Kintsugi (from Four Fragments) – Fall Equinox 2021

 

The season of secrets is once again upon us.

 

The time when we tell children harmless little lies to increase their joy and sense of wonder. The time when we hide gifts from them and our significant others. The time when we paint on a smile and pretend that our families don’t drive us completely bat-shit crazy. The time we tell ourselves that all those cookies we baked are for everyone else and not secretly for us. The time when we think we really mean the words we say, that it was great to see you, that we should get together again soon.

 

Though by that standard, this time of year isn’t special. We all keep secrets year-round.

 

When I was younger, I didn’t talk much about my life. Pretty much I didn’t see the things that happened to me as secret, more as normal events that no one chose to talk about. It didn’t take me long in middle school to learn that I was mistaken. The few times I related a story about things that had happened to me or my sister, I was greeted with open-mouth astonishment that quickly turned to stunned silence. Silence that spawned avoidance which felt suspiciously like rejection, whether of me, my experiences or just a reality that didn’t fit someone else’s illusion, I wasn’t sure. But I took away a reading of the implicit social contract that home life was something I shouldn’t talk about. It made people uncomfortable which made them drift away.

 

Keeping my silence felt less lonely and vulnerable than actually being alone. Older now, I am beginning to re-appreciate the wisdom in that.

 

Well into adulthood, I kept to that personal rule: Don’t talk about family. Don’t talk about things that happened except with the few people I felt I could deeply trust. To this day, I still have friends I spent inordinate amounts of time with growing up who tell me they never knew anything was going on.

 

The problem is, those secrets never went away. They continued to cast doubt on what was and wasn’t normal. On whether I did or didn’t have self-worth. Sometime in my late twenties, I began to rethink what I’d learned.

 

I was thirty when my wife revealed her own family secret to me. As she struggled to cope with how to finally deal with what had happened, I realized I couldn’t very well advise and encourage her if I didn’t confront my own experiences. As she sought counseling, I made an effort to begin to share more of my experiences more openly. Not just with her, she already was pretty familiar with my background, but with people I knew when the opportunity seemed right.

 

Initially, unlearning that early lesson was hard. But slowly I discovered there is power in the truth, power in revealing secrets. While those secrets protected me, they protected others as well. Those people had more to lose than I did when the truth came out.

 

Over the next twenty years, I became more comfortable with telling people things that happened to me. By the time I was forty, I would openly tell people there was abuse in my family if it seemed pertinent to the conversation. By the time I was fifty, it no longer made me particularly emotional. It was just another story from my background I had to tell.

 

That’s not to say it wasn’t difficult along the way. Hearing the answers from the people involved as to why they thought they did what they did was emotionally painful. But over time, reviewing those answers provided a modicum of peace even if I didn’t like what those answers said. And that’s not to say I don’t still engage in arguments in my head with people not present. Or sometimes not living.

 

Recently, I began reconsidering the lesson from nearly forty years ago that I’d taken so much effort to unlearn. Anymore, I wonder if I’d initially gotten that lesson right. It turns out that adults even well into middle age aren’t really much better about how they respond to other people’s adversity.

 

Yet, I also know that if no one is willing to speak out, the perpetrators continue to get away with their crimes. They hide behind those secrets. They rely on the pain and shame their victims feel to shield them from what they’ve done. There’s a reason for the admonishment about not shooting the messenger. It’s the action we’re naturally inclined to take, because the messenger is an easy target who stands right in front of us.

 

There doesn’t seem to be a path of least suffering. Only one of right and wrong which requires personal sacrifice.

 

And maybe all the talking in the world won’t make you feel any less alone.

 

---

 

No good can come of what I am about to write.

 

Six years ago, I awoke in the middle of the night suffering from an existential crisis. That’s not a euphemism; it’s an accurate description of how I felt. My thoughts then strayed onto choices, mechanisms. I won’t share the details. Suffice it to say, after a couple hours reviewing options, I came up with something that seemed palatable.

 

As soon as I settled on that possibility, I got back to sleep.

 

Sleep, that’s all I really wanted anyway. Rest. Peace. A brief respite from pain and struggle.

 

When I was young, I never really thought about suicide but I often thought about going to sleep and never waking up. Let God claim me. I prayed for that more than once. That was back when I still believed.

 

Those were the type of thoughts that emerged again that night.

 

Now there are going to be several reactions to what I just wrote. Let me outline the most likely.

 

First, there is: Oh my god, I never knew. These are the people who will never get past the word “suicide” whether stated or implied. They will treat you like a Faberge egg for the rest of your life. Something fragile and easily broken, if not quite beautiful. Something to be pitied, not someone they can understand or relate to. An object, not a human being.

 

The next reaction is to run as far and as fast as they can. This one is more common than you think. I don’t really know him that well. I don’t need his drama, I have enough of my own. I’ll let his friends and family deal with it. I hope he gets it all straightened out. Maybe if he does, I’ll come back. Maybe, but probably not. The damage has been done. So de facto exclusion and exile.

 

Perhaps the next most common is cynicism. This is just a cry for attention. You weren’t really serious. You don’t even know how good your life is. I wish I had your privilege. What a waste. You’re not special. Everyone goes through it. Just get over it and get over yourself.

 

Then there’s the even more callous variant of: Someone should really call your bluff. You want to die, then do it. I dare you. I double-dog dare you. If you succeed, maybe then I’ll believe you. But either way, you’re a coward.

 

And finally, there is: You really need to talk to someone. Not me, of course. We’re not that close. I wouldn’t know what to say. A professional. Someone who is trained and gets paid to deal with stuff like this. Someone who knows the exact right thing to say. Someone who can make it magically go away, or prescribe the drugs that will. So, I don’t have to deal with it. Because I’m not sure I can. Or that I really want to.

 

These are the pretty standard reactions to anyone else’s existential crisis. Any revelation that makes us uncomfortable or upsets our worldview. This I know from observation and experience. I’ve called it out time after time. And yet, I am still surprised by how exactly right it turns out to be.

 

One of the first basic lessons I was taught growing up is that if you are upset, if you feel bad, you must have done something wrong. You, not anyone else.

 

Not only family reinforced this lesson, friends have, too, as well as the whole pop-psychology social media. It’s like a surficial reading of Buddhism by someone who never cracked the book or even the Cliff’s Notes. Life is suffering, snowflake. It’s all in your mind and how you deal with it. You. Not me. Not what I do. My actions bear no responsibility. That’s what led any number of nominally Buddhist cultures to think the Enlightened One would have been cool with torture. That’s what led to our current society to see Ayn Rand selfishness as a laudable trait.

 

Then why am I writing this? What do I want or think will happen? Now that’s the fundamental question.

 

First, let’s get something straight. I am not now and have not been suicidal.

 

My grandfather committed suicide. The Best Man from my wedding committed suicide. I’ve told the story that my mother slit her wrists in our driveway when I was very young, although I don’t remember it (but have seen the scars). A friend from high school later told me he made two or three attempts in college. Another friend from high school tried at least once, seriously enough to end up in a college infirmary two thousand miles away.

 

I’m familiar enough with the signs by now to have talked a near total stranger off that ledge for hours late one night, because I recognized their pain and knew it was the right thing to do. Which was evidenced the next morning when they told me that right after they stopped talking to me, they called a suicide prevention hotline.

 

I’ve never made a move in that direction. No overt act. I’m pretty sure I won’t, although I can never say never. None of us can.

