Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Classes for volunteers are October 11th and 18th this year. It’s about 8-hours a day for two Saturdays. They would like a 30-hour commitment out of each volunteer. I’ve been doing it for the last few months and I’ve learned a lot about myself, financial management and where to get local help for a variety of issues when you have little to no income.

There are a lot of ways to volunteer!

1. Teach the federally mandated financial counseling course for bankruptcy filers.
2. One-on-One financial counseling/training for individuals and families.
3. Organize financial literacy games for kids.
4. Help out with seminar courses offered.

Contact Jennifer Abel at jabel at vt dot edu.

1. My old company’s 401k plan finally rebounded back to $24K this week. It’s bad that I haven’t rolled the funds over, but I like the international funds available to me there. I think I will wait a bit longer to do the rollover though since I’d like the balance to rebound back up to about $27K before rolling over. (I prefer to sell and move the cash. Then I can reallocate.)

2. I think I’m going to donate $100 each to Doctors Without Borders for Myanmar and China as a one-time donation. My company is doing a matching donation, and gratefully, no one in our China division has been directly effected by the earthquake.

3. The awesome Thai restaurant near my house will substitute tofu in my favorite curry. I swear, I opened the box and it looked just like chicken. The texture was different, but I needed the visual illusion last night. I *almost* ordered meat for dinner, but I’m still trying to eat meat only once a day.

4. I had lunch for $1.05 on Monday. That was for a small soda at McDonald’s. For some reason, boyfriend got some free chicken sandwich coupons in the mail. All I had to do was walk into a store with the coupon and redeem. Very easy. I have one coupon left for a breakfast sandwich. I’ve had them before. They’re really greasy so I’m not sure I will get one, but it’s nice to know I have a freebie if I’m hungry. Maybe I’ll give it to the next homeless guy I see.

I had something pulled together a little while ago that was Arlington-focused, but after an WAMU (local NPR affiliate) story this morning, I wanted to pull together a regional list. If I have left any off here, I am sorry. Please let me know in the comments and I will try to update them when I return from vacation.

It breaks my heart to hear that people are hungry in the US. 200+ years of democracy and we still can’t feed our people.

Some of these require a referral by a social services agency. Others restrict the number of visits you can make. Please call to find out the hours and ask what kind of services they provide. Different agencies give out different amounts of food too.

Virginia Social Services Agency
Maryland Social Services
DC Department of Human Services

This list is not in any special order because some agencies serve more than one jurisdiction. They are open to donations of all kinds so if you are inclined, please consider a donation.

Capital Area Food Bank
645 Taylor Street, NE, Washington, DC 20017
(202)526-5344

6833 Hill Park Drive, Lorton, VA 22079
(703)541-3063

Bread for the City
1525 Seventh Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001
(202) 265-2400

1640 Good Hope Road, SE, Washington, DC 20020
(202) 561-8587

Food for Others
2938 Prosperity Ave, Fairfax, VA 22031
(703) 207-9173

St. George’s Episcopal Church
915 N Oakland St, Arlington, VA 22203-1916
(703) 525-8286

Our Lady Queen of Peace
2700 South 19th Street, Arlington, Virginia, 22204
(703) 979-5580

Grace Episcopal Church
3601 Russell Road, Alexandria, Virginia 22305-1731
(703) 549-1980

Our Daily Bread
10777 Main Street #320, Fairfax, VA 22030
(703) 273-8829
info@ODBfairfax.org

Loudoun Interfaith Relief
213 South King Street, Leesburg, VA 20175
(703) 777-5911

ACTS Food Pantry/Potomac Food Bank
3900 ACTS Lane, Dumfries, VA 22026
(703) 441-8606

Manna Food Center
614 Lofstrand Lane, Rockville, MD 20850
(301) 424-1130
info@mannafood.org

Whitman-Walker Clinic: Food Bank (For HIV/AIDS positive clients only)
1816 14th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20009
(202) 797-3574 - more

Oxon Hill Food Pantry
4915 Saint Barnabas Road, Temple Hills, MD
(301) 899-8358

Christian Community Presbyterian Church
3120 Belair Drive, Bowie MD, 20715
(301) 262-6765
info@bowiefoodpantry.org

Howard County Food Bank
c/o Howard County Community Action Council
8920 Route 108, Columbia, Maryland 21045
(410) 313-6185

Anne Arundel County Food Bank
List of recipient service agencies

My company is kind of funny. The Red Cross is not usually on its approved charity list, however due to the recent disasters in China and Myanmar, they’ve approved donations to several relief organizations like the Red Cross and World Vision.

