This is a good post about why we need full public education funding through college. College is the main way that working-class and poor people can escape their economic class. (The other way is for one generation to enter into one of the well-paid trades, and then use that money to fund their children's education. This is a two-generation strategy.)
By making college free, class mobility would be improved, and society is helped. Funding it already seems to be normal behavior in middle-class families.
I posted on the public assistance blog about public health insurance and my worries about kids who are scarred by the experience. My folks were teenagers when my brother was born. Their parents paid for their undergraduate degrees, bought them cars, paid for childcare.... My parents still live with that safety net and still make foolish financial decisions.
OTOH, as I mentioned, I worked at age 10 to pay for school lunches. I moved out of the house at age 16. I "paid my own way." In fact, when I was 18 my parents couldn't make their car payments, so I took care of it for them. Even so, I've never thought for a second that I didn't have financial help, both tangible and intangible.
In addition to the crappy insurance I buy from the state at a higher rate than the private insurance I used to have, I have a zillion other sources of help.
* Grandparents almost completely clothe my children with overstocks and garage sale items.
* My boss's flextime allowance means I don't pay for childcare.
* Gifts of cash for holidays and special occasions. In fact, all gifts offer some sort of material comfort.
* National Guard status means I can shop tax-free on base and get discounted financial services through USAA.
* Don't publicly funded services count? Schools (my children's, my own, my state college), roads, civil servants, student loans/pell grants...
* My parents essentially threw me to the financial wolves at a young age and so I've been much more money savvy than they have been (though maybe not as savvy as I could have been with instruction).
* Death of parent resulted in modest inheritance.
* First time home owner loan gave me a lower interest rate than others qualified for.
* Learning from friends, trading services (like babysitting) with friends, generous pals have picked up the bill for us at dinner (which we've reciprocated), clothing/toy swaps... in fact, friends have helped me get through a recent health scare when my insurance crapped out (as did a family member who got a doctor to see me for free when my PCP wouldn't see me at all).
I don't believe anyone, not for a second, who thinks they didn't have help getting where they are. There are a thousand ways we get help every day from some source outside our own homes.
Ditto on Freecycle. I see phones offered and asked for all the time. We also have a local retailer that buys and sells used phones. That would certainly be an option for a cheap option.
We also kept our old phones when we got a free upgrade for renewing with Verizon. If we destroy one of our new ones we have the old ones as backup.
We are getting rid of our landline in the near future. One of our old cell phones is going to get left plugged into the charger on the shelf in the kitchen as an emergency 911 phone if anyone ever has to call 911 and doesn't have a cell phone on them.
The purpose of an emergency fund is to allow you to adjust to changed circumstances in the case of an emergency.
Often an emergency fund will also make a little money, in the form of interest. Other times, the interest earned won't be quite enough to keep up with inflation, meaning that you fall a little behind. But the goal is not the little bit of interest that's earned. The goal is the protection that comes from having some ready cash. Even if you have to pay a little for that protection, if you need it, it's well worth the small cost.
As someone who has had breast cancer, one might assume I am all for pink cans of soup and pink m&ms. Frankly, I feel that exploiting consumers' compassion for victims of disease to sell unrelated products is an all-time low in marketing ploys. As you say, better to cut a check that directly assists a worthy organization--say one that works for cancer prevention, rather than "awareness".
Sob! I miss San Francisco's public transit system, too! Oh, to be able to get to work on a bus or streetcar in a reasonable amount of time and in a safe and halfway tolerable environment!
When you live in a city whose designers (read "developers") purposely build in sprawl, public transit becomes a great deal less functional. Inspired by free bus passes doled out by Our Beloved Employer, I tried taking the bus to work.
The twenty-minute trip took TWO HOURS AND TEN MINUTES from the bus stop near my house! The bus had no springs, and its route followed the path of a lightrail construction project the city is engaged in, so that using the two hours to do office work was flat out of the question. Passengers were banged, thumped, and tossed every inch of the way.
And because no one who can afford a junker and hasn't had her or his driver's license suspended for DUI will take the bus, the people-watching was less than ideal. We got to listen to a mentally ill gentleman try to convince one of his voices, at the top of his lungs, that the landlord was evicting the voice. We saw a wide array of prison tattoos. And we felt terrible for a man in a wheelchair who pooped his diapers, filling the interior of the bus with a rich toilet perfume until he got off.