 

But as I’ve talked about before, I have had someone actually try to kill me, up close and personal. I remember exactly how hard I fought to keep that from happening, using every bit of force and guile at my disposal. I know from experience that I have the will and stubbornness to keep going under adversity, both mental and physical. I’ve suffered enough shocks to feel fairly certain I can do it again, though I also know it takes me more time now to recover from the initial hit. Or hits.

 

What this little late-night episode told me was that something in my life needed to change and I didn’t know how to do it. I was profoundly unhappy. I felt trapped because I couldn’t see a clear or easy way out. Just like when I was a kid.

 

Now comes the hard part. Because what I write next will probably hurt any number of people. That is not my intent. My intent is to outline the truth of the situation as I see it. As I experienced it.

 

The cold, harsh reality is this: In the past several years, I’ve had to confront the dark side of human nature. I’ve witnessed some abhorrent behaviors, heard life-altering statements. Things like that rape doesn’t matter as long as the rapist is more fun to be around. Things like that I should never gotten involved, no matter who I was trying to protect, who I was trying to defend because it threatened someone’s cherished illusions. By implication and action, that this was somehow my fault for pursuing it, and not letting it go. No matter who was at risk.

 

At one point six years ago, I said very publicly that I had checked out. That all I was able to do for two solid weeks was lie in bed and watch movies. I was unable to think straight, unable to write, barely able to function. Exercising and daily showers were major accomplishments. Maybe two people checked on me, both a couple thousand miles away. No one local. No one stopped by to see if I was ok, or just to say, hey, I’m here if you need me. I heard that statement once or twice well afterward but saw no follow-up.

 

In fact, I watched any number of people put daylight between me and them when I needed them, when I had said I needed them, because they didn’t know what to do or say. So, they said and did nothing. People who I thought meant something to me. People I thought I could trust.

 

One brave soul apologized, saying they had done exactly that, months after the crisis had passed. While it showed a great deal of honesty and integrity, it also served as confirmation.

 

Most people aren’t as forthright.

 

---

 

Beyond the time of secrets, we enter a brief, ten-day twilight zone between the solstice and the New Year. It's a time we usually reserve to do a few things we enjoy as well as looking both back and forward to sort out where we've been and where we think we're going.

 

Six years ago, in that interstice, we visited with college friends we hadn't seen in nearly twenty years. In the process of catching up, I started thinking beyond the normal where have we worked and what we’ve seen on trips to what was really important. Looking back, I think there are really three things I am extremely proud of having done, none of which I talked about that night.

 

That's not to say I don't have achievements that I'm pleased with. Things like reviving two dying organizations when I was younger that meant a lot to me, and keeping a third on life support before finally pulling the plug. Or the design and debug I did in engineering, though I'm sure someone somewhere by now has found any number of issues with it, if it still exists. Or more in having a body of writing that includes a novel, fifty plus short stories, twenty plus poems and over a hundred essays.

 

The problem is, I can't point to any one thing among them that feels like something meaningful.

 

The first accomplishment I felt, oddly, was managing our finances. Meeting my goals, many earlier than expected, has meant both Karen and I have been able to pursue careers we really wanted and enjoyed. It also meant that when things stopped being fun for her at work, she could bow out when she wanted. It involved a lot of hard work, worry, long-term planning and sacrifice. But the security and stability has been worth it. It's one of the few things I feel successful at.

 

The second accomplishment was taking care of Karen when she was diagnosed with cancer. Being home to do what needed to be done felt and feels important. I know how lucky she was in needing as little care as she did. Yet it constantly amazes me that her situation was not and is not a given, how many spouses and SO's walk away or fall down when things get tough. I can only hope that my small effort made a difference in how she responded to treatment and in the speed of her recovery. The pieces I wrote to entertain her while she was going through it still feel like some of the most important things I've written, though not the best.

 

Finally, I am proud of going to bat for her and for others who didn't know, some of whom may never know, the darkness her brother wrought. Of trying to defend three little girls from a sexual predator without losing my marriage in the process, which ended up being a close-run thing. For twenty years, I stood alone. I fought as hard as I could as long as I could. While I know I could have said and done certain things differently, I don't regret a thing. Except maybe that I didn't fight harder and do what I thought needed to be done from the beginning. I just hope I did enough.

 

Not exactly the types of things you recount over Indian food while everyone else talks about their jobs, their kids, their houses and their vacations. An odd collection to say the least. But I think if I look back in another thirty or forty years and that's all I have, I'll be content.

 

I’ll have to be.

 

---

 

Two years later, I revisited that third accomplishment. For decades, I thought I’d wended my way through a very narrow path to success on that one, despite the cost. Then, without warning, part of that accomplishment was ripped away. I thought I was doing something for someone else, because they couldn’t and I could. Turns out, they never wanted it. None of it. Ever. More the pity that I even bothered.

 

I could have turned my back and moved on. I had been lied to from the onset, repeatedly, overtly and covertly. By the time I learned the truth, at least part of it, a vow had been extracted. Not the last as it turned out. I kept them as best I could, at least the ones I swore.

 

But in that moment, I burned a final bridge to the waterline and fully expected it to remain in ruins. In fact, I still see that river as my Severn. If anyone from that clan brings that conflict back to my side, they are fair game. Like an onion eater straying west of Offa’s Dyke. This time, I will not stop until I’ve done what I should have from the start. But for now, I’m content to just enforce the border. With fire if necessary.

 

Yes, I was angry. And deeply hurt. Twenty years of effort is a lot to have devalued.

 

As a result, my writing, suffered. I stopped writing essays about my life entirely for years because they seemed to have become a sort of entertainment for the audience. Something titillating or voyeuristic rather than a mechanism to relate to people, to speak a truth of one kind or another I knew from experience many people shared but were too afraid to express. That was just too painful.

 

In the isolation of the pandemic and a time of social uncertainty, I still struggle with that.

 

Even fiction became more difficult. It felt trivial. Each time I sat down to work on a story that had been in process for months, I just pushed it away. Most days, I was no longer sure who I was writing for. To entertain an audience who may not really care if I lived or died? That may not be true, but some days that’s exactly how it felt.

 

I don’t write for me or to perfect my craft. I write to share with others. Because I can and they seem to enjoy it. Or because it sometimes enlightens them in some way by putting something into words they can’t. Though I have developed some deep trust issues on that score now.

 

As I’ve said before, the only thing I write for myself is poetry. Unlike fiction which is meant to entertain and so has to connect with the reader, poetry for me is about expression and capturing something I see or feel. I share it as a curiosity, not because I think it’s particularly good. Maybe it will resonate with someone, or reveal some portion of me that will help others understand. That’s why for a few years I posted so much of it.

 

But my choice is either to self-censor, or to attempt to express a truth destined to be misunderstood. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. So, I often sit, bound up in knots, trying to sort out a way to see myself clear, or set it down forever.

 

Which is a third option in a way.

 

---

 

When that third accomplishment was taken away four years ago, I checked out again. This time instead of movies, I read ancient science fiction for two weeks straight. Same deal as earlier. Only this time, I didn’t bother to mention why. It didn’t matter the first time, and I was well aware people were tired of hearing about it. So, I held them at arm’s length for my survival.

 

I knew how to survive. I’d done it as a kid. Then, I’d learned through social convention that talking about things didn’t help. People just looked at you in shock and turned away. Responsible adults didn’t or wouldn’t intervene, despite my then having no power to change the situation for myself. No agency.

 

Since I was young, I’ve heard excuses like, maybe if you’d been a better kid, I would have done more to help you. Or, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Even recently, I’ve watched conversations with people close to me get actively shut down, diverted or minimized.

