One of the most important steps in saving money isn't coupon cutting or careful shopping or any other of the suggestions I've made, it's setting aside money to not spend, to perhaps never spend but at least not to spend for a very long time: in other words, saving money. Besides avoiding spending money, two things in particular help make the idea into a reality:
1) Have a reason to save money. One of the best ways to give yourself a reason is to consider what you want for when you finally get around to retiring: just a comfortable retirement, a cruise, a particular vision of what counts as a great retirement house? A lifestyle appropriate to being grandma or grandpa? The clearer the picutre of what yo wnat to do with the money, the more specific, the more aware of what that will cost to achieve, the more real and reachable it will seem and the greater the incentive it will provide.
2) A plan to get there. Savings now translate to twice that later, so set a high but achievable goal for how much more money you want in the bank by the end of the year than you have now. 10 percent of income is a good place to start your calculations. If necessary payments take up a large percentage of income, an adjustment down may be necessary. IF income is variable, more when income is higher and less when income is lower may be the way to go.
3) It helps but isn't necessary to have a plan of attack, such as a regular transfer of money from checking to savings, regular deposits, or a common purchase that will no longer be made in order to free up more cash for the savings jar.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
A Victorian 21st Century?
I don't much go in for politics but can't help but be exposed to various views from friends, family, passing bits on the news, and advertising in the middle of otherwise good shows on tv. Maybe it's the splashy sort of exposure among other, very-different topics (including medieval re-creation, discussions of steampunk and cyberspace, crafts and cooking) that caused the image to form, rather than any real trends. Still, it was startling in its sudden clarity and completeness. Here are some of the pieces that stuck in my mind:
Republican's who originated things like the clean water act encouraging the dismantlement of environmental protection on behalf of big business (may or may not be true but it seems to be a popular claim by opponents);
the small size of the American middle class, working poor, homeless families that used to be upper middle class, more billionaires (really? with all those bank disasters and big company closures? Small businesses used to be the source of retired millionaires, but not billionaires where did they come from?); Crime crime crime (okay, it's actually way down despite the bad economy, but you'd never know if from the push to increase the size of every police and security force in sight),
union breaking (older relatives think the democrats and others are mad because the Wisconsin leadership decided the barely-above poverty teachers and state workers should all pay a bit of their own medical insurance like everyone else. Friends say the employees had no objection to that but resented the union breaking and related maneuvering to get it through congress on the sly);
plants and animals going extinct in every direction, indicative of bad environment and unpleasant living conditions for crowded humans (and yet they think the housing market is a key indicator for the economy? Do they realize some people are consciously choosing to not add to overpopulation and sprawl?);
Reduced retirment benefits, few pensions, and savings poured into heroic medicine (that is, the overuse of medical treatments when readily available and cheaper means of prevention would have worked far better)
Mansions continue to be built while foreclosure signs abound
Modest dress even among teens? (though they choose to how off the oddest selection of body parts sometimes...) and still parents complain at inappropriate dress and sexting and other expressions of... shall we say post-pubescent biological imperatives? (Which generation invented mid-drifts, hip huggers, and hot pants anyway?)
So what do you get (as an image if not the reality?): Seriously conservative dress, rich rich, homeless poor, struggling farmers, a wild west image of rampant crime and guns, bartering and subsistance living, working until death, overbearing cops and security forces who barely understand law and rights: a dirty, privileged, bright candles and dark alleys, glittering crystal and invisible victims of poverty and death, Victorian era with smart phones.
