One Size Fits All

I gave a small bit of money to the Green Party and I received a bumper sticker. Since I don’t own a death wagon, I stuck it on my bicycle. So it is now a rod sticker.

Its nice when (on the rare occasions) college work and life intersect. I’ve been learning about cafeteria plans in my risk class, and this open enrollment season I signed up for a cafeteria plan which on paper seems to be just what I need. Whether I will be unhappy with this plan remains to be seen. How does this work? A brief description:

Typically, in a consumer-driven plan, employees are each given a health reimbursement account (HRA) that is funded by the employer. (Some plans use pre-tax-dollar health savings accounts, or HSAs , which were recently changed to allow for rollover and portability so that they would work with consumer-driven plans.) From that account, employees pay for their healthcare until they reach their plan’s relatively high deductible, when a traditional HMO or PPO kicks in. The traditional plan carries a relatively low premium, which both employers and employees welcome, because of the high deductible, which employees are not so happy about. The catch that sometimes frightens employees: There is often not enough money in the HRA to cover their required out-of-pocket expenses. On the other hand, the carrot that frequently entices those who do not anticipate sizable medical expenses is the fact that they get to roll over into the next year unused HRA money.

Source

The option I picked was Aetna’s HDHP. I fund the account a little bit in addition to my employer. However unlike a flexible spending account I had before at an old job, there is no “use it or lose it” provision, but a “rollover” provision which I like more.

I haven’t written about my finances here lately. But here is the latest.

Husband began a new job that pays quite well (to us, its probably not much to others). I reduced my hours at work and was bring in about $600 net per month for the past few months, so I’ve been living off of my husband. I feel guilty when I cannot chip in half of everything…

So we’ve been paying down his student loan, and I began paying down my unsubsidized student loan as interest has begun accruing. Since both of us expect to pay down a large chunk of student loan debts, we changed our withholding using the IRS calculator.

I also opened up a retirement account with fidelity for my husband, because at nearly 35 he hasn’t contributed any money toward a retirement account. He has a decent amount of savings (considering the fact that we’ve been in school forever). Luckily, his new job also gave him the option to use fidelity for pretax retirement contributions. So right now, 10% of his every gross paycheck goes into fidelity pretax, and I contribute an additional $200 twice a month into a roth ira account.

Additionally, I’ve paid off my line of credit which was used to fund summer school. I also am now on a “pay it in full” schedule with my one credit card that gives me cash back. All other cards are at $0 balance. For example I opened some store credit cards to get coupons or free shipping (such as with LL Bean). I may close all cards but one just so I can get rid of all the agreements I keep in file. I dislike clutter. Even neatly filed paperwork.

In about 20 days I will begin working full time so I am looking forward to being able to pay for stuff myself and paying down my student loan and increasing my retirement contributions and savings. I can’t wait.

I realized today that I am a very tidy person when school isn’t in session. I remember when I was between 11th and 12th grade I had a very long break (including summer holiday) and it was the first time that I can remember when my room was tidy consistently.

After I dropped out of college for 2 years, I recall spending alot of time ensuring that my surroundings were clean.

This past thanksgiving break I made a conscious attempt to take a complete break from academics (first time this entire year), and I am so happy I did. Everything looks very neat and tidy.

Now in 16 days, tidiness will become more of constant rather than something to do when everything is really gross to look and touch and I have a sneezing fit.

One way to keep warm during the Freeze yer buns challenge is to do deep cleaning.

