I am 85% destressed from my last assignment. I haven't touched my Rescue Remedy in five days. Over the previous four weeks I went through one-and-a-half pastille tins. It's interesting that my new/old team is comfortable discussing the housing bubble/bust and the interim contract team was acting like it was contained only to California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona, and then only to subprime. I think my new/old team didn't take out any 0% down mortgages in the past six years.

This month sees some new expenses: passport and birth certificates, appraisal. My optometrist is threatening to bill me for $215, because the insurance isn't automatically "oh we'll pay that!"

I'm probably just antsy because I need to make some dietary and food budget changes/choices immediately. Or feeling broke because of the utilities and larger mortgage payment, and the 15% pretax 401(k). Or maybe it's because we still spend more than the median Seattleite household earns. Must be the DSL and food out and the cell phones and accelerated mortgage. I tell you it is not the utilities, nor our clothing.

Lylic, the copy of Slott's Retirement Time Bomb book I borrowed from my local library had dozens of pages missing, despite it being in the library's possession for three months. I e-mailed Slott at irahelp.com to see if I can get some word-processed missing pages.

I'm trying to plan our meals a few days ahead: I'm sprouting some barley for a casserole, and either going to make beet kvass or beet soup.

Discovered Trader Joe's for bread, bananas, and dairy!

Net worth up $8512 from last month, despite the house. Up a staggering $70K from last year at this time. And from January 1 of this year, down $5800.

Got Co-op America's Guide to Socially Responsible Investments, including listings of community development banks and progressive/green-friendly advisers.

The kombucha (sweet and effervescent and no doubt full of nutritious enzymes) that is Lux Living Frugalis asked me if I have a regular paying writing gig. Yes and no. I am a paid writer, with an office to go to. I do not ghostwrite for M.P. Dunleavey, although I think I could pinch hit if need be. I know how to reach her MSN editor, anyway. When I write, I write out of a sense of lack and for catharsis. I thought about applying to the open call for an SA blogger, but by that time I suspected my contract would be renewed, and that meant little time to do much else. Also holding me back were the facts that I don't plan my meals very well, nor do I clip coupons, keep a price book, or spend three hours of "free time" each day planning in advance how to save money. I think I am too subversive and panicky to be a readable SA blogger. Excellent writing from me means the worry ferrets got loose and are harum-scarum in the cerebellum. Please send chocolate.

Yay for me. 15% pretax. That's a big bite, but I need it to be large for tax planning.

BTW, I'm reading The Retirement Savings Time Bomb... and how to defuse it, by Ed Slott. I recommend it for people who have US retirement plans and who plan to retire in the United States. I'm thinking I have to consult a CPA knowledgeable in immigration issues to see what happens with my retirement assets when I move back.

I'm back at my old contract, and am gradually nearing tranquillity. I am grateful for the familiarity: asking for help is easier. I'm aware there are serious challenges outside of work, but having stability and friendly faces goes a long way. Exercise, meditation, vitamins, and a healthy lunch prepared for the next day should be part of my evening routine.

I have decided I would like to look more feminine and professional this summer, so I bought a dress. I would next like to buy some open-toe shoes and some capris or khakis. This busts my clothing budget but my public transportation expenditures will be around $5/month for at least six months. I don't have to dress well for this job, but I like how people treat me when I do dress up. They notice more than I imagine.

Lost nine pounds since I left in February. That was noticed too. :-)

I learned recently my safe deposit box contents are not insured by the credit union, so to get insurance I took out my baubles to get them appraised. $210 for seven items. The last time they were appraised, their resale values were enough to cover a year's worth of mortgage payments. Wonder if that's still the case, now that my mortgage is $25 less a month starting in July than it was when I bought the house...

I also couriered my passport application materials to my nation's capital/home town: $61.75. For an envelope weighing 0.15 of an ounce. When my passport is processed the application will cost me $97.

