Cost Savings Techniques

Last week I referenced a New York Times article by Alina Tugend about finances and how many of us compare what we have to those around us and may even be bewildered by how others can afford things we can’t.  In this article, Tugend referenced a website I had never heard before called Mr. Money Mustache.  This website is a rabbit hole of mega proportions, throwing you into a world where every decision you make has financial repercussions.  It’s also a helluva lot of fun, with fantastic advice for people of all income levels, and I particularly love to read the forum where people chime in on various topics, ranging from the sensible to the absurd. 

Mr. Money Mustache is all about achieving financial independence by making smart decisions, and it’s just one website that’s proliferated the F.I.R.E. movement, which stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early.”  There’s even a new documentary available on-line called “Playing With Fire,” which summarizes the trend of people eschewing mainstream habits in favor of gaining freedom from the spending treadmill. It’s great stuff, and even if you don’t go in whole-hog the way some disciples have, there’s plenty of advice to get you on your way to saving more, borrowing less, and giving yourself a better chance to pursue what you want in life rather than what you have to do due to your financial situation.

I’ve written before about my family’s philosophy when it comes to finances, but I’d like to highlight a few things we’ve done over the last twenty years or so that made an impact.  True, we still have spending weaknesses (for me: records, musical instruments, concert tickets and eating out), but by and large we’ve been able to put our family’s money where it matters most to us (namely, retirement, college savings, trips, and charity).  Here are a few things that have worked well for us:

1)     I cut my own hair.  Yes, I’m fairly bald, which makes this a lot more doable, but it’s an option for many of us.  Savings: about $250 a year over the past 15 years.  Total:  $3750.

2)     My family hasn’t had cable TV for 19 years now.  This is a much more doable proposition today than it was in the year 2000, and if you haven’t already done so, I urge you to cut the cord.  Savings: about $1200 a year for 19 years.  Total: $22,800.

3)     My wife and I have used Republic Wireless for our cell-phone service since 2014, spending on average about $250 per phone verses the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy that cost upwards of $1000.  Additionally, we spend about $25 a month each for phone service.  Today, that’s not a huge savings, but in 2014 it was.  All told, I figure we’ve saved about $3000 in phone costs and about $1200 in service costs since 2014.  Before then I didn’t even have a smart phone, so the total savings is even greater.  (NOTE: I’m ashamed to admit that some of this savings has been offset by my family still having a landline.  My wife won that battle, but family harmony is worth every penny!).

4)     We cut our own lawn, shovel/blow our own driveway, and don’t pay for any kind of landscaping except for tree removal.  At the low end, I figure I’ve saved about $60 per month for six months a year, and maybe another $150 a year for snow removal.  Let’s call it $500 a year, or $9500 savings since 2000.

5)     During my children’s school years, they were allowed to eat one hot lunch per week.  Every other lunch had to be made at home.  Cost savings: not much, really, as school lunch prices are very reasonable in Illinois.  But I feel like over the long haul this rule taught my kids to be more self-sufficient.  My now-adult daughters pack their own food most days and don’t go out to eat as often as they might otherwise.

6)     I save a lot on purchasing cheaper wine at my local liquor store, which often sells overstocked or older wines at huge discounts.  I often buy $15-$30 bottles of wine for $4 each.  Savings?  Well, let’s face it.  Wine isn’t a necessity, so the real savings would be giving up drinking altogether, so I’m not adding this in my calculation.  But it is another example of approaching purchases with a little more wisdom.

7)     My family hasn’t purchased a new car since 2007, and we still own it.  Our other car was purchased used, and that’s the only way we’ll go in the future.  If there are two rules to follow when it comes to spending: always, always pay off your credit card debt each month, and keep your car for as long as possible (and by slightly used cars).  Savings?  Hard to calculate, but let’s figure $100 a month for the past 12 years.  Total: $14,400.

8)     Keep your appliances and outdoor equipment for as long as possible.  I just broke down and purchased a new lawnmower after 17 years of using the old one.  And here’s the real miracle: our kitchen refrigerator is now older than our 22 year-old daughters.  How?  Well, for one, we’ve been lucky.  But also, we don’t particularly care what our refrigerator looks like (it’s not exactly pretty at this point), and I vacuum off the dust from the coils a few times a year.  Who knows if this was the difference, but it’s nice not to have to purchase another one!  Total savings: about $2000 minus the electricity we’re undoubtedly paying for a terribly inefficient appliance. 