 

A great deal of my faith in people had been shattered. I’ve been trying to piece something, anything, back together ever since. Not some Humpty Dumpty Faberge egg. Something more akin to Kintsugi.

 

---

 

"We are all just three bad breaks away from seeing throwing scud missiles as a valid career path."

 

More importantly, we are all just three bad breaks away from being that person so much of our society loves to look down on. That person who struggles. That person caught in a downward spiral. That person who needs help. 

 

Those bad breaks could come from your attention wandering for a split second too long in a parking lot with a pedestrian, your birth control failing under normal parameters in high school or college, or that lump that turned out to be something malignant rather than a sebaceous cyst. It could be identity theft. It could be getting laid off from your job. It could be the family or circumstances you were born into. It could be an addiction or mental illness. It could be the extended isolation or lingering illness from a pandemic that only half the country seems to take seriously. Stack any three of them together and you could be almost anyone.

 

Your life and circumstances can change in an instant, not always because of poor planning or poor choices but rather because sometimes random bad things happen to random decent people. If you've avoided them in this life, you are exceptional, in that you are lucky, not superior.

 

The day you forget that is the day you put your first foot into the grave. Because your sense of compassion and empathy has begun to die. And with it, your humanity.

 

And in a time of personal struggle, pandemic and insurrection, our shared humanity is all that stands between us and chaos, the container that holds in civilization while keeping anarchy at bay.

 

That vase is vital to our continued communal survival, no matter how we manage glue it back together, with platinum, gold, or silver. The flaws may be clearly visible, but the whole is stronger despite its imperfections.

 

And perhaps more beautiful for what it has overcome.

 

 

© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III

Leadership - Fall Equinox 2020

 

 

I started this year’s essays talking about leadership. As the year slowly loses light, we shift our focus to who we want to lead us and where we want to go.

 

Twice in my life, I’ve been put in the position to either rebuild an organization or oversee its dismantling. Both times I chose to attempt the former. And both times, while I was elected to the position, in reality, no one else wanted the responsibility. I am just the kind of special idiot who volunteers when no one else steps up.

 

The first time I was in Boy Scouts as a teenager. Unlike most of my peers, I’d come to the organization late. I’d never been a Cub Scout. I’d only lasted a few months as a Webelo as I’d gotten bored because we didn’t do anything except attend meetings without much else in sight. I’d been spoiled by the brief time my father and I had spent in an organization called Indian Guides where we actually did things like camping. But by then, my father was out of the picture. He still lived locally but had made it clear that his life and mine would only intersect every other weekend at best. Less after he left for Spain.

 

Of course, my lack of commitment to Webelos meant that by the time my middle school friends introduced me to Boy Scouts, my mother was reluctant to let me join. But once she learned that she wouldn’t be responsible for getting me to the meetings and that every few months I would disappear for a weekend, she was onboard.

 

Our Boy Scout troop was somewhat bipolar. Because it served a geographic area, its neighborhoods were half sleepy middle-class bedroom communities and half old-school Florida crackers. In my subdivision, Boy Scouts were seen as leading to a single goal: Eagle Scout. It was a box you checked. It was the American Dream writ small. If you studied hard, showed discipline, accumulated the right awards and leadership roles, you would eventually be rewarded with opportunities down the road. If nothing else, it looked great on a college application. Today, we would call that privilege.

 

Not so much on the other side of the boulevard. The rednecks in our troop were more interested in practical skills than academics. Our fathers were mostly white collar, theirs were blue-collar as well as hunters and boaters and fishermen. While we were interested in merit badges like Fingerprinting and Citizenship in the Community, they wanted to learn how to camp and cook and shoot, be it a bow or a gun. In general, it came down to us wanting to learn things and them wanting to do things.

 

All of which meant on our side, activities could get pretty academic and individual. While my friends were suburbanites, I found my interests aligned more with the rednecks. I quickly discovered their side had more fun.

 

Like the space program our city largely served, our troop went through boom and bust. Shortly after I joined, the troop expanded to six then eight patrols, our fundamental grouping similar to teams. We actively considered spitting the troop in two but ended up encouraging people to join the struggling troop just north of us to relieve the pressure. Which only cast it a short-term lifeline before it eventually folded and we inherited their remnants.

 

By then we’d fallen onto hard times of our own. In the time I had gone from a member to a patrol leader to troop librarian, our troop had begun struggling, too. Through new rounds of layoffs at the Cape and general disinterest, our numbers were more than cut in half. We barely had enough attendance to justify meetings. When annual elections for the youth leadership came up, our Senior Patrol leader could no longer dedicate the bandwidth. Like many other suburbanite boys, other activities and organizations, like band and baseball, placed greater demands on his time.

 

But for me, camping had become a sanctuary. I found more peace in nature than I ever could have at home. To avoid the chaos there, I often spent whole Saturdays or Sundays with a book and a BB gun in the woods. Full weekends away were much needed respites.

 

So, before a minimum quorum, I threw my hat in the ring and won easily. I encouraged a friend who was a year younger to run as my assistant. He picked that up with ease. I knew with him to help we could turn the troop around. At the time we had several existential issues facing us.

 

First, the church where we met had become a bit disenchanted with us. We usually met in one of their side rooms but our boisterous nature had begun to clash with their restrained Methodist sensibilities, especially with our proximity to their sanctuary. But we needed a sponsor, be it a church or a school or some other organization. I remembered when we’d gone camping, we’d often met outside a little plywood shack tucked in the back of the church lot. I asked who that belonged to. Well, it was on church property but our troop had built it sometime before any of the current members remembered. Nobody had been in there in years. No one had a key. But it’s ours, right? Checking with the church, we confirmed it was. If we met there, would the church still be willing to continue sponsoring us? Reluctantly, they agreed.

 

We met one Saturday to check it out. Someone brought bolt cutters for the padlock, which we cut then replaced. Inside, the space was larger than it appeared. It was divided into two areas, a larger room, equipped with folding chairs no one knew we had. Once we cleaned it up, we found it would easily meet our needs. We discovered a number of old merit badge booklets, enough to start a real troop library, along with miscellaneous camping supplies no one knew existed. We set most of that aside to distribute to the patrols as needed.

 

The second, smaller area was a small storage room, stuffed with tents and even surplus army cots. No one knew we owned any of that. Our leaders thought the canvas was likely all dry rotted so we left it for another day. But I didn’t forget about it.

 

Now that we had a place to meet, we faced a second existential problem: Adult leadership. In order to maintain our charter, we needed a minimum of three adult leaders to sign the paperwork. At the time I took over, that was a huge problem. The sons of two of our three adult leaders were no longer active in the troop. Naturally, they were no longer interested in donating their time. The third leader had hoped to step aside as well, although his youngest son had just come of age to join. We targeted him first. Reluctantly, he agreed to stay on if we could find two more leaders. Next we managed to convince my assistant’s father, a college history professor, to sign on, a role he never envisioned himself in but gamely tried on. Which still left us one short.

 

Problem was, this was the late 70s. Like most communities, the divorce rate in our city ran about 50%. Which meant a lot of our scouts didn’t have fathers around to volunteer. My own was in Spain or California by this point. Even if he’d been local, I doubt he would have volunteered. We targeted every father around could find. No luck. We even looked into trying to get a female leader. A one or two mothers were willing. National said absolutely no way. Women could lead a Cub Scout den not a Boy Scout troop. They’d rather let the troop fold than change, which given their more recent problems should surprise no one.