I also, for laughs, deposited $120 in my Roth IRA and, after a pleasant chat with the gemologist, received research stock reports on Newmont Mining, Willamette Valley Vineyard Incorporated, Mesa Trust Realty, and EZCorp. Still not really thinking about investing until after November 26... I'm thinking with the credit crunch the payday lenders will do really well. I'm holding off on EZPW, although it has appreciated by a factor of 10 in five years, because it's too easy for me to revisit in my head the misery of poverty, and the shame of being gouged because there's no other place to go. Newmont and Mesa Trust were suggestions by the gemologist, Willamette I read about in Equities magazine.

So there's a nice vertical path: from having to wear thrift store clothes and moving every year as rents rose, to wearing thrift store clothes to make a reduce-reuse-recycle fashion statement, discussing stocks with the gemologist. Let's hope the trajectory remains upward, or if it must return course, that it plummets with all the speed of a tiny feather dropped from the Empire State Building.

I also called to reinstate my contributions to my 401(k) plan, having freshly returned to my job site I vacated in midFebruary.

So the above, plus some chocolate chip cookies and San Pellegrino, plus bus fare, plus a New York Egg Cream and some fixings for lunches, set me over $500 in expenditures in one day.

Ordered and paid for 21,000 Yen.
Paid for garden set-up.
Will be putting a little extra toward the mortgage: $135.70.

As for Osaka and possible repatriation, I have faxed my request for replacement birth certificates, and secured signatures from my guarantor for my passport (trickier than US passports, but not as tricky as requesting a replacement birth certificate).

Ended one contract with drinks and boxty straws: boxty is julienned potatoes, fried crisp. What the bistros in my area call pomme frites. I am looking forward to returning to my software company contract on Tuesday.

I read how the U.S. savings rate is below 0%, and I read that 36% of us have emergency funds sized at the minimum three months' living expenses. How do people get three months' living expenses if they're not saving?

Also, considering many baby boomers have had defined benefit and pension plans prior to the defined contribution retirement plan era, are the stats that boomers have on average 50K in their 401(k)s really that scary when their defined benefit plans and Social Security entitlements are factored in?

I don't have to use it right away, this is true. I do have my goals stretched thinly at the moment, maybe because I'm breathlessly scrambling to catch up from daycare expenditures.

If I chose to be influenced by Liz Pulliam Weston, I would use most of it on the Roth IRA and the emergency fund.

If I chose to be alarmed by my home's dropping value, I'd replace the garage door or pay someone for weeding and mowing.

If I chose to be motivated by sustainability, I'd buy a new refrigerator, and a chest freezer, and some bicycle accessories.

If I chose to be rewarded by instant gratification, I would divide among the bathroom, garage door, and IRA contributions.

If I chose to be governed by the PC, I'd buy a new printer, personal finance software, firewall software, and a flat panel monitor.

Decisions, decisions...
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I have a garden. I mailed a cheque for $822.20.

There are supposedly lots of things we take for granted or are psychologically addicted to that we don't really need. Me, I like utilities: heat, gas, electricity, running water, indoor plumbing.

I like having a house to come home to. I like to put non-processed, non-toxic vegetable and animal matter in my mouth where the matter trickles down into my gastro-intestinal system. I like to walk outdoors, onto my property and pick up something that I'd have to wait in line for at the supermarket, have a "speshul membership card" for "speshul 4% deal" to buy.

I even like climbing into a large vehicle and zoning out while someone else drives me and sixty other people eight miles to work. I admit I also like settling into the driver's seat of a warm, covered vehicle when it is wet and cold outside and I have to be somewhere faster than a bus could be.

I like to cover my shoulders, elbows, torso down to my knees, and even to cover my feet. I like to stave off or slow down the physical deterioration of vital organs.

I like to show affection to my friends, and sometimes to my family. I like to redistribute a small percentage of my income to where it's needed more. To top it all off, I would like to have all of the above even when I am not punching the clock or earning a living. I might scale down from a house to an apartment or a "Golden Agers Eco-Commune" hut.