9)     We do a lot of home maintenance projects ourselves, outsourcing only when necessary.  And it’s important to understand that I didn’t grow up handy in any way, shape or form.  I’ve simply read, watched videos and asked lots and lots of questions from my friends who are better equipped for this sort of thing.  In the end, we’ve managed to do a few things well, including all interior painting, changing electrical outlets, installing a new circuit board for our boiler, installing our own ceiling fans, installing all of the toilets, sinks and faucets, repairing drywall, etc.  It all adds up.  Also, don’t forget to change/clean those filters on your air conditioners, humidifiers, etc. and stay on top of your auto maintenance.  Savings?  A helluva lot, but hard to measure.  I think conservatively at least $20,000

10)  We put our non-investment savings into an on-line account that earns (currently) around 1.8% interest and we locked our mortgage in at a really low rate (2.8% I believe).  Smarter still would be to not have a mortgage, though opinions vary on this. 

11)  We only pay for a fee-based financial planner, rather than asset-based.  I wrote about in-depth earlier this year. 

12) We clean our own home - not a given where my family lives. I have no idea how much a service costs, but let’s conservatively say $50 a month or $600 year. Total savings over the past 19 years: $9500.

13)  Here are a few examples of ways to save a bit, but more importantly, to reduce waste.  We do these more for the environmental impact than anything else.

a)      This is my favorite: instead of using Swiffer sheets to dust our hardwood floors, we use pieces of fleece leftover from family blankets we made some time ago.  Simply dust, shake the fleece outdoors, and wash.  We’ve been using some of these pieces for over a decade.

b)     We’ve used almost exclusively cloth napkins and real dishes, even when entertaining, for the past 20 years or so.  I abhor using paper and plastic products when avoidable, and cloth napkins look nice and are easy to throw in with the laundry.

c)      I’ve started to use my own utensils and napkins when going to eat at a fast-food restaurants.

d)     We’ve used cloth grocery bags for the past 25 years or so.

e)     We print on both sides of sheets of paper.

f)     For our cats’ litter boxes and our dog’s poop bags, we use the bags that come with products we already purchase: cereal boxes, toilet paper or paper towel packaging, insulated envelopes that come in the mail, etc.  Of course, not having cats and dogs to begin with would provide even more savings – both financially and environmentally – but how to you say no to this face?

There are undoubtedly a lot of other things I could mention.  If I add up all the above highlights, we’re looking at around $85,000 in savings plus the interest earnings and savings from a low mortgage rate.  Not bad, but these days, that can be wiped out awfully quickly just through a kids’ college education.  Crazy, isn’t it?  But it all adds up.  The website Mr. Money Mustache, along with the good counsel of people like Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey, can do a lot to get you on your way to cost-savings.  I hope some of my aforementioned examples speak to you as well.  Happy savings!

Finances, Budgeting and Keeping up with the Joneses

The New York Times recently posted an article on finances and how many of us compare our own lot with those around us.  Too often, we might be reminded of what we don’t have rather than what we do, perhaps leading to feelings of ineptitude or inadequacy.  It’s human nature, I suppose, and these feelings might be more acute in the United States, where the individual is mythologized so vehemently with tales of the self-made millionaire.  We want to believe that what we have is a result of what we’ve earned, and if we don’t have as much as our neighbor, it must surely be because they’re doing something right and we’re doing something wrong.  I generally don’t harbor strong jealousies, but I must admit to being bewildered by the sheer volume of opulence that surrounds me in the Chicago suburbs.   Surely, there can’t be that many investment bankers and surgeons, can there?

But as the Times article highlights, when it comes to finances, things may be a bit more complicated than they appear.  A successful friend of mine once touted that he was a self-made achiever, failing to mention that his parents had paid for his college education and his first car.  People can be very sanctimonious when it comes to finances.  Sure, some people are well-off and have earned every penny, but for others wealth might be – in part – due to a sizeable inheritance or familial assistance with a home purchase or college expense.  Hell, if my wife and I hadn’t saved money for our three kids to go to college, we might be living a fairly opulent lifestyle too!  For others, opulence might merely be a mirage paid for with massive amounts of debt.

Regardless of the circumstances, we all make financial decisions, and it’s important to align those choices with our values.  Far too many of us make short-sighted and boneheaded financial choices, as I’ve written about before, but if your choices are guided by your values, then it doesn’t matter what your neighbor has or doesn’t have: you’ll be putting your money where it matters most to you.

