Mein Taglich Brot

A New Blog

2011-10-03T22:08:00.002-04:00

It didn't take long for me to reconsider personal finance blogging. A new blog has been born and will pick up where Mein Taglich Brot left off but with a different twist.

Please continue to follow me on my new blog, Beside Still Waters. I look forward to our continued journey together.

Julie

Auf Wiedersehen für heute

2011-09-17T16:06:00.002-04:00

Good-bye for Now!

After much deliberation I have come to the conclusion that I need to take a hiatus from personal finance blogging. The several years that I have spent in this endeavor were of great help to me in getting through my personal bankruptcy, losing my home to foreclosure, losing my job, etc and doing a blog as well as reading others has been a great assistance in my personal growth.

At this time, I feel that I just can't devote the time and thought to this blogging and have decided to place this "on a shelf" for the time being.

I will continue to follow the blogs that I have been following and I want to thank everyone who has read my blog and who have commented.

I appreciate you all and good luck to all of us on our continuing journey!

Julie

Income Streams

2011-08-10T16:14:00.003-04:00

I enjoy reading the various financial blogs that I follow and learning of the varying ways that people have for finding extra income streams. It is amazing to me how inventive we are in looking for ways to add some income into our budgets.

For me, retirement last August was met with joy and happiness. The last few years of my career were in a position with an enormous amount of stress and angst. While I had not been planning on retiring at that precise moment, when the situation presented itself, I did not look back. I realized, though, that an additional income stream would be a good idea.

I fell into doing some medical transcription for the orthopedic group in our town. With Social Security now, I am only able to earn a specific amount and I was not interested in taking on full time home based transcription. Been there, done that, for 12 years and totally burned out from the 16-18 hour days, 7 days a week schedule.

I agreed to do some transcription for the senior member of the practice, he is only in the office 3 half days a week and the work was easy, quick and gave me a couple hundred extra dollars a month. When he had to have unexpected major surgery in April, the practice manager asked me if I wanted to take on the transcription for their major provider during my original client's recovery and I agreed.

This physician is also in the office 3 days a week but they are full days and I mean full. Whereas before I might type for 2 hours a day, 3 days a week I am now typing for 6 hours a day, 3 days a week. Of course, the money earned has risen as well to the point that I could not resume doing the original doctor's work as well when he returned from his surgery.

I am content with this second physician's work even with the extended hours and I do love the bigger checks. Yesterday was a whopper of a day, though, in which I typed 111 pages (76 patients seen in one day with 35 of those patients having 2 page dictations).

And for people who think medical transcription is a snap and can be done with a "good dictionary" I say consider this - the transcription yesterday involved 107,645 characters typed. Just imagine your fingers hitting the keys on the keyboard that many times.

Whew!

Julie

A New Pet

2011-08-08T17:31:00.006-04:00

I will admit that I am a poodle lover. I have had poodles for at least the last 45 years beginning when my parents bought my brother and myself our first black poodle when I was a teenager. Following that, I adopted a new poodle whenever I had to say good-bye to my previous one and do enjoy the love and companionship that they provide.

However, in March when my near 13 year old had to be put to sleep I decided that was the end of my having dogs. In the back of my mind, though, I knew that I would waver before too long.

Near 5 months later I have been fortunate to be able to adopt a new little puppy and she is a delight. She is 12 weeks old today and has been in my home for near 3 weeks. She is adapting well and is very well behaved and loving. I had to make a mini vacation to the other side of Detroit to be able to pick her up which was a nice little break from the regular routine.

I gave a lot of thought to whether I wanted to embark on this adventure again but am so glad that I did. The only thing is - I wish she could sleep just a smidgen longer in the morning; my spoiled (less than 1 year) retired self had gotten very lazy about early morning wake-up calls. It is worth it though to see her little tail wagging and her excitement about seeing me when I get her up to go outside.

Ahh, motherhood!

Above photos from the private collection of Julie

Julie

Renewing the Lease

2011-07-04T11:27:00.004-04:00

It is very true that "time flies" and seems to fly faster as I age. I don't remember in my 30's and even 40's that I felt as though the weeks just flew by. Instead it seemed to drag, perhaps because I was working and it felt like it took forever to get to Friday.

I was reminded of the flying of time this last week when my lease renewal for my rental condo arrived in the mail. It seems just like yesterday that I was losing my home and searching for a rental unit for my mother and myself. In actuality I am beginning my third year in this rental.

The management company is prompt in sending out the rental renewal one month prior to the end of the lease. This gives the tenant the opportunity to announce if they are going to be moving out. If not, there is a form to sign to renew the lease for another year.

Again this year, as last, the rent has remained the same. To say I am pleased is an understatement. The owner of this unit lives in another state and I have never met her but I do thank her for keeping the rent at the same level.

She may not know it, but I take care of this unit as if it were my own and I do appreciate the rent remaining stable.

For me renting is the best option. I love the condo, the location, the maintenance services that go along with it and it works for my mother and myself.

Happy 4th of July!

Julie

Fulfilling a Dream

2011-07-03T17:12:00.004-04:00

Do you ever think to yourself WHO you would like to see, from your past, that you hadn't seen in like, well like forever? Perhaps it is an old playmate or a work colleague who moved or somebody you went to school with.

I have always had such a wish. For me it was my 3rd grade teacher that I was always interested in seeing again. Why? Because she stood out in my mind from all the teachers I had through 12 years of school and the memory of her always made me smile primarily because this teacher was so kind and loving and we students were made to feel important which was so crucial at the young age of 8. I knew she had just married prior to the start of my 3rd grade year and that her husband was an up and coming Lutheran organist, composer of Christian music and choir director but that was about it. Despite this lack of information, I did think of her often through these last 50+ years and the memories of her part in my 8 year old life were strong.

About 8 years ago I reconnected with this teacher when her husband came to our church to perform an organ concert. I spoke with him after, his wife had not accompanied him as they now lived in another state but I had written a letter for her and gave it to him. Thus began a correspondence between us that has continued to this day.

It was with happy anticipation that I learned that for today's church service, my teacher's husband would be again performing at our church and this time their entire family were coming as they were celebrating a huge family reunion in our town.

Today in church I was able to see and visit a while with this favorite teacher. She was as sweet and kind as I remembered and she introduced me to 5 of her 6 children and their families. Her children were all pleased that my memories of their mother continued to this day and I learned that my 3rd grade class was the only year my teacher actually taught as she began raising her own children. When she introduced me to her oldest son she humorously told me that "he" was the reason she had to quit teaching but I was able to say that she was MY teacher for that one year.

In our normal day to day life, worries about finances, jobs, health, world issues, etc it is good to have a simple special encounter that just brings a smile to one's face.

Today was that day for me! Thank you, Mrs. B.

Julie

Shred Those Documents

2011-06-02T20:26:00.003-04:00

I am just shaking my head in amazement at what I saw yesterday. It is so mind boggling in light of how much is written about protecting one's privacy by shredding receipts, statements, etc. This incident just defies description.

Yesterday I went to pay my rent at the management office who handles my rental. The owner of this condo lives in another state and has contracted with a specific management company in town to handle her property. The office isn't far from my condo and each month I personally take my rent check and hand it in as opposed to mailing it.

Yesterday must have been garbage pick-up day for the streets around the management office. It also must have been recycling day (every other week) because the recycling bucket was sitting out on the curb when I drove up. As I walked up to the mail slot to put my rental envelope in I noticed that the recycling bucket was full to the top with stacks of paper that were Excel accounting charts, documents regarding rentals, leases, etc and the best part...canceled checks. The owner of the management company had gone so far as to TEAR THE CHECKS IN HALF (wow, how smart) but there they were all stacked on top of the bucket.

Now I will say that it was also a windy day and the checks had already started taking flight down the side street.

To add to the hilarity of this situation, this is a holiday week and the garbage pick-up is a day later which I can only say will give Mr. Wind long enough to scatter all those checks all the way to Lake Michigan.

I shook my head all the way home and can only say that I hope this small management company (owner and 1 staff member) do a better job of managing their rentals than they do with accounting (and common sense, of course)!

Julie

A Slump...A Brick Wall..A Plateau....

2011-06-01T17:47:00.003-04:00

...or whatever we want to call it, we all hit that proverbial bump in the road. With genealogy research, a brick wall is when a roadblock is hit in trying to find some information on a specific family line, and despite all efforts to the contrary, a different path needs to be taken. In Weight Watchers lingo, a plateau is when a steady weight loss suddenly stops and day after day, week after week or (hopefully not) month after month the scale doesn't move.

In blogging I call this situation a slump. When I began my blog, I was gung-ho and posted every day for the first year. The second year I kind of slacked off some and this year more of the same. I have been following my favorite blogs, though, and am impressed with the frequency with which people do post.

When I began blogging, I was inspired by "Betty" of "Bouncing Back from Bankruptcy". She was my mentor as I began the walk of bankruptcy. Betty posted very frequently but has not been heard of since last October. I am wondering just how she is doing. I hope she is okay but I am here to say that filing bankruptcy does not make everything afterwards hunky dory. Far from it.

It has been 13 months since my own bankruptcy was finalized and in some ways I am doing much better. Emotionally very much better with the weight of the credit card debt off my shoulders. There is something to be said for "cash only" and it is a great feeling to not have the mailbox full of credit card statements or dunning letters or collector letters each day. There are many days when I have no mail in the mailbox and this was unheard of before. This is a big plus.

In Betty's case, she was able to keep her house and she did have a full time job before and after her bankruptcy. True enough she took on part time work to supplement her income and in the last few posts she did write she shared that her employer had begun to cut her hours and her pay. This is tough.

I know because in my case I lost my home to foreclosure and had to find alternative rental housing for myself and my mother before anything negative hit my credit reports. From the time that I filed bankruptcy to the year later when the bankruptcy was finalized my employer continually cut my hours, my pay dropped over 80%, my mother suffered a stroke and I lost my job one month after my mother returned home from her month long hospitalization. I decided to activate my pension benefits from a long term job from the 80's and 90's and I started social security. I have been fortunate to pick up some home based income streams that are small enough not to interfere with my social security but adequate enough to add some money to the budget. All in all, looking back now I can say that I have survived.

Entering retirement has been an eye opening experience in itself. While I had always planned to work until 65 or 66, I started my benefits at 62. With all the financial and health related issues I was facing I had not given much thought to retiring right THEN and it really is a lifestyle change to slide into retirement.

I have been reading some posts in various blogs about the honeymoon period of retirement and how it can take a good 6 months or longer to revamp one's life. This is really true. While I love not having to punch a clock or get up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning, I have found that I have a darned hard time getting up before 9 or 9:30. At first I told myself "so what", I don't have anything to do specifically. As the months have gone by, though, and I have picked up some home based transcription, I have to force myself up at least by 8 in order to start in on the work. This has all taken time to re-work my thinking and my body.

Hopefully now as I enter my 10th month of retirement, I have a better schedule and am at a better place in my mind. I still don't like getting up early but I am doing better getting my day going.

Today I was up early (8 am), off to pay the rent at the management company, off to the bank to deposit my first of the month checks, to Walgreen's to pick up prescriptions and home to eat breakfast at 9:30. No work today so I was able to work on some of my genealogy in the form of scanning photos and working with them in Picasa. Went off to my client's office at 4:45 this afternoon to pick up a dictation tape for typing tomorrow and may even try to take a walk through the complex tonight.

Started with the Walk with Walgreen's program and anyone interested should check into that. Great program, great incentives with coupons and interesting reading. It doesn't hurt that their spokesperson is Alison Sweeney who is one of my favorite actresses (I am a fan of Days of our Lives!).

Retirement is sweet...getting a pension check and social security check each month is even sweeter and doing just the amount of work I want to do can't be beat. There are still challenges but life is a challenge no matter what stage of life we are at.

Thanks to all you personal finance bloggers who truly inspire and from whom we can all learn new things every day!

Betty - hope you are still reading blogs and please know that you are missed.

Julie

April Showers Bring May Flowers...

2011-05-01T17:57:00.008-04:00

...Not Necessarily!

I love flowers and have always loved them. I love picking them and placing them around my home in varieties of vases. I love the aromas of the blooms and the aura created in the home.

Gardening I do NOT love.

With my previous home that I had for 12 years, my mother did all the gardening. She loves to garden and get down in the dirt and work with the flowers. Even at 84 she was able to do far more bending and planting than I ever could do.

When we moved to this condo there would be no in-ground planting. The front of the condo is landscaped and maintained by the condo community. The back of each condo unit has an area in which the owner is allowed to do whatever they like in the way of planting. However, our condo sits at the beginning of a ravine that runs through the remaining 20 or so units and there is no where to plant in the ground. Container gardening on the balcony would have to be our solution.

I sought advice from two good friends that are avid gardeners. I scoured the Internet for articles on container gardening. I learned that it was relatively easy to plant bulbs in pots in the fall and have them bloom big and luxurious in the spring.

Last fall I purchased 9 pots of varying sizes. When my brother and sister-in-law arrived in October I twisted their arms to help me with the work. My brother punched out all the drainage holes on the bottoms of the pots. They purchased the bags of dirt for me as well as bulbs and I selected tulip and hyacinth bulbs (my two favorites). We placed the dirt halfway up in each pot, placed the bulbs appropriately, placed fertilizer, placed more dirt on top and watered. They even purchased wheeled bases for me for the pots that would allow the pots to sit up off the balcony floor and would allow for me to wheel them about on the balcony. Once completed they were, of course, way too heavy to be lifted and carried any where.

I thought we were set for a beautiful spring of blooms. Here is what I received instead:

This pot (above) was filled with hyacinth bulbs and has produced nothing at all with no signs of any life emerging.

Another pot (above) totally filled with hyacinth bulbs which appears to have been drowned with the water NOT emerging from the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot.

I thought I had success with the above pot when the tulip foliage began to appear. However after three weeks, nothing is blooming.

This pot (above) is definitely water soaked; again not draining out the drainage holes in the bottom.

Another few examples of tulip foliage (above) but no flowers showing after three weeks.

We also have three rosebushes in pots on the balcony. One pot, containing a rose that originated in my grandmother's yard 70 years ago and which was moved to Detroit and back here over the years, has survived and has new growth. This bush was dug out of the backyard of my home 2 years ago by a neighbor who placed it for me in a huge pot and then he carried it over here for me. That has done well in the pot for the last two years.

I purchased two other rosebushes last summer and planted them in pots. They did beautifully through the season, producing many flowers but both died in drowning accidents this winter. Those two pots are totally water soaked and the roses are dead beyond help.

There are a total of 10 pots residing on my balcony right now with only 1 surviving the winter. I am not looking forward to emptying out all the smelly, watery dirt and disposing of it especially in light of the fact that I will have to fill garbage bags and carry them through the house to dispose of. With the balcony residing on an incline and a ravine, there is no way that I can walk down from the balcony (though there are stairs - why?) and get the dirt out that way.

To say that I am totally disappointed is very accurate. I have no idea what went wrong, and in checking with my two gardener friends, they are perplexed as well. The only suggestion I have heard is that I should have had the pots in the garage through the winter rather than on the balcony. This would not be the solution in any case because I certainly could not carry each pot through the house to the balcony when spring arrived.

I'm open to any suggestions as to what went wrong here. Thanks!

Above photos from the private collection of Julie

Julie

Losing A Pet

2011-03-24T16:20:00.003-04:00

Today is a hard day for me as I had to have my little poodle put to sleep this morning. I had been noticing some subtle changes in her over the last few months but she suffered a seizure today that affected her eyesight and caused some vicious behavior. I was forced to put her little afghan (yes, she had an afghan) over her body in order to pick her up as she was violently aggressive.

After an exam and some testing at the vet's office, the doctor told me that putting her to sleep would be the honorable thing to do. She was just under 13, which he said was a good age for a toy poodle, but he emphasized that the decision was mine and he would abide by my wishes.

A pet becomes part of our family, we love them completely and part of loving a pet is that we have to make the hard decision when it is time to do the best for them and send them on their way. This was the decision I was faced with this morning.

Over the last 50 years I have been blessed with 4 different poodles. Each one was unique in their own way and each one was loved completely. The house sounds quiet now and feels empty. My mother was waiting at home for me to return from the vet and was so sure the vet would have had some magic potion to bring the dog back to her old self. This was not to be.

I have this photo that was taken at one of her groomings a few years ago during Halloween. How the groomer was able to get her to sit so appropriately, I don't know.

I will miss her!

Julie

Greed

2011-03-21T13:40:00.002-04:00

Is there an epidemic of greed in this country leading people to steal, cheat and scam others? I wonder.

Recently in our local newspaper there have been not one, not two but many articles about various scams leading to arrests of local residents. Are these thefts caused by unemployment, need to support one's family, etc - not at all. They are from pure greed.

Take for example, these events:

1. The executive secretary of the CEO of our local hospital system was found guilty of embezzling $186,000 over a 10 year period from the hospital. How did she do this? By doctoring her time card, by ordering items for her own home with the hospital CEO's credit card, by initiating reimbursements to herself and forging the CEO's name and other myriad activities. She was married, had a husband who was working, had two sons in parochial school but just wanted to enhance her lifestyle with a nicer car, extravagant vacations, etc. Once caught, she spent a year in jail, lost her husband, lost the respect she had and is now working in a low pay position in order to repay what she embezzled.

2. The City Manager of a neighboring village was found guilty of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the village treasury in order to pay for a lavish lifestyle that he had decided he wanted. Jail time for him, too.

3. The treasurer of a local church was found guilty of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church treasury.

We won't talk here about HOW these thefts could have gone on for so long before being discovered; obviously each system was not up to par in their checks and balances but these were three events right in our little community.

4. In the last 6 months, TWO local funeral home owners were found guilty of committing fraud against their clients by offering pre-paid funeral arrangements and pocketing the money. According to State of Michigan law, such pre-payments are to be held in an escrow account but in these cases they were not. Both men were eventually caught and sentenced to prison but the people defrauded are out their money. Several local funeral homes have come forward and offered to assist these people with pre-paid arrangements at cost reductions but the emotional toll this placed on them can't be erased.

None of the above situations involved people I personally knew other than the first example. But just this last week I learned of another situation that involved someone I most certainly knew and knew my entire life.

Not here in my hometown but back in Macomb County where I grew up there was a funeral home in which the owners were personal friends of my parents, my grandparents and was the funeral home used for all the funerals of my family members. The owners of this funeral home were members of our Lutheran church and were upstanding citizens.

They had a son who I actually went to high school with and later this son entered into the family business with his parents. After the deaths of his parents, this son and his wife continued the business.

Now I read in the Macomb County papers and on-line that this couple (62 and 48 years old respectively) have been scamming their clients for years by, again, offering pre-paid funerals and pocketing the money. They are both in jail awaiting trial and I watched a video on-line in which they were arraigned. Did they show remorse when entering the courtroom? Not at all - here they came, marching into the courtroom, handcuffed with smirks on their faces. His parents would be rolling over in their graves!

I can't get this situation out of my head. What in the world are people thinking? Do they honestly think they can pull off these scams and not get caught? Common sense will tell you that you will eventually get caught. How would they actually bury their clients when the time came if the pre-paid funds were not there?

Scamming, stealing, whatever you call it are terrible events. I can't help thinking that stealing from a hospital is pretty bad, stealing from a church is just as bad but when you steal from someone's pre-paid funeral, you have sunk as low as you can go.

I hope this couple has plenty of time to think about their actions while they are behind bars. The funeral home has been closed and I can only hope that there is something that can be salvaged to repay, at least in part, the clients who put their trust in them. In all likelihood, there may not be any restitution. Who can a person trust anymore?

Julie

Sharing by Experience

2011-03-19T20:50:00.000-04:00

In many of the finance blogs I follow, I see people stating that they want to teach their children how to better handle finances so those children do not have to experience the same angst that they had. This is a worthy goal.

In my case, I don't have any children to whom I can impart any wisdom regarding the advantages of saving, investing, avoiding credit card debt, etc. I do have goddaughters, however, and today I talked with one of them who I have tried to help over the years with her debt management.

This particular young lady was my first goddaughter 30 years ago and we are particularly close yet. Even though we now live 200 miles apart, she does stay in close touch and shares her thoughts, fears, problems with me. I have followed along with her during her college years, her teaching degree and her inability to find a teaching position. For 7 years after graduation from college she worked 3 different part time jobs, not in her field of degree and without benefits while continually searching for a teaching job. Her wages were low, very low and her credit card debt mounted.

We have discussed this often. I have shared with her my experiences though I was fortunate to find employment right out of high school and without a college degree I was able to keep my career in the medical field going for 45 years. This last December, prior to her 30th birthday, she called me with the great news that she had found a teaching job, she was able to eliminate her part time jobs and this position carried a significant hike in salary.

She told me at the time, just 3 months ago, that she was going to focus on paying off her credit card debt which was haunting her. She had been whittling away at it for quite some time, not using the card for over a year, but with finance charges (as we all know), the balance was very slowly going down.

Today I was talking on the phone with her mother and she took the phone to tell me her good news - she had received her income tax refund and had immediately gone and paid off her charge. She was so excited. I told her my news about paying off my tax debt and we both rejoiced in being debt free.

I hope that in some small way I have impressed on her the benefits of starting an investment program though her employer and if she uses her charge at all to pay it off at the end of the month. She told me that she had further requested that her line of credit be reduced from $3500 to $300 so that she would have it just for emergencies.

I am proud of her.

Julie

Debt Free

2011-03-18T20:30:00.001-04:00

Today I can say that I am finally "Debt Free". What a great feeling.

For those regular followers of my blog, you might be saying "wait a minute, weren't you debt free after your bankruptcy was finalized?" Indeed, at that time, a few weeks short of 1 year ago, all of my credit card debt was eliminated as well as my obligations towards the mortgage on my home that I had to sacrifice with the bankruptcy.

However, one debt that I had at that time was a 2008 income tax obligation that was not allowed to be eliminated in a bankruptcy.

In 2008, which was the last year I was totally self-employed, my tax consultant at the time did not correctly assess the amount of money I should have been paying in quarterly estimated payments for my IRS obligations. This came to light when the 2008 taxes were being prepared, and after all was said and done (and tweaked) I had a tax debt of near $4,800. Not having that amount of money, I entered into a payment plan with the IRS.

For those of you not familiar with such a payment plan, let me tell you that the penalties and interest assessed are worse than the worst credit card you might carry. First, to just set up the payment plan, I was charged $170. My required monthly payment was set at $76 so my first payment was $246 of which $76 was applied to my $4,800 debt. Statements were not sent monthly, I kept precise records myself of my payments and I never knew (the first year) where I actually stood. I was instructed to write my social security number on my checks, write the word 2008 1040 payment and that would indicate that my account would be correctly updated.

I would call the IRS periodically to check on my balance and it was apparent that most of the payments I made went to penalty and interest. I might add that, other than the first month's payment of $76, the other payments I made were in the range of $150-300 per month depending on what I could afford.

At the start of the second year, I called the IRS and again requested statements. They then began sending statements to me monthly, with a stub to use to submit payments. For that benefit, they added another $45 onto my balance which was entitled "setting up statements". Don't you love it! I then would notice that a payment of $250 would generate a statement the next month showing interest and penalties of $180. I doubted that the balance would ever go away.

This year, for the first time in 12 years, I actually had refunds coming. I called the IRS a week or so after my taxes were submitted to ascertain what my balance was on my 2008 obligation. I learned that the balance was down to $850 and my expected refund was $901. Today, in my checking account, I saw a deposit from the IRS of $51. This indicated to me that the IRS grabbed the remaining $850 I owed from my refund and sent me the remainder.

I am happy to have this debt gone. I am happier yet to be done with the IRS on this matter. I am especially happy to be able to say that I am finally DEBT FREE!

Julie

More on Microsoft Office

2011-03-17T20:25:00.002-04:00

I have purchased quite a few computer systems in my adult life. When I decided to upgrade to a new system about 3 weeks ago, I didn't realize the fun that I would be having with this purchase and "fun" is said with tongue in cheek.

I was pleased to find a system with the components that I wanted and at a great price as well. I was extra pleased to be able to cart the pieces home myself in my little Escort, get them in the house and down the stairs to my lower level office AND get all the pieces connected and the system up and running. I was flying high!

I knew that with a computer with the Windows 7 operating system, some of my software packages might not be compatible. A few of my programs did work so that was good. I did have to go out and buy new updated versions of a few others but all in all it was manageable.

However, enter Microsoft Office 2010. I previously wrote about my difficulties with Microsoft Word and the "auto correct" function. Much messing around, posting on some help sites and finally a call to Microsoft resulted in a "fix" of the problem.

Or, so I thought!

The auto correct worked for 3 days and I was happy. I began entering text, words, paragraphs like a madwoman into auto correct. I agreed to do some transcription for one of the other surgeons in my client practice and he uses many phrases that auto correct is vital for. I was sure all was fine.

Sunday when I began typing the 'new' doctor's work, I found that auto correct was again not functioning. Not only that, but all the phrases I had previously entered were gone. This time I could not even enter them once and get them to work. Due to the length of the work I had to turn around, I had to have two documents open, do a cut and paste of common phrases and what should have taken me about 4 hours to type took me 8. I was mighty crabby by the end of that day and was too tired to deal with Microsoft then.

I will say that Microsoft had followed up with me, though, after the first service call. They had sent me an e-mail telling me to respond to the e-mail if the problem recurred. So, on Monday I sent off an e-mail informing them that I was back at square one.

Amazingly within a few hours I had a call from a Microsoft technician, oversees, who began again to work with me on the auto correct function. He again took control of my computer remotely, did 'his thing', showed me a different way to access auto correct and the function worked.

It has continued to work (knock on wood) and I hope that this time the problem is solved.

Now that I have had this computer for about 3 weeks I can say that I am really loving it. The 23" monitor is wonderful, the quality of the picture is fantastic and I wonder how I ever got along without it. I am enjoying doing my transcription with the auto correct working and I am glad that I took the plunge and purchased this system.

The Windows 7 operating system seems to be decent to me. I have heard from others who are not happy with it but I find it pretty decent. Compared to Windows Vista, this system is 100% better.

Despite all my angst over the auto correct problem, I will say that Microsoft is very good to deal with for service issues. Both gentlemen that I dealt with were knowledgeable, pleasant and patient and seemed to exude confidence that they were going to solve my issue.

Julie

Update on Microsoft Word

2011-03-12T14:02:00.002-05:00

Thank goodness, I have managed to connect with Microsoft and my problem with my Word has been corrected....fingers crossed.

The other night, late, I decided to make a call again to Microsoft. This time, for some unknown reason, I did connect. When asked for my software registration number, the tech I was speaking with did not tell me it was an incorrect number as the previous tech did and I was given a work-order number and transferred to a Word technician.

