Letters From Home

I can never make up my mind about “new year’s resolutions.” While the start of a new year is a logical point to make a new start on all kinds of things, the “geography” of the first day of the year is pretty much wrong for most people. There really isn’t anything to mark it as a special new day, other than usually getting the day off work and watching the Rose Parade.

And I tend to cut myself some slack during that time of year, anyway. I figure the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year’s Day are just flat-out bad times to start something new.

The week after the week New Year’s Day falls in, however, is fair game.

One of the best ways to make a change is to make the new way of doing things a habit. And the best aid to doing that I’ve yet seen is the Habit List from the Productivity501 blog. It’s far better than a to-do list or a simple resolution, because it helps you keep track of your progress in whatever category you choose.

I’m starting a new Habit List next week. I plan to write more, exercise more, and get a lot more done at work. Should be easy to keep an eye on myself and see how I’m doing.

How about you?

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In response to one of my favorite blogs, Dumb Little Man, (which isn’t in the least bit dumb!)

I keep hearing ads on the radio for that “keep the change” credit card. You know, the one where you spend money on something with your card, and the card company rounds the amount up to the next dollar and puts the change into a savings account for you. The premise is that you then are astonished to find out that you actually have more money than you thought you did, and it was all so easy because the credit card folks took care of it.

This is SUCH a dumb idea, on so many levels. To me, it ranks right up there with the old “Christmas Club” savings accounts that the banks used to hype the hell out of when I was a kid. (Those were savings accounts that had mandatory deposits and paid no interest whatsoever, just for starters.) Dangle a dubious reward in front of the financially naive, though, and they’ll go for it every time, whether it be a bit of pocket change siphoned off the top of a credit card that charges you interest, or a savings account that gives you your own money back at Christmas time. And don’t get me started on tax refunds.

Where does the money for the rounding-up come from? Is it a gift to you from the credit card company? Or are you paying it to yourself when you pay the credit card bill? They never seem to go into detail about this, either. I can’t picture a credit card company giving you free money. And if they mention the interest rate on these cards, it’s in that bit at the end that sounds like they sped it up about 50x. So, are you using a card that has a 15% interest rate (or more) to put a few cents into a savings account that pays… what? And what happens if you don’t pay the bill off in full?

Cue the sound of Robert Preston saying “Think, men, think!”

I’ve also seen people on message boards here and there talking about how they or someone they know do the same thing with their checkbook. They round up to the next dollar and write that amount down, and gee whiz, when the check statement comes in they’ve got more money in the account than they thought they did.

Unless of course they’d figured they had more money in the account than what the register said and spent it all, at which point they’d get a very precise overdraft charge from the bank.

And, of course, more and more people are using debit cards in lieu of checks these days, and keeping track of the balance in Quicken or MS Money or something similar. Sure, you can round-up a check you’re typing into your software, but what do you do with the checks you write with your software to pay bills? (Write it for the correct amount, print it out, then go back and round-up the amount in the register?) What do you do about amounts that you have deducted from your checking account automatically? For that matter, when you go to reconcile your account in Quicken (et al), what do you do with the “extra” money?

The easiest way to save money is to not spend it in the first place. The easiest way not to spend it is to convince yourself you don’t have it to spend. And the easiest way to do this is to have an automatic deduction from every paycheck, into a savings or money-market account. Some employers will even do this for you automatically, especially if there is a company credit union. But it’s easy enough to set up with your bank.

Start off slow, so you get used to having a smaller paycheck to spend. Once you’ve adjusted to that, raise the amount of the automatic deduction a bit at a time. Of course, you have to adjust your spending accordingly, but not having extra money to blow on stuff you don’t need is not such a bad thing.

And don’t transfer that money back out of savings for anything other than a genuine financial emergency. And if you do have to transfer it back to checking, try to increase the amount you take out the next month so the withdrawal gets put back.

You’ll have a lot more “change” to keep this way, and you don’t need a credit card at all.

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I decided long ago that when I retired I’d grow my hair long again.

I wore it long for a long time. I let it grow till it quit growing, back when I was in my teens and early twenties, but in my mid-twenties I got a job that included a lot of public relations work and I thought that the “aging hippie” look didn’t go well with the job. So I got the name of my office mate’s hairdresser and went to see him, armed with a picture of the haircut I wanted.

I should have known something was up when he turned me away from the mirror to do the cutting. He snipped and shaped and combed and snipped some more, went over the result with a hair dryer, and turned me to face the mirror.

I was in shock. My hair looked like something a Marine barber would have loved. I went from having hair to the middle of my back, to having hair that was barely an inch long all over my head.

When I went to pay the man, I gave him the price he quoted for the haircut. He bristled. “In this profession, tips are expected,” he said. “Really?” said I. “Here’s a tip for you, then. If you ever come near me with a pair of scissors again I’ll kill you.”

After I left that job to become a full-time mom, I let my hair grow till it quit growing, again, and maintained that length till just before my second child was born. It was a long hot spring and I had long hot hair. I cut it short myself.

From then on, I kept my hair short, although I didn’t cut it again myself. Once I went back to work, the shorter hair style was much more practical. And once my doctor started loading me up on medications that made my hair thin out, it was even more practical. It’s a lot easier to make short hair fluff up and hide its shortcomings.

But now, I’m letting it grow out. It’s still thin, and this is undoubtedly not the most practical decision I’ve ever made. But I’ve decided to try the experiment and see what happens when it’s finished growing. I can always have it cut short again.

My hair is just below shoulder length at the moment. I can finally pull it back in a ponytail, for the first time in years. I can roll it up in back and clip it. My grey streaks now look like highlights, although I’m sure a hairdresser would have chosen a different color. While I used to have to do just one lather-and-rinse when I washed it, I now have to do two, and I’ve found some “volumizing” conditioner in hopes of making it look at least a little thicker.

Most of all, though, I’m getting used to feeling it on my shoulders again. I’d forgotten what that was like.

Back to the future? In any case, I like it.

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