So as you drive past your neighbor’s house, keep in mind that they might not have saved for college tuition as you did, or that they don’t put away a large percentage of their income for retirement as you do, or they don’t give a sizeable amount of money to charity as you do.  Or maybe they do and still have enough leftover for a Tesla and a luxury vacation to Tahiti.  If so, good for them! 

And if you’re someone who hasn’t been able to do any of the above, who maybe has made poor decisions in the past, try making a financial plan according to your values, align your choices according to that plan, and stick to it as best you can without worrying about keeping up with the Joneses.  You might find that you have more money available than you realize to put towards what’s important to you. And consider reading my blog from three years ago about twenty pieces of financial advice that I wrote for my children.

The Times article mentioned a blog I had never heard of before: Mr. Money Mustache.  Next week I’ll write about this, the FIRE movement it espouses, and some personal money-saving strategies I’ve found useful.

Song Forms, Repetition, Elton John and ABBA

Last May, as part of a build-up to the Elton John biopic Rocketman, the magazine Entertainment Weekly posted interview snippets of some of today’s great piano rockers about John’s influence on them.  One remark by Ben Folds particularly resonated with me.  When asked about the song “Levon,” Folds says:

The melody doesn’t repeat for a long time. I’ve brought this up with him and he’s usually “eh, I don’t want to think about it too much.” Same with “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” It stretches for over two minutes before a repeat. The current era’s songs are maybe two seconds.

He’s right.  Listen to “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”  There isn’t one second of melodic repetition until 1:08, when he briefly repeats a melodic motif in the chorus before moving onto new material.  It isn’t until 1:53 that we have an honest-to-goodness repeat, when we go back to the beginning before the second verse kicks in.   

That is fricking amazing.  It also goes to show that human beings are capable of not being spoon-fed pop songs onto perfect little index cards.  It’s a shame that more music isn’t as exploratory.

Ben Folds’s comment inspired me to listen to some songs more closely and look for moments when artists don’t throw away the playbook, but invent interesting alterations with regard to song structure.  Sure, when it comes to prog rock or particularly inventive songs like “The Continuing Adventures of Bungalow Bill” by The Beatles, “Déjà vu” by CSNY, or “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, song forms go out the window.  For these compositions it’s hard to identify what constitutes the verse or the chorus, or if these sections even exist at all.  But as impressive as these songs are, what I find truly remarkable are hit songs that eschew traditional structures but are still rooted in constructs that we can identify.

There seems to be a dearth of material on the internet about creative song forms in pop music, though there are a few, including one that inspired a comment about how unorthodox Journey’s ubiquitous “Don’t Stop Believin’” is.  What most of us would identify as the chorus doesn’t occur until the song’s end at 3:23.   Pretty remarkable.  If I had to map out the song form – which is certainly open to debate – I’d call it A-A(half)-B-A-B-C, with C repeating until fade.  It’s not a multiple movement song like “Bohemian Rhapsody” – there is a verse for sure, and a chorus, and a section we might call a bridge (the “Strangers waiting…” section).  It’s just presented unusually, and for that I give Journey kudos.

Having said that, I never want to hear the song again.

Scott McCormick of Disccogs writes an insightful blog that analyzes the work of Roy Orbison and Kendrick Lamar and how their song structures often stray from the norm.  I would label some of the song sections he examines a little differently, but I definitely recommend giving it a read.

And in 2013 I wrote about song forms and highlighted the work of Elvis Costello, who often places a bridge immediately following the first chorus – a highly effective technique – and a wonderful song by James Taylor called “Shed a Little Light,“ notable for its symmetric song structure of A-B-C-D-C-B-A.  Remarkable stuff!

But it’s another song that’s completely enraptured me recently in ways I hadn’t anticipated: ABBA’s “The Name of the Game.” 

It starts out simple enough, a verse (A), a pre-chorus (B) and a chorus (C), but then adds a sort of post-chorus (D).  At that point the song is already more intricate than 95% of what’s been produced in the last hundred years, which makes what happens next all the more amazing.  We would expect to go back to a verse here, but the Swedish pop band instead goes into an entirely different (and entirely wonderful) section E, the “And you make me talk, and you make me feel…” section, which in and of itself gets complicated with an altering melody the second time through.  Call it section F.