After about one hour, during which he connected remotely to my system from his location overseas, he did manage to resolve the problem. It has worked for several days so my fingers are crossed that it was a fix.

Also was told that with my particular software package I have 90 days of free telephone support which was appreciated.

Hopefully I won't need to utilize it but it is good to have that availability.

Now on to transcription.............

Julie

Microsoft Word Question

2011-03-10T19:46:00.003-05:00

This post is not exactly of a financial nature, but in another way, it is. I recently had my computer die. It was not unexpected as the computer was 7 years old and had existed in my home office during the brunt of my free lance career. It was heavily used and had been in for repair several times over these years. The last time I had it repaired, I was advised that I should consider a new computer. Of course, we are never quite ready for something to quit working but I have rebounded and I was able to catch a good deal at Best Buy and bought myself a new computer. This one is a Hewlett-Packard with a rousing 1 terabyte hard drive among other neat features. There were several sale packages the day I was at Best Buy and I managed to obtain a good, reasonable deal.

My question though relates to the Microsoft Office 2010 package that I purchased as well. Because my old computer was several systems old, most of my software would not work with this Windows 7 system. Since I am doing transcription still, I did purchase the Microsoft Office 2010 program. The version I purchased was Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and One Note.

One of the features in Microsoft Word that I heavily use is the "Auto Correct" function. In my old Microsoft Word 2003 this feature worked flawlessly. This feature allowed me to program different words, paragraphs and phrases that my doctors frequently dictate and to code them with a 2 or 3 letter tag. When needed in the dictation, the tag is typed and the entire paragraph, etc appears. A very necessary feature for a transcriptionist and certainly cuts down on the time spent in typing.

In this Microsoft Word 2010 version, though, I cannot for the life of me get this feature to work. It took some searching first to even find where in the world Microsoft had hidden the Auto Correct. After visiting Google numerous times, I was able to find the Auto Correct. It worked the same as previous versions, I entered my sentences, etc, created the tags and saved. However, the process would work for a few patients and then it would stop working and when checking in the Auto Correct list of saved phrases, mine were gone. I absolutely cannot get the Auto Correct function to maintain my entries.

I have spent several days searching Google and find nothing that helps. I have posted my question on several On-Line message boards and, again, nothing. I have gone to the Microsoft Help site, posted a query and no response. I have called the Microsoft phone support line, been told to enter my product key for free phone support and each time I get the message that my product key is incorrect, followed by the comment that to move further in the phone support line, I must enter a credit card and pay $39. Of course, the product key I enter IS correct and certainly allowed me to activate the program on my computer so I don't know if this is a ploy of Microsoft to push people to pay for support.

This is most disturbing. I am running out of ideas of where to get some advice as to just what I am doing incorrectly.

Any MS Word 2010 users out there???? Anyone familiar with Auto Correct?

HELP!!

Julie

The Human Pincushion

2011-02-23T13:38:00.004-05:00

No, this is not a post about sewing despite the word "pincushion" in the title. Rather it is a post about a name that could be given to me! Human pincushion?

Since the age of 12, when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I have had to undergo yearly blood draws. Or, I should say, ATTEMPTED yearly blood draws. It would appear that I have the worst veins that any hematology tech has ever seen.

For 50 years I have gone through these attempts; some successful after perhaps 15 different attempts on my body - both arms, both wrists at the underside, backs of both hands, tops of feet, backs of knees. You name the spot and I can pretty much guarantee I have been stuck there. And, of course, they don't just push the needle in, find they are unsuccessful and pull it out. Oh, no, they must move it around and around and around all the while trying to catch one of those sneaky rolling veins. I have been told to drink plenty of fluids. I have been slapped mercilessly on the backs of the hands to make the veins rise. I have been sent home and called back because the few drops they did extract were not enough for the tests. I have had butterfly syringes used. NOT FUN.

I will admit that due to these fun times, I am not the first to raise my hand when it is time for the annual blood work. In fact, I have been known to take the paperwork home at the end of one annual physical and promptly 'forget' where the paper is in hopes that next year the doctor will forget he told me to get blood work prior to my next visit.

This year, my luck ran out. Okay, it has been 3 years that I have avoided the blood work that the doctor requires. I had my scheduled physical for this past Monday and was told I would now be seeing the new PA rather than the busy doctor. However, Monday morning I had a call from the doctor's office inquiring whether I had had my blood drawn.

Long story short - they would not see me until I had the blood work done. They would fax a request to the hospital lab and wanted me to hop there post haste and get it done. Rescheduled my visit for Tuesday (yesterday). Of course, the lab was unsuccessful as I knew they would be and I might add with no health insurance I was stuck (ouch) with a bill for a draw though I argued with them since they only poked me about 6 times and no blood was found; they did cancel the bill but wanted me to go home, heal and come back in a week. Fat chance of that!

The doctor's office suggested another lab and I told them I was not too eager for another attempt. The nurse then suggested that SHE would try me if I wanted to come to their office and she would only poke me twice; if unsuccessful then maybe one other nurse could try. I might add that I needed my scripts refilled and they will not do that until I have my exam.

So off to the doctor's office I went where Kim came at me with the butterfly syringe. She told me that she had discussed this with the PA, and due to the fact that my veins are so "hard to get" and due to the fact that I have no insurance and lab work is expensive (I had previously sought out what my cost would be for the labs they wanted and it would have topped $300 plus costs for the draw), the PA suggested only drawing enough for the TSH (thyroid test). They would forget all the other lab work they would normally get.

When I heard this, I was glad for the savings of money but I did tell Kim that I have taken Synthyroid for 50 years and not ONCE was my lab work abnormal for that and NOT once was my dosage changed and I really think the TSH (at over $100) will come back normal. I couldn't convince her and she proceeded to show me that she has never had somebody she had to poke twice.

Well, Kim, never say never, though I will say that after several attempts on the backs of the hands and much movement once inside, she did manage to extract enough blood for the TSH profile. And in talking to me and hearing that I had lost my job and health insurance last September she offered me some samples of my meds including the one med I take that is NOT generic. She had a two week supply which saved me $50 so I was glad to take those.

Yesterday I went back for my annual exam and thankfully, as I had predicted, the thyroid blood work was normal but the PA was happy that she had covered herself by having me get the blood work done. I was just happy to get my scripts and beat it out of there where I found that they had reduced their normal $120 office visit to $54 for me. That was appreciated.

Total costs for physical were $54 for exam and the upcoming $100 fee from the lab for the blood work minus the $50 saved on getting a 2 week supply of one med and the $3.50 saved on getting a month's supply of another generic med. Not bad all things considered.

photo by katee_diane

Julie

Saving on Auto Insurance

2011-02-17T19:05:00.002-05:00

I have been on a mission to try and lower some of my routine monthly expenses. One expense was on my auto insurance which I have had through State Farm for many, many years. While my premium is not that terribly high and I don't drive the car all that much any longer, I was interested in seeing if I could find a better price on coverage.

Over the course of the last 10 days I have contacted 6 different insurance companies ranging from Allstate to AARP as well as others in the area. It was amazing to me to see that for the same identical coverage (I used my premium notice from State Farm to make sure I was asking for the same limits of coverage), each of the companies I contacted came up with varying premiums. However, all were MORE expensive than my State Farm premium. Two companies even told me that my bankruptcy and foreclosure on my credit reports were a contributing factor in the rates quoted. Every agency requested my social security number with the basic information they took from me.

As a final attempt I decided to give my State Farm agent a call. I explained that my lifestyle has changed, I am now retired and driving even less than I was before, am now a senior citizen and wondered if there was any way to tweak my coverage and lower my rates.

After making some minor changes and giving me a "senior citizens discount", I was quoted a new premium which is $72 a year less or a savings of $6 per month. I told the agent to go ahead with the changes and felt some satisfaction that I at least garnered a small savings.

It doesn't hurt to at least try.

Julie

When Coupons are NOT a Good Idea

2011-02-03T18:00:00.004-05:00

I do the majority of my shopping on-line. It is quicker for me and much more convenient especially with living in a small town where there are not an abundance of stores of interest to me.

I have found that lately many on-line sites are offering coupons with purchases. If not for free shipping there are coupons offering cents off a purchase or a percentage off a purchase and many other enticements to get one to shop on their site.

Yesterday in the mail I received a catalog from a site called Cheryl's and Company which I learned is a place to order freshly baked cookies, brownies and other assorted treats. I have never been one to buy cookies in a bakery or even in the grocery store, preferring to make my home made varieties. But I will admit that the catalog was tempting with their offers for varying Valentine cookies. They certainly know how to prepare a mouth-watering catalog.

I will confess that I went to their online site and selected some items and was pleased to see there would be free shipping. It was then that I had a reality talk with myself and convinced myself that (1) I don't have any idea how these cookies will taste and (2) I can make cookies myself that I know will taste good. I then closed out of the Cheryl's web site and forgot the whole thing.

However, this morning I had an e-mail in my box from Cheryl's and Company stating "we have saved your incomplete order for you and would like to offer you $10 off the order; just click (here) and complete your order". Wow! What a tactic to make a sale. Not only free shipping but $10 off the order as well.

Did it work to entice me? Nope. I deleted the e-mail though I will admit they do have a very clever process.

Hmm, maybe tomorrow it will be a new e-mail stating "we will send your order free so that you can sample our cookies".

I'll let you know!

photo by rfduck

Julie

Grocery Savings

2011-02-02T16:49:00.004-05:00

Last week I received a flyer in the mail from one of our local grocery stores. This store is relatively new, very clean but a bit of a distance from my home and I have only occasionally shopped there. However, in the flyer were 8 coupons, one for each week of February and March, for $10 off a total grocery bill of $50 or more. This did make me sit up and take notice.

Interestingly this grocery store is next door to the physician office client that I now am doing transcription for. I thought this would be a good opportunity to stop by the store each week and purchase my groceries and take advantage of the $10 savings. Yesterday I did just that.

I don't usually shop on Monday but we were slated to be part of the "Great Blizzard of 2011" beginning today and I decided I better get some food in the house. I went to the physician office, dropped off my work and darted over to the grocery store. Took a little time in the store as I wasn't familiar with the aisles but I did manage to purchase some items, adding them up in my head to come as close to the $50 as possible and went on to the check-out. I even had a few cents off coupons with me which I rarely have.

The order was tallied and the $10 was removed and I was pleased. Nice family store as well in which the packers bring your bags out to the car as a service.

I did give some thought, though, as to whether the prices at this store were more or less than my usual grocery. Later in the afternoon I decided to drive down the street from my home and walk through my regular grocery with my receipt and check prices. I did find that some items were less at "new" store as opposed to "regular" store but some were more. I went so far as to come home and tabulate the totals with both stores and was pleased to find that overall I had saved $4.27 by shopping at the "new" store without adding in the $10 off coupon.

I am planning on continuing to shop at "new" store to use these 7 remaining $10 off coupons as long as the weather cooperates.

And the Great Blizzard of 2011 has hit and I can only say that retirement is sweet. My physician client is in California for a month so NO work for me but also NO traveling in this horrendous weather.

photo by...Karenia

Julie

February, 2011 Update

2011-02-01T16:32:00.001-05:00

Today being February 1st I decided to take a look at my budget results for the month of January. I was pleased with what I saw after running my reports and totals on Quicken.

At the beginning of the month I decided to try a new method of small savings steps. My plan was to take all deposits I made in January and transfer 5% of the total into my pathetic $5.29 savings account. While I would have really liked to set the goal of 10% I felt I would start with a more manageable figure and see how it went.

Throughout the month, as my checks arrived and I deposited them, I would come back from the bank, log into my bank account and transfer 5% into the savings. It was satisfying to see the very small growth in the account.

In January I did receive 2 checks for my newly started free lance transcription gig. This helped much as the total for these two checks topped $600. Not bad for one month of transcription for only approximately 6-7 hours per week. I am pleased and even more pleased to move the 5% from those checks over into the savings.

Also I was gratified to see that sister-in-law and brother shared some of their funds with me in the form of 3 different checks spaced throughout the month. This helped as well.

Yesterday when totaling out my monthly Quicken, I was of the opinion that I could transfer another 5% of the January total deposits into the savings and did so.

From $5.29 on January 1st, I now have a smidgen over $600 in my savings. I'm pleased!

photo by: C.A.Sherwood Design

Julie

Further Savings

2011-01-26T17:58:00.002-05:00

I'm on a kick about trying to save wherever possible. Some ways that I have accomplished that in the last few days are:

1. When I began doing some medical transcription for a former client two weeks ago I knew I would need a couple of flash drives/thumb drives. Two would be the maximum number needed so that I could take work back, leave the drive, come back the next time with more work and pick up the old drive. Instead of going to Office Depot, etc I decided to see what Walgreen's had. I didn't need any type of flash drive that was huge and decided on their least expensive model of 2 GB. Even so, they were $23 each and I did buy two.

Assessment after using them was that they stunk. They opened with great difficulty and would not stay open. They required pulling open and then swiveling and were supposed to latch back into the top. They would not and continued to slide when placing in the USB port. Now, in the past, I would have pitched them in the garbage rather than returning them. I had thrown out all the packaging (who saves such packaging from a thumb drive anyway?) but I did have the Walgreen's receipt. Today I took those crazy things back and returned them. Received a nice $46 plus tax back. Good deal.

What will I use for the future? I did scrounge around in my desk and found a 4 GB drive that I was not using and put that into play. Also had another similar drive that I was using as my THIRD personal back-up (yes, I am compulsive about backing up my genealogy files and photos) but decided 2 back-ups were sufficient. I now have my $46 back and have found two other drives here at home that could be used.

Win-Win situation.

2. I am a big tea drinker. I especially drink decaffeinated green tea and have discovered that Stash tea is my favorite. Small town and all we don't have the availability for any special teas. I had received the Stash tea in a gift basket a year ago from a friend and had previously ordered it on-line. My supply is almost gone now and today I went on the Stash site. They had a special going that stated "buy one packet of loose tea and get 15% off". I don't usually buy loose tea but I decided to buy one packet of a loose decaffeinated green blend and then ordered some boxes of my regular green tea bags. When I did the order and got to the place to enter my code, I noted that I did indeed get the 15% off but not just off the one loose tea bag as I had thought from their ad but rather 15% off the whole order. Good deal and it paid for the shipping and then some.

Win-Win situation.

3. Third savings came today at the eye doctor. I had previously broken my office glasses (a special prescription for using on the computer and when reading which are NOT computer glasses per se, but are called office glasses). I have worn these for about 6 years since I transitioned to progressive lenses and they work magically on the computer and for reading. Just before Christmas my frames broke, I went back to the eye doctor but they were no longer made and could not be repaired. At that time they told me I would need to find a new pair of frames and they could insert the lenses into it. Not having any extra money then, I went back to using an old pair that I had.

Not a good idea as I am on the computer even more now that I am back doing transcription so today, after receiving my first check for the transcription, I went back to the eye doctor and we selected a pair of frames that were low end price. First they showed me some gorgeous frames that ran $260 and above. I don't think so! In the end, I selected a decent pair of frames for considerably less, sat and waited while they fit my lenses into them and they gave me a discount on the total because of the problem I had had with the old pair.

I have learned one thing in this example - it doesn't cost anything to ask for discounts as they are out there for the asking.

Win-Win situation.

I am pleased with these savings and eager to search for more ways to save.

Julie

A Penny Saved...

2011-01-20T18:08:00.003-05:00

...is $16.23 earned!

One of my goals for 2011 is to be more aware of those opportunities for use of coupons, offers, return of faulty products, etc. With that goal in mind, this week I had 3 opportunities to recoup some money and it totaled $16.23.

The first opportunity came with an internet order I placed with Hanes for some much needed lingerie. I had a coupon offer for 10% off an order of $50 or more but when I tallied the order, and input the coupon code, I did not receive the discount. The order went through, the items arrived but the final billing did not show the 10% discount. After 3 e-mails back and forth to Hanes, they finally came through this week and credited my debit card for $6.00.

The second opportunity came yesterday at Walgreen's where I went to pick up a prescription and a tube of antibiotic cream. I now have the Walgreen's prescription card for my prescriptions but with that card comes a 10% discount on the purchase of over the counter Walgreen's products. This was my first time using the card and it was seamless. The cream was $2.33 and the final bill showed my receiving a 23 cents credit. Not a lot but hey, 10% is 10%. There aren't that many items that I purchase at Walgreen's that have their brand but I will be looking for those in the future.

My third opportunity came today at the grocery store. Last week while shopping I picked up a magazine for slow cooking. I don't own a slow cooker but have been wanting one and when mentioning that to a friend recently she told me she had three and would be glad to give me her newest one which has never been used for cooking. I saw this magazine at the check-out line, had it in my hand and was checking the price when a friend came by, we began chatting and I tossed the magazine in the cart. When I sat down to read it the other day I noticed that 4 pages had been torn out of the book and it aggravated me. Then I checked the price to see what I had spent and was shocked that the book was $9.99. I determined to take that back to the store and get a refund. That is what I did today and the clerk nicely handed me over $10.

We are not talking about big money here, of course, but three opportunities to save $16.23 is nothing to sneeze about. I can find slow cooker recipes on line for free if I want to, I was entitled to the 10% discount on the Hanes order and the Walgreen's savings card did save me some pennies.

A penny saved is a penny earned is the old saying and in this case I saved $16.23. Not bad!

Julie

Wrap-Up of Monthly Budget Review

2011-01-17T16:08:00.002-05:00

At the beginning of the year I undertook a mission to review all my monthly expenditures from 2010 and ascertain where I could cut back. Over many posts, I have detailed a majority of my expenses and will wrap-up that topic at this time.

There is always room for improvement no matter how small. While I can't change the amount of my rent, I can hope for smaller utility bills though I am pretty frugal with the usage of water, heat (gas) and electricity. Gasoline for the car is another one of my expenses that is very low and might be lowered, albeit very minimally, by watching the changing prices for gasoline in my area. I filled my tank the 3rd week of December and today noticed I still have half a tank left. I truly do use very little gasoline.

Other areas that are pretty set would be prescription costs. While a majority of my mothers and my prescriptions are generic, we both have several that are not. Trial and error with generic substitutes for those brand name prescriptions were not successful and our doctor has recommended staying with the brand name. My mother has minimal prescription coverage so that helps. I have no health insurance or prescription coverage. I did sign up for Walgreen's Prescription Savings Club as of January 1st and have noticed a $15 savings per month on my brand name prescription. I am pleased with that savings.

Medical costs are another area of concern. My mother has a supplemental insurance and Medicare which covers the majority of her expenses other than the yearly co-pay. As of January 1st though I have no health insurance and will be looking at paying for my routine doctor visits. I require a quarterly visit to a podiatrist for a longstanding problem with one foot. While my previous coverage paid for all of his visit except $30, I talked to the office staff about my non-coverage now and they ran it by the doctor who agreed to drop his usual $75 fee to $40 for me. That will be a big help and will only cost me $10 more per visit than what I was paying in previous years. I want to try the same discussion with my family doctor to see if they will lower their normal office call to less for a non-insured patient. Hopefully, they will. I have already discussed that with their office staff and they told me I had to discuss this myself with the doctor.

Groceries and dining out are a big area where I need to be as frugal as possible. There are just the two of us (and a very small poodle whose 5# food bag lasts and lasts) and we eat out very infrequently but food prices continue to sky rocket as well as prices for paper products. I have started visiting our local Dollar Store for whatever items I can purchase there and the savings are promising. There is also an Aldi store in the area that I intend to pay a visit to as I have heard that great values can be had there.

Expenditures such as (1) gifts, (2) subscriptions, (3) household items are all very low in total from 2010. I buy very few gifts, have discontinued most of my magazine subscriptions over the last few years and don't really require any household items, dishes, linens, etc. I do spend a minimal amount on those items and will continue to look for ways to cut back when possible.

The last three areas of my budget that I am still taking a hard look at are (1) auto insurance, (2) cellular and (3) Comcast cable. I am planning on taking each one separately and look for better pricing. The first one will be my auto insurance which at this time is with State Farm and includes my rental insurance on my condo as well. I have several options for auto insurance that I want to investigate and will post on my results in a future edition.

Julie

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Clothing

2011-01-13T21:33:00.003-05:00

It has been many years since I spent heavily for clothing. During my years of administrative positions in various hospitals in the Detroit suburbs I did dress accordingly and spent on professional suits, shoes, etc. That ended when I became self-employed in 2000.

I found that with working out of my home the majority of the time, I didn't need professional clothes and got by quite nicely with one or two pair of dress pants and active wear types of outfits - pants and hoodie jackets with short sleeve tops. I have several sets for autumn and winter that are velour and several lighter weight for spring and summer. My weight has fluctuated over the years and the professional suits I had were all donated to a Re-sale shop some years ago but I haven't seen the need to replace them; besides nowadays everything seems to be more casual than dressy - even in the workplace.

My mother, on the other hand, has been blessed with a body weight that never changes. She has three times the amount of clothes that I do but most of her clothes date back 10 or more years; quite a few dressier outfits were bought when we still lived in the Detroit suburbs. We both are very careful with our clothes and find that they last and last.

I was, therefore, not too surprised when reviewing my 2010 expenditures to discover that I spent $236.17 for the year for clothes for both of us. This involved a winter jacket for myself and winter boots as well as a new nightgown which were all bought on sale.

The remainder of the money was spent on clothes for my mother resulting from her stroke and the necessity for her to have casual work-out clothes for the weeks she was in rehab at the hospital. I was told to bring in capri type pants and pull over tops that were easy to get into (when having occupational therapy) and walking shoes. None of these items were in my mother's closet as she always has dressed up with feminine type blouses with buttons (she could not maneuver buttons for months after her stroke) and NEVER pull over tops because they would mess her hair!!

At that time, I went off to JC Penney and came back with 5 pair of capris and pull over tops, all of which she was not happy with but understood that she had to have those clothes in order to rehabilitate. Shoes were the big problem. Again, my mother had always worn heels, and some very tall heels. She didn't own any walking shoes and she never wore socks preferring to have hosiery on at all times (she had worked for 25 years in the hosiery department of JL Hudson). Transitioning to socks and walking shoes was very new to her and she still is not happy with that but is adjusting.

Now with the start of the new year, I will be limiting my clothing purchases to absolute necessities and only when there is a sale or I have a coupon. As it has been quite some time since I replaced my lingerie, I had a coupon from Hanes where I have bought on line in the past. This was for 10% off of an order of at least $50.

I went on-line last week and selected quite a few items in that line of clothing (all on sale), the total was $54 for the merchandise and I entered the coupon code when prompted. The order went through but without the 10% discount.

I immediately went on-line and sent off a query to their customer service department. Heard nothing for several days during which the order arrived in fine condition. Tonight I had a response telling me that the particular coupon code I entered was for free shipping on an order over $75 and my order did not qualify.

Wait a minute...I had saved the coupon and I dashed off another e-mail in response clearly entering the exact wording from the coupon and the exact words stating 20% off an order of xxx, 15% off an order of xxx and 10% off an order of at least $50. I again listed the coupon code which corresponded with the code they listed in their e-mail. No where on the coupon was any mention of free shipping only percentage discounts.

I am not letting this go; 10% is 10% and I want the 10%. Whether their coupon was mis-coded or what is not my problem. I am holding a coupon that clearly states I get 10% and that is what they need to honor.

Incidentally in the order today there was another, identical coupon, offering the same deal so they are still producing the coupons, with the coupon code, as I had.

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Increasing the Income Stream

2011-01-12T15:48:00.002-05:00

When my employment ended August 31, 2010, I embarked on a mission to try to pick up other streams of income. My employed income had been dropping since January 7th and my savings were gone and I knew that my pending entry into social security benefits would not make up the difference even with the added income of my pension check.

Over these months I have networked strenuously with various medical practices in town to see if they could use my transcription services. Finding some type of work to do out of my home would be my first choice because I need now to be here for my mother and I don't really have anyone willing or interested to come and stay with my mother if I were to go out to work.

Impacting this as well is that my town is a small one with many industries having closed and more people than usual hunting for work.

One of my contacts did call me in December and told me that they would definitely be able to use my transcription services but they were waiting for authorization from the senior physician on this matter.

I was, therefore, pleased when last week I had a phone call from the office manager at this medical clinic. They had previously been one of my private clients for a 7 year period during which I performed administrative, payroll and human resources duties for them. The office manager informed me that the go-ahead had been received by the senior physician of the practice and they were desperately in need of assistance with their transcription.

They are a 5 man group and have one in-house employed transcriptionist who in no way can handle the load they produce. They also outsource to another woman who does the work in her home, but with her other clientele, she isn't able to fully cover the work. This is where I come in.

Monday I went by the office and picked up some tapes from one of their surgeons. He is in the office 3 days a week and I will be transcribing his dictation. They are already in an electronic medical record system but it is the type of system that still involves personal transcription of their dictations. The doctors dictate on tapes, the transcriptionist types it and it gets scanned back into their electronic charts. I came out of there with two tapes to transcribe.

I will only need to type the work, download on a thumb drive and return the thumb drive to the office. No need for fancy equipment but just my personal Office Depot transcriber, no need for extra telephone lines, no need for office supplies for printing. The doctor in question is clear, concise and easy to decipher and these two tapes took me approximately 3 hours to complete.

Today I took back the first batch of work and the doctor was there to thank me for "coming back to the fold" as he put it. I will say that I had a great rapport with this staff and many of the girls came up to welcome me back. Such a different feeling than the recent experiences at the Urology office where I provided services for 12 years.

When telling this to my cousin, Linda, she e-mailed me that it sounded like a great gig but obviously "you have failed retirement". I had a good laugh at that but I am simply enhancing my retirement with some extra income.

This was a good boost to my budget and I am pleased to have them share some of their work with me.

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Gasoline & Auto Repairs

2011-01-11T15:49:00.002-05:00

One of my smallest monthly expenditures is gasoline for my car. My friends all marvel at what I spend yearly for gasoline but living in a small town, working close to home (when I was working), having the stores and such close as well all factor into my gasoline expenditures.

For 2010, I spent a whopping $404.27 for gasoline. I usually find that I go 5-6 weeks between fill ups. Also during January-October, 2010 I had the extra bonus of points earned towards gasoline from my grocery store. This helped with the per gallon price as well. The store radically altered the program beginning November 1, 2010 and my rebates have dropped as well.

In addition to my gasoline costs, I spend $50 per year in Michigan for renewal of my license tabs. This cost is based on the weight of the car and with a Ford Escort the fee is always $50.

For auto repairs in 2010, I had the one major repair in October that totaled $995.15. This was totally unexpected but let's face it-repairs are always unexpected.

Total automobile expenditures for 2010 was $1,449.42 which means that, in a perfectly budgeted world, I should be setting aside approximately $125 per month.

