Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

One of my more popular posts is about a former co-worker who lost everything in a rental fire on St. Patrick’s Day.

Well, insurance is back on deck as today’s topic because last evening there was a fire and boyfriend had to call 911 and knock on doors to make sure some neighbors got out of their houses. Four houses in a row were lost, possibly some pets as well.

Last night a boarding up crew was out. I could hear their saws ripping through plywood as I went to sleep. All I could think about when I saw the fire engines was if the Red Cross was out to help the residents and hoping the residents had some insurance coverage.

If you haven’t done so already, review your insurance policies for 2008. Did you buy anything new of high value in the past year? Did you have a life changing event? Are you renting? Can you buy more coverage? Is your car old enough to warrant a change in policy? What’s your commute like? Longer or shorter? Are you carpooling?

I feel particularly sad for the young woman who is clearly house-proud. She was out with her parents earlier this spring planting and re-mulching her front garden. She obviously just bought the place because she’s sprucing it up so much. I also feel pretty bad for the lady boyfriend rescued. She answered his knock on the door and he convinced her to get out. She was house- and petsitting. She saw the smoke through the wall and was looking for the cats when he knocked. He had to plead with her to leave the cats behind and make sure she was safe first. Then there’s the lady in another house with lots of little dogs to keep her company.

The Fire Department was still out there this morning to ensure the hotspots were out.

After the shooting in the neighborhood a few weeks ago, I think the neighbors are slightly shell-shocked today.

Free Money Finance coincidentally posted an article on shorter commutes by Penelope Trunk, on the same day I said that a shorter commute is one reason why I switched jobs.

So if you have a bad commute, you are probably not very happy. And you should know that a bad commute spills over into all aspects of your life. Raymond Novaco, a psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, found that bad traffic on the way home makes for a bad mood in the evening. This is true regardless of age, gender, income, and job satisfaction.

This was very true for me. I spent the last few months struggling with my office relocation so I could make it to hockey games on time or other events downtown. DC PF Blogger happy hour planning has been a b*tch to say the least. But it’ll be a lot easier with my new gig.

Honestly, I like to be prompt when meeting friends or going to an event. I know most of the times I am late to something it’s because either I didn’t want to go or traffic. It’s rarely anything else. I have the worst road rage feelings in my car on my way in and out of work. It makes me feel ugly and I find it very hard to unwind. I don’t want to talk to anyone for about 15 minutes after arrival. I need to rest alone, or sulk in my beer a few feet away till I’m ready to perk up.

People are very rude non-signalers in the DC area. They also drive faster than I like. Since I like to drive fast, this is really bad. If I’m going 70 mph already, I’m being passed as a slow poke at 80-90 mph. I move out of the fast lane all the time for some yahoo going crazy faster than me.

Truthfully, I think my commute in terms of time will be about the same because of overflowing buses, but I will get enjoyable activities back like walking (in the SNOW. Ok. That’s a yuck, but a winter hike can be fun!), reading, listening to music. Reading is a big thing to me and I am psyched that the bus will drop me off 2 blocks away from the library and I can hoof it home the rest of the way with a New Arrival. I love reading and I am excited to put the library back into my schedule.

Think about the cost of your commute in terms of dollars and psychic dollars. I know I’m saving money on gas, tolls and insurance by switching to the bus (which is potentially reimburseable). I cannot wait to knock down my car insurance to ‘pleasure’ insurance!

Some are new. Some are old. Mostly stuff I read this week and thought was good.

Bluebird at Hedonic Adjustment writes about the genius of Ben Stein, asking the same question I’ve always wondered as well. But I do agree with Mr. Stein that Taco Bell’s Taco Supremes are very good. Every once in a while I crave a crunchy taco and nothing but a Taco Supreme will do.

Wine tips for your Turkey feast! Kojo is a great radio host. I could listen to his voice every day.

Holiday Stress relief! This is a pretty good list. What works for you? For me, I break out the spinning wheel, turn on old archives of The Diane Rehm Show or the Kojo Nnamdi Show.

A horrifying article about health care policyholders being dropped in the name of bonuses. A sensationalized one-sentence summary, but it’s not that far off. The original post is called “Greedy Enough to Make You Sick”. Thanks Financial Armageddon!

SingleMa shares her awesome news. I am so proud of her. She’s an inspiration!