It isn’t until 2:04 that we go back to the beginning of the song.  How is it possible to anchor the listener when you go through five or six song sections in two minutes?  ABBA succeeds largely because there is repetition within each section, unlike, say, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” which follows a normal song form but whose forms are extremely intricate.  For “The Name of the Game” each section repeats within itself.  Within section A the melody repeats twice.  Same for B, C, D and E.  Because of this repetition, the listener isn’t left floundering with information overload like attending a Broadway musical that fails to offer any repeating motifs or reprises.  ABBA pulls it off beautifully, following this song form:

A-B-C-D-E-F-A-B-C-D-E-F-C

Wonderful stuff.

In my own writing I’ve on occasion explored different song forms with varying degrees of success, but not to the extent that I should.  When you only have 12 notes to work with, one of the most effective ways to mix up your compositions and make them sound original is toying with song structure.  I may not be capable of creating a verse as interesting as Elton John, but I can at least go to a new section instead of returning to the verse right after the first chorus.  For composers, I highly recommend messing with this stuff and seeing what you can come up with.

In the meantime, I’m going to play some more ABBA.  And I owe an apology to Andy who loved this band in 7th grade and who I ridiculed because of it.  I’ve come around, Andy.  My bad.

Things to Watch, Read and Listen

Keeping track of TV shows, movies and books used to be a fairly easy task, but with today’s segmentation of markets and the sheer volume of media being produced (just looking at TV, there were approximately 495 scripted original series in 2018), relying on word-of-mouth has never been more important or more overwhelming.  Each time someone recommends a show or book or whatever to me, I text it to myself and compile a list that I keep near the TV, but I’ll never get to most the recommendations;  there’s simply too much out there to wrap one’s arms around.  I have a list of twenty shows to watch, fifty movies to view, fifteen books to read, twenty-five bands to listen to, and another half a dozen podcasts to explore.  This is in addition to the pile of unread books I already own and the podcasts I listen to regularly. 

In the spirit of offering more than you can handle, I thought I’d share just a few things I’ve come across lately that might be worth your time. 

WATCH

• The loss of romantic comedies from movie theaters has been lamented for some time, though apparently not enough for Hollywood studios to actually produce them.  But there is hope for the hopeless romantic.  Amazon has released Season 1 (8 episodes) of Modern Love, an anthology series based on a column in The New York Times, and has already renewed the series for another season.  I can’t vouch for all eight episodes, but the first two were excellent, with smart writing and directing, mostly by John Carney of Once and Sing Street.  The episodes clock in at under half an hour, which might almost be too snappy to tell compelling tales consistently, but so far so good.

• If you haven’t already checked out Ken Burns’s latest documentary Country Music on PBS, I urge you to do so.  Like all of his material, it requires a degree of dedication you might not be accustomed to – the series runs about sixteen hours – but it’s a rewarding ride.  I’m not much of a country fan, but I’ve learned a lot during the first four episodes, and with Spotify at my side, I’ve been able to explore many of the artists even further.  There’s something to be said for technology.

READ

• As if there weren’t enough music rabbit holes to fall into, Tom Breihan of Stereogum has embarked on the monumental task of listening to and writing about every #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 track hit from 1958 to the present.  Word-of-mouth failed me with this endeavor, because I just found out about it a month ago as a fluke, and Breihan is already into 1977, but that’s not a band place to start, as 1977-1982 is my sweet spot for music.  The first song I clicked on was Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light,” and I figured I’d read a few paragraphs about the track.  But no, Breihan writes extensively about each song, providing some history and context, offering links to other versions of the songs, and rating each song he covers, which makes this blog a little more thought-provoking than many.  When he mentioned how much he hates “Hotel California” the comments section went ballistic, but that to me is half the fun.  A great read.

LISTEN

Measured by time, I listen to podcasts more than any other medium – even music.  I have my usual suspects – WTF with Marc Maron, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Freakonomics, Radiolab – but here are two that I’ve added to my arsenal this year:

• Unspooled.  If you like movies, this is a fun podcast that covers one movie a week from the AFI list of Top 100 Films.  Hosted by actor Paul Scheer and critic Amy Nicholson, this weekly discussion has inspired me to fill in the gaps of some of my own viewing (my daughter Sarah has now watched 93 of the top 100 – I’m probably somewhere in the 60s). Paul and Amy are not the most eloquent speakers – I keep wanting them to live up to the standard that Siskel and Ebert set – but I like that they’re challenging the status quo and questioning whether the old boys club that supports mainly male-centric films from the 1970s needs to be upended (spoiler: it does).  They’ve also recommended some terrific books – most notably Making Movies by Sidney Lumet and Cameron Crowe’s Conversations with Wilder.  Both brilliant.