My budget is not perfectly tuned but budgeting for my gasoline is do-able and I do budget $35 per month for that. I do admit that I don't even watch the changing prices at the gas stations but just drive in when I need to fill up and whatever the rates are is what I pay. In my opinion, driving around to other stations, rather than the one closest to the grocery, Walgreen's, etc that I patronize, doesn't make sense to me. I'm more than satisfied with my gasoline expenses at this time.

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Water Bill

2011-01-10T15:41:00.002-05:00

My water bill at this condo is the most confusing of my utility bills. While the billing is for a 3 month period, the rates are much higher than I had in my house. Our city is divided into a "city" and a "township" and my home was in the "city". The condo is in the "township" and the newspapers have been full of articles on the fact that the township water rates are higher and slated to rise again.

At my home, for over 12 years, my quarterly water bill was around $80. This included water for sprinkling the lawn and gardens which is something I don't have in the condo. Here at the condo, though, the quarterly bill runs around $110.

When I analyze my water bill, I see the bill is divided by (1) local surcharge, (2) sewer usage, (3) water domestic usage. While a difference of $30 per quarter computes to perhaps $10 more a month than in my house, it is disappointing to me.

I did call the Water Department and questioned the bills. They did do a check of the meter and reported it was functioning properly. I was told to check for any leaks that might be occurring but there don't appear to be any obvious ones. My friend, Mrs. Lowes, even came over and went around checking the toilets and showers, faucets and concurred that everything seems to be fine.

Interestingly, when we first moved here, the first water bill appeared about 4 weeks later and was for over $700! I laughed when I opened it because, of course, we had only been here for 1 month and I immediately called my rental agent. Turns out that the previous tenants had not paid their bill (for HOW long?) and the majority of that $700 bill was a past due balance from them. The rental agent sorted out the problem, paid the bill and my portion was about $35. I must say, though, I would love to know HOW past due that water bill was because how in the world could someone get to $700 past due without the water being turned off?

In any case, I need to budget about $40 per month towards the quarterly water bill so that I am not caught short when a bill for $110 and upwards arrives quarterly.

Since I don't do an inordinate amount of laundry or run the dishwasher more than once a week, there aren't many ways to cut the water bill.

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Life Insurance Premiums

2011-01-09T20:04:00.002-05:00

The next expense I have chosen to discuss in my review of my monthly expenditures are my mothers and my life insurance premiums.

My mother has had a life insurance policy since she was 10 years old which her parents purchased for her through our Lutheran insurance program. That policy was paid at the age of 20 and requires no further payments. The policy was a whopping $1,000 and over the 75 years since it was purchased it has grown to a little over $2,000.

Obviously this is very little life insurance and 10 years ago I decided to look into purchasing additional life insurance for her. Our Lutheran insurance agent came out and told me that, at her age at that time of 75, she would qualify for a policy of $2,500. I took out that policy then with the monthly premium of $21.40. Certainly not a hardship to pay each month.

I continue to pay that premium each month for her and the value has risen somewhat; her two policies are now valued at $6,500. Not a tremendous amount but enough to prevent her from being eligible for any aid in Michigan, i.e., food stamps, Medicaid, assistance with meals, etc. To qualify for any of that aid, it would be required to cash in the two policies which are currently carrying a cash-out value of $1,500. Not likely that I would do that.

So, I continue to pay her $21.40 which is not a problem.

As for myself - I always had life insurance through my various employers; of course I would have had to die during my employment there. As soon as this latest employer terminated my job last August 31st, there went my life insurance.

Even though my brother tells me that I don't need life insurance since I don't have a spouse, children or anyone who would need my insurance to survive, I disagree with him unless he would be willing to see that my end of life decisions are carried out via his wallet. Since he lives in the 50th state and I am in Michigan, the chances of that are pretty unlikely.

I called our Lutheran insurance agent in September and talked about life insurance for myself. The smallest policy available now is a $10,000 one with a monthly premium for me of $35.57. Again, not really a hardship and what I consider a necessity.

Therefore, monthly my expenditure for life insurance is $56.97 and I am satisfied with that.

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Heat & Electric

2011-01-05T15:51:00.003-05:00

Today I reviewed two of my utility bills to see if there could be any savings of money there.

My heat in this condo is gas heat and the only other gas usage is from the hot water heater. I was shocked when totaling what my total gas bill was for 2010 as it was way lower than I had ever experienced in the near 15 years that I owned my home in this city. The total bill for 2010 was $445.07 or approximately $37.09 per month. In my home, I remember being on the "budget plan" and the bill was at first $185 per month and later $155 but never below that.

The only thing I can attribute the massive difference to is that I do not need to keep the heat high in this condo. Basically in the winter I have the thermostat set at 65 or, at the most, 68 degrees. This condo sits between two others, I do not have windows on either side of the condo, therefore, and there are fewer windows than the 29 in my home. In fact, in the lower level where my office is are 6 heat registers and I have them all closed as otherwise it would be unbearably hot down here.

I am delighted with the gas bill and in the spring and summer my bills have traditionally been in the teens or twenties. I don't think there is anything further that I can do to lower the bill more and am satisfied with this expense.

I did decide today though to call the Gas Company and get on the budget plan. I waited a year after moving here to get a feel for the bills but a budget plan payment is something that aids in my budgeting. I was told the budget plan could start in February and would be $46 per month and I will go with that.

On the electric side, I spent a little more than double the money compared to the gas bill. That, too, was a shock, but a negative shock. The total for 2010 for electricity was $923.67 or $76.98 per month. True, in the summer I do have the air conditioning running pretty much non-stop through the evenings as the upper level (where the bedrooms are) seems warmer and I need the cool air to sleep.

To help in lowering this bill, I have started to change the light bulbs to the CFL type as recommended by my engineer neighbor. I do keep the lights off throughout the house when not in that room but my computer is on most of the day, the television is on a good portion of the day for my mother and there are only so many things in our mundane life that can be eliminated in the way of electricity usage.

I also called the Electric Company a few minutes ago and went on the budget plan with that as well. That monthly bill will now be $76 per month.

I think I prefer the budget planning method, so that in addition to the other expenses I have written about so far, I will know exactly what these bills will be monthly.

Now I will go post these new totals on my Excel budget sheet.

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Mom's Health Insurance

2011-01-04T15:40:00.002-05:00

In addition to my own expenses, I cover all of my mother's monthly expenses as she lives with me and her income is very minimal. Initially when she moved in with me, I was working and she was able to handle her own finances. True, she lived with me and thus avoided having to pay rent, utilities, food, etc but she used her own social security and pension checks to pay her personal bills. Her two meager checks were sufficient to cover her basic personal bills. In addition, I assumed all the credit card debt that my father had left her in but that is fodder for a different post, of which I have written numerous times and not germane to this topic.

Now, 15 years after she has moved in with me, her health status has changed and the effects of her stroke last summer have left her unable to write, sign her name, etc and I am handling all of her finances. Since she has no bank account, her two checks get deposited into my checking account from which I pay her bills.

In addition, in the last few years I have discontinued paying her credit card debt and followed the advice of my attorney to just "let them go". My mother has no checking account or bank account of any kind, no assets, nothing and there is nothing for her creditors to tap into to receive payment of the debt my father left her in dating back to 1996. Over these 15 years I had managed to drop that debt 60% but finally reached the end of my ability to do so. Again, not necessarily germane to this topic. But, as an aside, the creditors are continuing to file lawsuits against my mother which I respond to according to the advice of my attorney and which result in judgments from the court (we have had two of these to date out of nine accounts). As she has no assets and nothing but her meager $200 a month pension check and $700 a month social security check (which can't be touched by a creditor), the attorney assures me that I should just "play the game" and not worry about the judgments-the creditors can't get something from nothing.

In any event, one of the monthly expenses I cover for my mother is her supplemental health insurance premium and her Medicare Rx premium. My mother worked for 25 years for the JL Hudson Company in Detroit and part of her retirement (in 1986) included paid supplemental and prescription coverage. That was a biggie as most large corporations stopped that coverage for retirees. For 23 of those years she had the coverage provided for her and her health was excellent and she never used it.

Over the years of her retirement, Hudson's sold out to Target Corporation and then to Marshall Fields and still the paid supplemental benefits continued. This was truly a blessing. Two years ago, however, Marshall Fields sold out to Macy's and with the sale came a letter informing my mother that effective 1/1/10, she would be responsible for 1/3 of her supplemental coverage and 1/3 of her AARP Medicare Rx coverage. This was to be the start of a 3 year transition to Macy's dropping retiree coverage entirely.

Thus, January 1, 2010, I began making the premiums of $60.89 monthly for her AARP supplemental insurance and $12.80 for her AARP Medicare Rx insurance. In 2010, these premiums cost me $884.28. I will say that the costs to date of her hospitalization last summer for her stroke, broken hip and hip replacement surgery (break occurred in the hospital due to negligence of the nursing staff when my mother fell out of her hospital bed) are currently at $80,000 not including the costs for all the therapy she has had. All of these costs have been covered by her Medicare and supplemental insurance so the $884.28 I paid for the year was well worth it.

Of course, with the start of 2011, her share of these premiums is now up to 2/3 of the total. Costs this year for the supplemental insurance will be $131.77 per month and $20.92 per month for the AARP Medicare Rx plan. In addition, due to the stroke, she has added additional medications to her daily routine - 15 medications total so that cost has risen as well.

Assessment is that there is no way to diminish these costs but, hopefully, brother and sister-in-law will continue with their assistance with these costs. I have made them aware of the circumstances and since my brother is himself a physician he should be cognizant of how costly things can be in health care.

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Reviewing Monthly Expenses-Rent

2011-01-03T15:20:00.004-05:00

Each year at this time I begin gathering all my income tax materials-receipts, Quicken reports, etc and wait for the various statements that must come in the mail prior to getting my taxes completed. With my Quicken software, I always print out a yearly report showing all my income and expenditures, divided by categories. It is an eye-opening opportunity to review just where my money goes.

In that vein, I decided to write a blog post each day on a specific expense, see what I spent in that category in 2010 and determine if there is some way to cut the costs.

Starting this series will be the easiest of all expenses which is my RENT. I rent my condo via a management company who manages the property for the owner who actually lives in MN. I don't even know the owner, have never met her and never knew her name (top secret in the opinion of the management company). However, through gossip in the complex here, I did learn the owner's name, that she inherited this property and it is an investment for her. She chose to have a local management company handle the property for her and that is fine with me.

We have lived here for 1 year and 5 months so far. This condo is in a large complex of 147 units with 4 units in each grouping. There are 5 or 6 different floor plans among the 147 units and this one is certainly suitable for myself and my mother. I have learned that the going prices for these condos are in the $135,000 to $150,000 price range.

Our condo is a 2 story unit with 2 large bedrooms and large bath on the second floor as well as a dressing room between the master bedroom and bath. Both bedrooms have large, walk-in closets and the second floor is carpeted throughout. The main floor has a half bath, vestibule, dining room, living room, large kitchen, brick fireplace and balcony off the living room. The first floor is carpeted throughout other than the vestibule and kitchen which are tiled. The basement is finished with several rooms consisting of a large laundry room, huge bathroom with walk in shower, two storage areas and a huge main room where I have my office. There is also a detached one car garage and the complex has a pool and tennis courts. In addition, each grouping of 4 sections of buildings are surrounded by beautifully landscaped parks with statues and fountains with benches for sitting.

For 2010, the total I spent in rent was $10,800 or $900 per month. I think that is a reasonable rent considering that the condo fees of $260 per month are included in my rent. Compared to my 15 years of home ownership, condo living includes snow removal, grass cutting, landscaping and that is a savings to me. In addition, when the maintenance crew removes the snow they also go up on each and every porch and place salt. That is a big help.

With renting, of course, any repairs needed are done by the rental agency I rent through. On Christmas Eve I noticed that I had no heat. I called the rental agent who told me to call a specific furnace company which I did and out they came, in the evening, to repair the furnace. No cost to me.

My assessment of the rent is that for what we receive here, the $900 is well worth the price; the rent was NOT raised when our year was up in August, 2010 so I was pleased about that.

For the purposes of my review of my monthly expenses, I am satisfied with the rent and see no way to alter it.

P.S. - To Deb, my anonymous reader who follows my blog - I read your recent comment and was posting it to my blog when "poof" it disappeared. I appreciate all your comments and am honored that you have followed me and continue to comment. Thanks!

And, the budget review goes on....

Julie

Savings Goals for 2011

2011-01-02T14:09:00.003-05:00

I have increased the number of personal finance blogs that I have been reading and have noticed the numerous posts on "savings goals for 2011". It is amazing the ways that people can maneuver their budgets to allow for admirable savings plans and I commend them all.

My situation is quite different as I am now retired and living on fixed income (and not much of it, either). I have a credit union account that includes an interest bearing checking account and a savings account. The savings account must maintain a whopping $5.00 balance for the accounts to remain active. At this time, my savings account has $5.29 in it.

I have decided to make an attempt to do some savings, no matter how small. I had toyed with the idea of saving 10% of all checks that I receive (pension, social security, money from brother & sister-in-law) but not knowing what they intend to send monthly gave me pause for thought.

I have now downsized my plan and am going to start with January and with moving 5% of every deposit I make in my checking account over to my savings account. Admittedly, this will not be an enormous amount but it will be something. It will also give me a small feeling of doing something positive to fund the savings account.

My deposit for tomorrow will be $1,452.34 so I will move over to my savings account the grand sum of $72.62. I can always up the percentage as the year progresses if more money comes my way and/or if I am able to secure some home based transcription work. Have my fingers crossed on that possibility as a former client has indicated they are in desperate need of more help on that front but are waiting for approval from the senior physician in the practice.

Here's hoping...

Julie

Welcome to 2011

2011-01-01T15:25:00.002-05:00

A new year has arrived and, here in Southwest Michigan, we are having the strangest weather. Yesterday the temperature was over 50, the snow melted and there was no need for coats. Today the temperature is back down in the 20's, it is windy and biting cold. In Germany, where I have family, they tell me they are having more snow than in many years. Of course, we can't control a thing about the weather can we?

I was pleased to see that I ended 2010 with a grand total of $403 in my checking account. Much better than the last three months when I had just coin available. Some of this windfall (?) was due to the fact that several of my friends gifted me for Christmas with grocery gift cards which enabled me to buy two weeks' worth of groceries with no cash layout. This was certainly welcome.

Also, another friend gave me 10 lottery scratch off tickets (she normally does this at her Christmas Eve gathering) and amazingly I won $102. I was so excited and the day after Christmas I was at the store to cash those babies in. With some cash that I received from two other friends, I have $200 put away toward the new stove that I am going to have to buy and soon.

During the onslaught of cookie baking that I did, it became apparent that the stove/oven is on its last legs. When I moved into this condo, all the appliances were here but I wanted to bring my nice range and the owner allowed it with the stipulation that IF I move out, the range has to stay. In the two years we have been here, I have had repeated oven problems, replacement of the heating coil twice that my friend, Mrs. Lowes, did for me and other problems. The stove is about 17 years old and was moved here by us when we relocated from Detroit so it has certainly seen its years of use. I have pretty much decided a new stove is on the agenda in the weeks ahead.

I have a check still coming from some transcription that I did in September for an old client. At the time I didn't bill them because I realized that IF I did, the income would push me over the limit I could have earned in 2010 to begin receiving social security. So the office manager kindly told me to wait until January to bill them; that bill will net me just under $400 and, together with my $200 saved, should be enough for the range. I have decided to have this present range stored in the garage in the event that we ever move at which time I will move the old range back into the condo.

Now, on to pay the early January bills, including the rent. My sister in law just sent me another check to cover the January rent and utilities which is dated January 1st. I will make sure that gets in the bank on Monday.

I'm off to set up my 2011 Quicken; such exciting things for New Years' Day! I'm listening to all my Christmas CD's again. I like to extend the holidays into January and am never in a hurry to take down the decorations.

Happy New Years to all.

Julie

Around The Corner

2010-12-30T16:47:00.003-05:00

2011 is just around the corner. The time of the year for resolutions is upon us. I have been reading many personal finance blogs and see that the bloggers are out in force with their resolutions for the new year.

I have never been one to make resolutions. I know myself too well and I usually have a hard time following through with such goals.

2010, though, has been a year of major stresses for me of which I have devoted numerous posts on this blog. I want to leave these stresses behind me and not dwell on them any longer. What could be a more perfect resolution!

In 2010 I retired; certainly sooner than I had anticipated but it was provoked by two events, i.e., (1) the loss of my job and (2) my mother's stroke which required that I be home with her to assist her. After 45 years of working, I was more than ready to put down my briefcase.

The budget is stretched beyond itself, income has really dropped and I will need to concentrate on tightening up the budget with the reduced income. I have some ideas in mind for the tightening and I will begin to activate them in 2011.

I have been a Quicken software user for more years than I can remember; certainly at least 15 years. It had been years since I updated my software and I did break down and purchase the 2011 version. It does have some advanced features that I had not had before and I look forward to utilizing the program.

For the first time in I don't know how long, maybe forever, I am totally without credit card debt. Of course the bankruptcy, which eliminated my debt, is responsible for that but it is a fantastic feeling to have been able to purchase a few Christmas presents and pay for them with cash.

As many of my readers recommended when hearing the events of my year, I did contact my brother to see if he would assist me in my expenses as supporting "our" mother has been my total responsibility since our father passed away and supporting "our" parents by myself goes further back than that. My sister-in-law, who is the keeper of the budget in their family, promptly e-mailed me to send me an Excel chart which she asked me to fill out with our income and expenses. She also had a few questions for me such as: (1) what type of savings do you have? (umm, $5.29), (2) do you have any 401 K or annuity accounts? (NO), (3) do you have a credit card for emergencies? (NO), (4) how much do you spend on frivolous items, clothes, make-up, etc that you could cut out? (I spend ZERO; look in my closet) and a few other even more personal questions. Maintaining my dignity in such a situation is vital to my self esteem but boy is it tough.

In any event, I filled out her chart and shot it off through cyberspace. Took weeks for her to respond to the e-mail but nothing was mentioned about the chart. Yesterday I did receive a check in the mail which was welcome and, hopefully, they have seen the situation I am in. Time will tell.

As 2011 looms, I want to thank my readers for following my blog; I notice many hits on my Site Meter but few actual responses. I have been following many blogs and today updated my blog with those sites I follow. If there are others out there who have blogs of their own and are following mine, please comment as I would love to add YOUR blogs to MINE.

Happy New Year and here is to a better financially and physically healthy 2011.

Julie

The Phantom Strikes

2010-11-28T12:13:00.004-05:00

Thanksgiving has come and gone. We had a very quiet day here but I did roast a turkey and made some of the side dishes that we enjoy. Later we watched a few Thanksgiving DVD movies that I have. Even began to get out some of the Christmas decorations and set them out.

However, yesterday had a surprise. Went for the mail and there was a card in there addressed to my mother and myself. I assumed it was our first Christmas card from my cousin and his family as my cousin's wife is always way ahead with getting her cards out. However, there was no return address on the envelope and the postmark was blurred and could not be read.

The card was thick, though, and had more than the required 44 cents postage on it. When I opened it, I saw it was a Thanksgiving card and a very pretty one at that. But inside the card were TWO Visa Debit cards - each for $100. There was no signature on the card to tell who this mystery gift was from.

To say we were surprised is an understatement. I have no idea who this phantom gift giver is but I think that is the idea of the giver - to be anonymous means even more to the receiver. To just know that someone was thinking of us and would send us this $200 gift is so touching and thoughtful.

Julie

You Know It's Bad When...

2010-11-16T19:12:00.002-05:00

...You've had 3 months with no salary since losing your job and your savings have been depleted.

...You've waited patiently for unemployment to kick in only to be informed that your ex-employer has made sure that you don't get unemployment.

...You've been forced to empty out your State quarters portfolio and your Presidential dollars portfolio to obtain some cash for food.

...You go grocery shopping with $18 in total in your wallet, carefully add up your few purchases and get to the check-out to find out the bill is $18.01.

...You have an episode of your own where you unexpectedly get dizzy and pass out smack on the ground on your face and your 85 year old mother, recovering from a stroke, doesn't know how to react.

...You are on the eve of your first Social Security check with 15 cents in your purse and $5.29 in your savings account.

Yep, that has been my life the last few weeks.

To expound on the above, it has been 3 months since I lost my job on August 31st and any savings I had at that time are gone with only $5.29 remaining in my account. $5 is necessary to maintain the account with my credit union.

I finally heard from unemployment with the dire news that my employer has now stated that I misunderstood them that my job was over and my job would have continued. They are so full of crap. I spent 2 days on the phone with various people at unemployment and the bottom line is, despite the fact that I was told 3 times in August that my job was over as of August 31st and I should find new opportunities, I have nothing in writing from the physicians, on their letterhead, with a physician's signature. They know darn well they told me my job was over as they canceled my Blue Cross at the same time as well. The people at unemployment were very sympathetic but told me I don't have anything to base an appeal on; the employer is fighting my unemployment and the written facts are on their side. So, down the drain goes the $362 per 2 week period that I was originally told I was qualified for.

To buy some food I pushed out all the US state quarters from their portfolio that I collected and got a rousing $25.00. Also cashed in my 7 US presidential dollars to bring my cash to $32.00. Bought gasoline with my gasoline coupon from our grocery store that gave me 51 cents off each gallon. Ended up with $18, went to the market, carefully added up my purchases and ended up with $18.01 at the check-out. Told the young guy that I only had $18 so would have to figure out what to put back when a young man behind me in line said "I will give you a penny, madam". Talk about feeling old and...poor. (And, the great gasoline rebate program at my market which has continuously given me cents off gasoline, was canceled as of November 1st.)

And, to add to my stress, I had an episode 2 weeks ago where I got up off the couch, felt dizzy and promptly passed out smack on the floor on my face. Panicked my mother to no end who, due to the stroke and her aphasia, she had no idea what to do. I woke up quickly and felt fine but have no health insurance to go to the doctor (and no money at the present time anyway). Talked to my brother a few days later who is a doctor in one of the two states not in the continental US (who, due to his distance from here isn't much help anyway) and his comment was that I should "calm down, lower my blood pressure and relax". Yep, that is an Army doctor mentality.

Mentioned my episode to my mother's therapist who told me she has similar episodes but she recovers before she actually passes out. She said her situation is due to "orthostatic hypotension" or low blood pressure on rising from a sitting position.

Of more concern to the therapists was to help us to prevent a problem if this were to happen again when my mother is unable to make a phone call or react. Their recommendation is a "LifeLine" alert system offered here in our hospital system. Unfortunately, the cost is prohibitive with my budget. There is a cost to install the system of approximately $100. The monthly fee for a system that would not require my mother to speak at all but would just require her to push a button and a pre-recorded message would say "This is Mrs. X and I need help" and would automatically dial 2 different friends/relatives to alert them; if no response from them, would dial 911 and would cost $59 per month. There needs to be a land line in the house for this to work and we have no land line so I would have to have a phone line with additional cost. This would make a monthly fee with the phone line and the LifeLine system of close to $100. Besides, I contacted several cousins in the area to ask them to be our "point of contact" person and none were willing to do so. The only one offering to help is my dear friend, Mrs. Lowes, but I need 2 points of contact. Talk about feeling friendless.

I talked to my brother about helping with the costs and his feeling was that our mother would not be able to react enough to activate the alert anyway and it would be a waste of money. His comment to me was "If you pass out and wake up quickly, you can tell Mom to hand you the phone and you can call 911", "if you pass out and die, well you are dead so it won't matter anyway" (hmm, guess my dead body can lie on the floor with my mother not knowing what to do) and "if you pass out and are injured and don't wake up, mother isn't going to know what to do anyway". Gives me such comfort, that brother of mine.

So here I sit on the eve of what is to be the arrival of my first Social Security check. I admit to some apprehension that something will screw that up as well and the check won't be in my account tomorrow. This will prove interesting.

In hindsight, I can't help thinking back over the past 45 years of my working life. I worked non-stop for those 45 years, had good jobs and made very good money and managed to create investments and savings accounts of ZERO. Yes, I did bail my parents out of many financial crisis situations and supplemented their small incomes for over 25 years. That is done; those were decisions I made in the past due to my weaknesses and my fear of my father; I can't change those decisions.

What now remains is to figure out how to frugally live on my pension and social security check and how to make that happen in a way that will leave me at the end of each month with MORE than 15 cents in my purse.

That is my mission if I choose to accept it. Well, I better choose to accept it because there is really no other alternative.

Julie

Election Thoughts

2010-11-03T19:27:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was election day in the US and here in Michigan the Republicans ruled. We elected a new Republican governor and people are geared up for all the changes they feel this will bring. Time will tell in my humble opinion. I admit that I am not the most savvy person when politics is involved though I am knowledgeable on the issues and what I don't know my friend Mrs. Lowes can inform me of. She will bring politics into many conversations and it is obvious that this is one of her many passions.

Yesterday she invited my mother and myself to go out for Chinese dinner. There is a small Chinese restaurant near our homes that is fairly new. So new that the management has very few clients. We were the only people in the restaurant last night and Mrs. Lowes started talking politics and the elections with the owner. He was so impressed with her speech that he up and left the restaurant to go out and vote and came back a short time later telling her how many people were in line at his precinct and how he had voted!

One thing I am glad to see gone are the numerous television ads that were playing over and over and over and then over again. Here in Southwest Michigan we receive television stations from South Bend, IN and from Chicago. Our televisions were loaded with Indiana political ads and the one that caught my interest was the ad by Joe Donnelly, a Congressman there.

His ad 'promised' - "I believe there should be a Hoosier for every job and a job for every Hoosier". I can't tell you how many times that ad played to the point that it was overkill and utterly ridiculous. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone could guarantee a job for every resident in a state and a state resident for every job? If he could bring that to fruition, hey, he can move to Michigan and do the same here where unemployment gives us the distinction of being one of the top states with people out of work.

I scoured our local paper this morning for the results of the Indiana elections but had to go to the Internet to see that Joe Donnelly was re-elected by a very close margin so Indiana will now see a "Hoosier for every job and a job for every Hoosier".

Good luck, Joe!

Julie

Car Repairs

2010-11-02T19:44:00.002-04:00

It is true that an automobile is a necessary evil nowadays. We need our transportation, of course, and have to be prepared to spend some dollars to keep the vehicle running.

I drive a 1997 Ford Escort. The car only has 24,000 miles on it and my mother bought it in 1997 when we first moved back to our home town. It is long paid for and about 4 years ago, when my mother discontinued driving, I sold my older car and took hers. Over these 13 years I have replaced the tires and done oil changes and tune ups but that is about all.

The last couple of weeks the car started giving me fits. It was making a terrible noise and I admit that I am pretty naive when it comes to the inner workings of an automobile. I was telling my friend, Mrs. Lowes, and she came over and checked out the car for me diagnosing the muffler.

