Why bother to save money?

Why bother to save money?

Being frugal can be fun; I believe that.  Natch -- I live and breathe frugality!  But I know that being frugal can be a bother;  for proof: ask my husband.  Heck, back in the day when I shopped at the mall, I would have told you that yard sales were too much bother for me.  Times haven't changed, but I have. So if shopping is fun, it's worth it to ask, why bother to count those pennies?

Some of us have no choice.  Or maybe we have a bit of choice, but low income or high debt means that frugality is our most powerful tool for making ends meet.  One of my favorite bloggers who sings this particular song is the courageous Poor to Rich; I get a big shot in the arm from her bubbly, can-do cheerfulness, and I get a decent dose of humility because of her candid honesty in describing what it's like to live the life of the working poor.

But let's look at people like me.  People who -- to be honest -- make a bunch of money and who bother  to be frugal not so we can pay the utility bill, but instead for our own funky reasons.  What reasons might those be?  Even more importantly (to me), what reasons should those be?

Potential answer #1 (contributed by my husband as I read him this post):  To get more stuff?  This, I reject.  We have too much stuff already.

Potential answer #2:  To keep one parent at home?  Me & my guy, we're working toward this (see P.A.#3 below).  I've got a lot of respect for this answer, even though it doesn't really apply to my situation.  It was Amy Dacyzyn of the Tightwad Gazette, after all, who got me started on the road to being a disciple of the famous Frugal Zealot, and staying at home with her kids was the pad that launched her own frugal adventures.

Potential answer #3: To retire early?  Or, put another way, to achieve financial independence from your job?  I got hooked on this idea (even though I love my job) through the excellent book Your Money or Your Life, and (even though I love my job -- did I say that already?), we've made this a goal for first my husband, and eventually a decade down the line, me.  And recently, I've become the latest woot-woot fan of the high-energy, macho-frugality blog, Mr. Money Mustache, who describes his frugalist technique for retiring at age 37.  Did I say woot-woot?  Yes, I did!  I'll say it again -- woot!

But as I pored over all his old posts, agonizing at his retired-ness while I (a decade older) still toil away at the salt mines for my salary, feeling inadequacy and envy mount up with every post I devoured, I came upon a post that popped the bubble.  In this post, he described his yearly expenditures ($30,482).  And of that, a mere $374 (or 1.2%) went to charitable donations.

Oh.

Now, I'm not trying to knock down another person.  Mister Money Mustache is not me, and I'm not ready to second-guess why he spent/donated/saved the way he did.  Indeed, in the next year his expenditures went down (to $28,453) while his donations rose (to $1,886, or 6.6%), and I'm in admiration of the jump, if not of the totals.  But seeing those numbers reminded me that for *me* at least, the goal of the frugal life is not primarily any of the reasons listed above.  My reaction explains a big part of why my husband and I aren't both stay-at-home parents, living on our savings.  It's because I keep giving money away.

So here's yet another reason to be frugal -- maybe not your own personal reason, but a reason to consider.

Potential answer #4.  To share the wealth with people who don't have the same access to resources that I have.  To be a conduit of the "good stuff".  To relieve a bit of other people's hurt, by giving up our own stuff till it hurts.  To let poverty and hunger bother us, bother us to the point that we're willing to bother about spending less on ourselves and more on others.

It's just a different kind of woot.

Personal Care Parsimony

Whenever I check out a new blog on frugality, I find I get lost quickly.  I want all the good tips up front, but they're (understandably) mixed in and buried throughout the blog.  With the imminent wind-down of Ye Olde Miser Mom blog, I figured it might be a good idea to round up some of my favorite -- and also some of my not-so favorite -- personal care practices in one place.

Here goes.  From top-to-bottom (er, or perhaps it would be better to say, from head to toe), here are some ways to save -- or not -- on personal care.

Hair Cutting:  I'm buzzed about this. (free for me; clippers for the men-folk run us $40, plus $10 for new blades every 10 years).

• Electric clippers let me cut my husband's hair quickly and easily, both faster and cheaper than going to a barber.  (At 10 Watts, a set of clippers costs essentially the same as using scissors, but they're much easier to use).
• Electric clippers and a bit of a razor also let me experiment (with permission) on my sons' heads.  I get to be a hair artist!
• For many years, my daughter and I cut each other's hair.  With really long hair, you don't need to be super talented to do a good job.
• Now that my daughter is grown and gone, my running partner cuts my hair.  Free + Fun = Freaking Win!