I recall reading that Japanese homes had no central heating and searched the web for articles on how they keep warm. I found a mother jones article that was published in 1976 that was very enlightening. An excerpt:

As you might have suspected, we did wear more sweaters and other such garments indoors than folks need inside a centrally (over)heated U.S. home. You can look upon our need for the extra layers of clothing as a nuisance if you choose but I found it quite pleasant to wear them. Besides that, as I’m sure you know, medical authorities almost unanimously agree that the reduced temperature change encountered when moving from a cool house to frigid outside winter weather is much less of a shock on your body than the change encountered as you move from a hot house to the same

outside weather. You’ll probably stay much healthier, in other words, if you spend the winter going back and forth from a 50° F building to 30° outside conditions than if you go back and forth between a 70° building and 30° outside weather

We still haven’t turned on the heat, but it was nice to come across the following article while working on a paper, “Japan Sweats It Out As It Wages War On Air Conditioning”. An excerpt:

Late last month, the presidents of Japan’s three biggest banks gathered to make an important announcement: They were abandoning formal attire for the rest of the summer — and insisting that their 1,630 branches nationwide keep office temperatures at a steamy 82 degrees Fahrenheit in order to conserve energy. In a formal ceremony in Tokyo, young women in cotton kimonos splashed water from wooden buckets on the baking ground — a traditional way to cool it down without using extra power.

“I want the banking world to get together to promote Cool Biz,” said Mitsui Sumitomo Banking Corp. chief Masayoshi Oku, lined up with two other bank presidents and the environment minister — all with open- necked shirts and no jackets.

Cool Biz is the latest stage in Japan’s aggressive campaign to lead the world in reducing energy use. Japan already uses less energy per dollar of output than other major economies. But the government is eager to do more. If all offices raised their temperatures to 82 from 79.2 degrees between June and end of September, when the hot season ends, it says Japan could reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by up to 2.9 million tons over the summer — roughly the amount caused by six million households in a month.

But there is growing social pressure in Japan not to complain. In fact, too much air conditioning is now seen as shameful — the equivalent of unnecessary trips in gas-guzzling automobiles.

A few days ago, I stopped by the local acme to pick up soy creamer which I usually have with my morning coffee. However, there wasn’t any soy creamer and I freaked out (in a minor way). I don’t like to drink coffee with regular soy milk because the coffee has these weird clumping effect with soy milk. So the only other options were regular creamer (which could come from CAFO cows), Horizon (who feed their CAFO cows with organic grain) and a creamer from Organic Valley.

I had never heard of Organic Valley and their ingredient list didn’t contain corn syrup, which was a plus. But I didn’t know how their cows were treated. On one side of the container there was a short message stating (paraphrased) that they treat their animals like family. As I picked it up and walked to the checkout line, I kept hoping that the didn’t put their family in an extremely confined space and feed them grain and injected them with hormones and then killed them. I kept hoping that the company let their family roam freely on grassy pastures.

I found out about Purple Women via m and this is my contribution regarding my decision to remain child-free.

Although I was on the fence about having kids until recently, after I finally made up my mind I realized that I never had wanted to have children, either by being a biological parent or an adoptive one. The reasons for not having children were just accumulating, so here they are all listed in no particular order:

While I am okay with people who consciously decide to have child(ren) for reasons important to them, I would like to have that same understanding from individuals with kids for my decision to remain child-free. Being married for 6 years tends to invite the assumption that we are still planning to have children especially since I have not yet entered my 30s.

Additionally, I would like some sort of benefit from health insurance companies for choosing to remain child-free. Giving birth is medically expensive and even more so if there are complications involved. I am even willing to sign a legal document in exchange for free birth control pills for life. But my insurance company (Blue Cross) said that they don’t accept such offers. So again I feel that someone with children and the desire to have children are given more options than someone like me in the health care system.

I guess this is the reality I have to deal with for going against the norm. Maybe at somepoint in the future it won’t be such an odd idea.

While browsing Netflix, I came across a television show called “The Good Life“. Only Season 4 is available for instant viewing, and so far I love the show.

On his 40th birthday to be precise, Tom Good decides that he’s had enough of the rat race and that he and wife Barbara will become self-sufficient.
Tom and Barbara

The pair convert their garden into a farm, get in the pigs and chickens, grow their own crops and on one memorable occasion, try to dye their own wool with nettles.

Tom and Barbara would just be lone loons were it not for their neighbours, the henpecked Jerry Leadbetter and wife Margot, a social climber who cannot bear chickens wandering the back garden.