Madame X, ah, reveals TMI.

If you can stomach another article after that (I’m still shuddering), try reading about The Ethicist and the adviced doled out to a child who thinks they should get a bigger share of their parents’ assets because their sibling gets more now. Is your family as complicated as this? Is a perception of equity a big deal to you? It is to me, but at the same time, I don’t think there will be anything left to divide. What matters more? Being loved equally by your parents or economically subsidized? Are they the same thing to you?

As a lapsed Catholic, I’m all about true confessions. CleverDude encourages you to stop hiding your secret! Two weeks ago I went to the PostSecret book signing in Bethesda and I had an opportunity to meet the artist and facilitator. (Thanks ~Dawn! I found the event through your repost.) He mentioned several times that debt is a big crippling secret people keep.

Alrighty. That’s enough for now. I’ve been working hard on a programming project and I have to thank Commenter Dean a lot for the tip he offered yesterday. I flat out told him I was stumped and he served up something on the fly.

[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.

Greetings!

It’s that time of year again. Open Enrollment. I dread it because it means lots of changes to insurance. Make sure you gear up and make some time in your schedule to attend an Open Enrollment session by your HR department. It could save you a lot of money.

This year, I got a lovely canned email from the CEO telling me that he’s in the High Deductible Plan and that new for 2008, our company will double its contribution to your the Health Savings Account. Fab. What’s the incentive? Who cares? Well along with those changes, I will now have to pay more for my PPO plan.

I’m seriously considering the change since I didn’t have much medical stuff happen to me this year. However, I do want to wait until I run the numbers and see what this is really going to cost me. There are some other benefits like more generic drugs in the formulary will be cheaper in the High Deductible Plan, which is good. I paid a lot for Augmentin in 2006. It was going to $70 bucks because I forgot my prescription card. When I went back with it, instead of being $5, it was a $15 prescription. So I presume if I need heavy antibiotics again, I’d be paying $5 for the Augmentin under the high deductible plan. Of course, I would hate to be sick again. (Whimpering in pain. If that is what Lyme disease is like, NO THANK YOU.)

Yeah, if you’ve ever wondered why I don’t write about HSA’s, it’s because I don’t have one. I use a FSA instead.

Tomorrow: 401k Plan Changes!

Hat tip to Rob for pointing this article out. It’s been a work-focused week for me and I’m not generating enough story ideas on my own.

The Wall Street Journal Online has a short story about American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. and Freddie Mac.

In documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Freddie Mac said it seized $7 million that homeowners sent to American Home to cover principal and interest payments, property taxes and insurance just before the company’s Aug. 6 collapse. American Home quit making payments to tax authorities and insurance companies Aug. 24….In an interview last week, Ginnie Mae’s senior vice president, Theodore B. Foster, said Ginnie Mae had seized from American Home some of the insurance and tax payments collected from homeowners. “What’s occurred is that we have the money, but AHM hasn’t been able to or willing to pay the taxes and insurance, and they have the loan records,” Mr. Foster said. “Therefore, we don’t know who to pay, and we don’t know how much.”

This is very bad.

1) If you are a borrower of AHM, you may be delinquent on your property taxes because they aren’t paying them through your escrow account. Try to find out what you owe the county by going directly to your Tax Assessor’s office and paying the bill. Same goes for your home insurance or PMI. (I couldn’t figure out what kind of ‘insurance’ was meant by the article.)

2) If you don’t, your local government may seize your property and auction it off at a tax foreclosure sale, even if you are paying your mortgage on time. It’s better here to actually over pay your taxes because at least the county can’t come and get you.

When Rob first sent me this, all I could think was that this doesn’t effect me directly. I don’t have AHM. I don’t own stock in Freddie Mac. (I digress for a deep irony, my friend works for Freddie and he lives out of his van! He’s literally homeless! LOL! By choice. “Strictly by choice.” - Say Anything)

However, the greater implications really frighten me. County governments could have short falls in revenue. It could be a sign of a recession coming. Rising homelessness. Not fun. I have vague memories of the recession of the early ’80’s and I don’t relish the thought of tough times ahead.

So this week, some congressmen decided to introduce some legislation for dental heath care for Medicare patients, particularly through S-CHIP. That’s wonderful. Unfortunately, my dental plan really sucks. If I am going to get any more work done, I am going to have to find another job for dental insurance.