I live within blocks of the Red Cross and boyfriend lives within blocks of World Vision. It’s funny that way in DC. There’s a lot of non-profits around here. I could choose simply on the basis of who as offices closest to me.

Right now, my company will allow me to assign a one-time or ongoing paycheck deduction. I’m not sure what to do here. I could take my tax refund and send the money upfront. Or I could send a sustaining ongoing paycheck deduction for the rest of 2008.

The other thing is that the codes are divided between China and Myanmar, instead of general relief funds. I am torn. I don’t identify with south Asians at all. Being Korean, and actually KNOWING people from Sichuan, I’m inclined to give all my money to the China fund. But because of the political situation in Myanmar, I am afraid they will be forgotten if I don’t send money to them now. (Plus a friend of mine who serves on an international g33k charity has actually met Aung San Suu Kyi with only good things to say about her, and I admire her greatly for her efforts to bring freedom to Myanmar.)

Right now I am quietly giving $25 a month to a US charity doing local work. That won’t change. But the questions for me now are:

1. One country relief fund or two?
2. One-time donation or ongoing?
3. How much?
4. Which organization?

I’m spolied and I’m not inclined to give till it hurts. But I did get my federal tax refund last Friday and eventually a stimulus payment will arrive. I’m trying to balance out my desires to give with my desire to pay for the remodel and pay off a credit card. But then again, since this is coming out of a paycheck yet to come, it’s not even money I’ll see if I let them take it from me before I get paid.

I know I can talk myself into anything. In the process of writing this post, I answered question #1. Definitely two country relief funds. But now I need to decide between Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross. If I do the MSF one, can I enter into Yarn Harlot’s Knitters Without Borders annual donation drive? (Terriblly selfish thought, I know.)

Most of my knitter friends are not young hipsters who rock out. They’re mostly moms with kids who are edging towards college admissions and retirement. One of them has had breast cancer on and off the last few years. She’s doing her third round of chemo now. It’s spread to her bones. I’m really worried about her.

I bring this up now because one of my favorite under the radar blogs disclosed her breast cancer diagnosis at the end of 2007, but I’m only just catching up on it now. I’m totally freaked out since she’s way way cool and I can only aspire. At any rate, I hope both of these women get better soon.

A third very dear friend of mine is having weird breast issues. Strange discharges and lumps, but nothing cancerous. So far, it’s all benign. But she’s way too young. (Under 35 for pete’s sake!)

Get involved with your money, your feet, or your mouse-click:
Sponsor someone who’s doing a Breast Cancer Walk.
Do a Breast Cancer Walk. (The Walk links are different. The second one I suggest you do, is actually a 2-day walk vs a 3-day one.)
Go to the Breast Cancer Site and click the button.
Encourage NIH funding of cancer research. (All kinds please.)
Support the American Cancer Society. (Jump-A-Thon anyone?)
Knit a Chemo Cap and donate to a hospital.
Make a some meals and spend some time with a friend who has cancer. (Chemo makes you very tired.)

For entertainment: A woman dyed her dog pink to promote cancer awareness and was fined for it. Awesome! Free press for the cause! How’s that for awareness raising?

Finally, if you are a woman, do your monthly exams. Early detection can save your life. Yes, that means you have to check all the way into your armpits and your under neck lymph nodes too.

(I’m actually thinking about doing the 5K run in DC in June because I’m getting so damned fat.)

If you have a spare pair of eyeglasses, please consider donating it to this exhibition in London.

Most of my prep school friends were Jewish and a few of them had family members who were Holocaust survivors. It would mean a very lot to me.

I think this would be a fitting way to get rid of my last pair after my eye surgery is completed. So far so good. My final pre-op exam was on a spare day off and I am still looking at three days off for surgery and recovery. I’m excited.

