financial lives of some of the presidential candidate. I know this much, I’m pretty sure none of them will be reading AskDong anytime soon to learn how to score a little extra cash by signing up for credit card deals. Barack Obama pulls in the rear with a paltry $1.3 million nest egg, but at 46 he’s got more time on his side than the other candidates. However, it’s unlikely poor Barack will catch up to the leader of the pack, Mitt Romney, who has a whopping $202 million to his name.

It should come as no surprise that so many of the candidates are so wealthy. Generally speaking, someone’s who is barely scraping by is less concerned with fixing the health care system, and more concerned with just having health insurance. While I don’t believe having a lot of money is a measure of life led well, being loaded does seem pretty well correlated with being ambitious and career driven. Hilary certainly has never been accused of not having enough ambition.  And Barack is certainly driven - he’s been eyeing the presidency since Kindergarten, at least according to the Clinton Campaign.  Amongst the republicans, Giulian has never shied away from the limelight, and now that he’s not mayor he has figure out a way to pay for for the limo to pickup his girlfriend wife.

Being a personal finance wonk, what really impresses me is the size of Mitt Romney’s IRA, 42.9 million or nearly 1/4 of his net worth. If the presidency thing doesn’t work out, Romney could think about a second career as a financial planner. He clearly has done a pretty good job of managing his own finances, and I certainly have faith that he would show flexibility in adapting to a changing environment.

While on average the Republicans are richer and older, the difference in wealth is almost all due to outsized net worth of Mitt Romney.   On the grand scale there’s really not much of difference in the personal financial fortunes of any these candidates. With maybe the exception of Obama, they’re all really really rich.  I would have no problem letting any of them pick up the tab for dinner. But since they’re politicians they can’t do that given that picking up the tab might constitute a bribe for my vote, and if we know anything about politics is that bribes go the other way. That said you wouldn’t think any these candidates would need the money.

The past three years, my girlfriend and I have hosted an annual holiday party at our apartment for about 30-40 people. This party is pretty much the one big social event that we host a year. We have people over for dinner throughout the year, and I host poker games every so often. However there’s a big difference between cooking for 6 versus 40.

Last year was culinary extravaganza.  I made food ranging from fresh spring rolls to empanadas. We even had a Turducken.  The food turned out only OK. It’s extremely difficult to both set a menu that’s appropriate for a wide range of people, and to prepare it in a manner so it’s warm when it should be and cold when it needs to be.  More importantly, it was bone tiring.  We were preparing the night before. We were prepping the morning of.  We were still cooking when guests arrived. I ended up serving the cold food warm, and the warm food cold.

This year we decided to do something different.  We had half of the food catered. Catering may not be right word.  We didn’t have waiters and waitresses in white shirts serving hor’dourves.  We had big tins of pasta, salad, and eggplant from our favorite local whole in the wall pasta place, Basta Pasta.  The catering was $200 for pasta, salad, and a eggplant parmigiana like appetizer. I was taken aback originally by the cost of the catering, but in the end I relented.  I wanted it easy.

All said and done the cost of the holiday party this year was about the same as what it cost last year.  While the ingredients for the catered food would’ve run only about $70 at most, catering was still a good deal.  Part of this is a result of my own predilections . I prefer cooking many different dishes rather than a big batch of something.  Partially it’s just not very easy cooking pasta for 40 at home.   Had I opted to make pasta, I would’ve made pasta for 10 and paella for another 10 or something like that.  Cooking different dishes is almost always more expensive.  Ingredients are not used as efficiently. More importantly, having half the food catered was a real time saver.  I was actually able to interact my guests before 9pm, and even managed to shower before they arrived which they were greatly thankful of.

Nickel and Dimed is a journalist expose by Barbara Eherenreich into to the world of the working poor. I’ve been meaning to read the book for over 4 years now. It’s sat at my desk at work for nearly three of those years, even making the move to the new office. It was first recommended by the bookstore clerk who rung up my purchase of Fast Food Nation, a similarly but somewhat more broadly veined book which I liked quite a bit. I only got around to reading Nickel and Dimed this past vacation as I sat 11 hours in the back of economy, traveling alone.
I’ll acknowledge, I read Nickel and Dimed with the intention of picking it apart. I have tendencies to read most journalistic treaties on topic of money with the eyes and teeth of an attack dog. My reaction to Nickel and Dimed ended up being a magnified version of my reaction to the Millionaire Next Door. They are written with the same intent on proving only what they want to prove despite allegations of being objective. Politically they are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but in practice they speak with a similar voice.

Foremost Nickel and Dimed reminded me how lucky I am, and how easy my own life is. A grueling 12 hours (which I rarely do) at my desk job is far easier than pulling two server shifts at any restaurant. My legs are not tired when I crawl into my warm bed in a spacious apartment in a nice part of town, an apartment that I would never be able to afford if I earned anything near minimum wage or even twice as much.
My biggest problem with Nickel and Dimed is not that I think it’s inaccurate. It’s not, but rather Barbara Eherenreich approaches the whole exercise without any intention examining what the working poor can do to lift themselves out of poverty, but merely to pay a visit to what is without argument or contention a wretched existence. Barbara succeeds best when she tells the story of her coworkers and their struggles and forced when she betrays her determination to fail.

The biggest flaw with her exercise is that she only stays in any one town for a month. By being at one place for such a short period time, it’s impossible to do anything but to live in relative poverty as a wage slave. Nobody rises from minimum wage to a better life in a month’s time. If she wanted to make that conclusion, she could’ve made it without a single day spent cleaning toilets, or serving tourists. While $7 an hour is enormous amount of money in some countries, in the U.S. $7/hour translates to about $14,000 a year. That’s hardly enough to live on which Barbara clearly demonstrates.