Shampoo:  Could use some bounce. (~$30/year)

• When I got my mom's old shampoo dispenser, I'd thought about trying home-made versions of hair care.  It turns out, though, that my mom's dispensers dole out shampoo and conditioner in helpfully tiny amounts -- so my existing stash of bargain-brand shampoo/conditioner has lasted several months, and so I haven't tried to convert to home-made.  This is complicated by the fact that . . .
• Every few years, my scalp starts molting, and this has been one of those years.  My dermatologist suggested I go for an expensive dandruff shampoo.  I resisted for a while, but finally gave in.  I'd love to find a cheaper (and less plastic-y) alternative, though.

Hair elastics: Got this all tied up.  ($0/year)

• Store-bought hair elastics are expensive.  But walking around a college campus, I see them on the ground all the time.  Pick them up, wash them, and wear them!

Make-up:  Holding pattern. ($4/year)

• I use bargain-brand mascara, purchased from yard-sales.  (For those of you who aren't frequent yard-sale goers and who are worried about contaminated products, you should know that some people sell stashes of never-opened Avon or other products at much lower-than-store prices.)   When I don't wear mascara, people ask me if I'm tired, and I hate explaining that it's the lack of make-up, not the lack of sleep, that makes me look dead.  Hence, I use eye mascara at a cost of about $2/year.
• Occasionally, when I'm going to be photographed, I'll used a bit of foundation, mostly because I have rosacea and so if I don't put on foundation I look like a lush. Cost:  $2/year. 

Rosacea meds: meh.  ($40/year)

• So, my dermatologist prescribed Metrogel for my really red nose.  I looked up the bad side-effects of this dread disease, and the main problem (aside from red skin) seems to be "low self-esteem", a complication I fortunately seem to have escaped, but I use the ointment anyway. I am open to alternatives; I just haven't found them.

Toothpaste:  No news is good news. ($0/year)

• The toothbrush is my friend.  So is floss. I don't use toothpaste, and my teeth are doing just fine.  I swear.
• But if you do use toothpaste, here's how to get the last of it out of a tube.
• I visit my dentist twice a year, and she raves about my teeth.  She gives me a toothbrush and floss every time I visit her, and that basically takes care of my home care.  So I suppose I could also say I spend $140 on toothbrushes, but get two dental visits for free.  Woo-hoo!

Perfume: Smelling sweet.  (gift)

• I love the cheap brands of perfume (Charlie!  Windsong!  Maja!)  This is a kindness to the sweet people who gift me with this perfume.  And my actually liking perfume is somewhat of a gift to my gift-givers (seriously, what would you buy for a miserly woman who seems to want almost nothing?).

Edible deodorant:  Stunning success. (less than $6/year)

• Here's an idea I totally stole from Dogs Or Dollars (she listed this as an experiment that turned into a success) and that I have just loved for over a year.  Get a jar of coconut oil (drug stores and health food stores sell this).  Most of the year, coconut oil has about the consistency of soft lip balm; it's not runny like regular oils until summer heats things up.  I also made myself a little jar of baking soda.  In the morning, I use my fingers to dab on a bit of coconut oil, and then baking soda.  This works great; plus it's low trash and it's low cost.  I figure at the rate I'm going, the outlay of about $12 for supplies will last me 2 or 3 years.  
• (I just re-read the D-o-D posts.  She mixes these ingredients together in one jar; I don't.  I figure, either way is a score).
• Even if you use store-bought deodorant, you can melt and re-use the last little bits in a container fairly easily. 

Soap: feeling bubbly.  (?20?/year?)

• Bar soap is unfairly neglected in the modern world, so it's fairly easy to stumble upon a cheap stash at yard sales.  
• At hotels, I don't do the grabby "take as much as I can" dance.  I use at most one bar of soap per hotel, but once I open that bar up, I make sure to bring it home with me so it gets used.
• I gather up slivers of soap in a stocking, and hang that up in my shower.  
• For liquid soap, I buy large containers in bulk and use those containers to refill smaller dispensers.  This is less expensive and creates less trash than buying many smaller containers.
• Sometimes "soap alternatives" (such as bubble bath) are cheaper than bulk liquid soap itself.  
• Washing our hands correctly is one of the most frugal ways we avoid expensive/painful illnesses.  Soap and water is cheap. The flu is a pain in the . . . well, in the whole body.

Shaving:  Obnoxiously happy. ($13 this year; in the future less than $3/year??)

