Sunday

[jenk]

Between load-in, setup, sound check, cashiering, tear-down & load-out, yesterday's Gaia Consort show was 8.5 hours for jw1776 & I. Fun, but tiring. (Btw, we got there after Chris & Sue, and left before they did...we helped, they *did* the show...)

I posted a bit about the show at gaiaconsort, and will likely add more later. skydancer posted some notes about what it was like to be backstage during the show.

But right now, I'm enjoying a lazy sunday. I finished re-reading Laurell K Hamilton's Blue Moon. I read the comics. And I stumbled across "the Five Great Moments of Personal Finance", according to Scott Burns, and had a good laugh. Enjoy:

• Discovering credit. If we can fog a mirror and have a record of work — however reluctant it may have been — the great lenders of America are waiting to lend us money. This is a truly great moment. The scent of megalomania is in the air. Want a house? It is yours. Want a car? Sign here. Need a vacation? Take this plastic. Need anything else, anywhere? Open your mailbox. Sign the offer. There are only two things you can't buy on credit in America: discipline and common sense. Credit is wonderful. But discipline and common sense are more valuable.
  
  
• Learning life is always more expensive. In my late 20s, I thought life would be easy once the kids were beyond diaper service. I was wrong. Decades later, I am still waiting for life to become less expensive. The price of breakfast at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan is as intimidating today as it was in 1965. Whatever you earn, prices and taxes will rise to the occasion. This is not a complaint. It is the way things are. All of us need to get over it. Breakfast costs less around the corner.
  
  
• Learning you must pay it back. There is a day when all money must be returned. It can be deferred. It can be put off. But it will come. We tend to forget this, often at the urging of our credit-card company(s), home-equity credit-line provider, etc. The party that follows the discovery of credit is always followed by the hangover of paying it back. This is not moralizing. It is a reminder about avoiding hangovers.
  
  
• Learning the law of unexpected consequences. Planning is one thing. Actual living is another. This doesn't mean we shouldn't plan. It just means the unexpected is inevitable. When Congress voted to allow everyone up to $500,000 of tax-free capital gains in their primary home, they thought they were simplifying taxes for homeowners. In fact, they accidentally reinforced the best investment most Americans ever make, created a bubble and provided the wealth to offset much of a major recession. Other changes — like the special accounting Congress allowed thrifts that led to the S&L crisis or the congressional capping of executive compensation that led to the options boom and related disasters — weren't so beneficial. Murphy rules!
  
  
• Learning real problems aren't money problems. Our easy problems involve money. They may be terrifying, but there is always a solution. Our big problems are the ones that can't be solved with money. They are the ones that make us cry in the night and pray for relief. The marriage that doesn't work. The illness that can't be cured. The child who is afflicted. The friend who won't be helped. If you are an adult and still think money problems are real problems, you have led a charmed life. Be grateful.