I did take the car in to my repair shop and learned it was going to be far more than a muffler. Turned out to be the entire exhaust system as well as the struts and shocks. Throw in an oil change and winterizing and the total was quoted as hitting $1,000.

I will add that I utilize an auto repair shop that is owned by a long time family friend so I am confident in the diagnosis and price of any auto repairs. I know the owner will not cheat me and when he says something needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed. But, $1,000!

Not in my budget for sure but necessary. Had to tell him to go ahead with the repairs and got the car back later in the day.

In a perfect world, with a budget that is full proof and never fails, one would have this amount of money tucked away for auto repairs. However, my budget is still a work in transition since my employment ended August 31st and I have gone 2 months without pay and no unemployment yet. My first social security check is due to arrive on November 17th and I am counting on that.

Here's hoping the car is set now for a long time to come.

Julie

A Harvest of Friends

2010-11-01T13:22:00.003-04:00

This last week my good friend, Tiger Girl, reminded me that some weeks have gone by since my last post. In looking at my blog, I see that almost a month has gone by. Goodness! I do have a good reason for this, though. I have been very busy with visitors, thus the title of this post.

I am a big devotee of Laura Ingalls Wilder and have enjoyed the television series, Little House on the Prairie, with Melissa Gilbert. I even have the complete DVD series of that show and one of the earliest episodes was titled "A Harvest of Friends". In that episode, "Pa" (Charles Ingalls) was injured and unable to complete an agreed upon job for a neighbor and was in danger of losing his farm. That is when a group of his neighbors and friends came to his aid, completing his job for him in the specified time and then going further and plowing and planting his field.

In the same spirit of helpfulness, this month, I had a steady stream of visitors to my home and it was most welcome.

First came a cousin and his wife from Farmington Hills who had never been to our condo before. They were on their way to Chicago to celebrate their mutual birthdays and stopped here for the day on their way. They brought with them some treats and we had a good visit along with some genealogical talk updating some of my information on that particular line.

Their visit was followed a few days later by my cousin, Linda, from Mt. Clemens who came for a 3 day visit. She surprised me by stopping at one of our neighboring grocery stores and came with bags and bags of groceries for us. This was most needed and was enough to get us through the entire month of October without having to do any grocery shopping; a certain blessing since I was now going into my second month with no salary and still awaiting the start of my unemployment and social security. Linda is my genealogy cousin as well and we visited, sorted photos and scanned them into her laptop, compared family data, ate out with another genie friend in the area who treated us both and even went to an outlet mall near here. It was a great visit.

Following Linda's visit, I had a phone call from a good friend in St. Clair Shores who asked if I wanted company on the following Sunday. We have been friends for over 30 years, worked together in Detroit ions ago and I am the godmother to her two daughters who are 27 and 29. All 3 drove down here on a Sunday morning and spent the day with us. We toured the areas of interest to visitors here, went to the beach at Lake Michigan, saw the new carousel that has been built on the beach, the girls jumped in Lake Michigan and we went out to eat - their treat. It was a great visit and so much fun to be with all 3 of them. It had been 7 years since I had seen them and the girls have grown and matured so much in that time. Though both have college degrees, they are still struggling to find full time jobs; one works 3 part time jobs with no benefits and the other works 2 part time jobs with no benefits. This is a worry for them and for me as their godmother.

Later in the week following the visit of my friend and goddaughters, we were off at therapy for my mother, just finished and leaving the therapy center, when our neighbor (who also takes her mother to therapy) was just arriving. She informed me that we had had a visitor at our home and she had seen them and informed them we were probably at therapy. We sped home and saw a note indicating another cousin and her husband, also from Mt. Clemens, were in the area and would return in one hour for a visit. True enough, within one hour they were back, and we had a long visit.

Whew, is that enough company for one month! No, not in the least.

Just a few days after these cousins visited us, my brother and sister-in-law arrived for a planned 5 day visit. They live in one of the two states not considered part of the continental US and only visit about once every 2 years. I had a list of some tasks that I needed help with and they both jumped in and took care of them for me such as:

Changing all the batteries in the smoke alarms in this condo (there are 6 alarms in here) and they are all high on the wall and would require me to be on a step stool. Better to have my 6' 2" brother do that without the step stool.

Changing high light bulbs in the various ceiling fixtures - again helpful with a 6' 2" man.

Changed out my front door screen with the storm door for winter.

Bought bags of dirt and bulbs so that I could plant spring bulbs in pots on the balcony of the condo (I am going to all container gardening on the balcony and we did 5 huge pots of bulbs) - again handy to have a strong man hauling huge bags of dirt but actually my tiny sister-in-law has muscles, too, and she was the one to haul the bags.

I have a small area of ground at the back of the condo for planting in the earth but the condo sits on the beginning of a ravine that runs through the last stretch of units and it involves my climbing up an incline to get to the earth to plant, pick, weed, etc and I am not stable on climbing inclines. My sister-in-law thought putting down plastic landscape material would be an idea and then filling in the area with stones. She again took the bull by the horns, measured the area, visited several local stores to get ideas and came back with their rental van filled with huge bags of stones which this time my brother hauled to the back. The two of them worked all day placing the plastic and the stones and it looks so wonderful. Now I don't have to worry about the weeds taking over and I don't have to get down there to plant either.

They took my mother and I out to dinner each night that they were here and took my mother on her doctor and therapy visits so that I could have a break from the care-giving which was appreciated. It was a good visit and it was nice to see them and to see my sister-in-law who had open heart surgery 14 months ago and was finally feeling back to normal.

All in all, October was certainly a period fitting the sentiment of "A Harvest of Friends"!

Julie

Guess I've Been Told, Teil Zwei (Part Two)

2010-10-02T20:44:00.005-04:00

To think I spent two days stewing over the situation with the church, feeling discouraged and upset. Well NO MORE. Today was the awakening for me.

This afternoon I received a call from one of the board members - the lady who had sat in on my chastisement with the minister. She starts out by telling me about all the activities she has been involved in all week doing good for the community (huh?) and follows by saying that she has had feedback from the women of the board who feel that they are all in a "healing phase" at this time and it will take a long time for them to "forgive" me once they receive an appropriate apology.

WHAT the crap is a "healing phase"? What in the blue blazes did I do anyway to merit this kind of baloney? Did I sleep with one of their husbands? Well, since they are all in their 70's and 80's and their husbands are not the most appealing, I don't think they have to worry about that. Did I steal the ladies group treasury money? Did I murder someone? This has become a laughing matter now.

Maybe they would like me to stand up on the altar on Sunday, apologize for my major indiscretion of defending my recuperating mother and then they could all stone me. Would they be happy then?

She further told me that "perhaps one day we will be friends with you again, Julie, but it will take a long time".

Well they can whistle Dixie or some other appropriate sentiment. I hung up that phone and told my mother I had had it with them and she was stunned and equally ticked off. She kept saying she can't believe this whole situation and this has become a huge pack of crap.

A little later my cousin, Linda, called me from the Detroit area. She had just read my post from yesterday and she was horrified. Linda has the ability to make me laugh and to build me up and her call of near two hours was just the medicine I needed to shake me out of my despair. Between our conversation and the comments I have received here, I find this whole situation a mockery of justice and a huge waste of time.

This has taken up too much of my energy and that is over. Maybe this call from church lady was good because it made me see just what a ludicrous position those women have taken.

Gotta love my cousin, Linda. She is going to make a mini vacation and come across the state to visit me tomorrow for a few days. We are going to saturate ourselves with our genealogy research, work on our photos in our computer and stuff ourselves with food. There will be a lot of yak, yak at the same time, too.

Julie

Guess I've Been Told

2010-10-01T16:29:00.004-04:00

In my last post, I talked about the situation at my church where I was contacted by the Ladies group and told to inform my mother, who was the current President of this group, that she would need to resign due to the effects of her stroke. Her term began on September 1st and at the first meeting the current Vice-President ran the meeting. At that time, the Vice-President announced that she would "fill in" until my mother could resume her duties. That made my mother very happy, of course.

First of all, my mother truly believes that she will quickly be able to go back to the church choir (which is her passion), return to the church quilting group and return to her duties as President of the Ladies group. I think that believing this will occur quickly helps my mother in her struggles with the speech/writing therapy. I am honest enough to know that this may never occur, or at the least, will take more than a few weeks or even a few months to happen. But I would not tell my mother that at this time.

So it was quite by surprise that I received a phone call from a board member of the Ladies group informing me that my mother must resign and that I should be the one to tell her. After listening to this woman, I did remark that this was a very difficult situation and that telling my mother this would hurt her very much to which the woman remarked "we know, Julie, that is why we want YOU to tell her".

I did talk to my mother, she was hurt and bewildered as I expected and she agreed to the resignation. I called the woman back, as she had requested, and I will admit that I did speak sharply to her, informing her that (1) my mother would resign, (2) that I was not happy that they decided to move on this action so quickly, (3) asked WHY this could not have been postponed for a month or two and (4) asked just WHY one of them could not have come to the house and actually talked to my mother. She was very firm and told me that it was a necessary decision, backed by the constitution, and this is the way it was.

I typed up a resignation letter for my mother which I had to sign for her as she can't write at this time, mailed it off and figured that was the end. Oh, no, not by a long shot.

Evidently woman #1 had to call the other members of the board and related that I was rude to her. They then went as a group to the minister and reported that I was rude to her. I know all this because....

Yesterday I took my mother to Bible class at church which we go to every Thursday. After the class, the minister approached me and informed me he wanted to speak to my mother and myself. As the people filed out of the class, one of the above mentioned Ladies group board members appeared and joined the three of us at the table. The minister then proceeded to tell me that he had been informed of the situation with the Ladies group and he was informed that I was not pleasant to the ladies regarding this situation.

Then followed a chastising from the minister who told me that the Board acted appropriately and that I was inappropriate in how I spoke to them and it would be necessary for me to call each board member and apologize. Several times I attempted to say something and on 3 different occasions he thrust his hand on the table and told me to "be quiet, you are upsetting your mother" and other similar sentiments. All of this was discussed in the presence of the board member.

He did ask my mother, very sweetly, when she thought she could resume her duties to which my mother replied "in a few weeks". Of course, this is my mother's opinion based on her hope and he said, in typical ministerial tones that "as soon as your doctor tells you dear that you can resume your duties, then the Ladies group will have an election to see if they want you back; are you okay with that?"

It was a horrible experience for me, very embarrassing and very degrading to be spoken to like a child and in front of a church member from the Ladies group (not the one who had called me either). He also remarked that on three occasions he has called my mother's number in our home but that I answered the phone. He questioned me why I don't let my mother answer the phone and made me feel like I was keeping her prisoner in the house. I replied that we have cell phones and since her stroke she is unable to flip the top of the phone open so she hands the phone to me when it rings. I do hand her the phone to talk to whoever has called but if I don't flip the top, the call goes to voice mail. We live in the same home for goodness sake; why wouldn't I be helping her with such things.

To end the meeting, he reiterated again to me "now you are going to call all the ladies and apologize to them for your inappropriate behavior" and I just sat there and looked at him. He then remarked to the board member "are you okay with this action" to which she replied that she would inform her board to expect a call from me with an apology.

This is ridiculous - it isn't like I swore at the woman, called her any names, told her they should all take a long walk off a short pier or whatever. I simply told her on the phone that I was very upset by their action, that my mother was sitting crying about it and that I thought they were very cruel and unkind and that my mother had said that she was through with any of the church activities. That was it.

All afternoon yesterday I stewed about this. My mother quickly decided she was fine with going back to the church and her activities because the minister was so sweet TO HER. She did tell me on several occasions that she couldn't believe the way he talked to me but my mother's personality both pre-stroke and post-stroke is that of a sweet, loving person who doesn't want any trouble with anyone. She doesn't want to have the church ladies upset with her if she doesn't come back to the meetings, she grew up in this church, attended the grade school - this is home to her.

I realize all that but there is a limit to what I can force myself to do to make my mother happy. I am not happy at all right now. I feel near a major meltdown. How much can an individual body take in a short 24 months:

(1) Lost all my client base and my home based business was closed.
(2) Found employment with one of my clients at a highly reduced wage.
(3) Had to file bankruptcy and lost my home in foreclosure.
(4) Had to find alternative housing before my credit report was 'hit' by #3.
(5) Found a rental condo, had to quickly pack and move losing my home of 12 years.
(6) Replaced in my job by a nurse in the office and offered a further reduced position working from my home.
(7) Started depleting my dwindling savings to live as my hours dropped quickly from 40 per week to 10 then 8 then 6 and finally to 2 or 3 for the last three months.
(8) My mother had a stroke, followed by a fall, broken hip and hip replacement surgery; 1 month in the hospital and 2 months of at-home therapies ending August 31st.
(9) Lost my job on August 31st when the physician office sold out to the hospital and my position was eliminated.
(10) Applied for unemployment and 1 month later still waiting for a determination as to my eligibility.
(11) Applied for social security to begin and must wait another few months for that to take effect.
(12) Began taking my mother for outpatient physical and speech therapy on September 13th, and as of October 1st, also re-scheduling continuing occupational therapy three times per week.
(13) Paid my October rent today (October 1st) depleting my savings account to $5 which is the amount necessary to keep the account open.

Today I have 2 quarters in my wallet, $5 in my savings account and $12 in the checking account. I have no food in the house but a box of cereal and some boxed milk which I was able to receive from a food bank that my friend, K, inquired on for me. Talk about depression - receiving food from a food bank when I have worked for 45 years.

Yesterday we had cereal and milk for breakfast and lunch and nothing for dinner as we didn't feel like a repeat of the earlier meals. Again, today, the same thing. Expected my pension check today which did not appear nor my mother's pension check. In the 26 years my mother has been retired her check has always appeared before or on the first and mine is automatically deposited into my checking account on the first of each month. I even went to the neighbor's mailbox to see if the check was there (the neighbors moved a month ago). They had mail but not anything for us.

I am feeling totally depressed with good reason. I am also very upset by the actions of the minister at the church and feel like I have been punished for some great sin. He even e-mailed me late last night to tell me that I am a child of God and God will forgive me for my actions against the Ladies group. WHAT!

I have come to believe that there is a huge difference between having a true faith in God and being a member of an organized church. One does not have to attend a church to be a believer and from this episode I can see why people choose to leave churches.

I know that my two good friends, Tiger Girl and Holly Hobbie, will agree with me!

Julie

Caregiving a Parent

2010-09-29T19:08:00.003-04:00

I have been very blessed in my life that my mother reached the age of 2 weeks shy of 85 without ever having had a major illness, health problems of any kind, need for doctor and specialist visits, etc. The few (and I mean very few) colds that she has had in her lifetime easily resolved with home care remedies. I was certainly spoiled in not having to be concerned about her health as so many of my friends were with their parents.

All that changed on June 19th when my mother unexpectedly had a stroke. That followed, later that same day, with falling out of her bed in the hospital, breaking her hip and subsequent hip replacement surgery. I would never have expected that my mother would have a stroke. She had a healthy lifestyle, was active and fit and had no family history of strokes in her parents, grandparents or siblings. Of course, this only goes to show that in life anything can and does happen.

One month in the hospital was followed by the next two months with extensive therapies in the home. Since September 13th I have now been taking her 3 days a week to the hospital outpatient center for continuing physical and speech therapy.

And, life as we knew it has changed.

My mother and I have lived together since moving back to our home town in 1997. We devised a shared system of tasks with my mother doing the laundry and cooking (as well as the gardening) and with me doing the cleaning and grocery shopping (and working, of course). Now all the tasks of running a household fall on me plus the necessity to find people to come into the house and stay with my mother when I have to run errands.

Thankfully, her hip is healing and she has done remarkably well with the physical therapy. She has now graduated from the wheelchair to a walker and now to a cane and can walk some short distances without the cane. She goes up and down the stairs to our bedrooms on the second floor with my help but without too much difficulty.

The speech problems though will be ongoing for quite some time. While she was and is able to speak clearly, she has what is called Wernicke's aphasia. She is unable to read, unable to write, cannot spell such things as her name or state her address or phone number among other things. The speech therapist tells me that this will all take time and it is a slow process.

This is all very frustrating for my mother who was used to being active. All of her activities have ground to a halt. She can't sing in the church choir because she can't read the words in the music. She could not serve as her 1943 class reunion president and the classmate who took over the reunion failed to contact her to tell her when the event was (I had promised my mother I would take her to the reunion; she just couldn't lead the group), she couldn't work on her flowers on our balcony because she is on hip precautions for 6 months following her surgery and the list goes on. She can't read during the day which she liked to do so she watches television until she gets bored with that and then is further bored because there is nothing to do to replace that. She can't use her computer and e-mail her friends and cousins as she did daily and the contact from them has ceased.

One of her main disappointments involved her service as president of the Ladies Aid group at our church. My mother had been elected President to serve from September, 2010 through 2012. We did attend the September meeting and the Vice-President ran the meeting. Everyone was glad to see her and told her that the VP would run the meetings until she could resume her duties. However, just 2 weeks later, I had a call from one of the board members who told me that the board had called a 'special' board meeting and decided that since the VP really doesn't want to do the Presidency duties temporarily that my mother should tender her resignation now so they could elect a new president. They wanted me to tell my mother that she needed to send in a resignation letter immediately. Nice!

Now, I realize that my mother may very well not be able to resume the presidency duties but I feel (1) that they could have given her a few months to see how she progresses (the therapists keep telling us her speech and writing will return) and (2) they could have had somebody come out here to discuss it with her or call her on the phone (she is able to have general conversations) rather than have me be the one to inform her of this.

It is hard for me to deal with all this for my mother. I feel somewhat like the parent in this situation and I feel protective toward my mother. I try to keep her happy and calm so that her newly diagnosed hypertension remains controlled and I try to give her hope that she will be able to get back to her activities and then I am thwarted by church women!! Life is difficult indeed.

Being a caregiver for a previously active parent is tough. Helping somebody choose their clothes when they previously were able to do so is just one part, helping somebody remember their medications is another part, remembering to have the medications on hand, creating meals that fall within the heart healthy guidelines now that she has been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, telling her she can't have coffee because it speeds up the heart when she always wanted coffee, cutting her nails carefully and avoiding any cuts and bleeding because she is on Coumadin and on and on.

Recently a friend told my mother "thank goodness Julie is retired now and can be with you to help you" and that is true but I hope that my life is more than the sum and total of helping my mother during this time. I can't say that I really feel retired yet but I do feel tired. It would also be nice if people would once in a great while ask ME how I am doing.

And the hospitalization bills? The explanation of benefits (EOB's) are rolling in and so far the total is topping $40,000 and that is just the specialists costs, OR costs, anesthesia costs and doesn't even begin to cover the hospital costs themselves. The EOB just arrived today that included the hospital costs for the first week in the hospital in a monitored bed and it was $18,000 for 7 days making the running tab at $58,000! Whew! Thank goodness for Medicare and a supplemental.

Things are much better than they were at first and I must keep reminding myself of that. It is just hard for me to keep a strong attitude and a sunny disposition to keep my mother feeling the same when sometimes I would just like a long nap. This afternoon I decided I would take a nap in my recliner. My mother was watching television and she said "fine" and "why don't you turn off the television". I went to do so, pushed the wrong button on the television itself and lost my picture and all stations! Huh! After pulling out the cable manual, the TV manual and the DVD manual and doing all the DIY steps that I could think of, nothing worked. No picture, no signal and no channels registered. A call then took place to Comcast (akin to calling AT&T in my book) though they were helpful, walked me through all kinds of do it yourself steps and still nothing. Tomorrow will bring a Comcast man between 1 and 4 to assess the situation and fix the problem. And, of course, the planned nap never materialized as by the time I finished all that it was time to begin dinner.

I love the Comcast regulations though:

1. A repairman will call you 2 hours before the scheduled visit. You must answer the phone or they go on to the next call (guess the phone has to go in the bathroom with me).
2. A repairman will call you 1/2 hour before the scheduled visit. You must answer the phone or they will go on to the next call...blah, blah, blah.

It is funny how we are tied to our televisions. Lose power or lose cable connection now and we are lost.

Maybe some nice soothing music would help. That's worth a try!

Julie

Final Paycheck

2010-09-19T18:08:00.004-04:00

Last Friday was the date that I was slated to receive my final paycheck from my former employer. I had submitted my time sheet and the lines of transcription I had typed through August 31st and calculated this last, less than 2 week check, at $146.00 take home. This money was budgeted for my grocery money for the remainder of September.

Did I receive my final check on time? Yes, I did. BUT, was it for the above mentioned $146.00? Nope. It was actually for the grand figure of....$2.06. WHAT!

I need to backtrack for a moment. In November, 2008 when I was hired at the office as their surgery scheduler/administrative assistant, I was told I would be salaried, no need to punch in and would have 1 week of vacation and 1 week of sick time after January 1, 2009. Okay, I said, fine. I was giving up my self-employed transcription work for them (which I had done for the previous 10 years) as they were anticipating the transition to electronic medical records to be complete in 3 months. I was happy - losing the transcription work was a worry but picking up this new position, hired, benefits, etc was great.

In 2009, I did receive the 1 week of vacation which I used to move to the condo I presently live in. I did take 3 of the 5 days of sick time in that year. All was fine.

Enter 2010 and January 7th. I was told that now changes were in place. The office was downsizing and my surgery scheduler job would be going to a nurse and I would be back to doing home based transcription (note-the projected 3 month period of time to transition to electronic medical records never materialized; we were now 15 months into the transition and no where ready to drop the home transcription). I was also promised that I would have at least 4 hours a day of work in the office doing administrative functions so that my total hours would still be 8 per day, 40 per week, 80 per pay period. I was told that, however, now I would be categorized as 'hourly' and would need to punch in and out. Ok, I said, that was no biggie.

BUT, the powers that be decided that the 2009 sick time was going to be eliminated and the 3 days that I had used in 2009 was being taken back. I now owed the office 24 hours of work at no pay and my vacation bank would read minus 24 hours. I will say that they did this to the entire staff and there was a hue and cry and some swearing but the final word was that we could "take it or leave it". I didn't like it but I was told that now, for 2010, I would have 2 weeks of vacation to accrue and taking back the 24 I used in 2009 would not be a big strain. I didn't like it but had to accept it or leave. And - they were paying for my Blue Cross coverage.

However, as regular readers to my blog know, I never did achieve the 4 hours of work a day at the office for administrative work and quite rapidly the doctors removed this administrative function from me and that administrative function from me in quick order. By the end of February, I was only punching in for perhaps 1 1/2 hours per day with the remainder of my paycheck being the transcription I was doing from home. As the months progressed, that 1 1/2 hours dropped to 1/2 hour a day for 3 days a week IF I was lucky. My total hours worked physically at the office ran in the area of 3 to 4 for the two week pay period or even less BUT, again, I kept telling myself - they are paying your health insurance coverage.

And this is where I was screwed - I did not accrue vacation time for the hours I worked at home. Rather my paychecks showed my 24 hours in arrears only going down perhaps 1 hour per paycheck. I questioned this on several occasions and explained that I was putting in 4-6 hours a day at home typing for the doctors and I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I would only accrue vacation based on the hours I punched in and out and was physically sitting in the office.

From January 7th to August 31st my 24 hours in arrears went down minimally and my last paycheck two weeks ago still showed a deficit of vacation time of 16 hours.

Ahh, now here we go back to the $2.06 paycheck. When I saw this deposit in my checking account I was stunned. Where was my $146 check that was to be for food for the month? A quick trip to my e-mail where my pay stub is always sent showed me exactly where the $146 was - it went to pay back the practice for those 16 hours of deficit vacation time.

I could have screamed. Instead I laughed. It was all so predictable for the way I was treated at this place. Right up to the bitter end, they were determined to get every single penny out of me.

My assessment of the situation:

1. They are a crazy, unprofessional medical practice with no substantive leadership. Let's see how they do now that they are owned by the hospital.

2. They had no business changing the rules of vacation/sick time and making it effective a year EARLIER when all the employees had already used most, if not all, of their allotted week of sick time.

3. I should have been accruing vacation time for ALL the work I was doing for the practice. After all, I was on the payroll and my home based transcription services were at their request. They didn't offer to set up the system in an empty room at the office so that I could be physically there typing so they could have their eagle eyes on me to be sure I wasn't out shopping all day instead of typing. After all, IF I was out all day shopping how would I have had the time to do their typing?

And, finally, I am through with them. It is what it was and 12 years of our affiliation ends with a very bitter taste in my mouth. A shame that after 45 years of working, I leave my final job with bad feelings.

Onward and upward!

Julie

Should I Go Bare....Sans Health Insurance That Is?

2010-09-14T20:28:00.002-04:00

Finding affordable health insurance is a huge challenge. For two days I have been investigating alternatives to the employer-paid Blue Cross coverage that I have enjoyed for the last 2 years. It has not been a pleasant experience.

First - call to Blue Cross indicated I could continue my group coverage by transitioning the same policy to an individual policy with the cost per month of $627. NO GO.

Second - discussion with a good friend who is self-insured with Blue Cross gave me the specifics on her policy; another call to Blue Cross and I was put in touch with an agent across the state (huh). He told me that the specific Blue Cross policy my friend has is no longer offered to new clients. The alternative plan nearest to her coverage would be $376 per month. OK, that is lower BUT has a $5,000 deductible which must be met yearly before any expenses are covered. NOT TOTALLY ELIMINATED THOUGH THE COST IS REALLY PROHIBITIVE ON MY REDUCED INCOME.

Third - this agent offered me other options including United Health Care, Aetna and Humana. Closer inspection of each policy, which WERE more affordable, uncovered that none of the three are accepted in Berrien County where I live. NO GO.

Fourth - called the local agent for an insurance company through my Lutheran religion (Thrivent). Today the agent visited me at home and showed me the policies available through Thrivent which are from Assurant Health. Many options, many high deductibles and equally high monthly premiums.

His advice was to take a catastrophic policy with a $10,000 deductible (yearly) with another $2,500 out of pocket expenditure which would then give me full coverage to $15 million. This is strictly a catastrophic policy in the event that some horrendous illness would occur. Monthly premium for this would be an affordable $160.28 per month.

My concerns, though, are the $12,500 that would be my bite IF such a catastrophic occurrence were to happen. He explained that our hospital system in Berrien County (all facilities here are part of one system) can not turn a patient away with a high deductible and would treat the patient but, of course, would then expend all efforts to collect up to the $12,500.

What is the answer? Which way to go? Right now I am mulling this policy. I know that my local family doctor would accept me for office visits with NO insurance and would simply require me to pay the going office visit fee at the time of the visit. However, many of our specialists in this community out right refuse to treat a patient in their offices if the patient has no insurance. Yes, in the hospital setting, a specialist is obligated (by authority of their medical staff privileges) to treat a patient who has no insurance while the patient is in the hospital and is further obligated to give that patient one follow-up visit in their private office but after that they can refuse continued care.