• I just switched over to using a metal razor.  On this subject, I'm like a reformed smoker who is completely delighted with the lower cost and reduced amount of toxins/plastic.  Razor companies, I've got your corporate number!  I'm not playing your multi-blade, multi-dollar game any more!!  Hah!  Perhaps I am too giddy to be trusted on how well this is actually working. (But as far as I'm concerned:  score!)

Sunscreen: Do not do as I do. (less than $10/year)

• I use sunscreen on my face during the summer, but I don't mind if it's several years old, and I probably don't put on as much as other people would recommend.  (See, for example, my rosacea above).  My sisters berate me for how lackadaisical I am. They are almost certainly correct.  There it is.

Nail clippers

• For some reason I don't understand, my kids lose theirs over and over.  So I bought each kid one set of nail clippers.  On each, I threaded a small ribbon through the hole at the end, and then I used an embroidery needle to thread the small ribbon through the paw of one of the kids' stuffed animals.  The bigger the stuffed animal, the harder it is to lose the nail clippers.

Lotions and gels: a slippery subject ($ = not sure.)

• Mostly, I do bulk buys of lotion for my sons' very chalky skin.  When I get out the lotion, the boys yell and run away, and then I chase them all over the house until I pin them down and lather them up.  Not particularly effective skin care, but definitely worth every penny for the family entertainment value.
• Also, we use petroleum jelly instead of antibiotic cream.

Paper products.  (???)

• I'm not sure how much our family spends on toilet paper.
• I'm also not sure how much our family spends on tissues.  
• But I'll counter that lack of knowledge with this:  rags.  You can blow your nose into a square of cloth made from a t-shirt even more comfortably than into a tissue.  You could launder the square of fabric, or if you're totally grossed out, you could just throw it away!  (After all, you were just going to toss that stained t-shirt in the first place, right?)  We have attractive looking rag-baskets in several strategic locations in our home.  I even have rags instead of tissues in my car now.
• Cloth rags are also helpful in bandaging wounds.

Feminine hygiene.  The Keeper is a keeper!  ($3 - $37/year, depending on the dog).

• I have two words: menstrual cups. Love 'em.  Unfortunately, so does my dog, so store them away carefully.

Showers: the phantom frugality menace (less than $50/year per person)

• We don't see stores boasting 2-for-1 sales on hot water, and we don't clip coupons for 25¢ off our next shower.  But hot water can be an even bigger expense than shampoo and soap, so it's worth thinking about how to use less water or not-so-hot water.  The simplest way to save money is to lower the water heater thermostat to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, if you haven't already.
• Next easiest:  plug the drain to keep the warm water in the tub while you shower. Toasty toes and a warmer bathroom result!
• Moderately advanced:  install a low-flow shower-head.  Bonus points if you get one with one of those little cut-off valves so you can turn off the water while you soap up or shave.
• More adventurous: install a water heater timer, so you heater stays on only while you're home.
• Summer fun:  buy a black hose, and shower al fresco.  Solar energy is free!

And finally  . . .

Foot massages. Good for the heart and sole.  ($0/year)

• To which I can only say, "Ahhhhh.   Thanks, guy!"

Credit Card Peek

After my recent bike splurge, I figured it's time to re-convince myself that the title "Miser Mom" actually fits me.  After all, I deliberately splurged during October, a month that two of my favorite bloggers celebrated (?) as a "No Spend Month".  I did not so celebrate the month, but I admire Northwest Edible and Dogs-or-Dollars for what they did.  Go, Dogs, Go!

Unlike them, I did spend money.  A bunch, in fact.  And yet I want to defend my Miser status.  So, in my defense, here's a peek at my most recent credit card statement:  money I spent in September and paid for in October.  On the face of it, the total ($2218) is a fairly hefty tag.  But $1141 of that amount was business travel expenses that will be reimbursed by the people who invited me to come speak.  Another $210 of that was charitable donations.  So the $866 part that I spent on me and my family is really this:

• $520 to fix the wheel-bearings on my 11-year old car.
• $57 for canning jars.
• $38 for gasoline.
• $196 for my two sons' visit to the dentist.  
• $42 for two months' newspaper delivery.
• $14 for a razor.

And that's it.  At least as far as the credit card goes.  What don't you see on this list?