After the two-hour trip, I was let off about a half-mile from my office--this particular bus does not go to the huge bus stop right in front of the university. Since I normally use the disabled parking, this was a bit of a hike with a computer in hand. Oh well.
On the way home, I was panhandled three times at the bus stop and hit up for a cigarette by another passenger. What the heck. At least the smoker was an interesting conversationalist.
A week after this adventure, a woman was abducted and raped from the bus stop near my house where I'd stood waiting 30 minutes.
Never again! I'll cheerfully pay $5 a gallon before I undertake another trip like that.
I recently moved from Berkeley, CA to Maine (yes, by choice) and aside from the food, which I really really miss, I miss mass transit the most. There is a very limited van service for getting around town, and almost no bus system unless you count Greyhound.
but the fact that the pre-packaged "convenient" meals are driving our families away from the quality time at the breakfast/dinner table just drives me nuts.
I personally hate the commercials on TV making it look so fun to just grab a breakfast bar and run out the door to catch the bus! Sometimes people are in a hurry, I understand. Just don't make it an EVERY DAY thing. There's so many conversation moments missed when you avoid mealtimes with your children.
Invest not only in the budget-friendly meals by preparing your own food, but invest in your children by just spending a few more minutes eating with them too!
I am a total sucker for the charitable promotion gimmick. I love the idea of skipping the product and just cutting a check directly to the organization. Usually, I thoroughly research a charity before donating, but that research obviously doesn't happen in the soup aisle. Until, reading this...I didn't realize how mindless I was being. Oh...they're good.
My problem is that the money is losing its value and I do not understand why should I save money during inflation. I may not be able to buy anything from my savings tomorrow?
How can I save money and make sure that I will receive enough return on it to cover inflation?
It's has nothing really to do with the taste of any kind of caffeine...it's the buzz..the crazed-out-mania I experience over & over. I can quit, but for me to stay off of it completely is my struggle...I know all the negatives...I'm off it, start to feel better and boom back at it. Accountability to my God or myself is not enough, sadly not even to my 2 kids, hubby or any other poor soul who crosses my path in my paranoid, crabbed-out mood!! Yea, it feels great for a fleeting moment or two. To sum it up...I'm nuts and the "slave to any caffeine" just makes me more nuts!! So I'll get back on the wagon today...be trashed for a week or so and we'll see how it goes. It's cold turkey & no "kicky drink substitutes" tried them... they just lead me back. Yes, there's a reason I'm writing this at 2am..and it's not cause I work the night shift!! Katie
Yeah, I really think that the US needs better public transit. When I lived in Honolulu, Hawaii the public transit was much more advanced because it is a tourist town and there were busses everywhere. In the Bay Area the public transit sort of thins out once you get past San Francisco. San Francisco has a lot of public transit but the MUNI bus is kinda of scary and they rip you off on those trolleys. They did an investigative report of how bad some MUNI drivers are and the videos were frightening. I really like AC Transit, which serves the Alameda and Contra Costa counties, but I don't live there anymore. :(:(
I totally agree with all of the reasons you gave for using public transportation. Another advantage to using it is your company may reimburse you (like mine does) for your tickets. Or you can enroll in a program where they automatically deduct the cost of the ticket from your pre-tax dollars. But I liked reason #1 the best - people watching!
You know how much stuff is thrown away a week before date?
30 loafs of bread I found. I feed my son with it and I have a great job. I think people forget we are just animals wash it, eat it, be done with it.The only time I have had food poisoning was from arbys, and i paid for that food.
I wish all of the United States had good transportation like they do in Europe. When we lived there for a few years I loved taking the bus and train all over the place. Every few blocks you would see some sort of bus or train stop.
We've always done the 2nd hand phone thing, because I really hate having that contract hanging over me...but just last September, I realized I had been with Sprint for 6+ years, and if I got a contract, I could get a free phone and a cheaper price for a better plan, so I bit.
Prior to that I had been using my usual second hand phone, which still worked fine.
This past week, my DH's phone started to kind of fall apart. Money is tight, so I suggested he give my old phone a try. He called Sprint and was told that "the phone is too old to connect it."
But it wasn't in September!
Fortunately (or not), I've run into this before, and the trick is to find a Customer Service Rep who's been there for a few years, and has connected the older phones before. The instructions to connect the older phones aren't included in the how-to books any more, but the old-timer reps still know how to do it.