Since I’m largely in training this week, I am in class and off the computers. I don’t even have time to check email as I wasn’t even issued a computer till the second day of training and I have a house guest from Seattle for a few days. (The host of the omakaze dinner at Mashiko. Of course we went to a sushi dinner! It was pricey but we also had happy hour 99 cent single pieces of nigiri. I might have to blog about that.)

N.B. I wrote this post ages ago. But the co-worker mentioned in the article still needles me with her attitude. Also, small disclaimer, I have a friend who is a Gates Scholar in the UK right now. I totally forgot that it might color my perception of the Gates Foundation. But she was really cool even before she got it.

Dunno if you can read this article about Vinod Kholsa’s efforts in microfinancing in India from the NYTimes, but there seems to always be this impression that the industrial tycoons of the modern age are all horrible people and they only give money out to burnish their image. [I personally think Vinod Khosla rocks. But then again, I think Sun Microsystems computers are pretty cool stuff and yes, this is an official endorsement of their products by Mapgirl. Watch their stock go pop right now on that endorsement. hahaha. SO NOT HAPPENING.]

I admit, guys like Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers and Conrad Black don’t help. But I ran into an interesting attitude the other day. I’m not sure if it was about money or race or both. But an African-American woman at work was telling me she was getting all verklempt over the TV program about Oprah Winfrey’s new school project in South Africa. She should have stopped there but someone mentions Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s charitable efforts and the woman starts saying something that was tantamount to ‘those two old white men don’t do anything for minorities.’ I found her attitude shocking. The co-worker who mentioned them and I started to tell her that rather than help 500 girls, the Gates Foundation was trying to help every single person in the world by creating new vaccines so they didn’t have to die of TB, malaria, cervical cancer or HIV. 500 or entire continents of people? Hm…. Sounds like both are worthy endeavors.

I would truly like to believe the PR spin all three celebrities have for their good works. I honestly think that they are doing great things with their wealth out of a genuine humanitarian concern for the world. I don’t think this is an Andrew Carnegie type operation that’s only about spin after the Homestead Riots. I think Oprah, Bill/Melinda, and Warren are the real deal.

I know there’s some bad apples in the barrel of the wealthy. But I don’t write off anyone who is willing to try and save the world. Even if he’s silly and wears sunglasses indoors all the time and his music is overproduced crap these days. Oops. Did I write that out loud?

Having money isn’t horrible. It what you do with it.

[Welcome readers of REDDIT! I got tagged on Sunday.]

My heart goes out to Southern California and the victims of the wildfires in and around San Diego. A very dear friend of mine lost his former monastery home to the fires. He doesn’t live there any more, but many of my friends have visited there and they lost a small flock of milk goats and some other livestock to the fire. It makes me very sad to hear how many animals they lost.

If you are interested, Nick is hosting a challenge for the American Red Cross. He’s matching donations, so please take him up on it. I myself will be making a donation as my company is matching donations to the American Red Cross as well. Our San Diego office was closed for almost a week, but thankfully no one working for us lost their homes.

Now, onto the title of this post. I know two people who have lost everything to a fire and let these stories be a cautionary tale for you.

Story #1:
My high school Latin teacher went back to Berkeley to finish her PhD. In 1991, there was a major wildfire in the hills of Oakland where she lived. (Oakland is just south of Berkeley and the rents are often cheaper there.) Many years later, I had a chance to see my former teacher again and speak to her about her experience. It still made her verklempt. She lost everything except the clothes on her back, her car, and her dissertation on diskettes. Her cat, her books, everything. Gone. She was on the verge of tears telling me this. I believe from things she said, that she got a FEMA payment, but no renter’s insurance.

Story #2:
Former co-worker of mine goes out for St. Patrick’s Day. He gets sloshed and stays overnight at his girlfriend’s house. He returns the next morning to find the fire department cordoning off his house. They are finishing up putting out a fire there. It’s burned to the ground. His roommates are thankfully alive. My co-worker has fire insurance but his roommates do not. My co-worker is able to document the fancy schmancy suits he wore to his old firm and get replacement cost for them. He’s got enough money to buy himself a condo and marry that girlfriend.

Many times on NPR last week, I heard how the renters lost everything and didn’t have insurance. I am surprised because it costs so little most of the time. Insuring my condo costs me less than $250 a year because I don’t have exceptional riders or additional umbrella policies. (Check that net worth. It’s not worth it yet.)