 

As the paperwork deadline loomed, we went the desperation route. We approached one of our former leaders with an arrangement. If he signed on to the paperwork, we would make sure he wouldn’t have to participate. We were confident given time we could find a replacement and swap him out. Reluctantly, he agreed. It was either that or watch the troop cease to exist. He had too much attachment from his son’s time with us, and his previous leadership, to let that happen. As it turned out, before the year was up, an old member of the troop who had been away in the military returned and stepped up.

 

Having cleared that hurdle, I turned to membership. Our troop had become a shell of its former self. As I mentioned, soon after I’d joined, we’d had to split patrols, the smallest level of our organization, just to keep things manageable for the boys leading them. But those eight patrols had dwindled to barely four, maybe three of which were functional with minimal membership. If we didn’t attract more members, adult leadership would no longer be a problem.

 

For that we needed something to draw them in. I had a pretty good idea of what that might be. Up to now, our leadership had been focused on creating Eagle Scouts as one of its primary goals. While that served half of our community, for the other half it just wasn’t a big concern. As I said, ours was somewhat of a redneck troop. They were more interested in doing than learning. Not that those two things were mutually exclusive. But the approach made all the difference.

 

So, I came up with a plan, something I could sell to both halves of our community. I sketched it in my mind then approached our leaders. I said I wanted one major activity each month in addition to our meetings. A camping trip, local or distant, a canoe trip, a hike, a camporee. Something, anything I could point to that was fun. While I had ideas, I needed help with the logistics, reservations, driving rotations, contacts, etc., which at the time were beyond my ken.

 

When I laid out my agenda to our leaders, they were skeptical and a bit daunted. I tried to ease their minds. There were two major camporees our troop attended every year. That left ten more events. Summer camp, either in FL or every few years in North Carolina, were annual activities, so I counted that as another. Nine more. For campouts, I reminded them of several locations I remembered we’d visited before, one in the far north of the county, one in the far south and several in between, plus the campground of our summer camp. Add in a few other full-day trips, and we were in business.

 

My enthusiasm must have been infectious. They started adding in their own ideas. One of our leaders had a boat, as did some other fathers. Previously, we’d camped out on islands in the Indian River, which were free. Someone threw in inner-tubing down any of Florida’s numerous spring-fed rivers.  In the end, the leaders said the plan was ambitious, yet agreed to give it a try. Why not. Even as they signed off, I think they thought there were enough obstacles that it might never happen. But they were willing to feed me some rope to see what I did with it.

 

The moment I got their buy-in, I started a recruitment campaign. I began with former members who’d fallen away, boys who were still the right age and might be interested. I talked to a dozen or so former members, some older, some younger. asking why they’d fallen out of the troop. Almost universally, I got the answer that the meetings were boring and we didn’t do anything fun. So, I laid my plan before them and told them the leadership had agreed. As a sweetener, I added that after each meeting, we would reimplement some sort of game like the ones we used to play. Capture the flag was always a favorite. I got the sense many of them didn’t believe me. Why not show up for a while and see?  

 

I didn’t stop there. I knew we couldn’t survive on returning former members alone. So, I knocked on a few doors of a few friends and acquaintances who I thought might be interested but had never joined. Guys who used to run around in the same woods I did. Guys in ROTC. I talked up our proposed activities along with the current and likely returning former members they might know.  Again, I told them, give it a try. If you like it, sign on. If not, what do you lose but a little time?

 

Within a month, our meeting room was full with boys who wanted to see if I was for real. I was. We immediately started planning our first camping trip. That’s when one of our leaders pulled me aside. He counselled me on another aspect of our troop I hadn’t had to think about before. A number of our newly reconstituted patrols were filled with boys who came from neighborhoods where there wasn’t a lot of money. Unlike boys from my neighborhood, they didn’t have the fundamental supplies for camping, especially tents. And they couldn’t just tap their parents to buy them. Those were big purchases, mostly reserved for Christmas and then on layaway. Some of these kids didn’t have sleeping bags. Some used blankets, or quilts their mothers made. He advised I might need to modify my plans.

 

I didn’t. Remember when I said there was a store room in our meeting house? I said, ok, I understand. But before we scale back and lose the kids we just got, let’s check out what’s in there and see if it’s of any use. So, the first troop activity we scheduled was go through that store room. This leader tried his best to temper my expectations. As I mentioned, the tents we’d seen were canvas. He’d been in the Army. He knew dry rot was a real issue, especially in Florida, especially if any of them had been put away damp however long ago.

 

That Saturday we started pulling out tents, unrolling them and setting them up. Four-man frames, two-man pups, and one really interesting three-man version. They had some stains and smelled a little musty, but amazingly, all of them had poles and stakes. The first one we set up had dry rot in a corner at one stake loop where a pole rested. We set that one aside, forging on, now preparing for disappointment. In fact, while I directed others to keep going, I examined that one to see if there was anything to be salvaged. I spent the next half hour hand-stitching a repair with canvas thread and a needle-point needle I pressed into service, fashioning an adequate and durable if not elegant repair. As I did, report after report got called over my way. “This one’s good.” “This one, too.” “No problem here.” “Here, either.”

 

In the end, all but a couple tents we pulled out were either fine, or, like the one I nursed, needed just minor repair. A few didn’t have all the right poles or stakes but we cannibalized those from the others. By the end of the morning, we had enough tents to outfit two to three patrols as long as some didn’t mind sharing a four-man tent. All we had to do was divvy them up.

 

That led to a bit of conflict as every patrol thought they should get at least one of the big ones. I shook my head and explained. Those were going to the patrols that needed them, the ones without, not the ones that thought they would be cool but already had their own. We dedicated the pup tents to any patrol that ended up needing them on an ad hoc basis. A few kids didn’t like it, but everyone pretty much agreed it was fair.

 

But I did claim the three-man pup tent as a leadership tent for my assistant and me, which no one had a problem with, especially when I stressed the next set of leaders would get it, too. It became a kind of status symbol, exactly as I’d hoped.

 

So how did my first experiment in leadership work out? Well, that first year, we had events in ten out of twelve months, including a three-day canoe trip down almost the entirety of the St. John’s River, and a ten-mile hike into a local ranch. Not quite my goal but easily double the highest number of events we’d ever pulled off before. As well, we used each trip as an opportunity to earn merit badges and other awards that helped with our advancement.

 

At the end of that year, I said I would step aside as leader, which had always been my plan. I encouraged my assistant to take it for himself with my support. He was more than capable and ready. To assuage any fears, I said I would stay on as his assistant if he wanted, so he could rely on me if he needed to. Basically, switching positions so our overall leadership team remained intact. We were both re-elected without serious opposition. And the troop rolled on. The next year, we might have slipped to nine events. But we still had a lot of advancement in rank. Everyone was happy or at least content.

 

I score that as a win.

 

Five or so years later, I had an opportunity to put those skills to work again. At college, I’d become an off and on member of the campus Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy (FITSSFF). I’d encountered them at some point in my first couple years, and was attending meetings somewhat regularly by my sophomore year. Much like my old Boy Scout troop, I could see they were struggling. Membership hemorrhaged as the year progressed. There was a core group who were a somewhat boisterous lot that tended to put new members off. Mostly, again, as a club, we didn’t really do anything but meet and cut up. No real events, no real discussions or activities. Just kind of hanging out. Given we were all in college with science and engineering majors, most people had better places to dedicate their time.

 

By the end of spring semester, that apathy and ambivalence had begun to show. We’d started the year with maybe fifteen people showing up to meetings, including some seniors who would be graduating. We ended with five. Barely enough to qualify as a club. And even getting that many to the final meeting had been a struggle. What I didn’t know at the time was that the club president had already written a very creative club obituary to post in the campus newsletter if our final meeting came out as he expected.