When I lived in St. Louis, I worked just inside city limits and parking at my workplace was $30 a month, but then, about six months before I left, MetroLink passes were free. Both my home and work were within a few blocks of the MetroLink, and riding only took 15-20 minutes where driving took 10-15.
Quite frankly, compared to Europe, the public transportation in the US sucks big time. Seems like the government is more interested in building superhighways than develop a robust public transportation system.
Having lived in Germany and France for 4 years, I never had the need to purchase a car. Everything was so convenient, cheap and on-time. I just buy one monthly ticket and I can use the buses, trams, subways and trains.
I also lived in Illinois, and Georgia for 2 years, the public transpo downtown is ok. But unfortunately, I still need a car to go to most of the necessary places.
Gangbangers, drug dealers, and assorted criminals can hop on our trains and ride to and from the scene of the crime(s) for free since there are no pesky turnstiles or fare collectors to deal with. (There ARE fare inspectors but they are encountered rarely.)
The center of the local drug trade is conveniently located in our downtown free transit zone.
Not just one, but TWO shopping malls in the free zone!
Convenient "Park and Ride" lots allow you free parking close to home while you ride the train to work and car prowlers steal valuables from your car.
Riders get a better sense of just how much human flotsam and jetsam there is out there.
I usually just Google 'coupon code' and the merchant name. Retailmenot is often one of the top two or three site listed, but you can sometimes find other coupon codes on other sites.
Also, the firefox plugin uses an internal database that is updated weekly, so it doesn't track your browsing habits at all.
I too have come a fan of public transportation. Mostly, I decided to take the bus at least once a week because of the cost. I can ride the 42 miles to work for $1.25 each way. With the price of gas going up rapidly, I am definitely getting my money's worth - and I have lots of time to read!
Great post Linsey...you nailed a few of the gripes that I've had for some time. I personally despise all the ready-to-go meal kits that you mentioned...come on, are people really so busy they can't make a sandwich?? And all this fancy packaging these meals come in just go into the landfill...Grrrr
This is a good post about why we need full public education funding through college. College is the main way that working-class and poor people can escape their economic class. (The other way is for one generation to enter into one of the well-paid trades, and then use that money to fund their children's education. This is a two-generation strategy.)
By making college free, class mobility would be improved, and society is helped. Funding it already seems to be normal behavior in middle-class families.
I posted on the public assistance blog about public health insurance and my worries about kids who are scarred by the experience. My folks were teenagers when my brother was born. Their parents paid for their undergraduate degrees, bought them cars, paid for childcare.... My parents still live with that safety net and still make foolish financial decisions.
OTOH, as I mentioned, I worked at age 10 to pay for school lunches. I moved out of the house at age 16. I "paid my own way." In fact, when I was 18 my parents couldn't make their car payments, so I took care of it for them. Even so, I've never thought for a second that I didn't have financial help, both tangible and intangible.
In addition to the crappy insurance I buy from the state at a higher rate than the private insurance I used to have, I have a zillion other sources of help.
* Grandparents almost completely clothe my children with overstocks and garage sale items.
* My boss's flextime allowance means I don't pay for childcare.
* Gifts of cash for holidays and special occasions. In fact, all gifts offer some sort of material comfort.
* National Guard status means I can shop tax-free on base and get discounted financial services through USAA.
* Don't publicly funded services count? Schools (my children's, my own, my state college), roads, civil servants, student loans/pell grants...
* My parents essentially threw me to the financial wolves at a young age and so I've been much more money savvy than they have been (though maybe not as savvy as I could have been with instruction).
* Death of parent resulted in modest inheritance.
* First time home owner loan gave me a lower interest rate than others qualified for.
* Learning from friends, trading services (like babysitting) with friends, generous pals have picked up the bill for us at dinner (which we've reciprocated), clothing/toy swaps... in fact, friends have helped me get through a recent health scare when my insurance crapped out (as did a family member who got a doctor to see me for free when my PCP wouldn't see me at all).
I don't believe anyone, not for a second, who thinks they didn't have help getting where they are. There are a thousand ways we get help every day from some source outside our own homes.
Ditto on Freecycle. I see phones offered and asked for all the time. We also have a local retailer that buys and sells used phones. That would certainly be an option for a cheap option.
We also kept our old phones when we got a free upgrade for renewing with Verizon. If we destroy one of our new ones we have the old ones as backup.
