“Is Style Only for the Upper Class?” at The NYTimes.com

Q. While I always look at the section with interest, I sometimes can’t shake the feeling that Style is defined by any two of a writer’s friends with too much money and time on their hands. The “A Night Out With…” pieces, for instance, often suggest nightspots that most people couldn’t poke their noses in if they didn’t know the right people. Even some of the bylines of those articles reek of highfalutin-ness; how am I supposed to take an article seriously when it’s written “By Zo”? I don’t get the sense from your section that anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck has Style. Does “Style,” by definition, percolate downward from the upper class? And can it be affordable?

– John Dillon, New Haven

I didn’t care much for the NYT’s defensive answer. Here’s my take on it.

No. Style is not for the rich. It doesn’t have to be expensive. To me, style is different from fashion and it’s different from being trendy.

From Merriam Webster Online (one of my favorite reference sites):

Main Entry: 1style
Pronunciation: ’stI(-&)l
Function: noun

2 a : a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech) b : a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself ; also : a particular mode of living c : a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created, or performed

4 : a distinctive quality, form, or type of something

5 a : the state of being popular : FASHION b : fashionable elegance c : beauty, grace, or ease of manner or technique

I don’t care what the mortgage banker tells you when you’re signing the loan. Your payment is never fixed. Even if you fix the rate, the payment is going to fluctuate. Perhaps I suffer from a changing payment all the time because I keep my escrow balance as low as possible and I live in a state which changes the tax assessment yearly, but in the 2.5 years I’ve owned my apartment, the payment has changed at least twice. It’s annoying.

I got a notice from the bank this week. They want a little more for escrow and my payments are going up by about $22. It’s not a lot and all of that change is for escrow money, but it still stinks. I’m luckier than most since I’ll probably see a chunk of that money back as a property tax refund next year, but it does make me wonder if I should just apply for tax relief so the money doesn’t have to walk out the door in the first place. Unlike some banks, mine doesn’t let me collect interest on the escrow. If they did, I’d leave a bigger surplus in it!

So keep that in mind if you’re budgeting your mortgage. You may experience a change in the payment due to your property tax/escrow payment. Are you going to be able to absorb it? In Virginia, I pay it semi-annually in two chunks. I can expect that the bank will examine my escrow balances at least once a year and readjust my payment amount. Fortunately, I have been able the absorb the $15-25 marginal rise in payments, but it irritates me that it changes at all. The escrow payment used to be $62.42, now it’s $106.07. The only comfort is that the refund has gone up from $500.00 to $600.00 and still represents about half of my taxes.

I love a rising real estate market, but the correlated property tax increase stinks. Just for fun, I decided to look at some property listings for places closer to my office. (This is because I’ve been going to a friend’s house for lunch.) I know that I can’t afford to buy anything there because it’s very expensive, but I also know that the cost of renting a similar apartment out there wouldn’t be any cheaper than my mortgage and HOA fee. In fact, it would probably be a lot more because I’d have to pay extra for utilities and swanky amenities I won’t use. I don’t even think my car insurance would get any cheaper, which is where a lot of people find savings when they move out of the city to the suburbs. Nor do my state taxes since I’m still in the same state. (But moving from DC to VA certainly made a huge difference in that respect. Have you explored changing your tax jurisdictions to save money? Just a thought.)

Kirby & Kira both write about their micro-level spending. I know I have a problem with buying things with cash. But lately I’ve been doing the John D. Rockefeller thing and writing down all cash outlays into a little notebook. Doing so means that I spend less. I am so frickin’ lazy that I will skip buying something so I don’t have to pull out my dorky notebook. (It’s an expensive Moleskine, which I bought as a DIY gift for someone, but he found the lost thing I was trying to replace with the gift.)

(more…)

It’s time to admit it. I’m a math nerd. I was in AP Calc in high school. But my final grade was a D, does that count? I suppose being on the Physics Team means there’s not talking my way out of the math geek label.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. I’m not a huge baseball fan. But I do like keeping the book. It holds my interest in games. I like making a K for a strike out. I like making the backward K for the pitcher when he throws three strikes in a row. I’m still not good at keeping the book, but it’s fun to scribble on the sheet anyway.

