Close to the Bone

I watch tons of CSI-type shows. One of the things I love to watch is the experts who can reconstruct a face, an entire person the way he or she looked in life, from nothing but a skeleton. In this Halloween season, I’m even more amazed by the skill it must take to find the features in the featureless. As far as I’m concerned, take something down to the bare bones and - well, I can tell a turtle from a dog, but this person from that? No way.

I guess my morbid turn is understandable - I’ve worked myself to exhaustion several times this month. But what do I expect? This is my hectic season. And though most of my time has been spent in (uncompensated) driving, my fabulous pay check on Wednesday had me smiling. What did I do with all that money? I sent some to my IRA, bringing the total up farther than I ever thought I could. I paid the balance of my kids’ student loans, too, and sent another chunk to a card that now is within one payment of zero - that takes us down to only four accounts left to be wiped out, and that’s including the mortgage. In other words, I took that entire check, and put it somewhere that would help me reach my goal.

Of course, the day I spent every penny on debt and investment was the same day my boss announced she had to cancel one of my classes. It’s too early in the game to pull back this far. Usually I have two or even three more pretty fat checks. I have bills still to pay, and Christmas is coming, and …

Yeah, okay, I’m nervous. Yes, I’m proud of how far I’ve been able to bring us, but the scare tactics of the media (covering a “crisis” that has – as usual – been going on for years without much more than a line on page 5) have done their job. I’m succumbing to fear. Just in time for Halloween, I’m ready to join both bank executives and Congress, and dance the panic dance.

And it’s foolish. We’re in this together - we’re all tightening belts and finding ways to make a dollar go farther. Hell, we have been for years, some of us. But I’m doing this by choice, not necessity, not yet anyway. How can I complain because this one time I cut into things a bit too far? I’m still here, still solvent, still me. And I’ll do everything I can to help those who need anything I can provide.

Because this close to the bone, underneath the padding, we all look alike to me.

Surfing

I spent my 'tween years in Laguna Beach, California. Now, it was bad enough that I was already 5'8" tall, and a C cup in the era of bathing suits made for boards not broads, but - horrors! - I seemed to be the only girl in town who couldn't surf.

Oh, I could body surf (after a fashion - hard to do with two built-in front rudders) and I could mostly mat surf. But put me in a standing position and - boom! - I was flailing at waves and choking up salt water.

I think I need to take lessons, because the markets have that same kind of "bitchin' dude" hang-ten feel about them lately.

Yesterday was the biggest single-day point loss in history. Today was the third biggest point gain. I wish I would have bought Wachovia at 39 cents (or whatever it was) a share, I can tell you that, but would it have done much, really?

Don't know. Maybe. Probably not. I told you before I won't take advantage of another's distress - I won't buy a foreclosed house, I won't buy at a fire sale, and I won't pay so much under value just because someone is desparate. I thought about making the exception, since I still think banks got themselves into this, but there's a person at the other end of that share. I can't help but think about that, and I feel ... weird.

Then again, maybe it's not guilt that drives me. Maybe all this up and down, up and down, up and down doesn't make me want to yell "kawabunga" after all.

Maybe I'm just seasick.

Solution Pending

When I was in high school, I used to play air guitar. (Yes, I know this is usually the bailiwick of teenaged boys - I was ahead of my time.) Anyway, I was really good at playing, as long as I didn't have to actually touch an instrument.

I suspect Congress would be very good at air guitar, too - as long as they don't actually get to touch anything. Anyone who can glibly suggest spending $700 bil - the only thing they seem to agree on - without a visible means of support, gets my vote for best fake lead, of any air music.

I told you I grew up with a politician, right? He was (and is) terrible with money. I spent my entire life in cycles of poverty and plenty. My entire life. The act of handing our current elected officials my tax money every month makes me break out in a rash; $700 bil just staggers me, especially since no one has told me where it's coming from.

It won't be a tax hike - they think that cutting taxes we can't afford to cut and still pay the bills, or rebating money they don't even have in the first place, is the best solution for every ill (probably because it will buy our vote). It could be a loan, I suppose, but since no American in his right mind will buy a Savings Bond (even if he could) much less $700 bil worth of them, I doubt it will come from local sources - especially since the banks have frozen, or at least strangled, the credit lines to us peons. Likely we'll borrow it from China, the same source we've been tapping to continue the war. (Oh, well, so much for cutting trade with a country that's been poisoning our toys and milk products - but since our wonderful corporations, the ones in trouble right now, moved their factories over there anyway, we're paying our own way, right?)