We are getting rid of our landline in the near future. One of our old cell phones is going to get left plugged into the charger on the shelf in the kitchen as an emergency 911 phone if anyone ever has to call 911 and doesn't have a cell phone on them.
The purpose of an emergency fund is to allow you to adjust to changed circumstances in the case of an emergency.
Often an emergency fund will also make a little money, in the form of interest. Other times, the interest earned won't be quite enough to keep up with inflation, meaning that you fall a little behind. But the goal is not the little bit of interest that's earned. The goal is the protection that comes from having some ready cash. Even if you have to pay a little for that protection, if you need it, it's well worth the small cost.
As someone who has had breast cancer, one might assume I am all for pink cans of soup and pink m&ms. Frankly, I feel that exploiting consumers' compassion for victims of disease to sell unrelated products is an all-time low in marketing ploys. As you say, better to cut a check that directly assists a worthy organization--say one that works for cancer prevention, rather than "awareness".
Sob! I miss San Francisco's public transit system, too! Oh, to be able to get to work on a bus or streetcar in a reasonable amount of time and in a safe and halfway tolerable environment!
When you live in a city whose designers (read "developers") purposely build in sprawl, public transit becomes a great deal less functional. Inspired by free bus passes doled out by Our Beloved Employer, I tried taking the bus to work.
The twenty-minute trip took TWO HOURS AND TEN MINUTES from the bus stop near my house! The bus had no springs, and its route followed the path of a lightrail construction project the city is engaged in, so that using the two hours to do office work was flat out of the question. Passengers were banged, thumped, and tossed every inch of the way.
And because no one who can afford a junker and hasn't had her or his driver's license suspended for DUI will take the bus, the people-watching was less than ideal. We got to listen to a mentally ill gentleman try to convince one of his voices, at the top of his lungs, that the landlord was evicting the voice. We saw a wide array of prison tattoos. And we felt terrible for a man in a wheelchair who pooped his diapers, filling the interior of the bus with a rich toilet perfume until he got off.
After the two-hour trip, I was let off about a half-mile from my office--this particular bus does not go to the huge bus stop right in front of the university. Since I normally use the disabled parking, this was a bit of a hike with a computer in hand. Oh well.
On the way home, I was panhandled three times at the bus stop and hit up for a cigarette by another passenger. What the heck. At least the smoker was an interesting conversationalist.
A week after this adventure, a woman was abducted and raped from the bus stop near my house where I'd stood waiting 30 minutes.
Never again! I'll cheerfully pay $5 a gallon before I undertake another trip like that.
I recently moved from Berkeley, CA to Maine (yes, by choice) and aside from the food, which I really really miss, I miss mass transit the most. There is a very limited van service for getting around town, and almost no bus system unless you count Greyhound.
but the fact that the pre-packaged "convenient" meals are driving our families away from the quality time at the breakfast/dinner table just drives me nuts.
I personally hate the commercials on TV making it look so fun to just grab a breakfast bar and run out the door to catch the bus! Sometimes people are in a hurry, I understand. Just don't make it an EVERY DAY thing. There's so many conversation moments missed when you avoid mealtimes with your children.
Invest not only in the budget-friendly meals by preparing your own food, but invest in your children by just spending a few more minutes eating with them too!
I am a total sucker for the charitable promotion gimmick. I love the idea of skipping the product and just cutting a check directly to the organization. Usually, I thoroughly research a charity before donating, but that research obviously doesn't happen in the soup aisle. Until, reading this...I didn't realize how mindless I was being. Oh...they're good.
Great blog....I look forward to reading more.
I love the math captcha. Is that a plug in?
You can sometimes get free phones on Freecycle.org
We have PAYG monthly with Virgin in the UK & it's a lot easier to get an upgrade as it goes on how much your bill is.
You can sometimes get free phones on Freecycle.org
We have PAYG monthly with Virgin in the UK & it's a lot easier to get an upgrade as it goes on how much your bill is.
Hi,
My problem is that the money is losing its value and I do not understand why should I save money during inflation. I may not be able to buy anything from my savings tomorrow?
How can I save money and make sure that I will receive enough return on it to cover inflation?