• Clothes.  The last yard sales of the season were last Saturday.  My clothes-shopping season is basically over until May; but even when yard-sale season is in full force, I pay with dimes and quarters, not with a credit card.  I figure I spent less than $4 on clothes in October.
• Food.  I write in too many other places about how much my husband and I spend on food.  My own food purchases during the past month were all cash:  $138 at our local market and at Millers' Amish store.  My husband spent more than that:  $238.  We're going into our low-spending winter months, so our food costs are likely to be fairly low for the next several months.
• Toiletries.  Well, aside from the razor, I spend nothing this past October on toiletries.  I think I'm going to do a whole separate post on this.
• Malls, stores, etc.  I bought the canning jars at a store, and I get my sons' meds from a pharmacy.  But those are the only regular stores I went to last month.  I try not to go to stores if I can find an alternative.
• Utilities, house payment, cell phone, all of which I pay on line.  We're trying to pay off our house early, so the total for this set of categories is several (many?) thousand dollars.  
• Other charity.  We donate regularly to our church by check, and I've started giving irregular donations to our local food bank on-line.   I won't give the totals here, but I will say that this part of spending out our money is important to me.  Let's just say: this is more than food and clothes and toiletries and malls combined, but less than utilities and house payments.
• Childcare expenses and music lessons, which totalled about $700 this past October.  I could ditch these if I wanted, but I actually sort of like tossing my money toward other people instead of toward things, so we intend to keep doing this.  Plus, it gives me a reasonable way to put your tax dollars to work.  

******

The next credit card bill (money I spent in October and will pay for in November) is likely to be lower: it will be about $500 (about $100 of which is charitable donations, about $100 is reimbursable business expenses, and the rest is indulgence of the medical/gasoline/childcare variety).  

But that's a cheat, because my husband put my new $1447 bicycle on his own credit card.  Which means, as much as I protest and try to wiggle away from this, the fact is, I splurged big.

$129: More happiness

This past week, we spent $14 on groceries:  my husband bought coffee.  That's it.  It brings our 33-week grocery average to $129/week.

129 (like last week's 132) is a happy number.  If we had 6 fingers instead of 10 --- which, oddly, seems to make a lot of sense to me from a design standpoint -- we'd write 129 as "333" instead.  In base 2, 129 is "10000001".  That's cool.

But $129 (the dollar amount, not the mathematical number) means a lot to me.  I started keeping track of grocery spending last March because I felt in my bones that it was entirely reasonable to spend less than $25 per person per week on groceries.  I felt this, even though I live with (and love) a non-miser husband who purchases a bunch of non-miser-style groceries.

(This week's purchase of coffee, by the way, is something I admit I wholeheartedly approve of.  Mathematicians are machines for turning coffee into theorems, or so said mathematician Alfréd Rényi, and so I do consider coffee to be an essential staple of our home life).

We're entering the months that I expect to be entirely "fringe" spending.  That is, we have vegetables canned up and stored in abundance.  We have meat and cheese and butter in the freezer.  We have pasta and rice set by.  There are beans galore in jars and cans and bags, down in my cellar.  So the only things we need to buy before next spring's growing season comes around are the fringes, the "extras":  dairy products, primarily.  Occasional condiments.  And stuff my husband deems essential.  This week is partial proof of my theory that our spending is going to continue to be low in the months ahead.  And I expect that time will prove me right, and that our weekly grocery average will come down to well under $125/week for our 5 person family.

Time will tell, of course.  But I'd like to think that eating mostly healthful foods (healthful for us, but also supportive of our communities and our planet) doesn't mean spending lots of money.  Rich eating can be a frugal adventure.

Bike splurge

Last weekend, before the storm blew through, we did my husband's three favorite activities:

We bought me a bike.

That is, his three favorite things are (1) buying, (2) me, and (3) bikes.  Not necessarily in that order, mind you.

From the front, it doesn't look like much.  Darned skinny.

With this purchase, the future triathalon becomes more and more real, more tangible.  And there's a part of me that's all excited, but there's also a part of me that's thinking "oh geez, this is totally not me".  It's not the exercise part of me that's nervous, surprisingly, even though I've nicknamed my bicycle SPDM (Sudden Painful Death Machine).  No, it's the financial side of this purchase.

The bike/helmet/tail-light conglomeration cost us $1,447.  This total amounts to what is by far the most money I have spent on myself on a single day in the past decade.  It's probably the most money I've spent on myself in a year in the past decade.  It's true I am the big-ticket purchaser in our family; I'm the one who purchased the new stove when the old one burned out.  I'm the one who decided to insulate the home. I'm the one who picked out the new high energy gas furnace (more on that later).  But those are family purchases.  This bike is mine-all-mine.  And it's pricey.