I am hoping then that we will have fewer people in the house, with smaller stomachs, and lots of free time so we can make gifts.

So scaling back is as difficult for me as it is for many other young families. Is there anything above that identifies me clearly as an "over-entitled American?" The transportation, clothing and entertainment costs are easy to cut back. The food and utilities: not so much. I could save on food if I spent money on sprouters, and jars and canning, and soil amendments and rental fees for tillers, and woke up in the dark with a flashlight and a brick to look for slugs, and chest freezers, and vacuum sealers. I could save on energy if I spent money on new siding, a new roof, solar panels, cistern, rainbarrels, a lean-to to store dry firewood. Oh, but there's that insurance thing to think about. It reminds me of the Dilbert comic: "Every item on this list is Top Priority except for Personal Life." My husband and I are trying to think of how we could scale back, wondering if we'll resort to our 1996 way-of-life (one-bedroom apartment, one car, no savings) in the recession. Except we didn't have Roth IRAs to contribute to, and we spent a greater percentage of our budget on food back then than we do now. We bought clothes at retail prices then, and the only apparel I buy at full cost now are undercarriage and shoes. We went to movies three times a week and now, maybe twice a month, we rent from an excellent video/DVD place, or watch stuff from YouTube. I am not ready for this recession.

And yet, I look at what we earn, how infrequently we shop for clothes or drive (still frequently enough to merit having a beater car on weekends), and wonder how to manage our goals of having the mortgage paid off before either one of us turns 55, a year or two of university education saved for the kidlet, while more or less having our expectations and needs met by one salary. I check the Consumer Expenditure Survey for my city for 2005-2006 and doggedly try to whack our expenditures to meet or beat what is spent by the average household unit in our area. It's challenging. The savings goals are to be met by the other person's salary. We're about 60-65%, rather than 50%, and I think some of that is due to food choices, technology we're not really dependent on, and our accelerated mortgage. And we should be able to afford insurance and bring that emergency fund up to six months, but no.
I failed the Kiplinger's Financial Fitness Test because I didn't have an emergency fund of six months' expenses. Truth is, I had emergencies! There's a lot I don't have.

Link du Jour: Five Basics for Building a Solid Financial Fut...

I'm thinking of using a fee-only planner through the Garrett Planning Network, after my retirement assets reach a certain amount and some of my short-term financial goals have been achieved. When I poke about for insurance I never know what is the best, or what to look for, I know nothing of trusts or estate stuff, and my spouse has a sizable 401(k) plan I wish he'd roll over into a noncontributory IRA. I also have questions about using a 529 or a Coverdell, especially when there's a possibility we may relocate out of the country.

I thought maybe one had to have an estate or net worth of over $500,000 to use a financial planner. Is my thinking incorrect?

My spouse noted at dinner that I seem to be the one getting the credit card offers. He didn't enlist in the Direct Mail Opt-Out Campaign, as I had, and thus he'd be getting four credit card offers from Capital One a month, but only the month before anti-consumer legislation benefiting credit card issuers would be law.

I received an offer from Chase today. The second surprise is that it didn't suck. F.I.A., formerly MBNA, would have me in the position of an abused spouse, believing that it had every right to refuse me 0% offers and APRs below 13% because I didn't deserve good credit--those installment loans for vehicles, over 100 months of mortgage payments, not good enough for F.I.A. I felt unworthy of having any credit card. But Chase is willing to offer me 0% until June 2009, and then a fixed APR of 8.99%. And my credit card issuer of twelve years isn't willing. How's that for weird?

I wonder what would transpire if I got some first-tier customer retention support person at F.I.A. "Hey, Chase offered me a 0% teaser for a year. Did you tell them how much I suck? The best you guys will offer me is 3% plus a 3% transfer fee for eight months. Any idea why they'd offer me a rate 4 points below the absolute minimum you'd give me?" "Doy, durrr.... we think our rates are more competitive. Black is white, ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom. Doyyyyy..."