It's has nothing really to do with the taste of any kind of caffeine...it's the buzz..the crazed-out-mania I experience over & over. I can quit, but for me to stay off of it completely is my struggle...I know all the negatives...I'm off it, start to feel better and boom back at it. Accountability to my God or myself is not enough, sadly not even to my 2 kids, hubby or any other poor soul who crosses my path in my paranoid, crabbed-out mood!! Yea, it feels great for a fleeting moment or two. To sum it up...I'm nuts and the "slave to any caffeine" just makes me more nuts!! So I'll get back on the wagon today...be trashed for a week or so and we'll see how it goes. It's cold turkey & no "kicky drink substitutes" tried them... they just lead me back. Yes, there's a reason I'm writing this at 2am..and it's not cause I work the night shift!! Katie
Yeah, I really think that the US needs better public transit. When I lived in Honolulu, Hawaii the public transit was much more advanced because it is a tourist town and there were busses everywhere. In the Bay Area the public transit sort of thins out once you get past San Francisco. San Francisco has a lot of public transit but the MUNI bus is kinda of scary and they rip you off on those trolleys. They did an investigative report of how bad some MUNI drivers are and the videos were frightening. I really like AC Transit, which serves the Alameda and Contra Costa counties, but I don't live there anymore. :(:(
I totally agree with all of the reasons you gave for using public transportation. Another advantage to using it is your company may reimburse you (like mine does) for your tickets. Or you can enroll in a program where they automatically deduct the cost of the ticket from your pre-tax dollars. But I liked reason #1 the best - people watching!
You know how much stuff is thrown away a week before date?
30 loafs of bread I found. I feed my son with it and I have a great job. I think people forget we are just animals wash it, eat it, be done with it.The only time I have had food poisoning was from arbys, and i paid for that food.
I wish all of the United States had good transportation like they do in Europe. When we lived there for a few years I loved taking the bus and train all over the place. Every few blocks you would see some sort of bus or train stop.
We've always done the 2nd hand phone thing, because I really hate having that contract hanging over me...but just last September, I realized I had been with Sprint for 6+ years, and if I got a contract, I could get a free phone and a cheaper price for a better plan, so I bit.
Prior to that I had been using my usual second hand phone, which still worked fine.
This past week, my DH's phone started to kind of fall apart. Money is tight, so I suggested he give my old phone a try. He called Sprint and was told that "the phone is too old to connect it."
But it wasn't in September!
Fortunately (or not), I've run into this before, and the trick is to find a Customer Service Rep who's been there for a few years, and has connected the older phones before. The instructions to connect the older phones aren't included in the how-to books any more, but the old-timer reps still know how to do it.
Viola, cheap phone....
When I lived in St. Louis, I worked just inside city limits and parking at my workplace was $30 a month, but then, about six months before I left, MetroLink passes were free. Both my home and work were within a few blocks of the MetroLink, and riding only took 15-20 minutes where driving took 10-15.
Quite frankly, compared to Europe, the public transportation in the US sucks big time. Seems like the government is more interested in building superhighways than develop a robust public transportation system.
Having lived in Germany and France for 4 years, I never had the need to purchase a car. Everything was so convenient, cheap and on-time. I just buy one monthly ticket and I can use the buses, trams, subways and trains.
I also lived in Illinois, and Georgia for 2 years, the public transpo downtown is ok. But unfortunately, I still need a car to go to most of the necessary places.
Gangbangers, drug dealers, and assorted criminals can hop on our trains and ride to and from the scene of the crime(s) for free since there are no pesky turnstiles or fare collectors to deal with. (There ARE fare inspectors but they are encountered rarely.)
The center of the local drug trade is conveniently located in our downtown free transit zone.
Not just one, but TWO shopping malls in the free zone!
Convenient "Park and Ride" lots allow you free parking close to home while you ride the train to work and car prowlers steal valuables from your car.
Riders get a better sense of just how much human flotsam and jetsam there is out there.
I usually just Google 'coupon code' and the merchant name. Retailmenot is often one of the top two or three site listed, but you can sometimes find other coupon codes on other sites.
Also, the firefox plugin uses an internal database that is updated weekly, so it doesn't track your browsing habits at all.
I too have come a fan of public transportation. Mostly, I decided to take the bus at least once a week because of the cost. I can ride the 42 miles to work for $1.25 each way. With the price of gas going up rapidly, I am definitely getting my money's worth - and I have lots of time to read!
Thanks for the post!
AAA gold card members get free passport pics anytime they need them.
Great post Linsey...you nailed a few of the gripes that I've had for some time. I personally despise all the ready-to-go meal kits that you mentioned...come on, are people really so busy they can't make a sandwich?? And all this fancy packaging these meals come in just go into the landfill...Grrrr