You think I am kidding, but I just got denied about $3000 in charges from the dental insurer. So I have to pay about $2900.00. But I have depleted all of my savings and will have to break all of my CD’s. That’s what an emergency fund is for, right?

Um, I’m not so sure. I’ve been a bit of a spendthrift this summer and I am going to have to chalk up the money from somehwere. A goodly portion of it will come out of my FSA funds, luckily. But I only have about $900 left since the initial $3K also came out of FSA. The total surgery was about $6K this year. I am saving the maximum $5K in my Medical Flexible Spending Account, but I have some other stuff like eyeglasses that also deplete those funds.

I have to do some serious scrambling here. I will be fine. I just shake my fist at myself and remind myself that I shouldn’t have slacked off on the saving. I think I’m going to have to tell my mom that she can’t have my bonus next year for her house project. The more I think about it, the more I want to keep the money as an emergency fund.

But the good news is that if I decide to skip my wishes for laser eye surgery, I won’t have to save $5K in FSA next year. *sigh* Forgoing my wish to have all my major medical conditions permanently resolved really stinks, but I am going to have to wait two more years. Crud. If I do that, the surgery no longer becomes cost effective and I’ll have to ride around with prescription eyewear.

Remember kids: FLOSS. FLOSS. FLOSS.

Greetings! Sorry for the late post, but I had to come home on short notice. Some how ‘perforated eardrum’ doesn’t translate well in Korean and I couldn’t understand how serious my mom’s operation was going to be till she told me that some funky gunk was running out of her ear. Anyhow, she’s fine, but I’ve been running all over town today helping out. Not sure what posting will be like this week.

But I digress! Onward to the 114th Carnival of Personal Finance. Trent did a bang up job with his intro to the Carnival and his editor’s picks. It takes a really long time for hosts to read all the submissions and bother with highlighting the best of the week. It’s hard work on the eyeballs to read lots and lots of posts in the last remaining hours of the deadline.

Sorry, I had to state the obvious and remind folks that we PF bloggers are for the most part only bloggers and not personal finance/investment professionals.

The first listed editor’s pick, is great. It’s from a relatively new blogger, Chica with Issues. You’ll figure out why when you read her post about educating her younger brother about money matters. She feels it’s her role to do it since her folks didn’t teach her much. She rocks for learning by the seat of her pants, but trying to save her brother from the same hard lessons. My older sibling and cousins did a lot to teach me how the world of money works and I am really grateful to them for it.

I’m picking NoCreditNeeded’s buying decision flowchart over his actual carnival submission. It really is amazing to see each step of the logical thinking process. If you aren’t asking yourself ‘Do I need this item?’ at the beginning of a purchase cycle, think again!

Queercents’ Sleeping with Money series is great. This week it’s “You did WHAT with our money?” And how to have that confrontation with a minimum of pain and suffering. The conflict resolution advice is excellent for any fight, not just about money. Boy is it good for me to remember that and to STFU when my boyfriend is expressing himself.

Golbguru on the Weight of Stolen Money. Intriguing. It reminds me of Suze Orman’s 9 Habits to Financial Freedom. It’s the small things that mold us into the human beings we are. D at Divorce to Financial Freedom unburdens herself for us in response. Very thought provoking of Golbguru. Blogs can be so cathartic.

Being Frugal blog on buying health insurance independently. It just sounds like a lot of work, however the post implies there is great savings to be had and a wide variety in levels of coverage, so this is one area where doing the research seems like excellent advice.

Harrison at Journey to Financial Freedom writes his steps to getting out of debt. Some of the steps are interlaced with personal stories. I really like tip #5, “Outsource your problem”, or acting as a third party. I run a side personal organizing business and one of my clients called me to help his folks with their finances. Just by sitting down with a stranger and looking at the numbers, it helped wake them up to reality. It’s why I think that Larry Winget show could be really cool. (I only saw half of an episode, but it was interesting.)

The Finance Buff on what will happen if your mortgage lender goes under. Interesting information and probably useful for people in today’s uncertain market. The good news is that your loan is a contract which shouldn’t be effected too much. But you’re probably going to write and mail your checks to a different place. (This reminds me to call a friend of mine at Countrywide. I hope she doesn’t get RIF’d into a new line of work. Lucky we’re both computer geeks and not mortgage people. So she’ll land ok.)