Update/Correction: Chase offered 20-day grace period. So apparently I still suck as a credit risk after all.
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I'd been dwelling on our finances--I know, BIG SURPRISE--meditating on why we still can't afford lotsa stuff it seems the average American household has. Our emergency funds and retirement funds have had the same growing pains our incomes had. Our savings are still recovering from five-plus years of daycare...

Easy Money is Liz Pulliam Weston's new book, and I recommend it to people who need checklists or informed guidance on getting their financial ducks in a row.

Readers of this blog know I tend to obsess, and reallocate, and oscillate between panic and relief. They know that my most pressing schizoid problem is attempting to save for "the basics" and saving for "hard times."

The "hard times" crowd I run around with are big believers in gold, commodities, foreign currency, and selling the house.
That's fine when one's house is in tip-top condition. My house needs some love, and yet, threatened with an uncertain economy, I do not have the cojones to face down the stigma of borrowing against my house to improve it.

Anyhow, on page 126, Chapter 7: Buying Homes and Cars, Ms. Weston outlines her idea of how people should prioritize their financial goals:

1. Retirement needs to be a top priority.
That means contributing as much as possible to a Roth IRA and contributing 10 to 15 percent of the gross income.

2. Sufficient insurance coverage: health, life, disability, home, and auto insurance.

3. University education for children.

4. Paying off the mortgage.

Before reading that, my goals look more like this:
1. Home Improvement.
2. Sustainability. (Who's gonna buy my house when utilities are freaking high? How'm I gonna afford my other goals when my energy costs spiral upwards?)
3. Emergency fund.
4. Retirement.
5. Osaka.
6. Paying down the mortgage.
7. Replacement car.
8. University education.
9. Insurance (outside of what work covers).

Aside from Osaka and sustainability, I believe most items on that list are what ordinary (the bottom 80% of income earners) Americans have on their financial wish lists. I'm supposed to be saving 45% of our gross income meeting these goals -- eep! Time for me to learn to love the humble bean and shivering at night.

I looked at the Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2005-2006 and was surprised to see that every region suffered an increase of liabilities to assets in 2005-2006. Not so surprised to see the West's liabilities jumping up by $36K (quick! in what region can you find Stockton, Riverside, Henderson, Las Vegas, and Phoenix?)

I also saw some sort of map (believe me, I'm trying to look for the URL) today and noted that most northern counties in my fair state, plus Detroit's county, plus the northern tip of New Hampshire are the only border areas that have suffered moderately heavy foreclosures. Now, if you look at counties close to the other border, you see something akin to a crisis. Nobody wants to be near Canadians in their senior years, unless you count the snowbirds in Florida. I smell retirement home investment opportunity as climate change accelerates.

(No, this isn't a partisan post. Honest. Skim through the paragraphs, do you see any names you're sick of reading about in the newspapers' politics sections?)

The garden stuff might be finished up today. Hooray! Another cash balance step backward, yet one fewer goal to save up for!

Made a Roth IRA deposit today. A little larger than I planned, but I found a prepared check in my purse that required only my signature. Again, that merely means fewer dollars per week to meet the magic $5000 number.

I have a glimmer of hope, a crumb of opportunity offered to me, careerwise. I have to think of/prepare a potluck dish for a school event tonight, but inbetween prep steps I'm tempted to be a feng shui whirlwind and declutter my career center, get writer's cramp penning affirmations, preparing a "treasure map." Maybe I still have time to down a Red Bull and keep the sunny side up... can you put some reddish-pink cling film over your monitor for a few seconds so it looks like my dream is in the pink bubble of actualization?

Although I frequently look at my less-than-40-hour-work-week as martyrdom ("look! I'm volunteering! for the children! for the future of America! and I could instead be putting more in my 401(k), restaurant revenues, and in Washington's coffers!"), a "Should you stay home or work?" calculator indicated we're actually saving ourselves extra tax money by my limited hours.