 

To keep our status, we had to hold elections for club president and vice president for the next year so we could submit their names along with our current membership with our renewal forms. The problem was, of the five of us there, three refused to run, which our president knew in advance, hence the obit. Of the remaining two, which included me, this was the other guy’s first meeting. When the president opened up nominations for the next year, I looked around and said, if no one else wants it, I’ll take it. Our president looked surprised, stunned even. Done. Unanimous. The other guy took Veep. We’d survive another year. Or at least the summer.

 

This time around, I better knew what needed to be done. But unlike with Boy Scouts, I didn’t have adult leadership (I was the adult now), or a reliable second to help me (the guy we elected Veep didn’t return after the summer). But that didn’t matter. I did have our former president, now a senior, offering his help, which I gladly accepted.

 

That summer, because I was local, I crafted a plan. The first thing I wanted to do was start the year off with a bang. Every year, FITSSFF like most clubs, manned a table during freshman orientation to recruit new members. I knew it was a somewhat ineffective process. I’d skipped my freshmen orientation (much to several people’s consternation). Even if I hadn’t, I wasn’t the type of person to cruise tables looking for activities. I wanted deeds not words.

 

So, I talked to a few working engineers I knew who could put me in touch with a liaison at NASA (we were twenty miles from Cape Canaveral). I told them who I was and that I was hoping to get a speaker for my college. Ok, exactly what are you looking for? I was hoping for a subject along the lines of science fiction to science fact, which I sketched out. Let me look into it was the official reply. Eventually, they put me in touch with an engineer who said he’d be happy to speak. He just needed a projector, a microphone and a screen.

 

I scheduled the main auditorium, which seated around 300 plus (on a campus of 7000), not knowing how many people would show up. Me and the former president drew up flyers that the school activities department printed. Who knew as a club we had a standing budget with them for that? Not us until we talked to them. We crafted and hung a banner across the main thoroughfare from the dorms to the classrooms advertising it.

 

I didn’t have much hope for turnout. So I was more than astounded when I met our speaker backstage to agree on his introduction. The auditorium was well over half full. A hundred and fifty people, only a dozen of whom were former club members. Wow. That exceeded my expectations. Sadly, the speaker did not. It became apparent after he went through his first few slides that there had been a grave miscommunication somewhere. He was talking about the art on the covers of his classic pulp science fiction magazine collection. Not at all what we’d advertised. Which showed as the audience began to slowly hemorrhage as the evening wore on. By the time he’d finished, one fifty had dwindled down to fifty.

 

As he closed his talk, I stepped back to the microphone and asked people to hang out for a couple minutes. I put on a good face to hide my disappointment (and annoyance), thanking our speaker and seeing him off. Instead of returning to the microphone, I sat on the edge of the stage and addressed people directly. I am not a great public speaker, but I can do it. Somewhere in introducing myself, I stumbled over something I said, which drew a laugh, but one that I got the sense put people at ease. Laughing with me not at me. I told them who we were, gave a brief pitch off the cuff and said if they were interested to come check us out at our first meeting, giving them a time and place.

 

Again, after what I thought was a debacle of an event, I didn’t have much hope for turnout for that first meeting of the year. Once again, I was surprised when I arrived just a little early and it was standing room only. Our regular crew had ensconced themselves in the back row and began chanting my nickname as I walked in. Generalissimo! Generalissimo! Generalissimo! Our first meeting was when campus activities insisted that we take club photos, so I’d dressed the part in a fatigue jacket and a foreign legion cap with a revolutionary beard. I know I made an impression on at least one redhead in the room. But not enough of one to be first or even second in line. Dammit.

 

After a group picture, somehow, I got the meeting under control. First order of business was the remainder of our deferred elections, the results of which we had to submit with our membership list along with the club picture. By then we knew we needed a VP as well as a treasurer and secretary. A rather chaotic election ensued. Our new VP wanted to be called Il Duce. Our treasurer got elected unanimously when he came in late wearing a suit because he’d just gotten off work. He turned out to be more reliable, with more of a can-do attitude than our Veep, which worked out. I honestly don’t remember our secretary.

 

Even with all the weirdness and miscues, by the end of the night fifty people had signed the attendance list. Better than any of us had a right to expect. But I didn’t rely on sheer numbers to hold the club together. We needed to keep people coming back.

 

My first goal was to organize a mini-gaming convention once each quarter, roleplaying and wargames. When I glanced through the club’s scant archives, I found we had hosted similar ten years before. I knew we had a lot of gamers on campus and in the club so it seemed a perfect fit. Each time I never ran a game, and only managed to sit in on one due to learning crisis management, schedule adaptation and game promo on the fly. Despite none of us ever having done anything like it before, we pulled off all three, mostly based on my experience attending a couple Gen Con Souths in Jacksonville and organizing some small, informal events for my high school gaming group. All three were wildly successful judging by attendance and enthusiasm, as well as the decent attendance of our meetings. That served as a foundation.

 

We also invited members to give reviews for whatever science fiction/fantasy books they were reading after meetings. We informally discussed books and movies, and gave each other recommendations. We ended up consulting with the club’s adviser, who taught a course on science fiction, on restructuring her reading list, which necessitated a research trip to the local public library for ideas after we’d worked through very limited options in the college library. We got together informally and watched science fiction/fantasy movies that we (usually I and other officers) rented. We organized trips to the theater when new science fiction/fantasy films came around. When one of my dormmates had a meltdown and handed me all his gaming books, wargames and science fiction books because his Christian faith suddenly told him they were an evil influence on him, I accepted them and started a club library, asking for other donations, and donating every science fiction/fantasy book I read. And of course, we continued our annual ritual of showing the short film the club owned a copy of outright although no one knew how. Hand of Death. 1960s science fiction at its very best (or arguably worst).

 

In short, we did things. Things other students apparently wanted to do. We even managed to attract consistent female membership, no small trick in a genre that isn’t always welcoming or accessible to women on a campus with a 7:1 male to female ratio.

 

All of which meant that by the end of that spring quarter when we had to hold elections for the following year, we had twenty-five members show up, a week before finals.  Quite an improvement from a year earlier. Once again, I stepped aside and convinced a friend to take over. He kept things moving forward for my senior year. After I graduated, I learned the club library I’d started had grown to a point where two presidents after him got it allocated its own storeroom on campus. From humble beginnings.

 

When I looked up both organizations twenty plus years later, both had not only survived but thrived. I am sure in the intervening years each faced other crises forcing someone new to step up. I fundamentally believe that without good leadership in that critical moment, whether mine or someone else’s, either organization easily could have failed. I know in my heart that my stepping up gave them that opportunity to flourish. Because I valued them.

 

Like I currently value science, evidence, facts and truth.

 

Now, in the previous paragraphs, you read a lot of “I”. The truth is in both cases this was all a major group effort. In the first, without our adult leaders, who handled most of the logistics, without an eager, more than competent assistant, without the other patrol leaders, older mentors and rank-and-file boys willing to put in the effort, it never would have worked. FITSSFF was much the same. A lot of people chipped in with their time and effort. Without the other people in the club and one other solid officer, things wouldn’t have gotten done.

 

I don’t claim full credit for either outcome, just for having the imagination, motivation and problem-solving tenacity to convince others we could get it done. Together. And get it done we did. Sometimes people just need to be shown the way. In fact, there are a number of things I don’t remember exactly how they got done, likely because I didn’t do them. At times, things happen around me. People take up tasks that need doing, contribute contacts, attend to details I’ve missed, put out fires I never see.