Confused? Me, too. Here's some simple math - there are 305,261,586 Americans right now, living in approximately 114, 384,000 households. $700,000,000,000 (that's the billions) divvied up works out to $2293.12 for every man, woman and child, or about $6119.74 per household. (That's more than the average American household carries on a credit card.) But don't worry - since we'll be borrowing it instead of taxing it to each of us, we won't feel the effects until much later, probably just in time to deepen the next economic downturn to monumental proportions.

And this in an era when fewer of us are carrying balances on our credit cards (though, admittedly, more on our mortgages). This, in an era when people are required - not optional - to carry insurance on our home loans until they drop below 80% (or is it 70%?) of the home's value. This in an era when we know credit has gotten us in trouble, yet we keep running to the well.

I don't know the solution for the country. Maybe this really is the most dangerous fiscal situation we've ever been in, as the more inflammatory rhetoric is telling us. (I guess I've heard the Weather Channel telling me about death and destruction - and "dodging the bullet" - so many times I don't listen to overblown projections any more.) Maybe the solution is making the banks go back to the teaser rates, at least for people whose primary residence is on the line. Or maybe it's just let everyone fall down and go boom. There are just too many variables to understand this on a national level. But I know what I'm going to propose for myself.

A money fast.

Yep, coming on the heels of the successful jewelry fast, Bunny is going to go cold turkey on spending. Okay, more like warm turkey - I'm going to talk to the Big Lug about cutting our cable, our cell phones, and various other cutting places, and live on his salary while we use mine to pay off ALL our debts, as fast as we can. In a single year, despite the fact that I don't make nearly as much as he does, we will not only finish paying off the cards but also the kids' college loans, our last home improvement thing, and even start working our way through our mortgage. In one year.

See, I know that no matter how much congress spends to "bail" me out, I'm the only one who can make it stick. And I know that the only way to have $5 mil in my hands by 2014 is to wipe the slate clean, get off the economic grid as much as possible. I don't want to be beholden - or vulnerable - to anyone, and especially not to the people who make laws the same way they make salad dressing (a little of this, a little of that, what do you think, hon, too much garlic?). I want economic independence, from all of them.

But until that day, I can at least thumb my nose (and my imaginary strings) at anyone who wants to scare me here. Because if Congress can make a case for pulling $700 bil out of thin air, and get so many to go along with the scam, then anything is possible.

Even this crazy, wild scheme of mine.

5 by 55!

In B-sharp!

Eat your heart out, John Entwistle!

Back-fire

Fall arrived yesterday, and, right on schedule, everything is falling, falling, falling; the markets are reaching down to touch their toes, housing is scraping bottom, and the dollar is looking up from beneath the earth's crust.

I've been here before. More than once.

I'm not even talking about the historical "heres" - though I do remember one, vividly: gas lines around the block, everyone (including my dad) out of work for years, fear crawling into every corner of every household, at least the ones I knew. It was the '70's, and everyone proclaimed it, as today, "the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression." The entire country was hurting, and for far too long all of us simply did the best we could.

That one was personal for me. I was getting ready to go to college - had the scholarship, the job, even the car. Four days before I was due to leave for my small, private college, and the wonderful experience I knew was around the corner, my father called me in to tell me he and my mom wouldn't be able to cover even small percentage of the expenses that I hadn't already earned with work and awards. Four days before I was due to drive off - not four months or even four weeks, but four days.

Yet I left that Saturday anyway. How? My best friend talked me into trying to snag a spot at the state school she was going to. And, after many phone calls (the grades and SAT scores helped), I did. My parents could afford that tuition (in-state was then under $200, twice yearly) and the room and board (under $500) for at least a semester as long as I paid for books. I then pushed for (and won) a scholarship that covered my tuition (as long as I had a 3.9 average), tutored math to cover my books and incidentals, and even discovered a test (CLEP) that, when I took it, got me out of most of the basic degree requirements (so I finished in three years). I worked my ass off, and I won.

So why did I forget the lessons of those years? How did we all forget?

Fear feeds fear. When we hear the reasons for recessions and depressions, few "experts" think about the fear factor. Oh, we hear about "spirals" and "runs" and "panic" on the way down, but have we really thought it through? If we did, we might understand the entire cycle.

I see it this way: fear leads to free-falls which lead to more fear about the falls which leads to average people hitting the bottoms of their respective wells.

... which leads to either complete depression and giving up, or the back-against-the-wall "screw this!"

... which leads to the lowering of the head and the lunge for the enemy's throat.