Sabermetrics rocks my socks though. I was a crappy statistics student in college, but when there is some meaning behind the statistics, I go crazy. CDC infection rate stats, Labor and Census stats, everything. This my children is the reason I was a social science major. I’ll get someone to check the math for me, I’ll do the analysis.

Right now in my head I’m pondering math and using slicing and dicing of datasets for work in a similar manner to sabermetrics. (Sorry, but even the name is cool. It reminds me of champagne saberage!)

I use Quicken, and it’s possible to put that information into a spreadsheet. So I wonder if I have a tendency to spend more on the weekend on dining than I do during the week. Can I hold down my dinner expense if I have a bigger lunch? It’s crazy and I have no time for this, but I’m seriously contemplating doing this kind of analysis. I am sure there is a PF blogger out there who’s done this. I can’t possibly be the only one to think of this.

ps - I love Michael Lewis. Liar’s Poker was excellent. I like his writing style and I find his sense of the dramatic rather thrilling.

Hustler Money Blog has the latest Festival of Frugality available now.

The only one that really caught my eye today at first glance is from John at Queercents. Y’all know my greatest budget weakness is dining out. He points us at a really simple calculator so you can figure out the real, total cost of packing your lunch.

I should probably read all of them considering how *not* frugal I’ve been thinking lately.

Occaisionally I read really geeky sites like Slashdot, Boing Boing, and Kuro5hin. Recently I found a Slashdotted (you’ve arrived when you’ve become a *verb*) article about the rising price of corn and biofuel production. It’s kind of alarming.

I’m very interested in Terror-Free Oil and greater oil independence for our country. NPR had a story on it this week. I’m a big fan of biodiesel since I live close enough to the Pentagon gas station to buy it regularly. But in the back of my head, I’ve been a little worried about ethanol production in the US. I don’t have all the facts and I find what few facts I know to confuse me.

1) The US pays farmers not to farm to prop up agricultural prices.
2) Ethanol in the US is made with corn. In Brazil, sugar cane waste.
3) Corn is animal feed.
4) Corn is human feed.

I mentioned something about the problem of corn prices rising because of the supply of corn going to make ethanol and someone at work countered with fact #1. Basically he reassured me that I shouldn’t worry about a lack of supply of corn. In the case of Mexico, as cited in the article, that could actually present a problem though. I’m not reassured at all. If we start making this transition, we’re going to end up probably monocropping the entire American Midwest with corn.

Ever read about the Irish Potato Blight and the ensuing famine it caused? Potatoes turned bad overnight in the ground. I don’t want to be chicken little here. But I think we should tread carefully and try to consume less oil overall instead of trying to figure out how to expand the supply and potentially jeoparodize our food supply. (What would I do without tasty corn-fed, feed-lot beef?)

Please don’t make me connect the dots to personal finance. I’m not sure what the configuration is just yet.

First, read this excerpt from the front page of Zecco on Monday night, 2/12, 10pm EST.

Ok this totally bothers me. They put this little tidbit on the home page of their website, generating buzz about a stock by what their users are trading via their website. I find that really sketchy. I am not actively investing in stocks directly, but if I was trading on stocks because of their volume or with a lemming mentality, “Everyone else is doing it”, seems like a piss-poor way to beat the market.

I’m not a fan of Value Investing like George (of FatPitch Financials) is, primarily because I don’t know anything about that method. But I’m going to guess that Value Investing has some due diligence behind it, rather than a herd mentality. I see stuff like this and it makes me turn into a contrarian b*tch and I want to short this stock now, even though I never do that sort of thing.

The other thing bothering me about it is that I work in the telecom industry and about once a month in 2006, Level 3 was buying somebody. When I worked for a telecom software vendor, we had about 15 clients. I think Level 3 ended up buying 2 or 3 of them last year. For some reason the ticker JDSU and TYCO keep flashing in my head. Growth through rampant acquisition seems like not such a very good idea at first glance.

I’m not knocking you if you recently bought Level3. I’m sure they have many good qualities as a company and investment. (I don’t really pay attention to my industry as a whole. If I owned any telco stocks, it’s because I’m invested in a fund where the fund manager picked it.) I’m just saying that I’d be careful about ‘buzz’ and what you read about a stock. Do your research. After all, it’s your money and it’s your money to lose.