 

All of which helped me when I reluctantly took on a leadership role in my engineering career. But once I did, I quickly rose from a team lead to being slated to lead multiple teams with over two dozen members and oversee a multi-million-dollar budget. And still helps me today, when I organize something as simple as a Kitten*Con.

 

Which is a long way of saying, I know a little bit about leadership and rebuilding.

 

When you lead an organization or a team, you first seek to preserve and protect it. You look out for all its members, not just the ones you like or the ones who agree with you. Not just your family, friends or base.

 

And yet, right now, we as a nation are entering a struggle for the kind of leadership we wish to see. I don’t mean that in the normal sense of a quadrennial election.

 

Although perhaps our current struggle isn’t really over leadership per se. On one side, we have someone who, while not likely to be a great leader, still wants to protect and serve the overarching organization he seeks to lead. On the other side, we have someone who, while charismatic, is a disrupter and destroyer. His record on those points is clear, at least to anyone without motes and scales obscuring their vision, purposefully or otherwise.

 

Most of my point here seems obvious, at least to me. So obvious that it’s difficult to put into words without belaboring it or sounding pedantic. By the nature of our current Orwellian environment where black is white and up down, anything I say is likely to be twisted and turned as a weapon against the idea itself by apologists and propagandists. I use those words advisedly.

 

Imagine for a moment that I had adopted that second style with either of the organizations I’d led. Now imagine I’d made it plain that I didn’t value either of those organizations at all. Imagine if instead of putting up ideas for how they could change and improve to benefit more people, all I had done was rely on pandering to a vocal few. Or imagine I’d treated the people around me the same way I’d experience in “Switching Sides”. Imagine working in that environment, with leadership who embraced it. Would either organization have survived?

 

That question might seem rhetorical or hyperbolic. And yet, I can point to interviews from decades ago outlining that this is where someone wanted us to be, with a group or party actively exploiting low voter turnout, or suppressing it, to gain a series of positions to build resumes so they could get elected to the highest offices with the expressed purpose of dismantling huge portions of the organizations they purported to lead, from local school boards to state legislatures to the federal Executive branch.

 

It was a brilliant and effective, if deeply cynical and anti-democratic, strategy. But that roadmap led to exactly where we are.

 

Back when I was a systems engineer, we tested the secure communication system our project had designed. We found that the most potent threat to its operation didn’t come from an external jammer, it was another unit in the network acting erratically. Which made sense. That errant terminal used all the same frequencies and all the same timing for its signals, it shared all the same resources and algorithms. That inside knowledge allowed it to disrupt an established, functioning communications network superbly, if in our case inadvertently, by spewing nonsense data that interfered with the otherwise orderly distribution of information.

 

The easiest way to destroy and dismantle an organization is from the inside. Which is to a large extent what we are seeing. People in power purposefully using every resource and lever within government agencies to suppress and distort the dissemination of vital information to the public, as they slowly, perhaps irrevocably, undermine and damage valued institutions central to our nation’s democratic principles, things like national security, the nonpolitical independence of scientific research, civil rights, justice, and the rule of law.

 

This is not leadership. And leadership, even merely competent leadership, is what we need to rebuild the public trust in those valued institutions and change the course we are on. And if we choose not to, may the gods of history have mercy on our souls.

 

  

© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III

Death and Taxes - Planning

When I was in high school, my best friend came from a background much different than my own. From a young age, he and his siblings worked. Not to generate a little extra spending cash like I did; they contributed to the family income out of necessity.

His mother, who was their head of household, had an interesting rule that stuck with me. When she or my friend or his brother came into a bonus or some overtime, not all of it automatically fueled the family coffers. Whoever’s windfall it was kept a portion of it to do with what they pleased. The rest went to common finances.

Now you might think this arrangement seems a little harsh. Shouldn’t the person who did the work get to say what happens to that money? Maybe. But his family lived more hand-to-mouth than I ever have, mostly due to circumstances of birth which I won’t get into. For them, middle class was a goal, not a birthright. Theirs were subsistence economics. This arrangement was a necessity to keep the family afloat.

But my friend’s mother was a very wise woman. I learned a great deal from her on a variety of subjects. Here, she was tapping a fundamental piece of economic psychology, one I’ve used to our advantage again and again.

Pay yourself first. But don’t starve yourself of a reward for your efforts or good fortune.

This is an important concept, one many people miss.

I’ve said before, personal finances are a lot like dieting. Making a radical change and going into starvation mode usually doesn’t work. In fact, most studies have found that mindset is counterproductive. Partly because we can only go so long before we need a reward or treat for our efforts. Yes, most of us are little children deep inside, or Pavlov’s pet. If we deny ourselves for too long, we are likely to binge when we get the chance to make up for what we missed. That’s deep-rooted evolutionary psychology from a time when our daily existence was often feast or famine.

I know better than fighting fundamental psychology. My id is devious and cunning. It almost always wins these fights. It will definitely fixate on what it’s missing. But if I can put it to sleep with a little treat, it will focus elsewhere.

Example time. As I said before, when Karen and I were living in Maryland, she was carrying some credit card debt. Anyone who thinks federal employees are overpaid has never tried living on one’s salary right out of school in DC. Anyway, to work it down, she needed to save some money. One of the ways she did this was by always paying herself first.

Back in the day, we didn’t use credit cards for daily expenses. Not only was it impractical, it was also actively discouraged by most businesses. For our day-to-day needs, we carried cash. Fortunately, greenbacks not the Rai stones.

Which meant every payday Karen went to the bank or ATM to withdraw money to see her through the week. To pay herself so she could work down her debt, every time she withdrew money from checking, she made an equal transfer from her checking to savings. This simple act reminded her that debt was still out there needing to be paid. At the end of each month, she took the extra she’d saved and applied it to her credit card debt, rather than just throwing in the minimum payment. In under a year, the debt was gone.

But she didn’t starve herself of a little spending cash to see her through each week. Which meant for her the practice was sustainable.

Once banks got a little more electronically sophisticated, this became easier. As I mentioned in the essay on budgets, we created a hierarchy of deposits which fuels our overall finances. Karen’s paycheck goes directly into our joint savings. From there, we have an automatic transfer to our joint checking for our normal monthly expenses. We also have two more automatic transfers to each of our personal savings accounts (where we each have another automatic transfer to our personal checking accounts). It’s a kind of waterfall effect, with money flowing in then dividing into separate pots, each without our having to intervene.

We operate out of our checking accounts. Which means we don’t see our savings on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.

As I’ve said before, we don’t miss what we don’t see.

The money that goes into our personal accounts, savings and checking, is ours to spend alone. The other person doesn’t necessarily see where it goes, unlike the joint account. That means we each get to manage our own weekly reward and savings for special purchases without having to consult the other. Yes, we still buy special things for both of us out the joint account. But I don’t have to bother her with weekly lunches or coffee, or that special game I see in the local gaming store. She doesn’t bother me about yarn or jewelry. It works for us.

And because we use our checking accounts as our operating capital to meet our immediate needs, our savings (both personal and joint) continues to grow. Though part of this works because we grew up with checking accounts, not credit and debit cards.

We didn’t stop there. We used to have two more areas of automated savings, which through circumstances has winnowed down to one.

When I started my job down here in engineering, the company I worked for took their US Savings Bond drive very seriously. They prided themselves on 100% participation and got really tiffy if the CEO didn’t get honored for it by the government every year. They put a lot of pressure on employees to participate.

Being engineers, a number of individuals I knew just contributed the minimum allowed and set it so they would never receive a bond. A friend actually fought the unofficial policy by not contributing at all which ended with him in a series of managers offices receiving lectures all the way up to a VP.