The thing is - it’s not supposed to be easy. Being uneducated and unskilled is not a way to go about life. The fact is for many individuals who are struggling to make ends meet are paying the price for poor choices made earlier in life. The mistakes were made in the teens, 20s and 30s. I’m not unsympathetic to the plight. I find it unconscionable that in this great nation of ours that not every citizen is covered by some type of health plan. Nor do I believe that one needs to pay the price forever for poor choice or poor luck. I do believe its society’s responsibility to lend a helping hand to those who have fallen on hard times. But in the end I’m a fervent believer there needs to be a sense of personal responsibility and some consequence to a life led less well.

Another problem with Barbara is her attitude. She has very much an “Us vs. Them Attitude.” I don’t like that attitude amongst conservatives, and I don’t like it amongst liberals. The rich are all idle, and poorly read. Management is always out of touch and heartless. She mocks the employees who cross over to management. She effectively mocks success. Nor do I find her attitude to those who are struggling to get by much better. In her attempts to paint a bleaker picture of what life is like on less than $8 an hour, she comes off as both patronizing and condescending. I’m sympathetic to the desire to illustrate how being poor is nothing that any of us want given that sometimes we as society overly romanticize the “simple” life. However she does not need to mock whatever achievements individuals do make. Her implicit presumption is also that those toiling away will not, and are not capable of making a better life for themselves. While certainly not easy, I know it’s possible to climb the economic ladder. Immigrants to the U.S. do it every generation.

The funny thing is once she finishes chronicling her adventures as wage slave, and gets down to “objectively” detailing the problems in her epilogue, I can’t say I disagree with most of her points.

• Housing – I do believe there is currently a dearth of affordable housing, especially in many urban area. It galls me that many apartments in New York often serve as nothing more than a hotel room for the affluent while low wage workers trek hours from less desirable areas come to clean and cook for the rich.
• Childcare – Rising rates of single parenthood, and two income households has created a crisis in adequate childcare.
• Healthcare – I’ve always felt that adequate healthcare insurance should be distinct from employment. This is not to say it’s as easy as the government providing it. It’s not.  The topic is complicated, but I do believe the current system needs to be adjusted.
• Uneconomic Behavior/Education – Barbara understands many individuals who are making minimum wage or near it do not make economically rational decisions. Like Barbara, I’m not ready to fault these individuals for such behavior out of hand. It’s easy for people who’ve had more education and better circumstances to pooh pooh poor decisions. So many decisions in life are based on experience and circumstance. Psychology has a much greater role in decision making than just rational thinking.

Given that I don’t disagree in the end all that much with Barbara, you would think that I would’ve enjoyed and agreed with the book more. However, I had a hard time getting past her antagonistic attitude. Being a successful is not a bad thing, and should not something anyone should feel guilty about.

I’m in the process of switching my Internet connection to DSL.  Currently I’m reduced to using my mobile phone as a modem.  I also gave my Dad my old wireless router since he needed one, and I usually manage to snag better deals than my Dad can. Yes, we’re still talking even after I criticized him for his selection of toilet paper.  I was hoping to pick up a new 802.11g router for less than $20. I was disappointed that cheapest router I saw at MicroCenter was $29.95. In casual conversation I mentioned to a few friends that I was looking to buy a new router to see if they had any recommendations. One these friends emailed me yesterday a link to a $5 router at CompUSA after rebates. This deal is only good for a purchase made before December 8th, 2007.  It’s one of those quick one week promotions.

I also made a purchase from Red Envelope with a $50 off promotion code. I almost didn’t use this promotion code, ETHNOL, not because I forgot about it, but because I didn’t have it until about a minute before checkout. Most online retailers such Red Envelope, Amazon, Buy, Overstock, etc. all allow you to enter a promotion code if you have one.  If you don’t have one, you don’t need to wait for next Sunday’s circular.  Just do quick Internet search for coupon codes for the retailer that interests you.  Websites like Coupon Cabin, and Coupon Chief quickly appear with lists of coupon codes to use.  Don’t take the first coupon that catches your eye.  Take some time a poke around and look for the best and most appropriate coupon.  The first coupon I found was for free shipping which would’ve saved me $8.95 - not enough to get excited about.  However after a minute of poking around I was able to find the $50 coupon for a purchase of $200 or more which fit the bill quite nicely.  As there are a number of promotions and coupons at any given time, it’s important to look around for the one that best fits the shopping situation.

I’m not a consummate shopper.  I don’t buy very much stuff in general, and tend to get alerted to deals by more astute consumers amongst my friends.  If you are buying something, it’s almost always worthwhile to do a quick online search for deals, and coupons. Five minutes can save you over $75 bucks as it did for me.

Lazy Man published the most recent Festival of Frugality #102. I was selected as an editor’s choice for my ode to premium toilet paper and on top of that I got a link at MSN’s Smart Spending. Woohoo!

Below are a few other articles that I enjoyed from this most recent festival.

• Silicon Valley Blogger shows off some Piggy Banks My piggy bank is a big pitcher.
• Free Money Finance Lists the 10 Most hated Money Tips. I only hate two of them. I only really hate reason #1, move to a lower cost of living city (and indirectly #9 - even though I’m all for foreign living in general).
• The Juicefairy offers some basic dining tips while traveling. It’s a little easier when you travel from a homebase that’s already expensive to dine.  If anything my dining costs often go down when I travel.
• The Bag Lady ponders how you value brands. I don’t. That’s not really true. I actually do think that some brands do confirm quality, and am willing to pay a premium for those, namely toilet paper.  How you determine what is quality is the harder question.