2Million has it the newest Carnival of Personal Finance available now.

I must say that I love the new hosts of carnivals and festivals. Participating is so important because I can’t visit everything and I count on hosts to spotlight what’s worthwhile reading. Plus if you are a new blogger and you never host one, then I may never get around to visiting you. Please participate as a host!

Cameron at Beating the Joneses on using an envelope system for budgeting. A lot of the comments are about using envelopes over Quicken to do your budgeting. I may have something to say about this soon since I’ve been doing the Mandatory Cash Option.

Kay at one of my favorite PF blogs, Don’t Mess with Taxes tells us that some companies allow you to use up your Medical FSA from the previous year until March 15th! WOO! My company doesn’t do this. I have the standard December 31 cut off date, but if you have Medical FSA funds, you may wish to look into this option. Kay’s got more specifics and points to another article I’ll be reading about lowering your income by increasing your medical expense deductions!

I’d never thought I’d say this, but I want a copy of the 2007 Ernst & Young Tax Guide. George at Fat Pitch Financials pulls out some tidbits that you might find useful. If anyone local wants to share a copy with me, leave me a comment. My taxes are going to be a little complicated this time.

Five Cent Nickel on 10 Things You Should Do to Cover Your Assets. I can’t stress that enough. After last year’s stressful time reading about durable medical power of attorney at a time when my dad was being wheeled into surgery, I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE everyone to think about this now before it literally becomes a life and death moment. Please, also take the time to find out what ‘extraordinary measures’ are and whether or not you want them. It’s not like what you see on ER or any medical TV show. There are further realities than the 3 minute scene you see on TV. The good people who take care of us in hospitals think that trying to save your life is worth more than 3 minutes of their time, ok? So don’t think you know everything about an end of life scenario because you watch that infernal box called a TV set.

Ok, after writing that last paragraph, I’m extremely verklempt. I can’t write any further. I really stress for anybody reading this that you take a moment and think about what you want done with your life, body, children and finances should something dire occur to you. I’m talking about organ donation, burial or cremation, etc. Think about it now while you are healthy and not when you are sick. Talk to your family about it now while you are not in need of these things. Like I said before, the time to plan is when there is no emergency. Same thing here.

I’m not really worried because of my heating bill. That’s all paid for by the HOA at my condo. I do turn down the heat to 50 when I leave the house and crank it up to 70 when I get home. (Usually around 10pm. It still feels really cold and I’m wearing three layers, socks and a wool shawl.)

I tend to check over my clothes before I throw them into the hamper. This week I noticed that my beloved silk thermal tights have runs in them. I guess I haven’t been checking my clothes frequently enough. The runs have been in there for a while and they’re destroying my tights to the point they can’t be repaired.

What does this mean? I think this means I have to take a trip to REI to buy a new pair. CRUD. I need it to get warmer so I can wait till next winter to get a pair. Or I could wait till some relatives visit from Korea and bring me a new set. When I was a kid, they’d always bring me long johns printed with Hello Kitty or flowers. I remember those really well because they were super thick, but not fuzzy on the inside the way sweatpants are. And they’d make me walk stiffly because they would change the fit of my pants and I would waddle outside to sled with my warm clothes.

UPDATE: I drafted this post a few days ago. While I was out on Saturday night, it was bitter cold again. I passed up ice skating at Pentagon City, and my friend and I ducked into Hudson Trading Outfitters so he could pick up his new hiking boots. I used the opportunity to buy a pair of Patagonia Capilene thermals. The wool pair were double in price, but Patagonia recycles the capilene stuff, so I figured I was ok to buy them. I really have an aversion to buying synthetic non-biodegradable fabrics, but the price point was so much better and the recycling angle appeals to the tree hugger in me. So $44 over $82. (But I wish my Lands’ End silk thermals had lasted longer. They had a good run for 10 years. Get it?)

I just submitted for the upcoming Festival of Frugality, but I see they need more hosts.

Since I’m hosting the CoPF in early March, I probably won’t host till April.

I don’t always participate, but I’m feeling the need to tighten the belt right now so I expect I’ll be writing more about being frugal soon. (Even if it’s not Festival-worthy.)