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity on using Lending Tree to find a mortgage. The comments are very interesting stuff and it looks like I did the right thing by shopping around at individual banks versus going to a broker.

JD of Get Rich Slowly has the 105th Carnival of Personal Finance available now. He’s done it DJ-style. “Stacks of tracks on tons of wax, etc.” I think I can almost hear Casey Kasem.

Madame X at My Open Wallet with Who Do You Think You Are? I’m serious. I think I can hear the song play when I read that title. Anyone else remember it? “A star?”

Accumulating Money has a really fascinating post about buying experiences over things. I suppose this is one reason why I don’t own a TV. It forces me to do things I want to be doing like hobbies and chores.

Mighty Bargain Hunter explains exactly how being disorganized costs you money. If you’ve never been able to see the direct connection, he lays it all out for you and invites commenters to leave more.

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has chosen his post Money isn’t everything and it isn’t you.

The Sun’s Financial Diary on opening a T-Bill account with Treasury Direct. He references Jonathan at My Money Blog, but I actually think you have to read Jonathan’s T-bill category for truly complete information.

Wealth Building Lessons on Canadian Royalty Trusts or “Canroys”, one way our northern neighbors save. It’s like an industry mutual fund, similar to an REIT.

SFOrdinaryGirl, my recent guest blogger, claims her best post is Giving Old Clothes a Second Chance. Pretty good advice since I’m about to go through my closet soon.

Clever Dudette with the famous packing your lunch post. This was put up on a high traffic website and has generated a lot of comments about lunch ideas. I highly recommend reading through all of them.

Five Cent Nickel says his best post is Ten Simple Ways to Cover Your Ass(ets). I agree! This is one of the best posts I’ve seen at his blog, but certainly not the only one. I definitely think you should take the long view on planning, and contingency planning like this is very important, especially if you have kids (say like, 4 boys).

A new blogger, Grace, at GRACEful Retirement only has 8 posts, but I do like this one on Special Needs Trusts. As many of you know, I’ve thought about something like this for my cousin. This might be the advice I’ve been looking for.

GolbGuru at the Tao of Making Money says his boss is lame, er, no. He writes about sharing knowledge about paying bills and investing. Though many couples decide on a division of labor, perhaps that’s not the wisest route. This is the only “couples” post I put on my list since most of them don’t apply to me. However, I watched my parents divide this labor and I think my dad is a disaster with money, so I agree a lot with the advice.

WOW. 104. I should only hope to live that long. But eh, maybe not.

The 104th Carnival of Personal Finance is available at Getting Green. Matt is a pretty snappy guy and he’s doing it minimalist style. It’s nearly Zen with the soft green/grey theme. I can almost hear the trickling water and the lotus flowers floating by.

Yours truly has participated with a post about Investment Clubs.

The ones that really caught my eye:

NCN on drip drip dripping your way out of debt. I really needed to hear this message this week. NCN has got it going on! I like being a part of the NCN Network because of cheerleading, motivating posts like this one.

The Sun’s Financial Diary on picking stocks like a guru. Thank god he put this together. I never would have known whose work created which style of investing without this post. The stock picking tool is kind of interesting too. Click through to get to the link for the tool.

Madame X at My Open Wallet describes her thoughts on expenses and retools her savings plan. I am looking at her spreadsheet and I think I’m a little confused. But I am going to try and figure this out and post results. Maybe this is the thing that I’ve been missing all along.

Enough Wealth advice for a newbie investor. uh. I have no idea what a superannuation fund is, but he’s an Aussie, so whaddyaknow? I think it’s a retirement account. For the most part, it’s sound advice despite the funny accent! (just kidding!)

Plonkee, which is one of the most original monikers I’ve heard. She’s the resident Brit in the PFBlog community and here she’s talking about ISA’s in Britain, which like superannuation funds, appear to be retirement accounts. But like an American IRA, come in different flavors, which are unlike the American Traditional or Roth flavors.

Make Your Nut, with a very funny or very sad story about explaining the modern world to a co-worker. Reminds me of the time that our intern was agog over automatic doors at the supermarket. That wasn’t funny though. Just really sad.

Trent at The Simple Dollar with very good advice about life insurance, from an actual actuary.

Penny Nickel at Money & Values on sweatshop free clothing.

Share and enjoy!