Republican's who originated things like the clean water act encouraging the dismantlement of environmental protection on behalf of big business (may or may not be true but it seems to be a popular claim by opponents);
the small size of the American middle class, working poor, homeless families that used to be upper middle class, more billionaires (really? with all those bank disasters and big company closures? Small businesses used to be the source of retired millionaires, but not billionaires where did they come from?); Crime crime crime (okay, it's actually way down despite the bad economy, but you'd never know if from the push to increase the size of every police and security force in sight),
union breaking (older relatives think the democrats and others are mad because the Wisconsin leadership decided the barely-above poverty teachers and state workers should all pay a bit of their own medical insurance like everyone else. Friends say the employees had no objection to that but resented the union breaking and related maneuvering to get it through congress on the sly);
plants and animals going extinct in every direction, indicative of bad environment and unpleasant living conditions for crowded humans (and yet they think the housing market is a key indicator for the economy? Do they realize some people are consciously choosing to not add to overpopulation and sprawl?);
Reduced retirment benefits, few pensions, and savings poured into heroic medicine (that is, the overuse of medical treatments when readily available and cheaper means of prevention would have worked far better)
Mansions continue to be built while foreclosure signs abound
Modest dress even among teens? (though they choose to how off the oddest selection of body parts sometimes...) and still parents complain at inappropriate dress and sexting and other expressions of... shall we say post-pubescent biological imperatives? (Which generation invented mid-drifts, hip huggers, and hot pants anyway?)
So what do you get (as an image if not the reality?): Seriously conservative dress, rich rich, homeless poor, struggling farmers, a wild west image of rampant crime and guns, bartering and subsistance living, working until death, overbearing cops and security forces who barely understand law and rights: a dirty, privileged, bright candles and dark alleys, glittering crystal and invisible victims of poverty and death, Victorian era with smart phones.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
the scrapbook as journal
I didn't actual go where I was originally aiming with the last blog on scrapbooking, and I ended up changing the title to fit. This time, I'm hoping to keep the title where it's at since I got all that background out of the way. Part of what I intended was the bit on Biomes - capturing images of my story settings as a guide for writing and revising and to share with readers the sources of my inspiration if I could offer it to them in some medium. But more, it was my image of a scrapbook that captured me in something more visual than words.
My journal is already something of a classic scrapbook, with a few ticket stubs, comic and newspaper clip-outs to which I've added comments or help me capture the themes and focus of the day, even a few stickers, though not typically the type used in modern "scrap books" that have everything but actual scraps in them. But I've had dreams of something more visual than that. For example, last night I envisioned a three-D picture that I might capture as a somewhat less 3-D scrapbook page: a thousand printed words cut out and carefully selected, then a bunch of them pushed aside to open space for "a few more words". It would, at the least, convey my interest in words (and it's something you can't do with he words on a Kindle or Nook, that tactile sense of book, pages, and words with physical as well as mental texture. (I'm one of those people that wants to finger all the pieces of a kit rather than just study the diagrams in the instructions; I want to feel the keyboard, not see where the letters are).
I envision a scrap book that has pages that express me, express parts of my life (hence the shift in the last blog off into art) like a journal more than like a photo album. Because I write, it would have pages reflective of writing, maybe some calligraphy and a little painting, but also the content of the stories (hence the ultimate connection to biomes that I was actually aiming for). I might find a science-and -technology sort of catalog to capture the essence of my science fiction writing, along with a few sketches and just a few words or space ship posters and space program headlines. I might have a page of family (though most will land in a whole scrapbook of their own before I get as far as a journal scrapbook). It might have a page or two representative of all the places I've been.
Scrap-book as journal is easier to share, more quickly scanned, and less deeply understood (perhaps just as well--see that other aspect of sharing, the giving instead of the viewing, less easy, often to the point of prevention for some, lacking in confidence or too often too harsh a response to what they have boldly revealed). It can be more akin to art in that regard (I see the careful, decorate pages around one or two pictures not so much art as elaborate framing, whereas my full page collages are like those simplest of frames, relying primarily on some edge that might remain uncovered, or on the journal cover as the only frame, capturing the whole but less so the individual pages and their contents, much like a written journal, especially one with little or no margin to the page.
Scrapbook journal, though, like all scrapbooking, is harder to fill than the written page, in its way. When I write, I select, but it is a selection of thought and sequence, not boundaries. I don't use a daily diary with sizes and dates but a large notebook and an entry might be half a page or many, then end and the beginning less defined than on a scrapbook page, whose edges aren't readily crossed. And my words are whatever I select, limited only by my knowledge, creativity and cursive skills. For scrapbooking, unless it is to be a sketchbook, it depends on the materials at hand, the physical limits of each picture or sticker or clipping, the selection gathered at stores or from magazines and photographic efforts of the past. This is a vastly different selection process and editing and revision is best done on the spot, before the tape or glue or stickers set and revision becomes destruction with no replacement supplies.