Staring my purchase right in the face.

Why did I spend so much?  I think this is an interesting exercise in psychology.  Here are my top several reasons, which I think might be common (in their generality) to why many of us make non-frugal decisions from time to time.

1. Peer pressure.  My husband is SO excited about this bike.  He thinks it's cheap (he has a half-dozen bikes, most of which cost twice as much).  He wants me to get all the coolest equipment.  It's hard enough to resist keeping up with the Joneses when you're just looking across the street at their stuff; it's even harder when the Joneses come right into your living room and argue with you that you ought to keep up with them.
2. Ignorance.  As I described in my two banjos post, I have very little idea what I'm doing.  I did try to rely on my husband's vast biking expertise when I made the purchase, and I rode a bunch of other bikes first.  But I'm not really plugged into any "frugal cyclist" networks the way I am into "frugal food" networks or "frugal clothes" networks.  [I'll add that my husband's connection with the bike shop did net us a 10% discount, so if I had been even less connected/more ignorant, I certainly would have paid more for the same bike.]
3. Haste.  There's part of me that would be very happy to wait until next summer to buy the bike; to keep riding loaners and price shopping for a while.  But it's looking likely that my guy could get called up to go to Afghanistan in November or December, and I really do want to be able to ride around with him before he goes.  So, hearing the ticking of that clock, I pushed up the calendar quite a bit.  And that haste almost certainly means that I paid more than I would have if I'd kept poking around.
4. More ignorance, plus fear.  I think, if I knew how to fix a bike or even how to shift gears or such, I would be happy to do all repairs myself.  But I don't know the anatomy of a bike (yet), and I just want to be able to take the bike back to Frank and Chris (the guys at the store who sold it to me) and say, "Fix this!"  I feel like a total wimp for saying that, but there it is.  I'm a bike wimp.  And so I wanted to buy the bike from them, so they would be willing-and-happy to help me when I'm stuck.
5. High performance (or perceptions thereof).  I'm sure I could get a decent commuter bike for way less than I paid for this bike.  I am totally convinced of that.  And I am pretty sure I could do the bulk of my triathalon training on a $700 bike instead of a $1400 one.   But come the summer of 2015, I'm planning to jump out of a lake after a very long swim and ride 112 miles.  And when I get off the bike I have to run/walk/hobble another 26+ miles.  And so, I am getting a bike that Frank-and-Chris tell me will help me do that distance and live to tell about it.  

If I wanted to make frugal excuses, I could claim that riding the bike will save me money over driving, and in theory this is true.  For many people who are Not Me, this would be even truer.  But I don't drive a lot now:  I walk to work; I walk to church; I don't much go to stores.  It's hard to save money over driving when, already, I don't do a lot of driving.  

More specifically, in 2011, I drove 7666 miles.  Of those miles, 2271 miles were for out-of-town business trips (for which I got reimbursed), so I that means I drove only 5395 personal miles.  Spending $1500 on a bike-set-up is approximately equivalent to driving 2727 miles less (at the IRS rate of 55.5¢ per mile).  So to "recoup" my investment this year, I'd have to cut my personal driving in half.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I drive.  Last week, we drove 150 miles (round trip) with the family to visit C-son--I don't see that as a potential bike trip.  I drove the dog 6 miles round trip to the vet--again, not a likely bike thing.  And I drove to 4 miles round trip to Market -- this I could do on a bike.  But that's 4 miles out of 160 that I could see converting from car to bike.  This week, the only driving I've done so far is a 6-mile trip to the doctor to pick up pre-hurricane meds; I might or might not have done that on a bike.  I am not going to recoup my "investment"  by reducing my car driving by a mere 4-6 miles per week.

Which goes to say, the Sudden Painful Death Machine is a total splurge.  Not a purchase that fits in the "payback" time category; and despite my early intentions, it's not even a thoughtful, painstakingly researched purchase.  What a way to wind down this blog -- with a live-for-the-moment, pricey purchase.   Twenty more posts, and I'm starting to write about spending.  Sheesh.

But, the weather is finally getting good again.  So I'm going to go ride.

Ready to go; the SPDM just needs a rider.

Halloween Dinner: a dinner to die for

A dinner I began planning eleven months ago finally happened last night.  On the menu were the following delectable delicacies:

A tray of zombie eyeballs:

Mummy-face meatloaf (with many thanks to Dogs-or-Dollars for the suggestion!)