At 62 years of age I have 3 more years before Medicare is available. With a double family history now of strokes (in both my parents) and with my history of hypertension, I am hesitant to venture without insurance.

Gone are the days of good employer based coverage with decent prescription coverage and other perks. Boy was I ever spoiled during my years of employment in various hospitals. Coverage was great and was fully paid by the employers. No more - many companies are choosing to not offer coverage to their employees and others are making employees pay up to half the monthly premium. Then there are people like me, losing a job with coverage and trying to decide which way to go.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Julie

Retirement Age Has Arrived

2010-09-12T20:03:00.004-04:00

Oh, my, 62 is very nice:

1. I can get a discount card at Big Boy's Restaurant.
2. I can get a 10% discount on groceries on Tuesday and Wednesday at our local small grocery store.
3. I can get a 10% discount on my nutrition supplements at our local small health food store.

and, the biggie....

4. I can start to collect my Social Security.

Now I am sure there are more perks to being 62 and retiring but I haven't thought of them yet. Have to give myself some time to savor retirement.

Today was the day. I love birthdays especially my own birthday. It doesn't matter how old I get, I love birthdays. I had many cards, some presents and a special gift from a cousin in Berlin (as in Germany not Wisconsin). New to Facebook, I had a whole string of birthday messages including one humorous one from my good friend, Tiger Girl, in which she jokingly asked me if I had received the $10,000 she had sent me. Not to be outdone, I responded back in kind and had to laugh when another friend thought we were serious. Oh, boy, would that have been a great gift. It was just a joke, D.

Several different friends have taken me to either lunch or dinner which was great. I even had a cake which expressed both occasions well:

Now comes the reality of retiring at 62. I had never anticipated that I would retire and begin Social Security at 62 but loss of job, lack of opportunities in my area and the sheer need for the monthly check dictated I start collecting.

I have agreed to do a small amount of medical transcription for a local orthopedic group here amounting to about 6 hours a week from my home so the extra money will add to my income. I am, though, still weighing the advisability of this in light of the need to then pay self-employment taxes and double social security. I have a call in to my independent tax adviser who is away for 6 weeks. I don't think there will be any monetary bite the remainder of this year for doing this small amount of transcription but I want to know for the future if it is really wise.

In any event, I am now 62 and my first Social Security check will arrive in November. I am excited.

Julie

photo from personal collection of Julie

Bittersweet Day

2010-08-31T19:46:00.005-04:00

I must admit that despite my enthusiasm for being done with my Urology work, I was a smidgen hurt today when not one person there said a word to me when I came in to the office, while I was there and as I left. Several employees walked right by me and acted like I wasn't even there. Oh, well, I am done - I am through with them and from this point on I don't need to think of them. Just send me my final paycheck and reimbursement for the final AT&T bill and I will be happy.

Speaking of AT&T. They drive me nuts, have always driven me nuts and I would not deal with them if they weren't the only game in town. I called them today, with my cell phone from Verizon, to have my two phone lines disconnected. I have been using a cell phone exclusively since moving into this condo in August, 2009 and not one person has ever told me they couldn't hear me on the phone.

This rep from AT&T was not happy that I was canceling my service. She kept insisting that I needed to keep a land line in the house and kept interrupting our conversation with "hello, hello, I can't hear you, are you using a cell phone?" After a bit it got ridiculous as I could hear her fine and she kept insisting she could not hear me. I actually went outside and stood on my porch and she got rather heavy handed about chastising me that I am depending on a cell phone. I was just as heavy handed in telling her that I most definitely did NOT want a land line and cancel these two lines TODAY.

About 1 hour later I did call the two digital lines and they were both disconnected so that is that. The final bill should come soon and I will mail it to the Urology office for reimbursement; I am not going back to that place again.

I AM RETIRED.....

My good friend had offered to meet me for lunch after I finished at the office today. We chose a deli just two buildings down from the office and across the street from her salon. When I finished at the office I had about 45 minutes to spare so I went into a Christian book store that is in the vicinity and looked around. Found a small Christmas gift for a friend who always exchanges with me and decided to sit in the book store and look through some books (they have nice comfy chairs around). It was a relaxing time which I needed to wipe out the angst from that office.

Then went to the deli, met my friend and she had brought with her the materials from her individual Blue Cross health insurance plan for me to see, and determine by calling Blue Cross, whether I can transition to the same plan. It was nice to sit and have a sandwich and just visit.

And as a surprise - my "retirement" has lasted all of 3 hours....About 3:30 today I had a phone call from a former client's office. I had provided administrative services to that client - an orthopedic practice - for 7 years during my self-employment phase. I gave them up when my transcription business flourished and I couldn't do all. They have two in-house transcriptionists there but one has been ill and can't return. They were inquiring whether I wanted to assist them with some home based transcription for two of their five physicians. This caught me completely off guard and I asked to think about it overnight.

The questions in my mind are:

1. They use a different system for transcription which involves a tape transcriber (which I have) but my system is old and not the best; I hate to invest $250 in a new system at this time as money is tight. My income from this gig would be small as the doctors they need help with are only there part time.

2. I had sworn when I gave up my self-employed work that I would not do it again on a part time basis because the tax bite with self-employment taxes is big and because I have very little to write off.

3. On the other side, it would be nice to do the work and, perhaps, make enough to cover my Blue Cross premium.

I want to talk to the one girl they have been outsourcing to who I know well and who can't handle all the work to see what her opinions are on the style of dictation of the doctors in question.

Amazing timing of this offer, though!

Julie

One Day Away

2010-08-30T19:28:00.002-04:00

Today I did my final transcription for my Urology client. As the doctor was dictating today on his end, I was typing on my end and by 6 p.m. I had completed his work. I then printed his work, prepared my final billing statement, gathered up my key for the office, security entrance fob, security clearance card, etc and had everything ready to deliver tomorrow.

After finishing all the above, I disconnected their digital system from my computer, pulled the telephone cords from the jack and re-organized my desk. I have an office desk that I purchased in 1983 that was reminiscent of the desks of those times with a typing "L" where a typewriter was meant to sit. I have my computer keyboard on that "L" and had the digital PC on there as well. With the extra space created from removing their digital PC, I decided to move my scanner next to my keyboard. Loved the look so much and now there is no excuse for my not working on scanning my genealogical pictures, etc into my computer. I don't even have to get up from the chair to scan. Great for the weight in the behind, huh?!!

One situation occurred today that rather concerned me for a bit. I had a call from my rental agent this morning about 10:30. She told me that the owner of this condo (who lives in another state) is trying to refinance her mortgage on this place and needs to have an appraisal of the property. I was informed that the appraiser would be out to the condo between 11 and 2 today. I did question my rental agent on whether the owner was considering selling the condo (my biggest fear as I don't want to move) and she responded that the owner had never told her that. While I love this place and the location is great and we are all settled, I do have a small concern in the back of my mind of "what if" and I try to put that out of my mind when it rears its ugly head. I think the biggest reason is that I would hate to be searching for a new rental when I now have a bankruptcy and foreclosure on my credit report and (as of tomorrow) no job. Putting my faith uppermost in my mind is the only way I can counteract my fear.

I will say that the appraiser never showed. At about 3:30 pm another employee from my rental agency called to inform me about the appraiser coming (huh)? and I told her that her associate had called me this morning but that nobody had shown. I guess those two women got their signals crossed and both called me. This one told me that she didn't even know the appraiser's name or number to call him to check on his schedule (they appear to be a little disorganized at that place) but what really "got my goat" was when she asked me her second question which was:

"Julie, have you lost your job recently?" to which I replied "No". She followed that by telling me that one of their clerks had tried to call me on Friday to inform me about the appraiser coming out and the clerk had called me at the work number listed on my application from July, 2009. When the clerk called me at the Urology office she was told "Julie no longer works here; she was fired"! WHAT!

I kind of laughed and told the agent that I still worked for them but worked from my home and in fact was typing right now for them. I told her there was disorganization at the office as the practice is selling to the hospital and would she please take my office number off my record.

I am livid with that office - which yo-yo would have the gall to tell a caller that I was fired when I definitely was not. The employees at that place are totally unprofessional.

I can say with assurance that I will definitely not miss that place.

Julie

Retirement Looms...Pension

2010-08-25T20:30:00.002-04:00

Despite the fact that I have worked 45 years, the longest I stayed at any job was 15; it is from that job that I have earned a pension. When I resigned from that hospital in 1997 to move back across the state to my home town, I knew I would have a pension "some day" and I knew it would not be huge but the stated age to start collecting of 65 was so far in the future that I didn't think twice about it.

About 6 months ago, in conversation with a close friend who still works at said hospital, she told me something interesting. She stated that she had looked into the pension (she is 8 years younger than me with near 30 years of service there) and she found out that we could begin collecting our pensions at age 55, not 65. Of course, there would be a rather significant deduction in the pension amount for starting 10 years early but she was determined to do just that when SHE would turn 55. She is still working at said hospital but about 5 years ago the hospital was bought out by a huge hospital system in Detroit so the above named pension was in essence from a different entity and my friend was determined to apply for her benefits at age 55.

She was 55 last Friday and told me that she has all the paperwork in place and will begin receiving her pension soon. When she told me the huge cut in the amount I cringed. I realize that, like so many of us, people's finances need help and she felt the need to begin collecting, but I am sorry for her that she had to begin drawing on it so early and would face such a loss in her benefits.

On the other side of the coin, though, I am grateful that she gave me a "heads up" on the ability to collect before age 65 as that was the impetus I needed a few months ago to call and inquire on my benefits. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that if I waited until age 62 I would be able to collect and collect my full pension amount. How was that possible when the age of 65 was listed on all paperwork?

The pension administrator explained to me that the program was set up to allow people to collect as early as 55 but that at 62 one could begin with no lapse in benefits. Not one to argue, I said "sign me up", the paperwork arrived, I completed it, had to have my birth certificate and passport notarized and off went the application packet. I had been told my first check would arrive on October 1st as my 62nd birthday will be on September 12th.

Imagine my surprise when on June 1st, I received my first check in the mail, for the full amount. A call to the pension administrator confirmed that I was approved (by the hospital) to begin my pension at that time with no deduction.

I have to say that on June 1st, July 1st and August 1st I still felt a sense of excitement to see that deposit appear in my checking account. I realize it is not that huge of an amount (certainly not the amount my above named friend has coming to her) but it is exciting nonetheless. The check does cover all 3 utility payments (electric, gas and water) as well as money for gasoline (which is my smallest expense) and a little left over for food.

All in all, I gave that hospital 15 years, I loved the work and I am thrilled to have this little present from them each month.

Thanks "BSH"!

Julie

Retirement Looms...Social Security

2010-08-23T21:14:00.003-04:00

When I began working in 1965, retirement and Social Security were not even on my radar. 45 years later, it certainly is!

I have to say that I enjoyed working and dedicated myself to the job at hand. When I found myself leaning toward the health care field, approximately 8 years into my working life, I had found my niche. My home life and family obligations were a stressful part of my existence but when I would go off to work, I was generally happy. I was appreciated in my profession by staff and physicians alike and even after moving back to my home town, I had calls and correspondence from some of the physicians inquiring how my life was going. To this day, a friend of mine who still works at my last hospital in Detroit will tell me occasionally that a physician has sought her out to inquire about me. This is a good feeling.

The first 12 years of my 14 living here in my home town, I was self employed and enjoyed that work as well and was very disappointed when my clients started pulling out and I had to go back to employed work. These last 1 1/2 years have not been a pleasant working experience and have become a heavy stressful situation. I admit that I am ready for retirement now and that will start September 1st.

While I had not planned on starting to collect my Social Security at age 62, it is now necessary. I applied on-line the end of June while my mother was in the hospital. It took all of about 15 minutes and the application was sent through cyberspace. On the July 4th week-end, while I was in the hospital visiting my mother, I had a phone call from Social Security. Evidently so many people are applying at age 62 that Social Security representatives work 7 days a week. I had a nice 20 minute conversation with this representative who asked me some questions, explained the process to me and at the conclusion of our conversation she was able to tell me that my benefits would start on November 17th and I would receive my check on the 3rd Wednesday of every month thereafter.

My birthday is actually in 3 weeks but it was explained to me that I would be eligible for benefits on October 1st and benefits are paid in the following month for the previous month, hence the November start to Social Security benefits.

At age 62, I am eligible to still work some as long as my yearly earnings remain below $14,100. For the year of 2010, I am no where near that figure so that is not an issue. The amount I was quoted to receive was even a little more than my most recent statement from Social Security so I was happy.

I am not ruling out finding some part time work in the future, preferably something I could do from home, but for now I know that my Social Security is locked in and the benefits will start rolling out on November 17th.

I am excited!

Julie

Work Update

2010-08-17T20:32:00.002-04:00

It finally happened...and I must say that I have mixed emotions about the whole series of events...but the Urology practice I have worked with for over 12 years has finally made the decision to sell out to the hospital. I am not really surprised as I could see the writing on the wall for some time.

As a result, I will no longer be providing services to them after September 1st. It is true that my work has greatly diminished since January, 2010 when they drastically changed my job from surgery scheduler-full time with benefits-to home based transcriptionist. My income has dropped over the last 18 months as well and continued to drop this year also. At this time I am only going into the office 3 times a week for, at the most, 45 minutes a day and then typing the transcription 3 times a week for approximately 6 hours a week.

I must be honest and say that I am not sorry about discontinuing the work. It has become even more stressful to be associated with this practice (if that is even possible) than it was before. Since Doctor #2 left in January the practice has taken a quick dive down. Doctor #1 followed in May by retiring and this left just two physicians remaining. As there is no office manager, and never has been one, Doctor #3 took over the duties and it is clearly not his expertise. Perhaps adding to the anxiety in the office are his constant messages warning employees that lay offs are coming and other dire forecasts. The morale in the office has sunk even lower than before which is also hard to believe as I didn't think it could sink much lower.

So, my last day of typing for them will be on Monday, August 30th. I will have to deliver the work to them on Tuesday, August 31st and that will be that. I will then be able to disconnect the telephone lines in my home that connect to their digital system and they can nicely come out here and pick up their equipment. It is way too heavy for me to transport. All in all, I will wipe my hands of the place.

Big loss, though, will be my Blue Cross health insurance coverage. That, too, will end on August 31st. It was a pretty decent policy with prescription coverage with an equally appropriate monthly cost to the practice of $627 per single employee. For this coverage, I was paying $73 per pay or $146 per month.

I called Blue Cross today to inquire about switching my coverage to an individual policy. They quoted me several different packages and the most affordable for me is the lowest package they offer at a little over $300 per month with a $5,000 deductible. They tell me there is no prescription coverage until I have met the deductible. Whew! They are sending me some paperwork on the various options for me to study but time is of the essence here and I must make a choice so there will be no lapse in service.

I also tried other options and spent most of the afternoon calling other insurance providers including my carrier for auto and renter's insurance and several others that friends have. The ones that my doctor participates with were all higher priced than what Blue Cross quoted me.

The paperwork should arrive in a few days and I will have to study the details before making a decision.

It is always something!

Julie

Some Sprucing

2010-08-15T18:07:00.003-04:00

My regular readers will notice a change in my blog. I had toyed with the idea of starting a totally new blog but decided to keep Mein Taglich Brot and just spruce it up a bit.

This is what I came up with and I surprisingly like it. Why surprisingly? Because of all the colors in the rainbow, I do not now like, nor ever have liked, the color green. I can't explain why I chose this template but it may have something to do with the fact that I scrolled through templates for 2 hours the other night and came up blank. By the time I quit, I had a stiff neck and was going cross-eyed from looking. The more there are to search, the harder it gets and I quit to go watch some TV.

Today I decided to give it another whirl and almost immediately came upon this template which actually "spoke" to me. The choice was made and green it is.

Mein Taglich Brot will continue to explore the path I am walking in my life and the ways I am working towards finding peace and contentment.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey.

Julie

I'm Back..........

2010-08-06T13:25:00.003-04:00

Ok, it has been almost 2 months since I last posted and made the decision to close the blog. I did so for one main reason but have decided to put that in the past and move on with my journey.

During these 2 months I have been stretched and stressed to the max. On the 19th of June my mother suffered a stroke. She lives with me and has lived with me since 1996 when my father passed away. She fortunately has always enjoyed excellent health and had only been hospitalized once (other than for the births of 3 children) for a hysterectomy when she was 40 (she turned 85 in the hospital this time). She had never had any type of serious health problems either in the past. This stroke came out of the blue and the physicians have told us now that there are often no warning symptoms or signals.

The stroke only affected her right hand and her speech and she was very fortunate in that regard. She walked into the hospital with me but was, naturally, disoriented. The first night in the hospital, despite the nurses telling me there was a bed alarm on the bed to alert them if she tried to get out, she did try to get out, fell and broke her hip. Turns out, in hindsight, that the nurse did NOT put the alarm on the bed. This followed with a hip replacement and 4 weeks in the hospital.

She is now home, for near 4 weeks, and I have 3 therapists and a nurse coming out to the house 4 x week. If I thought I was tired while she was in the hospital, being there with her for 8 or more hours a day, I am even more tired now that she is home. Her hip is doing fine, healing well and she is finishing physical therapy today as well as the home nurse. Speech and occupational therapy will continue for quite some time either here in the home or at the hospital's outpatient center, all controlled by Medicare!!

During this time, my transcription work has dropped even more significantly and I am only typing about 6 hours a week at home. The practice has undergone further major changes as well and are contemplating selling the practice to the hospital. They continue to pay my health insurance, though, so I continue to play the game with them.

I have kept up with the blogs I follow in this interim period and am honored by the comments made by Grace of GRACEful Retirement regarding the demise of my blog. I also appreciate the comments made by Deb(who posts anonymously) as Deb has been a faithful follower of my blog as well.

I AM back and whether I continue with this blog OR create a new blog (Series II) in my continuing saga, I haven't decided. I am leaning toward going to Series II (for a fresh start) but will be dropping the pseudonym of Immer and going with who I am - Julie.

Thanks for your continued support!

Julie

Mein Taglich Brot Is Closing

2010-06-08T19:51:00.003-04:00

That's right - after 1 year and 5 months only - I am closing down Mein Taglich Brot. This blog was very important to me and I feel that I documented to the best of my ability my financial history and the factors that led to my filing bankruptcy and losing my home to foreclosure.

This has been a very personal blog and I have benefited from writing about my situation. Naturally the last few years have been very trying and sensitive for me. I have done the best I could and feel that, all things considered, I have survived and do not have any reason to criticize myself.

Recently a friend told me that SHE tends to be very thin skinned when she is criticized for her work. I will admit that I am a very sensitive and thin skinned person as well. The rash of negative comments that my blog has faced in the last few months have bothered me and detracted from my writing. While I did turn off the comments a few weeks ago, I can not turn off in my mind the content of those comments and my blog has lost its enjoyment.

I have appreciated the positive comments I have received on this blog, and if my negative commenter had not persisted in sending 2, 3 or more comments a day all in the same bashing tone, perhaps my sensitive nature would not have been as affected.

In any event, I will continue to follow my favorite blogs and appreciate the support that bloggers give to one another.

Foreclosure Sale Week

2010-05-22T19:53:00.004-04:00

Before I could write this post, I had to let my sheer anger and amazement at the gall of people dissipate so that I could clearly think. Follow along with me for an amazing saga:

May 5th - I received a letter from my mortgage company informing me that a foreclosure sale/foreclosure auction (call it what you will) on my home would be held at the local county building on Thursday, May 13th. At this point, the house is still in my name though the bankruptcy is finalized.

May 7th - My friend (and former next door neighbor) Mrs. Lowes calls me to tell me that there has been a woman walking around the outside of my home this last week on 3 different occasions. Today, May 7th, Mrs. Lowes cornered her outside and spoke to her. The woman spun this story - she had previously seen my house during one of my open houses last year, she was very much interested in the home but had a home of her own to sell, she has 2 teenagers who go to the local high school and the fact that the high school is at the end of my street is attractive and she is very interested in this house. She ended the conversation with Mrs. Lowes by saying "we will soon be neighbors".

May 10th - My former realtor calls me this morning before I am even out of bed. My home has not been listed with this real estate company since the listing ran out last October. This realtor proceeds to tell me that SHE has been contacted by a competitor realtor inquiring on my home for a client interested in it. The interested party and her realtor are inquiring whether I would be willing to work out a short sale with the client in order for her to obtain the house prior to the foreclosure sale. MY realtor tells me that the other realtor and her client have already investigated my situation, know all about my bankruptcy and had even called the trustee at the federal court to obtain further information on me. I was not too happy and told my realtor that I would most definitely NOT be interested in doing a short sale as I was advised by my attorney not to do this since the bankruptcy had already gone through; they had told me I could possibly be liable for any difference between the purchase price and the balance I owe on the home. I was also not happy at all that my former realtor was pushing me in that direction as well.

Tuesday, May 11th - I called my attorney just to refresh my memory that doing a short sale at this time - 2 days before the foreclosure sale - would not be the thing to do. My attorney was in court but his assistant assured me that I was correct and that I should just let the process take its course without any further action on my part. Fine!

Wednesday, May 12th - I received a phone call today that went as follows: "Hello, Ms. Immer? My name is Mary and I - oh, my this is such a sensitive subject and I am embarrassed to broach this matter - but I am an individual interested in purchasing your home. I saw the home last year when it was for sale and I loved it but had a home to sell. My home has now sold in just 3 days and I am ready to move. I have two teenagers who go to the local high school (same information as Mrs. Lowes had related to me) and, oh, by the way I AM AN ATTORNEY MYSELF AND ACTUALLY A PROSECUTOR IN THE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE. I have learned who your bankruptcy attorney was and I have spoken with Mr. XXX and asked him if he could persuade you to do a short sale for me today so that I do not have to go through the process in a foreclosure sale. I have spoken to your mortgage company as well and also talked to the trustee at the federal court and have obtained your bankruptcy file and your phone number which is a cell and, of course, unlisted. Your mortgage company has assured me that the house is still in your name and they would be happy to have you do a short sale with me."

Ok, I about spit. I told this woman in no uncertain terms that (1) I had already heard of her interest through my realtor, (2) I had told my realtor "no deal", (3) I had checked with my attorney's office who advised me "no deal", (4) giving her a deal would in no way help me in any way, (5) I resent that she spoke to my attorney and resent that he discussed my case with her when I thought my dealings with him were confidential, (6) I further am livid that she would go to the trouble of investigating me and then have the gall to call me and tell me (yes, I realize a bankruptcy is a public record but still - call the person and try to finagle). She listened to me and I told her NO DEAL and she can buy the home at the foreclosure sale tomorrow if she is so interested.

Thursday, May 13th - day of foreclosure sale. The foreclosure sale was at 11 a.m. At 1:30 p.m. MY bankruptcy attorney calls me and proceeds to reiterate the whole above saga that I was already familiar with. I could not believe that he NOW encouraged me to sell the house to this colleague of his (who he assured me was NOT a personal friend). I told him that the foreclosure sale had been scheduled for this morning and was now past. And, I told him that I was not happy about this woman's discussions with me, her nerve and her attempts to take advantage of my misfortune by securing for herself a home at a reduced rate. I told him further that I was not in any way interested in helping her. I will say that he did not push and told me that was fine and was my choice.

I asked him just how this person could have obtained all the fine details of my bankruptcy and how such places as the mortgage company, trustee office, MY attorney's office would all freely disclose my personal information. He side stepped and told me that it wasn't really the interested person/prosecutor but rather HER realtor who had done the digging because the realtor was going for a double commission - she had sold this prosecutor's home for her so got commission #1 and now wanted to help this prosecutor purchase my home so that she could get commission #2. With that response, I asked him just how the realtor would have been able to call the trustee's office and obtain my entire bankruptcy file. There was just silence on his end and I told him I was not interested in helping her at all.

May 21st - Mrs. Lowes called me to tell me that a man was at my home, putting up "No trespassing" signs and taking photos. She went outside and talked to the man. His story was that he worked for a local realtor in town who is getting ready to list the home. His job was to survey the house, take photos, get the utilities back on, check the house for any water damage and prepare it for showing.

It would appear that Ms. Attorney/Prosecutor did not obtain the house in the foreclosure sale. Whether this particular realty company purchased the home OR whether the mortgage company had no takers at the sale and have now moved on with having a local realtor list the home, I don't know.

I will say that people do have nerve and beyond that. I can see that as an attorney and prosecutor this woman had access to information that not every Tom, Dick or Harry would. But this information that she had access to was to be used in the performance of her prosecuting duties not for personal use. I feel that she overstepped the boundaries of her position and I am, also, not too happy with my attorney whose advice went back and forth.

I hope the legalities of transferring the house out of my name occur and quickly as I am good and tired of all this wrangling.

I Reached My Limit

2010-05-20T20:40:00.002-04:00

I consider myself a kind person. I also know that I am definitely not good at confrontation and probably, over my adult life, have taken a lot from others when I have not been comfortable confronting a situation.

NO MORE!

I have had issues at the office with the physicians since they drastically altered my job on January 7th. Their original promise of just changing my duties and keeping my 40 hours and my benefits was a story that quickly changed over the following weeks. What my job now entails is that I go to the office for anywhere from 15 MINUTES to perhaps 45 MINUTES a day, assist my replacement with any questions she has regarding surgery scheduling and come home and do their medical transcription. My income has dropped as well and dropped drastically. The only thing keeping me going was the fact that they are still covering my Blue Cross.

Over these months since January 7th, one of the four doctors went on a leave which was supposed to be for only 4 months but which we recently learned is permanent. Another one of the doctors retired as of May 14th. That dropped my transcription down from the four doctors to now just two. Again, the income took a similar drop.

In the last two weeks I have had major problems with my equipment. First my computer crashed and was out of service for four days. Then immediately the digital system attached to mine crashed and was out of service for several days. They are both now repaired and working but, naturally, with the equipment out of commission I got behind on transcription turn around.

I did ask a colleague of mine to take over some of the work and she did which was a great help. I am closing in on getting caught up.

But where I reached my limit occurred yesterday. Doctor #4 (the newest doctor to the group) called me and proceeded to ream me out. He has been telling me that I am losing some of his transcription, that he dictates the patient's visit but that I don't type it and bring it back. I have gone round and round with him for months that he is not doing all his patient dictations. Each day, I take his work in, pull the patient list from the day before, check off my dictations against the list and ascertain if there are any people left without dictation. I then pull their charts and give him back the charts with a note to please dictate.