I looked at it differently. I saw it as an opportunity. I contributed something like $25 a week to build up some savings. Savings bonds weren’t a horrible investment at the time (before George H. W. Bush gutted the way interest was paid). We continued contributing through Karen’s job until Treasury (under George II) restructured the program and made it much more difficult to contribute automatically. By then, we had enough bonds to put a new roof on the house. Those bonds, which continue to increase in value, serve as our house emergency fund. They aren’t a great return, but they are guaranteed. In general, they are better than a savings account and more accessible than a CD.

Our second automated savings opportunity is longer term. Both our employers had 401k plans or equivalent. Both had some level of matching contributions. This investment pays a couple different ways.

First, the contributions are pre-tax (tax deferred until you withdraw money in retirement which should be at a lower tax rate). So immediately, we are essentially saving our tax bracket on that money (when we started around 28%). That alone is an outstanding return on investment, though as I said, the taxes are just deferred.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because her employer matches her contributions in a hierarchy, they are basically giving her money to participate. Now here, a few people get confused. They think that because their company only matches the first, say, 3% they contribute from their salary one-for-one and the next 2% at one-half-to-one that they are only gaining 4%. In reality, they are gaining 80% on that investment (they contribute 5% of their overall salary to which the company adds another 4% of their overall salary for free). That is a huge return on investment even before taking into account the average gains on the S&P.

Of course, she can contribute more than that theoretical 5%. There is a maximum annual percentage as well as an overall hard dollar maximum. And because she’s over 50, there is an additional “catch-up” contribution which basically bumps that maximum up by another quarter. Since we’ve been married, we’ve maxed out our contributions, upping hers when she turned 50.

As well, Karen’s 401k equivalent has some of the best index funds and lowest management fees in the industry (much less than 1%). Which means almost all of her money goes directly to work. And because the contributions are automated each paycheck, we take advantage of any market dips throughout the year.

But wait, there’s more (order now and you’ll also receive…). Because, again, she doesn’t make that much money, we qualify to contribute another chunk of money (with another catch-up) to personal IRAs (traditional or Roth). And because she still doesn’t make that much money, the IRS subsidizes the first $4k of our contributions with a 10% tax credit ($400). For those keeping track at home, remember that $2k savings I mentioned in the essay on Discounts? Yup, there it is, working its little heart out so I don’t have to. And yup, that first year’s contributions are guaranteed the average S&P returns regardless of what the market does.

Now you begin to see where all that money we freed up from mortgage and car payments goes. Trust me, seeing the statements of how much we’ve saved provides a tidy little jolt of dopamine each quarter. And people are paying us to do it.

Let’s do a little quick math. Let’s say you have an employer that through a combination of direct contributions and matching is willing to add $4000 a year to your 401k. Let’s say you have a 30-year career ahead of you. And let’s say, because you are already pretty lucky, that you can capture the average S&P returns for that 30 years. What would you be leaving on the table by not taking it?

Plugging that into my quick search internet compound interest calculator (with annual payments)… $693090.64. Yup, you read that right, almost $700k. And that would be on top of the $866378.90 (just over $850k) from your $5000 a year contribution from the example above. That translates to $240k and $300k over a more realistic 20-year contributing career.

Ok, let’s settle back to something many people will find more realistic. Let’s run those same numbers for getting a $200 tax credit on $2000 IRA contribution, again for 30 years. The annual tax credit alone ends up worth just under $35k. The base $2000/year contribution ends up at just under $350k. (see the Notes and Asides for a caveat to these calculations)

Thirty years. For most people with a full retirement age of 67, that means starting those contributions at 37 years old. Quite doable.

Now of course, with inflation, management fees and the vagaries of the market, it’s not quite worth that much, but you get the idea. That’s a lot of money left on the table.

Pay yourself first, especially for retirement. What you don’t see, you won’t miss. And always take the free stuff. Win-win-win.

And there’s one more little tax break we take advantage of, Karen’s Flexible Savings Account, which basically allows us to spend pre-tax money each year on medical expenses (including dental checkups and glasses). While the rules are more Byzantine than an HSA, and the amount we can contribute is limited, we can’t beat the subsidy on routine medical we get from it being pre-tax. Beats the S&P any day.

Of course, before we were in that position, we were paying down debt. So, when Karen received a small inheritance, she used half of it to pay off the remaining note on her car. The other half she used to take us on a trip. When I was deep into overtime the year we got married, over half that money got poured into the mortgage, which is how we eliminated it even earlier. The other half went into things we wanted around the house. Now, if Karen gets overtime, a bonus or travel money (which doesn’t always happen and isn’t much), half gets dedicated to funding our IRAs and half usually goes to vacations (with at least some amount to yarn).

Which brings me back to allowances and another principle we live by: When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Funny thing about an allowance. In my experience, until very recently, I would always spend whatever money was in my pocket. When I had very little money, I didn’t spend it if I didn’t have it. When I increased my allowance, I usually spent close to the limit I carried. By the way, yes, I used to track this in my budget numbers, mostly out of curiosity.

Again, this is fundamental psychology for most of us. If you don’t have it, you won’t spend it. Of course, credit cards changed that calculus significantly. With them, it’s quite easy to spend what I don’t necessarily have, or at least want to have.

Remember way back in the essay on budgets where I said there were two kinds of budgets, a long-term and a short-term, and I said I’d get to the short-term later? Guess what time it is.

Full disclosure, I ran across this exercise in some article or book about twenty-five years ago. Credit cards had just begun to become ubiquitous for daily purchases, at least in certain crowds, which included me at the time. Because of the ease of purchases, more and more people were getting into trouble with them.

The exercise went like this. Set your credit card (or debit card) aside for a month. Each week, take out your allowance from the bank in cash. Yes, most people have what they consider to be an allowance, even if not a formally designated one. Instead of putting that cash in your wallet, stick it in a small notebook you carry in your pocket. Every time you spend any money, write it in that notebook with a date and time. It doesn’t matter how small the amount, even $1. Just make sure it’s noted every time.

At the end of the month, review those purchases. Group them into categories which can be broad or narrow, like lunches, dinners, coffee, movies, drinks, clothes, jewelry, craft or hobby supplies, gifts, gas, cigarettes, etc. Whatever categories best fit. How many of those purchases do you not remember making? How many that you remember gave you a distinct sense of joy? How many were just out of habit?

Many people end up being amazed how much they spend on coffee in a month. Or alcohol. Or cigarettes. Multiplying that by 12 gives you how much you spend on any given category in a year. The cliché example is buying coffee on your way to work each morning. It’s only $5. I hear that from people all the time. It’s only $5. That’s $25 a week, or $1250 a year. Even $5 a week is $250 a year. The question to then ask is do you get that level of enjoyment out of that purchase?

For me, this was a useful exercise. One of the things it changed was that instead of stopping in the company cafeteria for coffee each morning (which was crap), or buying into one of many coffee funds (which were also crap), I bought a thermos and started bringing in coffee I brewed at home (which was definitely not crap). A cheaper, better alternative. I also cut back going out to lunch to only Fridays, which had the added side benefit that I lost weight even though I wasn’t really trying to. All of which meant my allowance stretched farther and my savings built up faster (as well as my looking more svelte).

Now I’ve never really liked shopping but once upon a time in her princess days, Karen did. Every now and then she still gets the itch (she grew up as a mall child, just like me). She finds that sometimes grocery shopping can fulfill that urge. Other times, it’s thumbing through catalogs. If she’s really jonesing, she goes shopping for shoes or bras she really needs. That almost always cures her. It’s a weird trick but one that works for her and doesn’t burn through her allowance buying things she doesn’t necessarily want or need. In favor of things she does, like yarn.