1. Organic Food. For sure. I am a localvore, more or less, relying on foods caught, raised and grown within my state. The Food Labeling Act of 2006 has led me to distrust food labels on supermarket shelves -- it was lobbied for by at least seven out of nine food processing companies California Attorney General Bill Lockyer tried to sue two months before Rep. Michael Rogers of Michigan drafted the bill. Nobody in my family has an advanced degree in chemistry to help us ascertain how many additives or preservatives can be safely ingested or for how long to prevent cancer, and seeing as food is one of the few variables I can control for preventing cancer...

2. Lunches out.

3. Dinners out.

4. Hair. I was floored to read that most families spend under $60 for personal care a month. With careful budgeting, I can manage under $100. I believed that what I paid was the going rate for haircuts and hair colour because that's what the salons I went to were charging.

5. Internet and Cell phone stuff. I don't know how people develop tolerance for cell phone spam via texting or autodialing -- I can't fathom wilfully paying for such garbage. I look forward to the cessation of our contract.

Title in reference to my baby steps. I want to stomp stomp stomp like Dumbo on a fermented berry rampage through my financial plan.

I had some moments at the library -- for an academic exercise, because I can't afford to buy stocks and seriously, late November, after August and September's predicted volatility, might be a better time, I researched some large-capitalization blue chip stocks through my discount brokerage and through Value Line. Here's what looks good right now, if you're buying:

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)
Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO)
Burlington Northern (NYSE:BNI)
Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL)

I've been going through the budget repeatedly and I have noticed two things:
1. I spend too much at hair salons.
2. My spouse and I don't earn enough money. Some ex-Marine can get a job earning $8K after taxes, but I with ten years' IT experience net half that...

Liz Pulliam Weston argues that saving for retirement is a higher priority than building up 3-6 months' savings, and advises that a HELOC used only as an emergency fund would do while the retirement is being padded. This gives me some breathing room. I'd rather chop down the actual money in my E-Fund to pay for the bathroom, and shove more at the Roth so I can restart my 401(k) at 15% without forcing us to live on Top Ramen and Kraft Dinner (Kraft Macaroni and Cheese), than use the HELOC for planned expenses. One's a definite, one's a maybe. Rule in favour of the maybe.

I have a spreadsheet of savings goals. As I've just started saving for most of my goals many of them are just past the 10% mark. I had a specialty tea with some shortbread in the posh part of the city with a friend to commemorate my 10% milestone of funding my Osaka trip.

Our water consumption is up. I wonder how much of that is due to someone being home full-time, or from the garden setup. I set aside the greywater/re-use/cistern plan as I don't even know what's legal right now, and renters/buyers would care more about the garage door than "am I being sustainable?" Also, thanks to our wet and miserable winter and first half of the spring it looks like we won't have a water drought this summer.

A good friend commented that I had lost weight. It must be more than five pounds I've lost, as my friend is a straight male. He's known me since I was really thin. I hung out with my straight male friend today as my spouse is gaming at a tournament. At least my in-laws remembered and sent flowers today. I sent flowers to my stepmother, and my kid has actually been well-behaved today, as I greased my social gears and took some exercise.

I've decided that this year my charitable donations are to be divided between helping families living with cancer and families living with hunger. Go with what you know, right?

Apportioned $150 to the Save Yourself Account. I owe myself about $750 more to my Roth IRA judging from my pay advice. 10% of gross pay to retirement. Actually it should be 13% according to my spreadsheet, but I don't want to be in debt for the bathroom remodel. Because I know the minute I dip into my emergency fund for some non-emergency, an emergency requiring more than the full amount I had stored will happen.

I am also four mortgage payments away from being one-third through the principal paid on my home. The sad fact is that by then I'll be almost 40% through the term.

All these little drip-drip-drips.

This is a bonus. I unplugged the television and other peripherals downstairs.

The city wants us to discard our old refrigerators and get newer, more efficient ones. I may do this.