His purpose today for the call was to accuse me again of not doing all his work. He went further to tell me that I am deliberately skipping some of his files just because I don't want to type them. He then told me that he is going to have one of the receptionists download his voice files to HER computer before I take the voice files and she is going to cross check my work against the voice files. If she finds missing dictations, she will look for the corresponding voice file. If the file is there, then that will be PROOF to him that I am deliberately lying to him and "I will come down hard on you, Immer". This I do not need. I am good and tired of him and his threats. This was not the first time he came down all over me but was obviously "the straw that broke the camel's back".

Today I went into the office and asked to speak to him. I told him that all his backlog is in, I have completed all his work that I had. I then went further and said that I had done a lot of thinking about our conversation yesterday, and based on his style of communication with me, that I was no longer interested in doing his work. I told him that I have worked my entire career in health care and have worked for very busy and stressed chiefs of staff of various hospitals and have never had someone talk to me and accuse me of things the way he has. He sputtered and screamed and I told him that I felt he needed one person dedicated only to his work and that was not me. He asked me if I would continue to do the work until they found somebody else and I said "NO". He then screamed and shouted at me and I said "thank you" and walked out of his office.

I then went down the hall to the other doctor's office (who is the office manager) and repeated the same thing to him. I told him that I would naturally be happy to still do HIS work and that I would also be glad to do the work of the 'new' doctor they are recruiting but I would not do Dr. #4's work any further. I said that he talks to me inappropriately and I am not willing to put up with that. His response was "ok, thanks for sharing that with me" and he put his arm around my shoulders and said he appreciated my honesty.

Whatever!

The atmosphere in this place is toxic to say the least. I am still sticking it out with now just one doctor's transcription until the time they say they are not going to cover my Blue Cross. While I will lose some income from dropping this other doctor's work, I do not care.

I walked out of there as though a load had come off my head and chest. What they do about his work is up to them. I did bring in the software for the voice file system that he uses and gave it to the receptionist which he demanded I do. She then attempted to install it and could not and I then saw the computer support person come running in the office (they called him for a STAT visit) and he sat down and installed it for her. I can say that if she could not install a CD on her computer, she will really have fun downloading voice files.

Whatever. It is their problem and not mine. And I feel much better for it.

Transcription Woes

2010-05-17T17:21:00.003-04:00

My transcription production has suffered greatly the last two weeks with my computer issues. It doesn't take even 1 day of non-production to get behind. With no computer system working, it was impossible to turn out any work and with the digital system shut down as well, I could not extract any voice files to even share with a colleague.

Now the Dell is back up and running and the digital system decides to cause problems. This digital computer came from a company in Indiana. I called them last week to have a service check and they have changed their procedures. I had to register my problem with their service desk and then wait, wait, wait. It has now been 2 days of waiting and they have not had time to get to my problem. Meanwhile, the doctors are unable to use the system to dictate and have taken to using micro cassette tapes.

Today I picked up tapes from last Friday and started in on transcribing them. When I got to the last tape for Doctor #1, I listened instead to gibberish. Obviously he either had his system set up wrong or, more likely, he got a bad micro cassette tape from the stash at the office. In any event, nothing can be deciphered.

Ok, this has happened occasionally over the 12 years I have done their work. The doctor is never happy to have to re-dictate even one patient let alone a whole days worth of patients. In this case, he will have to.

What makes it even more aggravating is that Doctor #1 retired on Friday and that was his last day. This was his very last set of dictations.

All I can say is that somebody in the office with more authority than I have will have to give him a call and tell him to come back and re-dictate.

I did manage though to extract some voice files from the digital system and downloaded them to a thumb drive. I then asked a colleague if she had any time to help me get them caught up. She does and she was willing to take the thumb drive with the voice files. I am very happy about that.

Now it is just a waiting game as to when the digital system can be serviced so that I can get back in business again. Sometimes glitches in production, computer malfunctions occur and they certainly can't always be anticipated and stopped before they shut down the flow of work.

One thing I have learned about physicians is that they might have lots of patients but they have ZERO patience for anything out of the routine.

I could write a book! Maybe I should!

Do For Others

2010-05-16T20:40:00.002-04:00

I consider myself a nice person. I have always had a soft spot for the senior citizens in the world (and am rapidly inching closer myself to being one)! What I am talking about, though, are those in their 80's and 90's. I like to engage them in conversation and it is amazing what can be learned from their experiences.

Last week one of my neighbors approached me with a request. I only barely know this neighbor who I would guess is in my general age range. She lives a few units over from me and her elderly mother lives with her. She had told me earlier in the year that her mother had had a fall before Christmas and had been confined to one of our long term care units for months. She has just brought her home and she is pretty shaky yet, walking with a walker, etc.

This neighbor told me that she had two tickets for a very popular event in our town and one was a ticket for her mother and one for herself. Naturally her mother cannot use this ticket at this time. (Naive me, I thought she was going to offer me the other ticket but that was not the case). She told me that she had someone interested in the ticket and they were going together but she was nervous about leaving her mother home alone for that evening. Her question - if she were to put her mother to bed at 4:30 PM (huh), would I be willing to go over to the condo every hour and check on her? She caught me off guard and I told her that I would.

I went over earlier in the afternoon to meet her mother who was working on a bowl of the stinkiest smelling soup. My eyes about popped out of my head when I saw the condition of the inside of their condo. I have never seen any place that was as dirty and cluttery as this one. And, I mean DIRTY. They have the cutest little cat but I am betting they don't have any litter boxes in the place for one thing.

Ok, I talked to the mother and back home I went. At 4:45 PM, my neighbor left and I began my 'sitting' duties. Every hour I dutifully went over and the little lady was sleeping. I could see her little chest going up and down. The daughter had left the door unlocked (another thing I would never do but then again I was raised in Detroit) and I quietly went in, checked on her and went out.

At 9:30 when I went I had to turn on a light as it was now dark. Immediately the little lady called out "hello" and she said to me that she was really hungry and when was her daughter going to be home. She asked me to re-heat her soup and that was a trip in itself - first finding the soup in their packed refrigerator which was packed with all sizes of plastic containers containing left-overs (with accompanying aromas). Then search for a clean sauce pan which could not be found and I had to wash out one that was in the cupboard. I did make her soup, brought it to her and stayed with her while she ate. She is a lovely older lady who was obviously lonely and I didn't mind chatting with her but, oh, the filth in that place. It can't be healthy.

At 9:55 I saw the daughter pull in her garage and I went out to tell her that her mother was fine and that I had fed her. Her remark was that she had told her mother she would make her some soup when she came home. Cripe sake..making an elderly lady wait for any kind of dinner until 10? And, putting her to bed at 4:30.

Ok, my good deed was done. Did I get a "thank you" for my help? Nope.

Ask me if I will do this again!

Comment Spam

2010-05-12T19:00:00.003-04:00

In the world of blogging, I am considered a relative newbie. I have only been writing this blog for approximately 16 months and have welcomed the various comments that I have received over this time.

During this time, I have scouted for other finance blogs to follow and have now accumulated some really fine ones that I enjoy reading. I also have appreciated the comments that I have received on my blog from such bloggers as Betty of Bouncing Back from Bankruptcy and Grace from Graceful Retirement as well as some new blogs that I have just discovered, including Early Retirement the Middle Way.

I have also had two people commenting on my blog, who I assume don't have blogs of their own, as their comments come over as Anonymous. Thanks, Jan and Deb for your many comments as well.

All in all, I have not been inundated with comments on my blog though my Site Meter shows a great number of "hits" having occurred. For these, I am very grateful and appreciate your support in following my story, whether you have commented or not.

Today I was reading the current post by Grace at Graceful Retirement. The gist of Grace's post involved bloggers who suddenly disappear off the blogging radar. Grace mentioned that several of her favorites are no longer blogging and have done so without any mention of what is going on. Comments followed Grace's post and included other bloggers mentioning missing other favorites that they follow. Various theories as to why these bloggers disappear were thrown around and all have justification.

In my case, I have recently disabled all Comments from my blog. This was done after I started receiving a goodly amount of anonymous comments that were, shall I say, less than complimentary. These comments followed rapidly with several each day, all in the same tone and all accusatory, judgmental and generally unkind.

Yes, the world is made up of all different types of personalities. There are obviously people that "get off" on following blogs (or following on-line news stories) and then posting their inappropriate and at times unkind comments. Obviously these people should be pitied as they must lead dull, boring lives where the only enjoyment? they derive is from bashing someone else.

Financial bloggers post about highly personal matters. To just be willing to put ourselves out there and post about financial situations, errors in planning, efforts to improve ourselves and our quality of life takes a lot of courage. As for me, I am finding my posting as being a means of therapy as well.

Working 45 years, going through a job loss at 61 years old, loss of my home to foreclosure, the necessity to move, the necessity to file bankruptcy are all huge lifestyle changes. To be able to post about them in an anonymous fashion is helpful. Naturally, my name is not Immer, but is the blog name that I chose for this financial blog.

Kind, supportive comments are a big help when blogging. I could not even describe how it helped me during the bankruptcy to have the comments that I did from Betty, Jan, Deb and others. Unkind, cruel and degrading comments do nothing but detract from my growth.

My comments are now turned off. To those bloggers who have followed me and commented supportively, I am going to be sorry to miss your comments. I will continue to follow your blogs as they are enjoyable as well as informative and helpful. I hope you will continue to follow mine.

Editorial over!!

My Computer Is Back

2010-05-07T18:53:00.002-04:00

Quick repair and I have my computer back. This morning the service tech stopped by, unhooked the computer and off it went with him. He made the comment to me "you don't need this back soon, do you" and I reminded him that my transcription for the office is shut down until I get the system back. He left, saying it would be 2-3 days before he could take a look at it.

In the afternoon, I went grocery shopping and while in the store, my cell phone rang. It was the computer service company calling to tell me that the computer was repaired and that the tech had tried to deliver it to my home. He then took it to the office and it would be waiting there for me.

I headed over to the office from the grocery store and loaded the computer into my car, got it home, down into my office and it is all hooked up again.

It seems to be working fine and thank goodness that I didn't have a bill to pay for this.

Now, to just get caught up with the transcription - am 4 days behind with the computer being down that length of time. Little by little, it will be done.

My Dell Crashed

2010-05-06T15:41:00.005-04:00

It was only on April 30th that I wrote about problems with my Dell XPS. At that time, the computer service person from my office came out and fixed the current problem. He did warn me that there were other areas of the computer that might "go" and that the age of this computer and the intensity of its use might warrant not choosing to do a major overhaul.

It didn't take long at all for the next problem and this happened yesterday afternoon. I was doing transcription, went upstairs for some lunch (my home office is in the lower level of this condo) and when I came back down the computer screen was black.

Long story short. Two reboots later and nothing happened. I don't know if the hard drive has died or what. I did call the computer company again and they promised to have the guy out this week sometime to take in the machine to their shop and check it out. So far today nobody has called and I am at a neighbor's house to check my e-mail, banking site and do this post on their computer for which I am very grateful.

The immediate problem, of course, is the transcription I have sitting here. I am closed down at this time because the digital computer from the office, which is connected to my Dell, will not work if my Dell isn't working. So there are many files in the digital computer to be typed and several tapes here to be typed, none of which can be done without a working computer.

If it is necessary to purchase a new computer, I am going to have to think hard about just how to manage that with my drastically reduced budget. Also, with the system shut down as it is, I am not making any income to help in the purchase of a new computer.

This is a double wammy for sure. I feel that the doctors should have their digital transcription system in THEIR office, connected to one of THEIR many computers and allow me to do the work there at the office. Then, if and when a computer problem occurs, their support person will hustle out to the office to correct the problem pronto.

But, in these doctors' frugal minds, they prefer that I do it in my home, with my computer, my electricity, my printer, my supplies, my dedicated phone lines and my computer repairs or repurchase. That was fine when I was self employed and doing all their transcription over a 10 year period, making good money and filing taxes as a self employed person allowing me to write off such expenses. Now, of course, the income is drastically reduced with certainly no wiggle room to buy a new computer system.

This was not something I had expected to be facing at this point as I begin my recovery from bankruptcy and foreclosure. At this point, I am just going to wait and see what he diagnoses the problem as and go from there.

Wish me luck.

Dining Out on a Budget

2010-05-03T20:42:00.005-04:00

I have never been one for frequent dining out. I can remember one recurring suggestion contained in articles and books for someone attempting to overcome debt...stop the daily latte and muffin, stop the lunches out, take your lunch to work instead, etc, etc. That hint never helped me because I never had a daily latte or muffin and never, ever ate out at lunchtime and very rarely for dinner. With my digestive woes, I was limited anyway in what I could eat and just avoided it.

One thing that persuaded me differently was when a Chinese restaurant started to go into the building directly next door to my office. I love Chinese food; it is my favorite of all times and to have one right next door was pure nirvana. The building had previously been a Senior Citizens Center and had sat empty for 3 years after the Senior Center moved into larger accommodations. Finally the building was bought and I watched for months as a Chinese man began making many modifications to the building in order to open his restaurant.

Last October the restaurant opened. I will admit that I frequently visited this place for lunch, or rather, stopped in, bought an egg roll and egg drop soup and took it back to the office to eat at my desk while I was working. Total cost for the egg roll and soup was $2.10.

Over these months, the proprietor and myself have become friendly. When my hours were cut at the office, he questioned me on it having noticed my arrival at 9 in the morning and departure at 9:30. Each time I stop in, he asks me again if I am still just working 30 minutes. He seems genuinely amazed that an organization would cut an employee's hours to that extreme.

Tonight my mother and I went over for dinners of sweet and sour chicken. Two dinner entree's, 2 egg rolls, 2 beverages and the price was $9.00. Can't beat that. The food is good, not too heavily seasoned (good for me) and the atmosphere can't be beat. There is a buffet that they have at lunch time but I never tried that.

A fellow finance blogger, Betty, recently wrote a post on frugal dining at her local Chinese buffet. Her post made me realize that my Chinese lunches/dinners are equally frugal with lots of food for a low price. It is a nice meal out as opposed to always eating in.

This must be the day for Chinese restaurant talk because my cousin in Berlin just sent me an e-mail telling me that he and his family recently celebrated his birthday at a gorgeous Chinese restaurant in a town near to his home in Berlin. Now this place is one that I would like to see as well as savor the food. I think the travel there would be way more costly than the meal itself but it is a nice dream!

Himmelpagode near Berlin, Germany

April, 2010

photo from personal collection of Immer

May, 2010 Musings

2010-05-01T19:52:00.002-04:00

Hallelujah!

May 1st is here. No, that is NOT the reason for the Hallelujah message.

Today the mail came bearing two long awaited letters:

(1) A letter from my former employer's pension administration firm informing me that starting immediately I will be able to apply for, and receive, my pension. Previously I had been told it would be necessary to wait until age 62 at the earliest but this letter told me I could apply now which I intend to do. Only 4 1/2 months until my 62nd birthday anyway but that is a few more months of a pension check.

(2) Finally - my discharge of bankruptcy arrived from both my attorney and the court. Date of discharge was April 28th and that is now over and done with. To say that I am relieved is putting it mildly.

How is one supposed to feel when a bankruptcy has successfully gone through the system and come out with a discharge? Should I be excited, elated, overwhelmed, celebratory? I think rather the word 'relieved' is a better description. I can now put this behind me and move forward.

photo by... BookLoversStuff

Computer Woes

2010-04-30T19:42:00.002-04:00

One of my biggest concerns involves problems with my computer. Not only do I depend on my computer for my personal needs - Quicken, blogging, e-mail, genealogy, surfing the net, I also need it for the dwindling medical transcription I do for my employer.

So it was with great angst that I began noticing some glitches in this loyal Dell XPS baby. True, I have had this computer since 2004. True, it has had a new hard drive put in about 2 years ago. True, it has been used way more than a "personal" computer is used but I was not prepared for problems with it. Then, again, when are we ever prepared for computer problems.

I had a brainstorm, though, when these problems started creeping up. In the past, when I was self-employed, any repairs came out of my wallet. However, I am no longer self-employed and my employer's digital computer is hooked into my computer in order for the transcription to come INTO their CPU but come OUT of mine so that I can use only one monitor.

I made a call to the computer support company that handles all the repairs at the office. When I had moved into the condo here I had to have some help reassembling their computer and I was able to have the office support person come out and do the work - on the office's tab. They do have a monthly support contract and pay one monthly fee which covers 1 hour of service in the month or 1000 hours of service so it really isn't any more of a cost to them.

I inquired at the office, was given the go-ahead and the computer guy came out yesterday and "healed" my Dell. Thank goodness!

However, the prognosis he gave me (gosh, do you think I work for doctors or what?), was that this computer may have seen better days. For now, my Dell and I are still together and I hope she can continue to serve my needs.

It Could Always Be Worse

2010-04-21T18:43:00.003-04:00

The saying "somebody has it worse than you" is certainly true. I reminded myself of this today after visiting a cousin of mine who is in a nursing home.

Our grandmothers were sisters and lived next door to each other in their later years and I knew this cousin slightly from the various times I came across the state to visit my grandmother. I did not know her really well because she was a good 10 years older than me and her parents had been separated and she was living with her mother (her father had been my relative).

When I moved back here 13 years ago, I connected with this cousin again. She has always been what one would call "quirky" but she has a good heart and each Christmas she would stop by with Christmas gifts for myself and my mother. She also remembered our birthdays. Never having been married, and living with and taking care of her own mother, she now lived in the family home by herself. She had been injured years earlier on her job (she was a Matron at the County Jail) and she was on permanent disability from the results of her injury. Over the years her health started to deteriorate when she was diagnosed with diabetes and I have kept in touch with her.

Prior to Christmas she had a fall at home, was unconscious for several days until found by the police and has been hospitalized since that time. She has had several serious surgeries and been back and forth in the nursing home. Due to her health she was not allowed visitors until recently.

Today I visited her in the nursing home. She was glad to have a visitor as she has nobody come to see her and I accompanied her to her physical therapy. What I saw there was shocking - no not the quality of care which was excellent but rather the condition of my cousin's leg and foot. Years of diabetes, years of smoking and the inability to properly care for herself nutritionally has resulted in vascular surgery to try to save her legs. Both legs are swollen beyond belief, are red and blotchy and she is unable to even lift her feet. It was a sad site and she is talking non stop about being able to go home. I am sure the day will never come that she is able to return to her home, her brother wants to sell the home, her car has been sold and her two dogs (her greatest loves) have been sold as well. She is discouraged with little hope in site of getting back to her former life.

I tried to boost her spirits and encourage her with the hour long therapy session. I must say that the therapists at this nursing home were premier. There were 5 different residents in the therapy area all having various types of physical therapy and each one had an individual, dedicated to them therapist. These women were patient with the residents and the one with my cousin was especially patient and caring.

I am happy in a way that my cousin is in this facility because I know she is being watched, she is being fed well, she is having therapy and her blood sugar is being monitored but it is a sad place nonetheless.

One thing I have to say is that the facility was very clean, there were no unpleasant aromas that nursing homes in the past were famous for and the nurses and aides were all pleasant and caring.

The whole experience made me realize that while I may have concerns and angst of my own, there is always someone far worse. This is a good point to remember when the going gets tough.

ADDENDUM: I will say that despite the economy and lack of available jobs, I can see that Physical Therapists would be a field up and coming. I wish now that my two goddaughters had gone into that field as I am betting they would have a much easier time securing a position. There will always be nursing homes and assisted living facilities and residents in those facilities will always need physical therapy. It would be a hard job but rewarding, too. I tip my hat to those professionals.

Foreclosure Sale

2010-04-20T19:41:00.002-04:00

I'm still waiting for the discharge to come through from my bankruptcy but the letters from my mortgage company are arriving fast and furious. All through the bankruptcy process, the mortgage company was not ignoring me. I began receiving letters from a law firm representing the mortgage company about 4 months ago after my bankruptcy was first filed.

Despite all the months BEFORE I filed that I had tried to get Bank of America to work with me on, for instance, (1) a short sale or (2) a deed in lieu and was royally ignored by them, they are now coming forth offering just such deals. Of course, now it is too late which is probably their plan anyway.

What really amazes me with these letters is that I don't just receive 1 letter but rather 4 identical letters each and every time. They address one letter to my old address which is forwarded to me via the postal service. They address another letter to my address here. They then send another letter, certified mail, to the old address and yet another letter, again certified mail, to this new address. Each of the letters in these envelopes are identical.

Yesterday I received another 4 letters in the mail for which I had to sign for 2. Each letter said the same thing, namely, "because you have not agreed to a deed in lieu (huh), we are moving ahead with foreclosure and the foreclosure sale will be held on May 14th at the County Building in XYZ county".

This is interesting, also, in that I had had previous letters last November telling me that a foreclosure sale was going to be held on December 9th. Whether it was held, I don't know because nothing happened that I am aware of. The house still sits empty and remains in my name.

Today I stopped by the house to pick lilacs from the lilac bushes I had planted over the years and noticed the grass had been newly cut. My friend, Mrs. Lowes, commented that she had seen somebody cutting the grass but she did not know where they were from. Whether this was from the mortgage company or the City, I don't know but I am glad that the grass was cut so that the appearance of the house would not detract from the beauty of the neighborhood.

I hope they have this foreclosure sale on May 14th so that this situation may be over and done with as far as I am concerned. Just one of many items that I would be able to cross off my "stress list". Here's hoping!

The Trials of Job Hunting

2010-04-16T13:16:00.000-04:00

Over the 45 years of my work life, I must admit that I had little difficulty in finding employment. When I graduated from high school in 1966, I immediately went out into the work world and immediately found a position with Michigan Bell Telephone Company as a secretary. Over the years, when I wanted a change, I had a few interviews and had a job. After about 5 years in general industries, I transitioned to the health care field and found that jobs were plentiful and, even without a college degree, I was able to move up in my field. I did secure certification as a Certified Medical Staff Coordinator and that did help in finding later employment but jobs were plentiful and fairly easy to come by.

That, of course, has all changed now. I was recently talking to my sister-in-law about the angst that both my niece and nephew are experiencing in trying to find jobs. They are 27 and 25 respectively, both have college degrees and have been unable to find employment. My niece is presently going for her Master's Degree in education in order to help in securing employment. My nephew continues to send out CV's and to network and opportunities are scarce.

My sister-in-law was comparing their frustration with the frustration that I personally am feeling in being unable to find employment. I had to say, though, that I am really at the end of my working life. I have worked 45 years and the value of me finding full time work is not as crucial as her children finding work. I told her that my two goddaughters, ages 27 and 29, are in the same situation. Both have college degrees, both still live at home and each has 3 part time jobs (not even in their fields of education) with no benefits and do not make enough money from all 3 jobs to even afford to move away from home.

These are worrisome times indeed. I can feel the frustration that my goddaughters express when I speak with them and they question all the schooling they went through, the struggle to achieve their degrees and the difficulty in finding a full time job. These girls live in the suburbs of Detroit where employment opportunities, during my work life, were plentiful. They are not now.

What will happen to this generation of the population? How will these young people move ahead in life, afford housing, support families? It is a worry for sure.

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers

2010-04-14T13:00:00.001-04:00

I am so glad that I had thought of going to my former home to pick all the Spring flowers as they are blooming. Over the 12 years that I owned the home, we had planted numerous bulbs and over the past few weeks they began to bloom.

As the house is still in my name and my mortgage company has made little effort to take control of the home, I drove by the home every day on my way home from the office. As I am only working 1/2 hour a day at the office, I was full of energy and vigor after leaving work (just how tired could one get after working 30 minutes anyway!).

All total I picked 360 hyacinths over a 10 day period of time and brought them home to our condo. We had over 20 vases around the house full of hyacinths, ran out of vases and ended up using drinking glasses to hold them as well.

I will admit that I had planted more hyacinth bulbs over the years than any other Spring flower as they are one of my favorites. I did pick crocuses and daffodils as well. They are all picked now and the tulips are starting to bloom.

Here at the condo, late last Fall, we did plant about 40 bulbs in the small patch of ground that we have here behind our balcony that is permissible for planting. All those hyacinths, daffodils and tulips have already bloomed.

I am delighted with the total number of flowers that we were able to have in the house with very little effort.

photo from the personal collection of Immer

Everything Takes Work

2010-04-13T19:18:00.006-04:00

On February 5th I had called the administrative fund that handles my pension. I had inquired at that time about the feasibility of taking my pension early at age 62 instead of the customary age 65 and I was told that I was qualified to begin drawing my pension at age 62 with no penalty. I was told to wait until a few months before my 62nd birthday and to call back and they would walk me through applying. With my birthday in September, I would receive my first check on October 1st.

I was psyched about this big time. Several of my friends from the hospital where I earned this pension had told me that it was actually allowed to begin collecting at age 55 with a lesser amount and that several of my former co-workers there had already started collecting. I marked my calendar as to when to call the company back.

Within a few weeks I had a letter from a different management company indicating that they had just assumed control of the hospital pension plan and would be the new point of contact. I decided to call them just to make sure that there would be no glitches in collecting at age 62. When I spoke to the new company, the gentleman who talked to me explained that their company had just acquired this pension plan and their information indicated I would have to be 65 before I could collect. I told him that I had information from my former employer and from the former administrative company both showing that collection of the pension could begin as early as age 55. He told me that he would have someone investigate this and I would be receiving a letter in 8-10 days giving me details.

Now, today, 6 weeks later I have still not heard anything. This morning I called the pension fund, talked to somebody else who told me that they had "just" received information from my former employer and that I should be getting a letter in a few days. Isn't that always the way - "the check is in the mail", etc. She would not indicate to me any information on my request but just stated "you will receive a letter in a few days".

Why is everything so difficult? I thought I had this sewn up and was already planning in my mind how to budget my pension and social security checks to meet my living expenses. I am still positive that I can begin collecting at 62 (based on my previous co-workers' success) but I want to see it in writing.

Now I am waiting for two important documents - the discharge of my bankruptcy and the letter from the pension company. We have to be so on top of everything in our lives because waiting for somebody else to handle something is poor judgment.

Here's hoping I hear on both issues soon!

photo by... caccamo

The Wait Continues

2010-04-12T19:52:00.002-04:00

In the 11 days since my last post, I have continued my financial struggle. I am still awaiting discharge of my bankruptcy and am now 9 weeks post-341 hearing. I was pleased to see that one of my anonymous readers, who had her 341 hearing just 5 days before mine, has just received her discharge. Hopefully, mine will be coming soon.

My work has continued to decline. I am now going to the office each day for just 30 minutes and doing their dwindling transcription 3 days of the week out of my home. In just the past 3 months, that transcription has declined almost 2/3. Why do I even continue with this craziness? Because for some unknown reason, they are still willing to pay my Blue Cross premium and have me listed as an "employee". Not wanting to lose that Blue Cross coverage, I am "playing the game" with them.

I will be beginning the collection of my Social Security benefits in September and will also start collecting a retirement benefit at that time that I have from a job I held in Grosse Pointe in the 1980's and 1990's. While those two checks will not be enormous they, hopefully, will be enough to cover my expenses. As long as my employer continues to cover my Blue Cross, I will continue to do their transcription as well. How long the transcription will go on, before the practice is totally transitioned to electronic medical records, I don't know but I can estimate that it could continue another year at least.