It will come in time, I think, but for now, it is an exercise mostly of the mind, unless as I create my trip scrapbooks, I set aside one eah for my journal, or spend a few extra minutes with the scraps to place a few visual "notes" on a "journal" page.
My journal is already something of a classic scrapbook, with a few ticket stubs, comic and newspaper clip-outs to which I've added comments or help me capture the themes and focus of the day, even a few stickers, though not typically the type used in modern "scrap books" that have everything but actual scraps in them. But I've had dreams of something more visual than that. For example, last night I envisioned a three-D picture that I might capture as a somewhat less 3-D scrapbook page: a thousand printed words cut out and carefully selected, then a bunch of them pushed aside to open space for "a few more words". It would, at the least, convey my interest in words (and it's something you can't do with he words on a Kindle or Nook, that tactile sense of book, pages, and words with physical as well as mental texture. (I'm one of those people that wants to finger all the pieces of a kit rather than just study the diagrams in the instructions; I want to feel the keyboard, not see where the letters are).
I envision a scrap book that has pages that express me, express parts of my life (hence the shift in the last blog off into art) like a journal more than like a photo album. Because I write, it would have pages reflective of writing, maybe some calligraphy and a little painting, but also the content of the stories (hence the ultimate connection to biomes that I was actually aiming for). I might find a science-and -technology sort of catalog to capture the essence of my science fiction writing, along with a few sketches and just a few words or space ship posters and space program headlines. I might have a page of family (though most will land in a whole scrapbook of their own before I get as far as a journal scrapbook). It might have a page or two representative of all the places I've been.
Scrap-book as journal is easier to share, more quickly scanned, and less deeply understood (perhaps just as well--see that other aspect of sharing, the giving instead of the viewing, less easy, often to the point of prevention for some, lacking in confidence or too often too harsh a response to what they have boldly revealed). It can be more akin to art in that regard (I see the careful, decorate pages around one or two pictures not so much art as elaborate framing, whereas my full page collages are like those simplest of frames, relying primarily on some edge that might remain uncovered, or on the journal cover as the only frame, capturing the whole but less so the individual pages and their contents, much like a written journal, especially one with little or no margin to the page.
Scrapbook journal, though, like all scrapbooking, is harder to fill than the written page, in its way. When I write, I select, but it is a selection of thought and sequence, not boundaries. I don't use a daily diary with sizes and dates but a large notebook and an entry might be half a page or many, then end and the beginning less defined than on a scrapbook page, whose edges aren't readily crossed. And my words are whatever I select, limited only by my knowledge, creativity and cursive skills. For scrapbooking, unless it is to be a sketchbook, it depends on the materials at hand, the physical limits of each picture or sticker or clipping, the selection gathered at stores or from magazines and photographic efforts of the past. This is a vastly different selection process and editing and revision is best done on the spot, before the tape or glue or stickers set and revision becomes destruction with no replacement supplies.
It will come in time, I think, but for now, it is an exercise mostly of the mind, unless as I create my trip scrapbooks, I set aside one eah for my journal, or spend a few extra minutes with the scraps to place a few visual "notes" on a "journal" page.
the scrapbook as art
I'm not much of a scrapbooker. I don't buy anything that I can't get on sale. Half my stickers and background designs are magazine pages I liked, and so far my scrapbooks are mostly just collage-y substitutes for trip photo albums because the photo album pages they make these days are cheap crap, no matter how fancy and expensive the cover they put on them. (Don't dare try to look at the notes on the back of a picture because the barely-attached slip-cover will pull up or off or tear, they're so pitifully cheap. So we had a quilters and scrap-bookers joint retreat and I saw what a scrapbook could be like, and went with it. I never use my den so it's now the place where I gather scrapbooking supplies, enough for years to come, probably (though even with cut-out, collaged photos from my trips and just a few backgrounds and stickers I can fill forty pages with one longer trip or a couple of shorter ones).
