A weekend of favorite things…

Posted by random olio

Happy Friday! So it is ALMOST the weekend. What do you have planned? I am looking forward to the weekend, to relaxing, spending time with my hubby, sleeping, some good food, and getting caught up on a few things. I recently blogged about the book: “All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending” by Laura Vanderkam. She talks about how we can have better weekends with just a bit of planning. Some weekends could be on the frugal side and some weekends we could splurge a bit. What would your ideal weekend look like? Here is an excerpt on this topic in her book:

“What would it be like to fill a day, or even better, a whole weekend, with one’s favorite things? How would one do that? What are those favorite things? And most important for the sake of this book, what would that cost?” page 109-110

So my ideal “frugal” weekend with my favorite things: It would start with sleeping in, then getting my run in, showering and heading into Portland for a yummy breakfast. If I were to pick my favorite place in Portland for breakfast it would be VQ (Veritable Quandary). Afterwards, going with my hubby to explore new boutiques in town. Exploring new boutiques gets my creative juices flowing and inspires and encourages me to look at design, patterns, colors, and then when I come home I want to paint, write, and explore what has interested me on our boutique adventures. In the evening, I would want to snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. Just a top of mind ideal weekend.

I thought I would also share a few photos that we found while out exploring recently. This we found in Santa Barbara, California. It is a fun way to grow plants, using an old or used wine rack.

planter idea in Santa Barbara

This chair (I cannot imagine how much it weighs) we found at Anthropologie. I love it. Not at all comfortable, but just a clever design using old radiators!

chair in Anthropologie

What would your ideal weekend look like?

Happy weekend to you – hope you have some sun!

Are you the scary customer?

Posted by random olio

I cannot say I am always the nicest customer. After working in customer service for so long I have a shorter fuse. I know what it takes and now have high expectations for what a customer experience should look like. These days my husband makes the calls pertaining to our accounts. He has a lot more patience than I do, and I often am – well to put it nicely a bit too blunt over the phone.

I recently finished reading: Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail by Caitlin Kelly. It is a good memoir of Caitlin’s experience working in retail between 2007 and 2009. She is a freelance writer, who needed income during the economic downturn, and she chose to work at The North Face store near her home in New York City. Her job paid between $9-11 an hour with no commission or benefits (since she worked part-time). She was also provided a uniform for her job (many retail jobs do not provide this for free). Her book was a reminder to me to watch how I might treat retail workers, whether at the mall, grocery store, boutique, etc. Caitlin is a journalist so she already had experience working with strangers and the public, asking questions, and connecting with them. I loved her fresh approach to how she interacted with her customers. We could stand to remember this when dealing with our co-workers, family, and friends.

“I lived for these moments. Retail, at its rare best, allows total strangers to quickly connect and converse meaningfully. It’s really, often, about trust, the merchandise and the sales floor merely the means through which two people, however briefly, can slow down long enough to discover and enjoy common ground. It wasn’t an accident that after a twenty-minute conversation with me someone would easily spend $400, or much more. That person had received my careful, individual, and undivided attention, a rarity in any store. A rarity anywhere, really.” page 86

Throughout her book she shares how the corporate offices did all they could to cut back on their sales staff to save money. The less they paid their sales associates, the more profit they made. The less associates they had on each shift, the higher their profits. Many had little to no training, and no thanks or gratitude from management or the head corporate offices. Associates were constantly on their feet, in sometimes horribly ventilated storefronts, with short breaks, annoying music, and irate, rude, and aggressive customers. This all leads to extremely high turnover. By the end of Caitlin’s 2 year stint at The North Face she says the following:

“Now, though, I also carefully and consistently thanked anyone doing a service job well, from grocery baggers to gas station attendants. I viscerally appreciated how grim it could be, how little many customers thought of them, and how hard and poorly paid was the work.” page 205

I vow to curb my frustration, whether with the store, retail worker, or with something in my own life, and not take it out on the individual working in the store or over the phone that day. If we were all to do that, we could make a change in how retail workers experience customers. They do not deserve our frustrations, anger, or scorn. Often, the retail worker has no control over the issues we may have with their company. Much of the time, store management and corporate headquarters do not want to hear the complaints or comments their sales force has heard from customers. The best way to communicate issues that might be widespread between many stores is to contact the corporate offices to voice your concerns.

Are you like me? Do you need to think again about how you are treating retail workers?

Money Club or Book Club?

Posted by random olio

Is it bad that I am intrigued by the idea of getting together with others and instead of having a book club (which of course would be great too) having a Money Club? Is it me, or do I feel that most others would not enjoy it? Is it because money is such a taboo topic among so many of us? I do not think a Money Club would necessarily need to be just women, but then maybe it would make women feel more empowered if it was just women. In any case, I am curious, if a monthly Money Club get-together is something folks would go to?

I got the idea from a LearnVest Daily email newsletter. I wish I had come up with the idea. I did not know the idea had been around for a long time. After doing a Google search I found quite a few websites that give details on how to start a Money Club. Regardless, I think it is something I might try to start. We all need to be more liberated about money issues, debt, talking to our spouses about our checking accounts, spending needs, etc. The above link shares steps for starting your own money club.

It is possible your Money Club might start out and be a bit uncomfortable. I think it is because of how little we talk with others about money, but it is so needed. I know plenty of individuals that are freaked out to even look at their checkbook so they just resist doing so and as a result do not know how much money they have to their name, or if their bank is hemorrhaging their accounts with unwanted and unnecessary fees. Others may not know what their joint income is and whether or not they have an emergency fund (maybe their spouse takes care of all of it and they never talk about it). A Money Club could help shed light on their current financial state, and if they are on track for retirement, are they financially prepared for the loss of spouse, or the loss of income. Or maybe it is about sharing resources, ideas, and encouragement for individuals wherever they are in their financial experience.