When it’s gone, it’s gone.

That same philosophy applies to us with maintenance.

A number of years ago, we were watching an American Experience on the Great Depression. One of the sayings used by people who went through it or were born into it was, “Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do or Do Without”. When I bounced that off my aunt, who was born in the middle of it, she said, that’s exactly right. So many people could learn from that in today’s disposable society.

For us, that translates to waste not, want not. As I’ve mentioned earlier, we will fix or improve things rather than immediately buying new. Which, oddly, seems to get reflected in the amount of trash we put out compared to our neighbor’s trash migration each week (they are always coming home with something). A personal choice.

But we have found that when we take care of things, we value them longer. And if we have fewer of them, we don’t get paralyzed by having too many choices, which is another condition confirmed by psychological studies. More on that in another essay.

In general, maintaining a car or the AC, though somewhat of a hassle, is easier than the bigger hassle of buying a new one. And as I’ve said before, we prefer to buy quality which we think will last. It probably helps that neither of us ever looks forward to shopping for new things because our tastes run far enough outside the norm that we can rarely find what we want or envision.

As I mentioned, my car is almost 30 years old. A bunch of years ago, a friend who we gamed with offered me double its Blue Book value. Cash. Tomorrow. He was dead serious. As was I when I turned him down. But to get an offer for half of what I’d paid for it a decade later said something about both the initial choice I’d made and the way I’d taken care of it. Our mechanic used to make us offers to sell it all the time. Of course, I’ve replaced the roof and Karen’s now resewn the seats.

We’ve bought one set of bedroom furniture since we’ve been married. It’s solid pine and matches a number of bookshelves, the spare bedroom set, end tables, a set of storage cubes, a corner cabinet, a chair, a sweater chest, a stereo cabinet, a wine rack and the game table. We picked it up in stages as we could afford from various manufacturers, some at closeout. Several years ago, when we had a mold issue in the house, we had to take all of it out into the garage and revarnish it. I’ve had to repair a notch taken out of one of the bookshelves. Just last month, Karen had to replace the cheap staples they used on her drawer fronts with screws.

But we knew when we bought it that it would last if we took care of it. Sure, there are scratches from various cats either using a piece as a launching board or making a hard landing. But those varnished over scars just remind us of those missing cats. And in the intervening years, Karen has made a paperback shelf, a DVD cabinet, two CD cabinets and a game table top to match the set. And all of it still glows when it catches sunlight.

As another example, when we first moved into the house, Karen really wanted a solid wood front door. We both wanted a door with a window but she insisted on solid wood. We made a deal. If she took care of it, we would get it. Which she has. Every year, she goes out, sands it and applies a fresh coat of spar varnish. This year, she made repairs to the jam where it had rotted from below. But looking at it, you wouldn’t think it was a 25-year-old door. We’ve known people who couldn’t get their solid wood doors past year five. Personally, I don’t think I could have. But Karen did.

A quick third example. When we bought the house, the back bathroom had countertops that could best be described as Flintstone fluorescent green marble. Yeah, lovely. Oddly, Karen (it was her primary bathroom) decided that she didn’t really want that color scheme. But instead of ripping out the cabinets and countertop and replacing them with something new, she had it resurfaced with a new laminate including replacement cabinet doors and drawer fronts for a fraction of the cost. And that minor improvement endures to this day as both of us remain content with the conservative color scheme she chose.

And in case you think it’s just her, ask me about the 25-year-old pair of Birkenstocks I glue back together every time the leather separates or the cork cracks. They cost a lot more than regular shoes, but no pair of sneakers has ever lasted that long. And I wear them every day around the house. Or ask about the only pair of dress shoes I’ve ever bought that still hold a polish.

Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. Our house is 40 years-old this year. Our cars are 30 and 17. Our washer (with a new knob) and dryer, almost 30. Our stereo and speakers (some of which we’ve refoamed), 25. Our freezer, almost 20. Our fridge and dishwasher, 15. Our TV (with a replaced power supply), 14. Our stove is original to the house. The list of items we could have upgraded or replaced for newer models with more features goes on and on. But what we have suits our needs and desires just fine. Quality shines.

I’ve found that there is something about pride of ownership that makes people envy what you have just as much as if you had the biggest, brightest, newest, ooooow shiny. And sweat-equity costs so much less than replacement if you start with good bones.

Simplicity, discipline, patience and planning.

Which brings me briefly to the first part of the title. Planning for the inevitable but unforeseen.

A number of years ago, I was talking to my mother when the subject of life insurance came up. I mentioned that while Karen has a basic amount provided through her job (with no premiums for us), we don’t have a policy on me. She was aghast. How could we not have life insurance? (kind of missing the point we did on Karen, just not on me. When I was in engineering, I carried a minimum policy, too).

Well, we don’t really need life insurance at this stage of our lives. The intent of life insurance is to provide a replacement income in case someone dies. It makes a lot of sense for young couples just starting out or couples with kids, or anyone with a dependent who might not be able to make up that income. A minimal amount makes sense to save someone burial costs (which we could get for free through our credit union). We are not in that position. If we had kids, it might be different.

Insurance at its heart is a hedge against uncertainty. In most cases the uncertainty is likely to occur, we just don’t know when. Everyone dies. The vast majority of us get sick. Many people get into auto accidents, whether through their fault or someone else’s. At its heart, the insurance industry, which has been around at least 2000 years, studies the average occurrence of various possibilities and their costs in various locations (ok, this is how it ideally works, so save the snark).

Because like most of people who don’t have the operating manual to their crystal balls, we don’t know whether certain events will occur (like a direct hit by a hurricane, or breast cancer) or when (like dying). In general, insurance provides a good hedge against that uncertainty, in much the same way a fixed interest rate, fixed payment mortgage hedges against interest rate uncertainty. With insurance, pooling the risk among a large enough population is what allows those collected statistics to work.

In general, I like hedges against uncertainty. If I had any lingering doubts, 2007 cured me of them. But likely I would have been content either way because I understand the math and how the dice can roll.

In the same way, while I would never willingly go without health insurance (having it in 2007 paid us to the tune of $300k in dividends), we don’t need dental insurance right now (it’s a wash because our teeth are sound). We might be able to get our money out of vision insurance but every time I’ve run the numbers, it’s been basically a wash with the other discounts we can unlock (which don’t stack).

Homeowners insurance we still have even though we no longer have a mortgage (which requires it). Though with the rise in premiums and deductibles for wind-storm damage, it might be better to get an umbrella liability policy combined with another for fire, theft and casualty. I’m not quite ready to make that leap.

Auto insurance is required by law, and I am generally lawful at heart. Though with the age of our vehicles, comprehensive really doesn’t do us much good (except for replacement windshields for the Jeep, which has needed two). And because we have good health insurance, we don’t really need the coverage for uninsured motorists as I understand it.

We’ve considered long-term care insurance through Karen’s work but unfortunately, the opportunity to sign up for it only comes around every 5-10 years. The last time it did, she was still disqualified for being too close to her final treatment. Regardless, I have heard mixed reviews on whether you can ever get your money out of your premiums. It is increasingly difficult.

All of these are planning trade-offs with potential savings and expenditures that we weigh out year after year as our situation changes. But like an old Soviet 5-year forecast, life often has other plans.

Which is why we keep living below our means. As we plan to do for the foreseeable future. 

© 2019 Edward P. Morgan III 

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