The Good Life attacked the middle class and the ‘alternative’ lifestyle at once, showing Margot’s snobbishness as blindness, and Tom’s fanatical self-sufficiency as going too far.

My thoughts right now have to do with an event that will take place a year or more from now: a cross country move.

On one hand, I am perfectly happy with tossing out (giving or selling) all our stuff (although I will miss our composter and IKEA dining table). But since we’ve been sleeping on a futon for about a year and I have frequent backaches (which disappeared when I slept on a real bed for a week), I have been thinking about purchasing a proper mattress. These tend to be expensive especially to someone like me who isn’t very wealthy. The idea of buying a mattress and then moving in a year or so is bothersome. Because even if someone does buy it, it will be at a huge loss…and this bothers me.

I am reading Karen Armstrong’s The Battle For God. Its primarily about how religious (of the three monotheistic faiths) fundamentalism came into being. An excerpt about Mohammad Ali’s efforts on equipping an Egyptian army:

The pasha was thus forced to conscript the fellahin, dragging them from their homes, families, and fields. They usually had no time to make adequate arrangements, and their families were often left destitute, the women forced into prostitution. The possibility of conscription to an utterly alien military life filled many of the fellahin with such terror that they frequently resorted to self-mutilation, cutting off their own fingers, pulling out teeth, and even blinding themselves. An efficient fighting force was created, but at a terrible human cost. Not only were the fellahin themselves damaged by conscription, but agriculture suffered when the men were torn away from the land.

While browsing various sites looking for a good hot water bottle, I found Jane Rose’s Beach Litter Art:

The inspiration for my artwork comes from my passion for beachcombing, which I do along the shores of the Isle of Colonsay where I live. A small Inner Hebridean Island off the West coast of Scotland.

I am fascinated by the variety of objects I collect but it disturbs me that such large quantities pollute the sea and harm the wildlife within it. Unsightly litter also spoils the beach environment for the visitors and is a constant problem for those who have to collect and dispose of the rubbish.

I recently joined Crunchy Chicken’s “Freeze Yer Buns” challenge. Why did I join? Because I think its a fun little challenge, how would I deal with the cold if there was an electric shortage or something along those lines? I also think we could save some money. The best part of all is the cooking. Turning on the stove and/or oven and making all those soups and warming apple cider to warm my insides is a very enjoyable activity.

Additionally since we already plan on purchasing a proper mattress I’ve begun looking into getting a canopy bed (used either via ebay or craigslist) so that I can hang some heavy drapes and conserve heat when sleeping. I also use a hot water bottle (where I re-heat the water everynight before going to bed). The goal is to not turn on the heat throughout this winter. We’ll see how long that lasts. So far the temperature has hit the 40s but not freezing.

Excerpt from the article:

The problem is, social movements have long been made by people far worse off than our indebted generation, a fact driven home on a recent trip to Tijuana, Mexico. I met a group of women, many in their mid-twenties and most with children, employed by the foreign-owned factories along the border. They work sixty hours a week assembling televisions and other widgets for American consumers, often for as little as six dollars a day. They live in little shacks made of scrap wood, recycled pallets, and old tires. Their homes lack running water. These women have no money and no free time, yet they have organized themselves into a collective and are effectively advocating for environmental justice in their community. Returning to the US from Tijuana, it was as though I could suddenly see clearly: our “necessities” appeared to me as what they really are — luxuries. I have no doubt there is an element of social control built into the massive educational debt imposed on young Americans today. But I also believe social change requires sacrifice — and imagination. We need to reevaluate the supposed “necessity” of higher education (especially people interested in the humanities, the arts, and in social change, who may find the fortune they spend on tuition could be more fruitfully invested elsewhere), envision new standards of “success,” redefine the “good life,” and figure out creative ways to share costs by reinvigorating old ideas (housing, food, and vehicle co-ops come to mind). Above all, we need to remember that our single biggest luxury, our salient self-indulgence, is acquiescence, and that it comes at too high a price.