I am happy to be out of that office full time. The job was horrendous and sucked every bit of energy out of me. The work load was unmanageable as evidenced by the major changes they made to the position after replacing me. The new surgery scheduler does not do any of the administrative work that I did as well. Though I was told that I would be doing that administrative work, and still getting 40 hours a week, they lied to me. They have taken all the administrative duties, of which there were many, and divided them up among other staff successfully robbing me of those hours and that income. Also, I have noted that when the surgery scheduling becomes too heavy for my replacement, she nicely hands off paperwork required in the scheduling to the 4 receptionists and they are actually doing the work for her. This surprises me and aggravates me because on the few occasions that I had asked for help, they rudely declined. They preferred instead to report me more than once because they felt I was not answering the phone quickly enough in my office. It was pretty impossible to have patients in the office nearly 8 hours straight and answer phones at the same time.

In any event, that is behind me and it is obvious that big changes were made to the position so that it is no longer the untenable job that it was for me. My replacement gets to take her lunch breaks and she has told me that the job is really "easy". Sure, it is easy when a big chunk of the duties were handed off elsewhere.

Whatever! That position is gone for me and, other than the loss of the income, I am glad to have it gone. I prefer the transcription here in my home and, due to its rapidly declining time constraints, I find that I can do the work in 2-3 hours here. All in all, that gives me about 20-22 hours per TWO week time period as opposed to the full time 80 hours.

After 45 years of working, I am hoping that I don't have to find any further full time work. I am tired of working and if my social security and pension check can support me, then I am happy for the chance to slide into the "retirement" phase of life.

Now comes a new direction in this blog. Hopefully, my bankruptcy discharge will come through and all will be over. Hopefully, as well, the foreclosure on my home goes through and I can put those two matters out of my mind. While I certainly did not expect nor desire to have to file bankruptcy nor lose my home to foreclosure, it was the only alternative after years of trying to avoid such actions.

I am now moving on to the "living within a tight budget" mode and learning ways to stretch the dollars. I know it is possible and I am looking forward to the challenge. My title of this blog says it all - Mein Taglich Brot - or My Daily Bread. It has been, and will continue to be, the challenge of living within my means and enjoying the ride.

April, 2010 Musings

2010-04-01T20:48:00.004-04:00

Here it is April 1st already and I'm beginning my fourth month of budgeting. What have I learned in the past three months?

One thing is that a budget is a lot of work and takes serious dedication. I have been documenting every penny spent and have only had a few days when I was short some dollars and wondered WHAT it was that I had bought during that day. No matter how structured I am, there are little purchases that get away from me.

All in all, I am satisfied with the budget I have hit upon after a few false starts and I am all set up now for April. The big downside for me is, of course, that my income is so variable and that makes it tough for planning. So far, I have done okay, though, so I am satisfied.

Renting as opposed to owning a home does make for a lot less in the way of home repairs and expenditures for same. When renting, though, one is at the mercy of the owner (or in my case the rental agent) as to how receptive they are to a repair and how quickly they send somebody out.

Today we hit a record high for this area of 77 degrees. It was really warm. We have a huge door wall off the living room and I had that open with a nice breeze coming in. The only other window on the main floor is a double window in the kitchen. Do you think I could get that sucker open? No way. I had to stand on a step stool because the window is over the sink. I unlocked both windows and they would not budge. I even got out a hammer to hammer under the handle but that would not budge it either. I am betting that the painter painted the windows shut as he painted all the switch covers shut. Wonderful.

In my bedroom, on the second floor, are two windows and those open wonderfully but they are a different window and lock as opposed to the other windows in the condo. I had them open all night and what a nice breeze. When we moved into this condo in August, it was air conditioner time and it lasted right through to winter so this is the first time we have actually opened windows.

However, in the second bedroom, which is my mother's, there is just one window and, again, it is identical to the kitchen and try as I might that would not open either.

On the off chance that I am handling the locks incorrectly (they are the craziest looking locks I have ever seen), I may try to ask my friends J & D to see if they have an idea how to get the windows open. If that doesn't work, then it will be another call to the rental agent.

Wonder how long this unseasonably warm weather will last. I am getting tempted to get out the screen door and install that, too. Let's hope that works!!

photo by...Suzee Que

Small Purchases

2010-03-30T20:20:00.003-04:00

I can safely say that going "cash only" makes a big difference in what I buy or don't buy. A huge difference.

I had a small list going for a few items that I would buy at either WalMart or Lowe's. Here in my town, these two stores are side by side. Neither is a favorite store of mine; heck going to the stores are not favorite past-times any more as opposed to on-line shopping.

But, today, I worked my customary 1/2 hour at the office, had no transcription to do (big income day!!) and headed off to WalMart. What was I looking for:

(1) Some more blue wash cloths and hand towels. The color of our master bathroom is an odd shade of blue, the sinks are blue in the bathroom and dressing room and the toilet is blue. I love blue but there are 5000 shades of blue. The only place last August that I found a perfect match in towels/wash cloths was at WalMart. I headed first for the linen department, found the Better Homes and Gardens collection and saw they still carried the same line of towels, etc. Did they have my blue shade? Nope and no longer carrying it. The replacement was a greenish blue and no where near the shade I needed. Ok at least I saved some money but I had really hoped to buy some more of them as they are fading out.

(2) Next item on the list was switch plate covers. Again, in my bedroom (blue) I wanted to replace the wall switch and a few plug switches. When the electrician worked on that room last week, he had to dig the switch covers off as the painter evidently painted right over them. Such good quality workmanship these days! When the electrician put the covers back on, of course, the chipped paint was visible all around. I remembered WalMart had at one time some fancy switch plate covers in many colors and some with designs. I likeVictorian type of decorations anyway and I thought I would treat myself to some new covers. Did they have any? Nope, they only carry the standard white, wood tones, metal, ugly, ugly, ugly. Well, guess I saved some more money.

(3) Next stop was the housewares department to get a new iron. Ours blew last week and spewed out rust and all kinds of crap on the ironing board cover as well. I did find many irons to choose from and decided to go cheap. Why? Because we don't iron that much and I had always had more expensive irons and they all do the same thing which is iron. This was a Black & Decker and was $12.99. The ironing board cover was another $11.50 so I did make some purchases.

(4) Next I needed to get a box of cup hooks. In my bedroom, the cable cord runs right across the wall under my one window. It is unsightly and I had the idea of putting some cup hooks under the window ledge and then hoisting the cord up there to hide the look. Box had 100 hooks which will cover my needs until 2050. Cost was $4.99.

That was all for WalMart and I was ready to get out of there. Not much spent and that was good, too.

Across the street to Lowe's to look at their switch plate covers. No different than at WalMart so no sale there.

Then down the street to Office Depot to get a ribbon for my calculator. Total cost there was $5.19. I am a regular at Office Depot, have one of their member cards for big discounts and I have NEVER left Office Depot without spending at least $100. That was in my self-employment days. This was a good feeling. In and out and only $5.19.

Had my fill of stores today but at least they were not crowded and I could get in and out quickly. Store shopping is rapidly becoming one of my least favorite things to do.

Spring Flowers

2010-03-29T20:24:00.006-04:00

This is the time of the year when bulbs are starting to bloom in southwest Michigan. I always enjoyed planting bulbs in late Fall and anticipating their appearance when Winter would be over.

Over the 12 years that I owned my home, I probably planted a good 500 or more bulbs consisting of crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, irises, etc. Of all these, the hyacinths are my favorite and the largest majority of bulbs planted at my home are probably those.

When we moved to this condo last Summer, I had hoped to be able to dig out the bulbs and move them as well but quickly found out that (1) planting wasn't allowed except in a very small area behind the deck and (2) there were way too many bulbs to dig out.

My house is still sitting there empty and forlorn and the bank has made no effort to do anything in the way of taking possession. The last 10 days or so, I have made a trip by the house each morning after I leave the office and I have been picking crocuses and bringing them back here. We have them displayed in vases and they are lasting a good 5-6 days which is pretty good for them.

Today I noticed a huge amount of hyacinths about ready to bloom and I am looking forward to that scent in the condo. This is a good way to have a steady flow of flowers in the house for the next few weeks to add some charm and without cost.

photo by ' Toshio '

Time For A Change

2010-03-28T22:33:00.002-04:00

It's time for some spring spruce up at Mein Taglich Brot. I have been scouring the Internet for new templates for my blog. While I really loved the red diary template I had been using, I was beginning to tire of the darkness of it and wanted something fresher and bright.

I have found this background, I like it and I have selected it for this blog.

Change is good and a change like this perks up my thinking as well.

It is now 7 weeks since my 341 hearing in Kalamazoo and I am anxious to receive the final discharge papers on my bankruptcy. Equally anxious to get the foreclosure of my home over and have the bank actually take over the house.

I need these changes, too, for my psyche and to be able to put this financial situation behind me.

Change is good and Spring is around the corner!

Electrical Work Completed

2010-03-25T20:16:00.002-04:00

Today was the day that the electrician was to appear, sent from my rental agency. They had called me 3 times yesterday afternoon to verify that I would be home and informed me he would be here at 9 a.m.

I decided to head to the office early so that I could put in my rousing 30 minutes and get back home here before he came. I did so and was back by 8:30. As so often happens with service people, he actually came at 11, but in any event he did come and I was happy about that.

First stop was my basement where one ceiling fixture frequently blows out bulbs and where I had broken the bulb a few days ago trying to replace it. Half the bulb was still in the fixture and he did manage to get that out. He checked the wiring, said it was fine but recommended I switch to CFL bulbs. He even went so far as to say that he would go to a neighboring hardware store and pick up a few for me. He then noted that the switch for this fixture was a dimmer switch and said it would be better to change the switch as the CFL bulbs are way more expensive to accommodate a dimmer switch. I thought that would be fine because I sure don't dim the lights over my desk for any reason. I wonder why dimmer switches were even installed in a basement. Whatever!

I then asked him about looking at something in my bedroom. On the wall of both bedrooms, when first walking into each room, there is a switch. There is no overhead light fixture and I assumed that the switch was meant to operate with one of the wall outlets - plug in a lamp, turn the switch on at the door and I could control the lamp from the doorway. He confirmed that was indeed true but I told him that when I moved in, we tried each outlet in the room and none worked with that switch.

Long story short - the switch was bad, had been wired wrong as well and we determined WHICH outlet on the wall went with the switch and that outlet was also bad and was not wired correctly. Off to the Hardware store he went and returned with new outlets, new switch for the bedroom, new plate covers, light bulbs for the basement fixtures, a new switch for the basement and everything was fixed.

I am so delighted with the bedroom switch. The room is quite large and I had to walk across the room, in the dark, to reach the lamp to turn it on. Now I can turn it on from the doorway. Just a little thing but a pleasure.

Another pleasure was the fact that, as a renter, I didn't have to pay for any of these costs and that doesn't hurt.

The Wall Crack Saga Continues

2010-03-24T19:07:00.003-04:00

I am at my wits end with these cracks in the walls on the second floor of my condo. I have previously written several posts about this situation and the parade of contractors who have marched through my bedroom and closet to climb in the attic. Of the 3 different groups of people sent out here to 'look', there were 3 different explanations for what the problem was and how to repair it.

The last contractor told me basically what my friend, Mrs. Lowes, had suggested. That was that during the winter, a foundation may shift and with the heat on cause this separation where a wall and ceiling meet. She said she has had this problem at her home, though on a much smaller scale, and that in the spring, the crack goes back together. This sounds like hogwash to me but I have learned to believe Mrs. Lowes. However, she did feel that the cracks I have here were pretty extensive and that prompted my call to the rental agent.

In the last 3 weeks, the cracks have slowly started to disappear though they are still there to some degree. Today the rental agent brought out yet another contractor to have a look. This man agreed with the assessment of Mrs. Lowes and said that while the problem should be repaired, it would need to be done in the midst of the winter when the openings are at their largest.

He questioned me about whether I run the heat high in this condo which actually I do NOT. I have found that all winter I could comfortably keep the temperature at 66 and still be warm enough. My gas bills were very low all winter and I attributed this in part to the fact that our unit sits between two other units and that there are not a lot of windows here. He also said that there needs to be lots of humidity on the second floor to prevent this from happening again.

The rental agent accompanied this man today herself. This is the first time that she physically has come into this condo since we have been living here and her concern seemed to be that the ceiling would not collapse. She remarked that the owner wants the problem fixed and the contractor and she agreed to wait until next winter to see if the cracks reappear.

At the same time the contractor noted two 'different' types of cracks on my bedroom wall and ceiling (which I had shown to all the other contractors that marched through here and who all ignored them). This guy today said those are water spots and the rental agent remarked that prior to our moving in they had had to do a massive roofing repair on this unit. Of course, the roofing repair falls under the jurisdiction of the condo association (and not the owner from whom I rent) so she said she would call the condo association and have them get their roofer back out here to solve that problem.

A short time later she called me back to say the condo association will be contacting me to let me know when a roofer will be out.

Just more reasons I am glad that I rent.

A Car Expense That Did NOT Hurt

2010-03-23T18:50:00.001-04:00

Ever since I locked the garage door remote in my car - in the garage - and had to pay out over $100 to have the garage opened and a new lock put on, I knew I was in danger of doing the same thing with my car key.

To backtrack, when I rented this condo, it only came with one garage door remote. I am betting there were two remotes and I am further betting that there was a key for the access lock on the garage door, but some earlier tenant had probably gone off with it. When I inadvertently locked the remote in my car and closed the garage door, I knew I was in for an expense that I did not need. As this was my fault, the rental agency was happy to give me the name of the garage door company they used but the expense was mine. I now have two remotes and the access key for the door in the event the power was ever off but my wallet was bit to the tune of over $130.

About the same time, I noticed that I could not find my extra car key for my 1997 Ford Escort. I knew there were two keys and two alarm key fobs but where the one set went, I don't know. This has bothered me for months but I never did anything about it.

One of the reasons for my procrastination was that the Ford dealership where my mother had purchased the car in 1997 had closed and there was just an empty building sitting there. I was not aware of any other Ford dealership in the county and locksmiths do not duplicate car keys.

Recently in talking about this with a girl at work (one of the few who still speak to me) she mentioned that her husband's car dealership had bought out the Ford line of autos as well. She suggested I call their dealership and inquire about the key. This dealership is out about 15 miles from here, in the country and I didn't realize they also handled Ford products.

I called their service department and I must say that my experience was really good. The man I spoke to went out of his way to check to see if my particular make and model "blanks" were available and promised to call me back. Within 15 minutes he was calling me back to inform me that they would have to order the blanks but they could and they would be in the next day. The next day he called me again and said that the blanks had not arrived in their shipment and he wanted to avoid my making a trip out to their dealership. Two days later he called me again to report that the blanks were in and I could bring my key out, they would cut another key, test it to make sure it worked and I could be on my way.

Today I drove out to the dealership after my 30 minute stint at the office. It was a beautiful day for a drive through the countryside, very little traffic and I admit that I had no idea how large this dealership was. Once there, I went to the service department where another very pleasant gentleman informed me that I would need the "parts" department and he walked me through their hallways to that area. There another person came and cut the key for me (I decided on getting 2 extra keys) and within 10 minutes they were done. We tested them on the trunk, car door and ignition to make sure they worked and I paid the bill....

Total bill for 2 keys - $9.90.

I was impressed with the service and the attitudes of the staff when their total profit from my sale was under $10.

A good experience and a nice, relaxing drive on an early spring like day.

Keep Your Fingers Out of the Light Socket

2010-03-22T19:19:00.001-04:00

I really like this condo and want to be able to rent this for a long time to come. One of the reasons is that the basement is completely finished and affords me a great location for my office. I have more room in this basement than I ever had in my home.

There are also really neat ceiling lights down here and a great ceiling. But I have found that the covers over these ceiling lights are really buggers to get off when a bulb needs to be changed.

One of the bulbs seems to be blowing out quite frequently. Naturally it is one smack in the middle of the floor where I have nothing to hold onto (such as the wall) when I am standing on a step stool. Myself and step stools/ladders don't mix very well and I am inclined never to go above rung 2. I just changed that bulb about 3 weeks ago and that was the second time this year and tonight, when I turned on the wall switch, it nicely popped and blew out.

Out came the step stool and I got on the rungs and managed to get the fixture cover off. I reached in to unscrew the bulb and it broke in my hands with half the bulb still in the socket. I put my finger inside the socket (bad idea) and it nicely sparked, spewing particles all over my top and my fingers. I didn't notice until later that I had such black particles stuck to my skin that took a while to wash off. Luckily that is all it did and it didn't send me to the floor electrocuted.

Time to make a call to the rental agency who promised to have their electrician out to have a look. Thank goodness for that as I know from my home that just a call to an electrician was a good $95 or more service call.

What did I learn from this - keep my fingers out of the socket for sure. I don't know what I was thinking but I guess I just thought that I could unscrew the portion of the light that was left in the socket. Obviously not.

Making Improvements on a Rental

2010-03-21T19:34:00.002-04:00

For most of my adult life, I rented - from flats to apartments to a home and I can recall making subtle improvements to my rental. Perhaps it was something as simple as wallpapering a wall or putting up new curtain rods. I remember in one apartment I actually purchased flocked contact paper (which was the rage at that time) and papered one whole wall of the living room. In another place, I purchased traverse rods for the door wall, had a friend install them and I was able to use the draperies I had had at another apartment rather than the curtain rods that were there.

In this condo, there have been a few things that I have wanted to do. One involved the blinds on this door wall. When we moved in, I noticed that there were 36 louvers or panes on the blinds but about 7 were missing. Naturally they were smack in the middle and privacy was pretty bad. When I tried to move some panes to the middle spots, the hooks broke right off. At that time I called the rental agency and they agreed to spring for a new rod assembly (or rather the owner did) but I would need to purchase the louvers. Off to Lowes I went and found some nice fabric panes and we now have a nice arrangement of blinds on the door wall leading to the balcony. My cost was about $55 for these louvers.

In my bedroom on the second floor, the windows had traverse drapes. They were rose colored, or at one time had been rose colored. They were now filthy and the backing looked like some animal had urinated on them in spots. They still contained the cleaning tags indicating that they had been sent out to the cleaners before we moved in. But they were ugly, ugly, ugly. My entire bedroom is a soft blue which was selected to match a Queen Anne's chair of my grandmothers that was covered in a blue brocade. I was not about to change my bedspread ensemble to work with the rose/ugly drapes and I wanted to use the chair in the room. When JC Penney's had a sale I was able to purchase two pair of soft blue drapes, shorter than the floor length that was here, and we installed them ourselves. They are beautiful and match my chair and bed ensemble. I am really pleased with that and the total outlay was under $100. When I removed the rose drapes, they actually fell apart, and while I was going to save them in the event we move from here, I dumped them. Now I wish I had not done that but that was my 'quick to action' attitude.

I am now itching to make one other change here and have been thinking about it for about 3 months now. In the kitchen there is one window. It is actually the only window on the main floor other than the door wall off the living room. The kitchen window has a venetian blind on that is a terracotta color probably intended to match the terracotta floor. The blind is filthy and old, ugly and despite numerous attempts at cleaning and scrubbing the blinds, it remains dirty and ugly. I have been debating getting a pleated shade for that window in a rose color to go with the floor and go with our dishes and our decor in there. I think it will let in more light, too, than the venetian blind. That is something I am pretty well decided on doing but haven't done so yet.

While I don't want to put a lot of money (which I don't have anyway) into changes in this condo, a few subtle changes makes a difference and warms up the place and I am willing to do that. A rug here, an afghan there, a picture on that wall, etc makes a big difference.

Securing the House

2010-03-20T16:09:00.002-04:00

Yesterday my friend, Mrs. Lowes, called me and informed me that there were two men walking around the perimeter of my home (she was my next door neighbor). In true Mrs. Lowes' style, she went outside and asked the men "what's going on, guys?" to which she said they responded that they were there to "secure the house".

Mrs. Lowes questioned them further and ascertained that the mortgage company had hired their firm to gain access to the house and "secure it". They asked her how long the house was empty and she responded "since August". They made the comment that they "hoped the power had been turned off".

She watched them work on the front door to try to gain access and they were in the house about 2 hours. When they came out, she headed for her door to quiz them and they said that there was no water in the house and everything was fine. Off they went.

Today I decided to stop by the house myself. It is still in my name and I had just received a letter from Bank of America offering me the opportunity to halt the foreclosure, pay all back payments, pay the past taxes and insurance, etc and the house could be mine again. Sure!

I walked up on the porch and sitting on the porch was the doorknob from the front door. The screen was open and the plunger from the door was lying between the two doors. The main door had evidence of the absence of the deadbolt lock and in its place was a disk. IF this company changed the front door lock, I don't know.

There was mail in the mailbox from the electric company, dated January 5, 2010, addressed to "resident", stating that the electricity was still on and should be put in the name of whoever is living there. What a joke. I had canceled all utilities in August, 2009.

I went around to the side door and that screen was open as well. Mrs. Lowes still had an extra key to my home and I used it to unlock the side door and walked in. So much for "securing the house". I walked through the house, noted that on each sink there was a printed note stating that the water had been "winterized" and under no circumstances should anyone turn on the faucets. The microwave clock was still working and I opened the refrigerator door and it was still on. So much for the electric company shutting off the electricity though I long ago received a final reading and bill.

Also, that explained why Mrs. Lowes noted that the motion light on the garage would go on at night and spook her.

All my bulbs that I planted over the 12 years of ownership of that home are poking up big time. I have hundreds of crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, irises and lilies planted there. The crocuses were blooming so I nicely cut all the flowers, put them in a basket I had in the car and brought them home here to put in vases. I intend to keep going back through the spring and cutting all the flowers that appear.

It is obvious that it is a long process between stopping your first mortgage payment and the bank actually taking physical possession of your home. This has been going on since May, 2009 and they are just getting around now to "securing the house".

How did I feel walking through that home that had been my dream to purchase? I honestly don't know. I felt bad walking through and seeing the house empty, the blinds all drawn the way I had left them. The house did look like what it was which is deserted. It looked cold and lonely, but, in all honesty, it didn't totally feel like "my" home any longer. I walked out and relocked the door and that was that.

However, those flowers ARE mine and I do intend to stop by each day after leaving the office and clipping whatever flowers are there. I would have dug up all the bulbs before we moved out but I do not have the option of planting them here at the condo so I had to leave them. As long as that house is not occupied by somebody else, they are my flowers and I intend to have them.

Review of My State Tax Return

2010-03-19T15:47:00.001-04:00

As I wrote a few days ago, I was informed that my 2009 Michigan Income Tax return was selected for review? I was not happy!

What was so special about my return that it was selected for a supposed random review? I don't know. But the letter from the State arrived today as I had been informed on the phone.

In this letter I was requested to send the following information to the State post-haste:

1. My 2009 property tax statement. A mortgage escrow statement would NOT be acceptable.

2. Signed & dated lease agreement for my rental home to state the exact dates in 2009 that I was renting, including photocopies of all rent checks - front and back sides.

3. My W-2 from 2009 (isn't the W-2 included in an E-filing?)

In addition, a form was enclosed with the letter entitled "Schedule of Household Income". I was advised to complete this form on both sides, include the above items and send off to the State by no later than April 19. It would then take until at least the middle of July before I would have any response.

I will admit that the questions asked on the Schedule of Household Income annoy me. There were a total of 25 individual questions requesting information on any and all money that I may have received in 2009 such as from wages, interest, rental income, capital gains, retirement pension, annuity benefits, unemployment, social security, awards, prizes, lottery, bingo, alimony, worker's compensation, child support, scholarships, grants, payments for foster care, etc.

Of the above items, only the first two applied to me with my W-2 income and my $12 of interest for the year on my checking account.

Question #16 was inappropriate I felt - it read "all payments made on your behalf by relatives or friends or other individuals as well as gifts of cash received". WHAT! I don't feel it is the State's business what kinds of gifts I received - for instance, should I list a $25 birthday gift from a good friend? This is ridiculous.

If that wasn't enough, I totally was disgusted with question #25 which read "Explain how you meet expenses that you do not have income to cover". What kind of information are they looking for there? Should I write that I return empty pop cans for pennies.

This felt like I was filling out more forms for my bankruptcy rather than giving information for a tax return. Can you just see people revealing the money that they made on scratch off lottery tickets or Bingo winnings! I was annoyed by the questions but I did comply and made a run to the Post Office to send off the envelope.

Now I will wait for a response until July??? I am wondering if all this "random review" is actually related to the bankruptcy or foreclosure. If so, it is just adding more salt to the wounds of having to go the bankruptcy/foreclosure route. I feel like it just never ends.

My First Credit Card Offer...

2010-03-18T14:00:00.002-04:00

...post 341 hearing!

Today I received a letter in the mail from "First Premier Bank" offering me the chance to apply for their Platinum Master Card despite my poor credit history.

I can remember when I first began writing this blog and came across the blog "Bouncing Back from Bankruptcy". That author, Betty, wrote about the abundance of credit card offers that she was receiving post discharge of her bankruptcy. She wrote with humor about the outrageous account fees, rates, costs, limitations and available credit of her first offers.

I can certainly agree.

This offer is for a $300 credit line Master Card with the following limitations (don't laugh, now):

Credit limit of $300.

Initial available credit of $225 (after their $75 one time first year annual fee).

Processing fee of $45 (which must be paid, along with the above $75 before access to the card is granted).

Subsequent year annual fee of $75 which will be billed at $6.25 per month.

Annual percentage rate of...............59.9% on purchases.

Annual percentage rate of...............59.9% on cash advances.

And, if that isn't enough, get this...$36.00 account maintenance fee on closed accounts.

Ok, if that isn't enough to make you run for your pen to fill out the application, I don't know what would entice you!!

I don't have any intention of applying for any credit card in the future but I was certainly amused by this one. And like Betty wrote, I am going to put these offers in a file and see just what kind of juicy choices come my way.

On the other side, though, I am wondering just why I have already received this offer when I have yet to receive the final discharge of bankruptcy. Betty, if you are reading this, what are your thoughts? I am wondering if the final discharge has been made and I just haven't received the notification yet?

Kiss That Refund Good-bye

2010-03-17T19:19:00.004-04:00

I will admit that I was really excited about my income tax refund this year. After all, it has been 10 or more years since I had a refund. True enough, my federal refund will be kept by the IRS to credit to my 2008 outstanding balance with them but I was looking forward to the state refund of $700.