• My friend Michael Stoller has produced a podcast called My Blueprint, an exploration of various issues pertaining to growing as a human being.  These are snappy episodes of under ten minutes, and the few I’ve listened to so far are terrific.  Stoller doesn’t shy away from providing specific examples from his own life and touching on topics that affect all of us, and I walk away with just a little something to ponder as I go about my day.

So there you are!  Add them to the list so you can feel just as overwhelmed as I do!

Music Aids the Claustrophobe

I’m not happy in tight spaces, a characteristic that probably falls short of a clinical phobia, but still significant.  The box-torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty and the entire movie Buried stayed with me long after viewing, conjuring feelings of anxiety when I imagined myself in these dreadful scenarios.  (As I write this, I wonder if my public admission is akin to Winston confessing his fear of rats in Orwell’s 1984.  If ever the powers that be want to break me, they know what to do.)

Which brings me to the dreaded MRI procedures I had to face not once but twice last spring, a result of an immobile left shoulder.  Why my entire body had to be inserted into such a tiny tube to scan a small area of my shoulder I don’t understand – I’ll leave that to the sadistic medical experts – but for the first MRI I was in good shape.  I was given headphones, I asked for some easy-listening 70s hits, and twenty minutes later I was birthed from the cocoon transformed in neither beauty nor health, but with results that gave the doctor what he needed: permission to do another MRI, this time with painful injections before the procedure.  Yea!

It was this second MRI – twice as long as the first – that nearly did me in.  The technician offered me ear plugs instead of headphones, which immediately put me on edge.  The bedside manner that was so calming the first time around seemed to be lacking, and when I asked for headphones the technician seemed annoyed, which caused me to blurt out a fatalistically unspecific response when asked what kind of music I wanted to hear.  I said, “Something light and soothing.”  Oh, was this a mistake, for the technician put on the most banal, painful, incessant piece of new age piano rubbish ever to pollute the airwaves.  It was the formless expression of someone who wanted to make a living writing scores for independent film but who lacked the talent, an affront to all thing musical with meandering phrases and NO ENDING.  I mean it never stopped!  Meanwhile, my mind was focused on how much I wanted to scream and wiggle my legs and arms, and how much I needed to raise my head beyond the encasement whose ceiling hovered just inches from my forehead, and with each thought I became more and more anxious until I finally called out, “Can we take a break?”

Through the crackle of the distorted audio on my headphones, the technician seemed nonplussed by the request (and yes, I’m using nonplussed in the correct sense, not the sense that’s been promulgated recently, including by none other than President Obama). 

“We’re not even half-way through,” she said.

Oh no. “Just a break,” I said.

She conveyed me out, and we talked things through.  I said I didn’t know if I could finish, but maybe if we changed the music I could persevere.  This time I returned to my musical stalwart of easy-listening 70s hits, and as I was slid back into the tiny compartment, the piano intro to Al Stewart’s “The Year of the Cat” began to play.  It’s a song that I know very well, having seen Stewart play the tune at City Winery less than a year prior, and my son having played the piano intro off and on ever since.  The piece felt like a well-worn sweatshirt on a bone-chilling evening, it’s soothing message of mystery settling my nerves instantly.

To help me through my journey, I imagined walking around my residential block, but slowly, carefully, fully aware of each and every step I took and each detail my eyes observed.  Flower by flower, tree by tree, house by house, I strolled down Highland Avenue, then east on Fremont, then south on Oak, and by the time I reached half-way down that block, with “You Are the Woman” by Firefall accompanying me, the procedure was complete. 

The result? Nothing that couldn’t have been prescribed without the MRI! Physical therapy for a frozen shoulder. A complete waste of time, money and spent anxiety. But a reminder of the power of music, whether life-affirming or torturous.

Next spring my daughter will graduate with a degree in music therapy, and if her life’s work can help easy people’s suffering the way 70s rock did for me, it will be a career well-spent.

Now, can we discuss why the openings of MRI machines are so fricking small?