My plans are always big, though. I managed to get a few really great vacations into scrapbooks or what I had left of the older, nicer albums, but I have some eight or ten boxes (not photo boxes, I mean those heavy, lidded boxes that originally held twenty packages of office copy paper) of photos (and other trip things, like brochures and tickets and maps) from the past decade or two. Some I chose not to put in albums, some I saved for special themed scrapbooks I haven't got to, yet, like a family portrait book or my planned cookbook (yes, I've taken pictures of food and place settings as well as path ground covers, tree bark, and garden herbs) and especially one I think of as from my middle school science class term that I've never heard since - Biomes. The biomes are for my novels, especially the fantasies that take the characters through mountain passes and swamps, mystic ancient forests and endless plains. I've been collecting pictures of story settings forever but never quite managed to put them all together into an album or scrapbook but it will be impressive when I do. (I dream big, even if the reality never quite gets there).
Though I haven't made many books, and would probably be considered by most of the scrap bookers I know to be "missing" the goal of lovely pages that might only have one or two pictures beautifully arranged with my chaotic (but carefully laid out, with story, color choices, and consideration of density and ballence) pages of flowers and waterfalls and wildlife, waves and landscapes and the most vague timelines, being more about place and focus than the sequence in which they were seen; still, I see the fascination of it, and the potential. I quickly learned the delight in sticker shopping and the point of the stickers (which I was slow to incorporate as a substitute for invisible double sided tape, and still rarely use without also helping hold on a picture). I see the art element of it in my efforts to get a page that can b pleasant to look at as a whole while also showing off my photographed memories. And gradually I understand one of the early books I saw that seemed to have no purpose at all: just decorate pages laminated thick with cut outs or vague collages of decorated paper all on the same color theme and no photos, no picture element at all. It was scrapbook a pure art. Something pretty to look at.
My imaginings don't quite go that far, but they might be close, especially in the eyes of someone else, not knowing the meaning I put behind the pages I imagine, the more abstract collages I envision gathering in a scrapbook-as-collage-art. They remain on my to-do list rather than my acted-on list, but the vision is slowly growing and I've made notes about potential pages. I did a collage for a leadership workshop, magazine cutouts (mostly catalog ads, actually, with clothes I would never by, colors I liked regardless of the object, and other things intended to represent my interests and priorities) and I can see doing that for page after page with a better selection of magazine and catalog cutouts, added painting and calligraphy, photos and confetti and other flotsom and jetsom, each conveying a message about me or my interests or my views of the world, even if only I can interpret the message behind it. Is that not the essence of art?
My plans are always big, though. I managed to get a few really great vacations into scrapbooks or what I had left of the older, nicer albums, but I have some eight or ten boxes (not photo boxes, I mean those heavy, lidded boxes that originally held twenty packages of office copy paper) of photos (and other trip things, like brochures and tickets and maps) from the past decade or two. Some I chose not to put in albums, some I saved for special themed scrapbooks I haven't got to, yet, like a family portrait book or my planned cookbook (yes, I've taken pictures of food and place settings as well as path ground covers, tree bark, and garden herbs) and especially one I think of as from my middle school science class term that I've never heard since - Biomes. The biomes are for my novels, especially the fantasies that take the characters through mountain passes and swamps, mystic ancient forests and endless plains. I've been collecting pictures of story settings forever but never quite managed to put them all together into an album or scrapbook but it will be impressive when I do. (I dream big, even if the reality never quite gets there).
Though I haven't made many books, and would probably be considered by most of the scrap bookers I know to be "missing" the goal of lovely pages that might only have one or two pictures beautifully arranged with my chaotic (but carefully laid out, with story, color choices, and consideration of density and ballence) pages of flowers and waterfalls and wildlife, waves and landscapes and the most vague timelines, being more about place and focus than the sequence in which they were seen; still, I see the fascination of it, and the potential. I quickly learned the delight in sticker shopping and the point of the stickers (which I was slow to incorporate as a substitute for invisible double sided tape, and still rarely use without also helping hold on a picture). I see the art element of it in my efforts to get a page that can b pleasant to look at as a whole while also showing off my photographed memories. And gradually I understand one of the early books I saw that seemed to have no purpose at all: just decorate pages laminated thick with cut outs or vague collages of decorated paper all on the same color theme and no photos, no picture element at all. It was scrapbook a pure art. Something pretty to look at.