My tax preparer e-filed my returns on February 26th. It is almost 3 weeks and no refund has popped up in my checking account. Today I called the State of Michigan (their website is useless; can never get through). I was first directed to their automated telephone system where I received the message that "your return is in review and you can expect to hear from us by no later than.....July 13th". WHAT! I then activated my desire to speak to a representative, held on for about 25 minutes and actually had a live voice to talk to.

The answer - "your return is in review due to some questions we have". What kind of questions? The representative was very polite and told me that there are questions regarding the home I own, what property taxes I paid in 2009 on the home, whether I am still living in the home and why my return shows that I lived in the home for part of the year and rented for part of the year. She explained that a letter was sent out to me regarding these questions soliciting (1) the lease on my condo to prove I am renting and for what period of 2009, (2) a copy of my property tax statement from 2009 from the home, (3) the desire for a written explanation from me as to my residency status and several other questions.

I told this representative that I had not received a letter and she verified my address and noted that the Treasury Department had transposed the numbers and letters of my street address. Wonderful. She promised to have another letter issued today.

I explained my situation and (1) that I owned the home for the entire 2009 year, (2) that the home is in foreclosure, (3) that I moved to a rental unit in August, 2009, (4) that I filed bankruptcy in 2009 but it had not been finalized during that year, (5) that I had not personally paid the property taxes on the home in 2009 but that the mortgage company had and added the cost to my outstanding mortgage balance, etc, etc.

Again, she was very kind, told me to gather all the materials asked for in the letter (once I receive the letter), write an explanatory letter detailing all I had told her and making sure to state that the house is sitting empty and mail it back. She told me that the Treasury Dept will totally understand what I am detailing because they hear this same story over and over due to the financial crisis in this state.

She also told me that she could see that I have an outstanding tax liability to the IRS for 2008 and she wanted me to know that it is possible that any refund I would get from the state could be grabbed by the IRS. She commented that "I just want to make you aware of this".

So, as I see it, I won't be seeing any refunds at all in my checking account. This will take months to sort out and when all is done I am sure that my refund will either be adjusted downward or the IRS will take it anyway.

Then I called the IRS about my refund from them to see if the money had been credited against my 2008 liability. Originally I received monthly statements from them with a payment coupon and return envelope, however, since December, 2009, I have not. I had called them before about this and was told to continue sending in my payments but I want to know each month just what my balance is with the horrendous interest and penalties that they add. Today when I called their automated system I heard the same message "your refund cannot be processed at this time due to questions regarding your return; you will be hearing from us shortly regarding this".

I am so distressed by all of this. I cannot get ahead of the tax obligations and feel like I am just working to give all the money back. I am barely making any money now and the State refund certainly would have helped. I just can't cut a break where these issues are concerned.

Losing Items in a Move

2010-03-16T17:06:00.005-04:00

I have moved many times in my adult life and everything arrived at my new home unscathed. Nothing was lost and nothing was broken.

However, in my last few moves I have not been so lucky.

When I moved across the state in April, 1997, naturally a huge moving van was used. I inventoried all the cartons I had and they totaled over 200. The movers emptied out the house in Detroit on one day and would not guarantee delivery until the next as they had to drive 200 miles across the state. The next day when they arrived, I counted all the arriving cartons and could swear that they were all delivered.

But, were they?

My mother and I lived in a rental house for one year and many of our cartons were stored in the basement for that year - unopened. My intent was to rent for a year and search for a home to purchase which I did. We moved into the home in May, 1998. For this move, a matter of 6 blocks, I used a small moving company as I had no strong, willing and able friends or family to assist. Once in the new home, all the cartons were unpacked and it was then that I realized a few things were missing.

These were 2 photo albums of my two special goddaughters from birth to 10 years old and 2 photo albums of two vacation trips from 1979 and 1983. In addition to this, there were about 12 pair of my mother's bermuda shorts that could not be located. Now, had we packed the shorts in with the albums back in 1997 when we moved from Detroit? I don't know but they never appeared. And, naturally one year after the cross-state move, there was no going back to the old movers to check.

This time around I am finding several items missing of a greater loss. One is my grandmother's charm bracelet and another is a small, diamond pendant that was also my grandmother's. I have torn this condo apart and neither can be found. Now my cousin, Linda, has moved many times as well and has suggested many hiding places where I might have stored this jewelry including inside my "world's softest socks" but they are not there. This is a joke actually because Linda turned me onto the "world's softest socks" and they definitely ARE - SOFT. Long lasting, too. But, wait, I have digressed.

Today I realized that I only have one car key for my Ford Escort. Where in the world did the other key go to? This is ridiculous. I always had two keys and two alarm fobs but, no, there is only one key. I made a call to the Ford dealership in town and learned that I could order another key for $6.00 so I will do that but where in the world did that key go to?

On a financial note, I feel that $6 isn't all that bad for a new replacement key. Actually I was pretty surprised about that and the dealership people were very helpful, telling me that they would have to order the keys and then would call me when they come in for me to go and have them cut one to accommodate my car.

Not very cost effective, though, was my expenditure today. When we turned our clocks ahead last week-end I noticed that 2 of my watches and 1 of my mothers did not work. I went to have these batteries replaced today and the final bill was $24. Whoa-$8 for each battery. Give me back those wind-up watches.

I've Been Counted

2010-03-15T15:54:00.003-04:00

Today is the day that the 2010 US census forms are being delivered to all homes across the country. Mine arrived as expected after a letter a week ago informing me to "be on the look-out for this envelope". I have already completed the form and it is back in its postage-paid envelope to be returned to the US Dept of Justice.

Ok, as a genealogist, this is an awesome feeling. To know that what I filled out today will be available for searching 72 years from now by future genealogists makes me feel connected though this census will not be open for general viewing until 2082 and I doubt I will be doing any searching at that time.

The form was easy to fill out and took very little time. That was due to the fact that this census, this year, isn't asking too many detailed questions. That is a disappointment to me when thinking of this in the long range as far as researchers would care.

In 1910, 100 years ago, more detailed information was solicited and it is a treasure trove of data for genealogists now who are researching our ancestors.

For 2010, though, I have noted the following questions lacking from a genealogical standpoint: (1) Marital status, (2) Number of years married, (3) Number of children, (4) Place of birth of father, (5) Place of birth of mother, (6) occupation, (7) value of personal property.

I am guessing that in 1910, the value of a person's personal property was important to the government; obviously in 2010, it is NOT. Or, perhaps Americans today would be apt to protest if the government were asking them questions about their personal financial situation.

Oh, well, by the time 2082 comes around and my descendants happen across my 2010 census, at least they won't know that I declared bankruptcy and had my home foreclosed! Thank goodness for small favors.

In any event, I have been counted. Have you?

Retirement Health Insurance Coverage

2010-03-14T17:55:00.005-04:00

No, this post is not about MY retirement health insurance coverage but rather my mother's.

My mother went to work at the JL Hudson Dept Store in Detroit the year I began high school (1962). I had begged and begged to be able to attend the parochial high school affiliated with our religious faith and the tuition was too high on my father's barbering income. So off to work my mother went, working in the hosiery department as a sales clerk. Her intention at the time was only to work the 4 years of my high school. Right! Following my graduation in 1966, my brother began high school and my mother decided to work another 4 years to send him to the same parochial high school. And, those 8 years of working continued and parlayed into a total of 25 years.

When my mother retired at the age of 62 in 1987, she learned she would receive a monthly pension check of $220.91. Not bad considering the extent of her income as a sales clerk and, as she often remarks, better than nothing. But a BIG bonus was that the JL Hudson Company would continue to provide her supplemental health insurance (then from Blue Cross). That coverage continued and continued and over the last 22 years, her supplemental coverage continued to be covered 100%. In discussion with various friends and relatives, my mother learned that nobody else was receiving such a benefit from their employer. Even some of the big name employers in Michigan no longer provide paid supplemental coverage for their retirees. The hospital I worked for in Grosse Pointe never did as well.

During these 22 years of my mother's retirement, Hudson's was sold out to the Target Company and the health insurance coverage continued, Target sold out to Marshall Fields and the coverage continued, Marshall Fields sold out to Macy's and still the coverage continued. I often tell my mother that was well worth her 25 years of working to have paid supplemental coverage for 22 years.

But all good things come to an end and Macy's notified all their retirees that beginning in 2010, they will be discontinuing the paid retiree health insurance coverage. We waited and waited for billings to arrive and nothing came until this last week when my mother received 2 letters with one from AARP which is now her Medicare Rx provider and United Health Care which is her health insurance provider. Both indicated her payments for January and February were not received and she was in danger of losing her coverage.

After extensive time on the phone, I was able to ascertain that coupon books were mailed out in December - well we received nothing. I was given the amounts in arrears, told to mail in the payments pronto and new books were ordered. Within a few days the books were here and are reminiscent of the coupon books for car payments.

Macy's is going one step further, though, and are only charging the retirees 1/3 of the cost in 2010, 2/3 in 2011 and full cost in 2012. Right now my mother's obligation will be $74 each month for the two payments. While she is not happy about this, I do remind her that she did have 22 years of payment free coverage and that is definitely a plus.

Lifestyle Changes

2010-03-13T17:40:00.000-05:00

The buzz word when discussing diets, exercise programs, improvements to one's life has become "lifestyle changes". As a long time user of the Weight Watcher's program (and one who has NEVER graduated) I see that the impetus is not on Weight Watcher's as a "diet" but rather as a lifetime commitment or "lifestyle change".

My friend, J, and I have been discussing our mutual desire to work on nutritional lifestyle changes (gosh that sounds so much better than a DIET). In any event, both J and I have recently learned during physician visits that our blood pressure is out of site with mine being way more out of site than J's but equally disturbing. I am on blood pressure medication and have been for over 10 years, J has never taken the medication and wishes to avoid it. We have been doing a lot of talking about our methods for these lifestyle changes and collaborating. Just a few minutes ago, we went out for a walk around our condo complex.

J has already initiated her plan and is doing fantastically after only 3 1/2 weeks. It is encouraging to see a plan put in motion and actually producing results. My metabolism is so crazy that I have been known to follow WW faithfully for as long as 3 months and NOT lose a pound but rather gain 10 lbs. I have been a huge challenge to my WW instructors over the years.

What this has to do with finances, though, is the high cost of food. J and her husband have begun purchasing and eating many fresh veggies and fresh fruit. That, together, with fresh fish, chicken, turkey, etc, adds significantly to a grocery bill. Here in this community, the fruit belt of Michigan, in season we have the opportunity to purchase fresh from the farm produce. That season is NOT upon us yet and when I went grocery shopping today I desperately wanted grapes and blueberries. What was available were products from Chili.

Ok, I purchased a big bag of grapes and a small box of blueberries. Both were very pricey against my desire to live in an austere manner. The grapes are hideous and tasteless and the blueberries are not much better. In the past, I would have just tossed them out and not thought twice about it. I did toss out the grapes (I know, I know I should have taken them back but I was too lazy) but I thought of the money that I spent on something I put in the garbage.

I will have to be more careful about this and if I don't like something it will be wiser to return it to the store. There is no excuse not to do this as the store is practically walking distance from the condo complex. Maybe if I do enough walking, I will build up my stamina enough to make a walking trip to the grocery.

What motivation!

Retirement is Looking Enticing

2010-03-12T15:07:00.001-05:00

While I will be 62 in September, 2010 and able to begin collecting social security and my pension check, I had never really anticipated actually retiring. I had actually not anticipated drawing on my benefits at 62, either. In the back of my mind, I would have to be working until at least 66 when I could collect my benefits without any reduction if I continued working. With no savings and no 401 K or other investments, I could not see how I could even consider retiring.

Originally when I purchased my home in 1998 it was with the intent that the home would be my retirement at the time I chose to stop working. I thought that I would sell the home at the time of my retirement and use the profits, along with my social security and pension checks, to fund my retirement years. Unfortunately, this did not materialize as I was not envisioning that (1) my job would so drastically change, (2) my income would more or less diminish to a few hundred dollars a 2-week pay period, (3) that I would be forced to file bankruptcy and (4) that my home would go the route of foreclosure.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my financial position these last 6 months or so. The four items above have all occurred and there is no going back from that. So, my impetus is on how to "spin" those events to give me a fresh start with enough funds to support myself and my mother.

I have come to the conclusion that as long as my employer continues to pay my Blue Cross premiums (they are paying 70%, my pay is being hit for the remaining 30%), then I will continue to do the small amount of work that I am receiving from them. Despite all my efforts at job searching and networking, it is obvious that jobs are few and far between in this community.

My question to myself has been - could I actually retire when my birthday arrives this year and my social security and pension checks kick in? If I am still doing a minute amount of work for the office in the way of transcription, could that little income supplement my retirement money and make it possible for me to not think of any future full time employment?

I think it is possible. I have 6 months until I reach 62 and I am going to calculate each month, with my budget, whether I can live on the income I would be receiving come October 1st. My combined checks from my retirement income would be approximately $1,900 per month. With my rent at $900, the question to me is whether I could make ends meet on the remaining $1,000. My cousin, Linda, tells me it is more than possible and she lives quite well in a frugal manner. My mother's social security and pension checks that she receives each month do cover her medication costs, health insurance costs, personal expenses such as her weekly hairdresser appointment and she usually contributes the remainder of her monies towards our mutual grocery bill.

For the next 6 months, I want to focus on an austerity program to see just how well I can manage on the monies available. To be able to also focus on the goal date of October 1st, and not to stress about finding new full time work, would be beneficial to my physical and mental health as well.

I can't help but repeat to myself that 45 years of working is enough. I have put in my hours and I deserve to be able to relax from the years of stress and strain. Retirement is definitely looking enticing.

Saving Money on Check Ordering

2010-03-11T19:33:00.004-05:00

Today I realized that it is about time for me to order new personal checks. Actually it is 8 months past due as I am still using checks that have my old address on them. When we moved, I thought it was a pure waste of money to order new checks and toss out the ones with the old address and I have continued to use them anyway. I must say that nobody refused to cash a check because the address was wrong!

In my ever increasing process of looking for ways to save money, I realized today that I can save a good amount of money by changing my check habit. For years, since becoming a Quicken devotee, I have ordered Quicken checks that are 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper with three checks on them. These sheets slide into a printer and I can print out my checks. Over the years, I had a desk jet printer and even when I only needed to print one check, I could re-insert the sheet back into the printer, adjust the settings and print out the other two or even one check.

Now, though, that I have a color laser printer, I don't have that option. If I print three checks, then my sheet of checks work fine. If I print one or two checks, then I have the other one or two check forms that won't re-insert in my printer. To solve that, and not waste checks, I end up hand writing those odd shaped sheets.

Why do I need those pricey Quicken checks anymore? I don't for sure. When I looked back in my Quicken check register, I see that my last order for 250 checks cost me $89.95. They last me about 1 year. That is very pricey considering I don't have that many checks that I need to write each month any longer.

Tonight I took a look at some Internet sites that offer regular checkbook size checks. The differences in price are staggering. $9.95 for a book of checks as opposed to $89.95. This is a big difference and I will have to check a few more sites to see just which company I want to use.

Now that I am thinking of it, I will have to check with my bank and see if they offer free checks. I had always declined those when changing banks because I was tied to the Quicken checks. I am betting that my credit union even offers free checks so off to their web site I am going to go.

Extended Warranties

2010-03-10T15:46:00.004-05:00

Today I was surfing the web and came upon a very interesting web site related to Seniors. One of the articles on this site referred to insurance policies and which are not necessary and an actual waste of money.

I was pleased to see that I do not have any of these policies nor do I intend to. The one that caught my eye was referring to extended product warranties.

It is becoming more commonplace that when purchasing anything electrical one will be asked if they want to also purchase the extended warranty. When I recently purchased a new Sony digital transcriber at Office Depot I was asked this very question. I responded with my traditional "No" and I see that the article on this web site would agree with me.

My digital transcriber was $199.95. It is necessary for the medical transcription that I am doing for one of the three physicians at my office. My previous transcriber had bit the dust after about 10 years of use. I think that is an acceptable life span for something $200 which was used constantly.

If that transcriber had broken, though, in perhaps 6 months or 1 year would I have been beating myself up because I didn't purchase the extended warranty? Probably not because returning it for repair would have been more work and more aggravation than I would have wanted to deal with. In addition, I would not have been able to be without the transcriber anyway and would have had to purchase a new one.

Over the years my parents always purchased extended warranties with their appliances. This was something my father was fixated on. I remember specifically their Whirlpool washer that they purchased in 1984. They continued to renew the warranty on that washer year after year. Each year, Sears would call, inquire and my father would hand over his credit card.

When my mother and I moved across the state in 1997, we took that washer with us. It was already 13 years old and the 13 years of warranty coverage had already cost $1,169.35. The first few years we were here, when my mother was still handling her own finances, she continued to renew the coverage.

At the age of 16 years of washing machine life, the machine needed a repair. Yes, we had the coverage, the repairman came out, fixed the problem and we were good to go. He made it a point to tell us that it was so good we had the extended warranty because the cost for his repair would have been $349.95. My mother was so pleased thinking she had saved $349.95. But I sat down and configured what she had paid in 16 years for the coverage and told her the $349.95 would have been preferable to the cost to date of $1,439.20 for the warranty.

At that point, we discussed this and I was able to have her realize that these extended warranties are just not worth the money spent.

And, incidentally, the washer continued to work and when we moved to this condo last year, the washer was now 25 years old. It was in perfect, pristine condition, no scratches or dents. As there was already a washer and dryer in this condo, we decided to sell our pair. I managed to find someone at work who was thrilled to pay $100 for a 25 year old washer with lots of life left in it.

Think twice, three times or 100 times before agreeing to an extended warranty. We live in a "throw away" society now and sometimes it is easier to just purchase something new than to have spent unnecessary thousands of dollars in warranties.

Income Tax Filing

2010-03-09T20:48:00.003-05:00

It has been years since I had my taxes done and ready to file this early in the season. Originally when I began working, I did my own taxes and had them done and out by early in January. Those were the years, of course, of refunds and I was always itching to get my refund back quickly.

All the years I was self-employed, I owed money so I dragged out the taxes as long as possible. This year, though, I had everything ready to go in early February and sent it off to my tax preparer.

Today I received the copies in the mail. I was pleased to see on paper that I have a refund from the Federal as well as a refund from the State. She had previously told me this over the phone but it was nice to see it in the flesh.

All the papers are now filed in my 2009 tax portfolio. She has e-filed my returns and I am watching my checking account on-line to see how quickly the State refund will hit my account. I know the Federal will be taken to pay down my 2008 obligation on taxes but the refund will go a long way in reducing that balance.

My tax preparer also did a nice thing for me and that was that she reduced her bill by 2/3. She mentioned that she knew the struggles I was going through right now and wanted to help me as best she can. This was most appreciated.

Now...State of Michigan...get that check to me!!

Bankruptcy Feelings

2010-03-08T20:35:00.000-05:00

Deciding to file bankruptcy was not a quick decision. I spent several years attempting to pull myself out of my rising debt, and when thoughts of bankruptcy surfaced, I would quickly squash them. After all, there has always been a stigma associated with bankruptcy.

I can remember many years ago when I was a teen. One of my older cousins and his wife owned a family business. The business was profitable and allowed them to have a huge home, advantages for their 5 children, nice cars and an expensive lifestyle. But then disaster struck in the form of the loss of their business. All of a sudden, they were in deep trouble. They had to file bankruptcy, they lost their home and they went from apartment to apartment for years trying to stay solvent.

During this time, did people support them? I don't know if their immediate families offered help but I do know that they were fodder for gossip in the extended family. Constant comments of "you know x & x had to declare bankruptcy" and then discussions about the situation took place. Even to this day, I will occasionally hear people label x & x with "they declared bankruptcy". This is totally inappropriate but is the way of gossip.

Naturally deciding to file bankruptcy is a horrible situation. I went through all the pros and cons and, in the end, had to go with the filing. But I am finding something interesting and that is that many people are truly sympathetic.

I have not shared this situation with too many people. However, the fact that I had to move from my home with my mother and had to leave the home sitting there, the fact that the home has obviously not sold and the fact that people are basically nosy has made it apparent (if nothing else) that I lost the home to foreclosure.

Recently my friend, Mrs. Lowes, went out to dinner with some other neighbors in my old neighborhood. They were commenting about the fact of how they miss my mother and I and how bad they feel that the house is still empty. Mrs. Lowes told ME that she told THEM about how my income took a drop, about just what the medical office I work for did to me and that I just could not keep the home. The interesting thing was that one neighbor told Mrs. Lowes that he had to declare bankruptcy 10 years ago himself when his business went belly up and how getting out of these unfortunate circumstances is not all bad any more.

With the economy the way it is, and people losing their jobs more and more, it is obvious that bankruptcies are going to increase. My attorney told me that his practice has never been so busy as it is now with more and more people unfortunately losing their homes as well as filing bankruptcy. It is a sad state of affairs but it was helpful to know that people understand where I am coming from and are supportive.

Financial Thoughts from a Senior

2010-03-07T20:10:00.000-05:00

Ok, I am not quite an official "senior" yet but soon enough - just a bit over 6 months away. As such, at this stage of my life, finances for me have to take a different track from what people in their 20's and 30's are doing. Those years are gone for me. I got through them, made many unwise choices and now am reaping the results.

If I could talk to my two goddaughters, who are 27 and 29, I would tell them to save, save, save. I never saw the need in my 20's for saving. At that time, I would occasionally have a small savings account that might reach $500 but would be quickly eaten up with helping my parents. Yes, I had unusual extenuating circumstances but I made the decisions and lived by them.

My two 'girls', C & K, are very special to me. As their godmother I have been privy to their lives since they were born. C graduated from college and has worked at 3 part time jobs for about 8 years. Even though she is in the suburbs of Detroit, there just have not been positions available for her on a full time basis. She works hard, runs from job to job but has no benefits and no prospects for other work. Her younger sister, K, also has a degree in her field of interest. She is working in a job that is totally apart from her degree as she has been unable to find work either. Again, her job is part time, no benefits and low pay.

My niece and nephew are in the same situations as well. My niece, D, is 27, has a teaching degree and cannot find a full time teaching position. She is now going for her Master's in an effort to make herself more marketable. Her brother, J, is 26 with a degree in architecture and also is unable to find work in his field.

Today I was thinking about the extreme ends of the field in this case. Here I have 4 young adults all just itching to find positions in their fields, jobs that will bring them satisfaction, challenge and income and here I am, 45 years after starting to work, looking for any job to balance the budget.

What advice would I give to these 4 young people?

1. Keep applying for work and even consider taking a position in a field that might be apart from their educational interests. With a full time job, it is always easier to keep searching for something more in tune to their interest. Also, one never knows if a different career path might open up a newer interest.

2. While working in their part time positions, try to save as much as they can. Both my goddaughters are living at home with their parents so their expenses are minimal.

3. Make the focus of their job hunt be on finding something full time that will give them benefits - especially health insurance coverage. Both girls presently have NO health insurance coverage and have exceeded the ages in which their parents could cover them.

4. When a full time job comes to them, make an effort to begin a serious savings program. Invest in the companies 401K program especially if the firm matches their contributions. How I wish I had done this in my 20's - I can't go back and change my choices but C & K can make that a prime goal. It will pay huge benefits when they reach their 60's.

5. Still allow themselves some money for fun. I rarely, if ever, did this. I never took vacations, never did fun things. I was so ensconced in helping my parents and keeping peace in the family home that I settled for solitary past times like reading. I hope for these girls that they develop healthy social lives and do some fun things. It all works together.

These suggestions are for any young people starting out not just my young people. If anything, I have become wiser as the years have gone by. Now to just parlay that wisdom into ways to help myself.

Creating a Budget Is Hard...

2010-03-06T19:45:00.000-05:00

...making it work is even harder!

So far, this year, I have created 2 different budgets and neither of them are really working for me. I started out with the envelope system of budgeting and I really think that is a premier way to go. However, one has to HAVE money to put into the envelopes in order to make the budget work. Since my income/job took a hit on January 7th, my paycheck has continued to drop and it is not possible to fund all the envelopes.

I then tried a system through my Quicken software which really was just another take on the envelope system - this time with entries in a Quicken format rather than money in envelopes. Again, with barely enough money to cover the fixed expenses, it is not working.

At this time I am concentrating on being able to pay my fixed expenses - rent, electric, gas, water, gasoline, cellular bill (no land line), groceries and my IRS obligation for 2008 taxes. In addition, I have my prescriptions and my mothers to cover and these vary by month. This month, I was unhappy that I had just refilled my blood pressure medication for 90 days when the doctor changed my prescription. The money spent on the old prescription was literally money down the drain. There is no way around that but it was a hit to my wallet.

Today I spent a great deal of time going over my Quicken entries and comparing my spending for January and February. I truly have very little wiggle room. I don't eat out, I don't go to movies or rent movies, I don't stop for a muffin and coffee in the morning, etc.

This will definitely be a slow moving process to come up with a budget that will cover all my expenses and meet my needs.

More on the "Cracks"

2010-03-05T16:06:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about the cracks that are appearing on the second floor of my condo. Over these weeks, the cracks have grown and are appearing in other parts of the second floor.

I have had 3 different groups of people out here to survey the situation. One was a contractor, sent from my rental agency. He told me that the rafters in the attic are not adequate and more rafters would need to be placed along with a complete repainting of the second floor. He told me the repair would be several thousand dollars.

Next came some representatives from the condo association, sent by my rental agent in an attempt to see if this was a roofing problem that would be the responsibility of the condo assn to repair. Three people arrived, all climbed into the attic and they all concurred that it was NOT a rafter problem but rather a water problem. They felt that it would be wise to wait until spring when the snow is off the roof to have a roofer take a look.

A week ago, another person rang my doorbell. He told me that he was a contractor who does work for the condo association and he was advised to come "have a look". I could see his truck with appropriate signage so I had him come see the area. He said it was definitely NOT water damage and definitely NOT a rafter or construction problem. He said that it was simply a re-shifting of the structure due to the cold weather. He said that in spring/summer, I will find all these walls and ceiling cracks will magically move back together and that no cracks would be apparent. Now, my friend, Mrs. Lowes, had told me something similar but she felt that the cracks here at my condo were pretty extensive and she found it hard to believe they would simply re-match to the walls and not be visible.

Today the doorbell rang and there was this contractor again. He said that he had received permission from the condo association to try to repair these cracks. He would crawl into the attic and nail huge screws into the ceiling to force it down to match up with the walls, thus eliminating the cracks.

Up he went to the second floor where I again had to empty out my walk in closet so he would have access to the trap door to the ceiling. This made the 4th time I emptied this closet and he set to work. About 30 minutes later he returned to announce that "I am sorry but it wouldn't work". All the screws that he attempted to place in the ceiling, via the attic, did not do their expected job.

His solution - wait until spring and you will see the cracks gone. He did add that he was the contractor who built these units in the late 1970's and he has seen NO such situation in any other unit. Just my luck, I guess.