I challenged myself to come up with ways where I have saved thousands of dollars a year. Here are some:

1. We have only one car. Insuring, maintaining, fueling and paying for another car would cost us $5K.
2. My child grew out of full-time daycare.
3. We drive the car mostly on weekends, with two wee (5-mile round trip maximum) errands during the week.
4. Contributing 10-15% to 401(k) plans.
5. Refinancing has, on average, saved us over $4K a year.

Update: I enjoyed Heather Havrilesky's 4-18-2008 Salon article; there's so much I could identify with. Growing tomatoes, baking bread, buying food in bulk, making bean soup, shopping the natural food stores for bulk beans. It's worth reading the comments for some yummy bean soup recipes.

In my dark teatime of the budget, the DAYCARE years, I would dream about what I would do when the child went to school. Europe! Home remodeling! New car! Vacations! 18% retirement contributions! BEING LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

I didn't think I was ever living beyond my means, because I had been consumer debt-free for most of those years. I accepted vehicular and HELOC debt as consumer debt, short-term though they may be. I was also contributing 10-18% of my money to retirement annually.

I looked at my budget. A few years earlier MSN Money profiled a couple where we live going broke on $90K a year -- they adopted children from China and had car payments.
When one first tackles a budget, one records amounts that are comfortable and reasonable. Maybe a family living at twice the median income thinks it can get by on DSL Internet, three cats, a cell phone, extra to the mortgage. Maybe one family at that income level is heading toward bankruptcy.
Shockingly, $100K doesn't go as far as it used to even ten years ago.

And then the little whacks are the challenge. One thinks one's doing well because she doesn't have cable television, as long as she waits ten weeks between haircuts at the "good salon" and four months between hair dyes, or because she has cut by two-thirds her family's automobile gasoline consumption, even though gas has gone up to three times what it was when she first bought her car. And then one reads Easy Money and thinks: "okay, somehow I've got to manage college, early house payoff, a decent retirement, home renovation (the kitchen is an untouched 60 year old), disability insurance. Downscaling expectations can be tricky. Preparing for an era where food and energy are no longer subsidized means additional expenses: greenhouses, better windows, gardens, tools, rain barrels and aerators and insulation. How to budget all that in with feathering the Nest of Tomorrow?

So I'm rereading from my personal library for how to live on less: Living More with Less, The Complete Tightwad Gazette, Your Money or Your Life, Invest in Yourself, Saving on a Shoestring and Orchids on Your Budget: the latter is not a nuts-and-bolts "do math to make your income larger than your outgo" but rather a 1937-New-York-City-Vogue "Oh honey yes the money is gone but you needn't throw your chicness out the window"--amusing for its humour and for the recognition that even the lifestyle of having to let the maid go can afford crudites, taffeta, silk, satin, crepe and wool. I'll add this: there was a time, not so long ago, when people accepted their carless, TVless, and retirementless lives with joie de vivre.

"The Smart Poor do not pretend to be rich, which makes everything different. Once you give up struggling to fool people, you can have a lot more fun on very little money. You can live in a funny flat in a poor city neighbourhood or a remodeled barn in the country. You can go to cheap foreign cinemas (now we rent DVDs) and boast about it, instead of skimping in order to be seen at the Opera. You can hunt up bargains in clothes and rip off the gewgaws and--if you have the flair and the figure--look like a million dollars."

Really, Orchids on Your Budget presages YMOYL with this message: "The point, nowadays, is not merely to know the cost of a thing and whether or not you have money to pay for it, but to know whether it's worth the price to you."

It's a funny old world... the neighbours to the north and across the street from us have broken into their home equity piggy bank a few times -- their houses are valued higher than ours, but their mortgages and liens are higher than what our house is worth. I thought I was hard done by because I was choosing to pay for cars and home remodels (whenever they were below $10K, that is) in cash, which takes years to save up for, by the way, when you're saving for retirement, flying home to visit the folks who are too frail to fly over, college, daycare @ $11K/year, and an emergency fund. So my house looks like junk right now. Yet I have the most equity, both in terms of numbers and percentages, of the three houses. Sometimes it is a boon to have the junkiest house on the block. Let everybody else's remodel bring up the house value. The city is helping to prop up my property appraisal taxes with a public park, "condensed community cages" and "expanded commercial retail zones." I would also like a light rail station please.