My imaginings don't quite go that far, but they might be close, especially in the eyes of someone else, not knowing the meaning I put behind the pages I imagine, the more abstract collages I envision gathering in a scrapbook-as-collage-art. They remain on my to-do list rather than my acted-on list, but the vision is slowly growing and I've made notes about potential pages. I did a collage for a leadership workshop, magazine cutouts (mostly catalog ads, actually, with clothes I would never by, colors I liked regardless of the object, and other things intended to represent my interests and priorities) and I can see doing that for page after page with a better selection of magazine and catalog cutouts, added painting and calligraphy, photos and confetti and other flotsom and jetsom, each conveying a message about me or my interests or my views of the world, even if only I can interpret the message behind it. Is that not the essence of art?
Monday, January 2, 2012
Diving into the New Year
I'm still looking for a new focus for this blog so I decided I'd try a more freeform, less focused effort for awhile. It will probably still be more or less about writing and at least some about my fantasy and science fiction, but maybe also about journaling, scrap-booking as a forum for writing, and non-fiction writing, which I've been neglecting lately or relegating to journal entries with no audience.
I have no end of ideas for topics for nonfiction writing and essays, and fiction other than science fiction and fantasy (though I've never liked the results of my attempts in that direction) and maybe with this as a prod (I try to blog at least twice a week on all my blogs) I'll work on my writing in those areas.
For example, I found myself self-editing a letter of all things! Letters might deserve editing, but it should be toward making them more interesting to the singular audience, not more "standard" which I was doing. (I almost decided to leave out the statement "I was still living in yesterday" as part of my comments on new technology. Then I thought, why not say it? A little bit of metaphor works in letters, too! I'm usually more matter of fact, if only to keep the letter brief: not every one I write to has lots of time to sit and read. But some of the people I write to are older, not able to get around well, and might enjoy a longer letter, and certainly won't complain about a more interesting one, even if I don't edit them fully (I hand write them).
Letter writing will probably get lots of my attention on this blog. I fear it is a lost and fading art. I've never been great at it, but I do my several a month and sometimes several in a week, still, love to receive them, and know from much experience that the handwritten letter is quite different from e-mails or any social media, both in content and experience. The next generation is already a deprived group and I'm sorry for them, for computers are a cold media and cannot convey what a handwritten letter can, any more than a handmade scarf can be replaced by a thin bit of cheap fleece. (On the other hand, a handwritten letter can only reach one person at a time, sometimes one person ever, so for the cooler substance of mass communication, computers have their place. Value...? I guess it depends on the substance. I'll try to make mine worth the bother of reading.)
I have no end of ideas for topics for nonfiction writing and essays, and fiction other than science fiction and fantasy (though I've never liked the results of my attempts in that direction) and maybe with this as a prod (I try to blog at least twice a week on all my blogs) I'll work on my writing in those areas.
For example, I found myself self-editing a letter of all things! Letters might deserve editing, but it should be toward making them more interesting to the singular audience, not more "standard" which I was doing. (I almost decided to leave out the statement "I was still living in yesterday" as part of my comments on new technology. Then I thought, why not say it? A little bit of metaphor works in letters, too! I'm usually more matter of fact, if only to keep the letter brief: not every one I write to has lots of time to sit and read. But some of the people I write to are older, not able to get around well, and might enjoy a longer letter, and certainly won't complain about a more interesting one, even if I don't edit them fully (I hand write them).
Letter writing will probably get lots of my attention on this blog. I fear it is a lost and fading art. I've never been great at it, but I do my several a month and sometimes several in a week, still, love to receive them, and know from much experience that the handwritten letter is quite different from e-mails or any social media, both in content and experience. The next generation is already a deprived group and I'm sorry for them, for computers are a cold media and cannot convey what a handwritten letter can, any more than a handmade scarf can be replaced by a thin bit of cheap fleece. (On the other hand, a handwritten letter can only reach one person at a time, sometimes one person ever, so for the cooler substance of mass communication, computers have their place. Value...? I guess it depends on the substance. I'll try to make mine worth the bother of reading.)
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