Financial conversations may not be something that you care about, and it may bore you to death, but it is as necessary as attending to many of our basic needs. Maybe I should start a virtual Money Club via phone or online if there are not enough interested individuals in my local area. So if an ETF or a living will leave you with a blank look on your face, maybe a Money Club is a great way to learn more, have fun, and get to know others while helping you to feel at peace about your financial future.

I am off to ponder this idea further.

Engagement rings as downpayment?

Posted by random olio

I just started reading “All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know about Getting and Spending” by Laura Vanderkam. I am intrigued by quite a few ideas I have read so far, so I have a feeling I might end up writing about this book over the next few days. For those of you that may not know me, I am avidly interested in personal finance. I believe that as we grow up we do not learn about personal finance unless our family teaches us, or we specifically take classes in college, or some other random way. Most of us wind up learning about it by default, and even at that we do not feel completely confident about what we really know regarding finance.

The premise of this book is that even with all the money in the world most of us would still not be happy. The author explains how we can use money as a tool to creatively set ourselves up to do the things we want to do in life. Because I am passionate about money issues and women issues I found the following ideas interesting about engagement rings. The average couple spends $5000 on an engagement ring. My husband and I quasi eloped. We told folks before we left to get married, had a send off party, but went to sun and sand just the two of us, with the officiant, photographer, and videographer as our witnesses. Based on how we got married, I have an interest and intrigue for big and small weddings and how folks decide to get married. With that I have always been fascinated by the engagement process. We did not have a formal engagement, or an engagement ring, our experience was all very non traditional. In her book, Laura talks about how men in the 1930’s would propose to women and then have a string of fiancees. To protect women multiple states added laws that allowed women to sue for breach of promise, meaning that men had expensive consequences when proposing to multiple women. I am shocked (and a bit in awe) that women had very few rights at the time, and yet they could sue a man for breach of promise. This is the background Laura shares:

“Then in 1935, a legislator from Indiana sponsored a bill abolishing broken engagement as a reason to sue for damages. Other jurisdictions followed, which soon raised a question: if a woman couldn’t sue, what could she do to protect herself? One solution would be to demand a large transfer of capital as part of an engagement. That would make any prospective grooms think twice about seducing a woman under false pretenses. The most efficient way to do this would be for the man to give his beloved money. Money can be used for anything, and so this method would at least let the woman do something useful with it, like go to school or start a business. But genteel folks have always found cash a bit tacky in proper situations, so that didn’t catch on. Fortuitously, at the same time brides were looking for something expensive yet respectable to secure their honor, the diamond industry faced a glut of the precious stones and needed some way to move them. Seeing an opportunity, the DeBeers company staged one of the first national marketing campaigns to boost diamond sales. Its advertising agency got Hollywood stars to wear conspicuous rings, and movies soon featured engagement scenes involving diamonds. Within just three decades the diamond engagement ring was welded into the culture, almost universally accepted…” page 18-19

So our current day engagement ring came about from women finding an expensive way to secure their honor. Does that mean if the man breaks off an engagement then the woman keeps the ring, but if a woman breaks an engagement she has to return the ring to the man? It made me start to think: is the cost and purchase of an engagement ring still necessary? Is it the most fiscally responsible way for a groom (or a couple) to spend their money before starting their life together?

Food for thought.

Weekend Recap // National Library Week

Posted by random olio

What a wonderful weekend! Chris’ parents were here for the weekend and we packed in lots of walking, talking, and of course eating. After taking them to the airport, Sunday afternoon was a nap, movie for Chris, and a nice long run for me. Gratefully we had sun this weekend, and it seemed that all Portlanders were outside, many in a t-shirt and shorts which made me cold, the sun was out but it was not super warm. Yet.

So this week is National Library Week (April 8 – April 14). I can remember going to the library when I was little. I do not know how old I was when I started checking out books, but I can remember going in the summer and telling them which books I read, and getting to put stickers on the wall for the summer reading club. I was also involved in the “Book It” program with Pizza Hut. I cannot remember if this was with my school or my local library, but I just looked it up and it is still active. I remember meeting certain reading goals, and then getting a coupon to go to Pizza Hut for a free personal pizza. As a kid I did not get to go for pizza often, so I thought it was the coolest thing to read books and get free pizza!

I now go to my local library weekly, almost as often as I frequent the grocery store. I am either returning books or picking up new ones. At the moment I have 20 books sitting on the shelf to be read. Since you can place books on hold electronically, I am at the mercy of when it is my turn for a specific book. This is my system: My library allows books to be checked out for 3 weeks. For a book where there are a lot of holds, and I know I will not be able to renew it after 3 weeks, I move that to the top of my list to read. For older books where there are not any holds and many copies available, I know I will be able to renew it so it goes lower down in my stack. I am so grateful for our local libraries, I have saved a ton of $$ not purchasing books and I have just finished my 39th book for 2012.

You can find more details about National Library Week events in your area at this link.

Since I am on the topics of libraries and books, I have an odd thing to share. This was in the book I was reading this weekend. It says: “I’ve been gone a lot from library (smiley face) doctors appts.” Was it planted there for the next reader? For the library? Who knows, but very random! It sounds like something I would write when I wake up in the middle of the night and make notes on the pad of paper by my bed. I have been known to write some random things in the middle of the night!