 Cockroaches:

 Salted Rat Brains (amazingly, they look a lot like cauliflower!):

 Water with skeleton straws, saved from last month's Pirate Dinner.

 After dinner we grooved to Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Who grooved?  Who moved?  Well, the zombie rapper and Super N-Man boogied down . . .

 As did the Dinosaur Lifeguard and the Queen of Calculus.

There was also a biker dude, but he moved too fast for us to get his photo.

Speaking of bicycles . . . tomorrow we all get to meet the Sudden Painful Death Machine.  Are we ready?

But in the meanwhile, enjoy your Ogre Poop!

Bicycle Purgatory

Last week, during the days leading up to the purchase of my own new bicycle, I rode a bunch of different bikes, and I learned a lot.  Not so much about bikes, actually, but definitely a lot about my husband.

Here are three of the bikes I've ridden.

Bike One is my trusty old used-store purchase.  It's built for stability and safety, both of which are important to me because I'm a total bike wimp.  I decorated it myself in such a way that no teenage boy would ever want to steal it, saving myself the expense of a bike lock.  It's got a big fat cushy seat, huge paniers for lugging groceries, streamers I made myself from potato-chip bags, spoke decorations that my husband bought me.  It's a kooky, visual joy.

The disadvantages are minor.  One is, it weighs a ton.  I think it's made of solid lead, or cast iron, or something.  So I can't carry it up and down stairs, and I can't easily put it in a trunk.  That means, it can't travel with me.  The other downside to this bike is its rider; I just don't ride it much.  Hence, the challenging myself with a triathalon -- which I can't do on this bike.

Bike Two: My husband's one-speed bike.  (He calls it a "single speed" bike, not a "one-speed".  More on the differences between me and my husband below).  I rode this about 5 miles around the neighborhood with N-son.  I was surprised at how comfortable it felt.  I raced N-son and, even though I didn't win, I tired him out.  Success!

Bike Three:  My friend's bike.  It's a darned nice bike, but it's very small (she's short).  When I rode it around the block, I felt all twitchy and like the bike was about to flip upside down and crash  me into the pavement, or a telephone pole, or something.  Size matters.  I'm getting a much larger bike.

But mostly what's surprised me is the several intense conversations I've had with my husband.  Such as,  . . .

Conversation number 1:

His car, with some of its stickers.

When I mentioned putting a sparkly cow sticker on my new bike helmet to bling it up, he begged me not to.  This is the guy who has more than a dozen stickers on his car.  This is the guy who sometimes wears neon-colored, form-fitting spandex to our evangelical presbyterian church.  But stickers on a helmet would make other cyclists take me not seriously, he says.  To which I reply: compared to them, I'm not serious!  They should take me not seriously!  This disappoints him, I think.

Conversation number 2:
My husband adjusted the seat post on my friend's bike so my butt would have been about a mile in the air.  I said, that's too high; move it down.  He reluctantly moved it down a half a centimeter.  I said again, too high, move it down.  He started telling me how long my legs are and where a true seat height ought to go.  And I sort of flipped and started yammering about dying and falling from great heights and said in my most serious (yet slightly freaked-out) voice:  move it DOWN!!!  Which he did, but he was totally unhappy.  But I lived.

Conversation number 3:
My step-daughter texted my husband to say she was watching coverage of a triathalon in which "all sorts of very fit-looking people collapse."  This prompted my husband to ask, "have you thought about what you'd do if you collapse during the triathalon?"   By this, he does not mean "which hospital would you go to?" or "who would take care of our children?", but rather, "would you then sign up for another triathalon so you could say you finished one?"  We had a big conversation after this, the basic gist of which is that there's a big difference between competing in a triathalon and doing the triathalon.  My goal is to be able to keep moving for 12-15 hours, not to compete.  If there's a hard hill, I'm walking up it.  If there's a scary intersection, I'm breaking before I get there.  If I get tired, I'm slowing down.   That is, my goal is to not collapse, thank you.

When my husband starts a race, he thinks about the road directly in front of him.  When I start the same race, I think, "Okay, it's 9 a.m.; I'm going to be running until 11 or so.  Can I keep up this pace the whole time?"  Of course, these are the ways we each approach personal finance, too.  It's been surprising that he's just figured out that this is the way we look at endurance races.

All of this is prelude.  It is prelude to my new bicycle. Thursday:  the Sudden Painful Death Machine comes home.