Also, a sign that reality has set up a tent (yurt?) in my area: I actually have acquaintances whose house value is below what they purchased it for 22 months ago.
My home value has dropped too, but I'm choosing not to worry about it until a 40% drop happens.

My i-Bonds arrived today. I may put them in the Safe Deposit Box along with a deposit, if I have time tomorrow after banking.

I look forward to seeing the bathroom remodeled and paid for so I can catch up on the retirement and save up for the other home improvement projects.

Sent an Optional Cash Purchase cheque for 5.5 shares of GE stock.

Spent money on a small selection of starts at the Edible Plant Sale, and at Emerald City Organics: dwarf oregano, tarragon, one roma tomato plant and one Early variety; also valerian, geraniums (both edible and flowery -- the valerian roots are a nice herbal sedative for the nervous), spearmint, catnip, and one sweet pepper.

Judging by the starts and the weather outside this May day has been brought to me by the Vitamin letters C and D.

Reconnoitered the garden shed and found rose food, liquid fertilizer.

Also baked bread last night. Little by little. Can't bring instant self-sustainability to my little .18 acre.

The last time I felt this lousy was the week my mother died. Sure, I became a homeowner that week (no, it wasn't a "here Mother-the-giver-of-life, just sign your deed over to me, then turn around to imagine the bunnies on yonder hill"BLAM! situation, in case you were wondering), but I was thinking "wow, life is going to be harder for me. I only hope I'm up for the challenge." And sometimes I was not up to it.

Currently I don't feel up to what's ahead. I feel like I'm burying my future and my dreams. Maybe I'm on the despair step of the five phases of accepting death and loss. Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic. I thought perhaps after some major losses I could speed my way through the rest of them.

I made a list of assets and liabilities for this challenging environment. The assets column is longer than the liabilities column, and some of the liabilities I can work on to eliminate: e.g., not in great shape, anxiety-prone, lack of basic survival skills. The list made me a little happier. On top of that, two long-distance chums this week gave me hour-plus chats and roused me out of staring at the existential abyss, so life isn't all sucky. If I can make time for some savings, simple pleasures, friendships, exercise and some gratitude, the stress should abate.

What scares me is I don't know what's going to happen, and I don't know if what I have is enough to allow us to survive well whatever comes. If not, well, at least I don't have to worry about surviving past my retirement.

Maybe I'll get to acceptance sooner. Maybe having a plan and working that plan, on top of enhancing and improving my spiritual and community karma would be enough to channel my nervous energy.

Today I attended two gardening classes: 1-2-3 gardening and container gardening. I also went to a bathroom supply and showroom to investigate fixtures, sinks, surfaces and ventilation fans. Our meat purchase was today: we purchase meat maybe once a month, sometimes we skip a month. This purchase should last us two months.

I think I'm going to burn some incense, recite the serenity prayer, have some herbal tea, and distract myself with planning meals from the bounty in the refrigerator. Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends from the library plus some healthful purging of garbage should help too.

My MMA is down to 2.5%, bummer. I know there are online accounts -- I need most of my MMA available and liquid at present, owing to bathroom renovation.
What this means is that my best savings accounts right now are: my son's account (up to $500), the Save Yourself Account, and the house. Fortunately my credit unions and mortgagor are promoting the "let's talk about the equity in your house" deals... perhaps a raise to $40K in the HELOC isn't out of the question. My line of credit has risen by 20% though, without any prompting from me.

In happy mortgage news, I am twelve payments away from the point where I pay more principal than interest.

I may put more money toward General Electric's direct purchase plan: it's trading at a low, and has a nice yield.
Today I pretended my boy has a future and put $100 in his college fund, and I pretended I was going to live to see 68 and put $280 in my Roth IRA.