... which, after some wrangling, frequently leads to success, which leads to more success (because we did what we didn't think we could do).

... which leads to "I deserve this success" and the gorging on that conquest and the next (which will follow because determination frequently leads to more) until we get drowsy in the sun and lazy when we take our hard-won abundance for granted.

... which leads to slippage and the first trickle of fear, especially when we find we can't quite grab it, not with the same ease, because it's easier to hold onto a leash than it is to catch one once we've let it go.

... which leads to fear which leads to more fear ...

Am I wrong? I'm no expert on money - we all know that, right? - but I understand fear, especially about cash flow. I've had it many times before. We all have. The college year just depressed and disillusioned me, but there was one day in 1992 or 1993 (the height - or depth - of the last "recession"). We had just moved to this very expensive area (without the army housing that we'd been in for more than a decade), we were maxed out across the board (rent, credit cards, etc.) with three small kids in the house, and, while I was choosing which bills to pay and which to blow off, I suddenly realized that, thanks to my life insurance policy, I was worth more dead than alive. Luckily that horrible thought immediately created an explosive "oh-God" back-fire that turned on the orginal problem and blew it out like giant Roman candle.

Oh, yes, I understand much about fear. I've been afraid lately, because my income depends on something that is optional, not necessary. And my quest depends on my house and my other assets NOT selling for half of the assessed worth, as they would right now.

But I realized this morning that right now we are in a panic because of our credit markets. And it isn't the first time. The excesses of the '20's led to the depression of the '30's, which fed the causes of WWII and the deprivations of the '40's (which we all handled with grace and hard work because we became a community), and led to the prosperity of the '50's, which preceded the turmoil of the '60's which caused a variety of new phenomena (stagflation) in the aforementioned '70's, then the ridiculous extremes of the '80's and the tight belts of the '90's, the happier times of the early '00's. Most of our past problems (except for the stuff around 911) are related, in one way or another, to spending as if there's no tomorrow, of pretending we can eat all we want and won't ever get the check.

Oh, I'm not saying there aren't other, insidious elements at work. I know about the greed of the credit companies, the mortgage industries, the sharks that are always waiting to take eat the small fish with no conscience because they can always declare bankruptcy, set up somewhere else, and start over. I know that the governments don't set good examples, either - they spend our tax money then plan this year's budget around last year's income instead of the average of the last 20 years, and they borrow money as if they will always have increased revenues (instead of using surpluses to repay these debts, our wonderful elected officials go into a feeding frenzy). We are the children of profligate parents, emulating their frightening patterns in our own lives.

But "they" are the smallest of the issues. At some point we have to grow up, and away from, toxic people. At some point we have to realize that we hired these people, or at least didn't speak up when they took over the company, the state, or the country. Instead of firing them all, we're turning to these same poisonous "role models" to bail us out - even as I write this, I'm listening to lawmakers blaming the lack of regulation in the asset markets (bank, mortgage companies, etc.) for our problems. And who's going to create and enforce these regulations? The same people who contributed to the spiral in the first place.

Enough is enough. I'm not afraid any more. There's got to be a way out of this, but it has to be our way. We have to end this once and for all - go not for the throat but straight for the heart.

We're the heart. And we're stronger than they are.

Collapsing

My body has the strangest habit - when push comes to shove, when my time is not my own and my schedule is slammed to the proverbial wall, it comes through like a trooper - on steroids. When the rush is over it ... falls apart.

I don't mean this in the emotional sense, although this happens, too. Typically, in the days when I wrote novels, I would dump the manuscript with FedEx and while I was there my head would start to throb. By the time I got home, I had a 100-degree fever and the energy of a newborn (less, really, since I had no lung capacity, either). I would stay in bed for about three days and make my family's life a living hell.

Nowadays, it's not usually that dramatic, mainly because I guard my Fridays with a fierce Bunny growl - "mine, mine, MINE!" Unfortunately, this week I have had ten- to twelve-hour days for the past six days straight, and last Friday was a bit ... long ... with hunting and a busy-ness all out of proportion to "rest," which is what I needed. My system is confused. It's reacted as if already in the Killing Time. It's falling apart.

And it's not attractive. I can't think, or write, or do much more than putter around here every hour or so (and no more than twenty feet from the nearest restroom). So, rather than try to tell you stories about the hunting I didn't do or the treasure I didn't find (yet), I'll just see you next week ... assuming I survive my twelve hour Saturday and Sunday and Monday and ...

I just need a very long nap. Really.