Please, as the winter season starts, please look into getting renter’s insurance if you do not have it already. This is especially a concern if you are using a kerosene heater.

As we head into the holiday season and enjoy today’s holiday of gluttony, I just wanted to take a moment and reflect on the abundance in my life.

During my regular knitting gathering this week, we were talking about S.A.B.L.E., Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. For those of you who don’t knit, ’stash’ is your yarn stash from which you can pull to make projects. It’s your warehouse of yarn. For many women, building stash is a comfort. It’s saving yarn for use in the future, like a quick knit baby sweater when you don’t have time that week to run to the store to buy a baby shower gift or pick up a specific baby yarn. For other women, it’s just plain old hoarding out the wazoo.

In 2007, I’ve purchased very little in the way of new craft items. I think I’ve spent less than $150, whereas I might spend $400 in a typical year. Last year I realized that I needed to stop buying yarns and fiber because I spend a lot of time blogging and no longer craft like I did before starting MFC. My stash is overtaking my small apartment.

One of the knitters, Lanea, is on a book buying moratorium this year because she realized that she and her husband have way too many unread books in the house. I know that I could read every book I have in the house and not buy a new one for at least 2 or 3 years, if not more. And that doesn’t include what’s still at my mom and dad’s house. That’s probably another 2 years’ worth of books.

A friend called me one night recently and I started to futz around and clean up my closet. Ostensibly, I was looking for my sweaters since we had our first hard frost of the season on Monday night. But really I was culling my clothing. A storage box of sweaters turns into a box of t-shirts and shorts for the winter and that means a quick inspection of my drawers and closet racks for things that can be donated to Goodwill. I realize that I have lots of spiffy clothes for work, but I was choosing not to wear the silk shirts and sweaters because I didn’t want to spend the money to dry clean them. And yet, I am loathe to get rid of them. Finding them was finding a new wardrobe for work. What is the cost of cleaning them when it saves me money on buying new clothes?

My friend on the phone asked me how many pairs of shoes I had. I thought this was a trap because he’s a guy and I’ve been accused of being Imelda Marcos. But I felt better when I guessed 30-40 and he said he had the same. (I am now going to have to inventory them for my own satisfaction.) As I told him my guess, I was staring at a pair of boots, thinking of the Baby Phat pair that Single Ma wants. My boots are old and out of style, but they’re still in reasonable condition. They will last me another year. Frumperella isn’t going to mind since these boots won’t turn into shoeboxes at midnight.

If you look around your life will you find what you need within the possessions you have? Think about that because at its core is an assumption that you can discern your needs and wants and separate them like sheep from goats. Do you have unacknowledged abundance in your life? Will finding it help you re-prioritize your spending in the next month?

During the winter season there’s all kinds of propaganda about peace on earth and goodwill towards man. There’s pap about transcending material things and putting other people first. It’s all b.s. since everyone goes into a gift buying frenzy. Everything seems like such a damned good deal so it’s ok to spend on yourself a little while you spend on everyone else. But that’s a false correlation. It’s not ok to spend on yourself if it’s going to break your shopping budget.

If you think before you shop about what you really have in your life, you will see that you probably have plenty. I write about material things, but I know the same principle of hidden abundance counts for immaterial things as well. I have my life, my family, my supportive friends. For the first time in many years, I can say have good oral health. My cup runneth over and I didn’t even know it till I stopped to think about it.

We have met our goal of $2000 thanks to 18 generous donors. We are solidly in 5th place for the topical blog leaderboard, and 19th overall. I hope just by being on the list, people see us and become interested in personal finance. If nothing else so there’s more money left for philanthropy.

So, even though we’ve met our goal, can we catch up to Ralph Answang’s photography site? He’s got a few high dollar donors, but seriously, I think we could overtake his #4 ranking before the end of the month. WHO’S WITH ME? (Please Lord don’t let this be a repeat of Jerry Maguire. Renee Zellweger is cute and all, but I can’t take chirping crickets.)

There’s one more payday left this month. Can you squeeze out $5 from it to help some kids?

BTW, I did get an electronic thank you note from the teacher whose project I helped. It does make you feel good to know the money is going to good use.