I submit this brief entry on Friday, August 10, 2018.
My work week would be over by now, however I took my
thirteenth vacation day of 2018 today.
I had originally intended to take my daughter and perhaps
one of her friends to the beach in Evanston today, and it would have been a
perfect day for it, about ninety degrees.
However, my son being the musician that he is and a trumpet
player and lover, in particular, he began asking me about two weeks ago if I
would drive him to meet with and tour a custom trumpet manufacturer in Chicago,
so that is what we did today.
We also took a friend of his who happens to be a girl but,
let me tell you, this particular young woman is of the highest caliber and a
middle aged mensch can hope that someday the two of them will hit it off a
little more, if you know what I mean.
This particular friend happens to have just been admitted into the
top-rated music school in the country, Indiana, and is moving into her dorm tomorrow.
Regardless, I took today off and took my son, his friend who
is a girl and my daughter to the Schilke Music factory where my son and his
friend tried out various trumpets, flugelhorns, cornets and mouthpieces for
about an hour and then we toured the factory floor to learn how the trumpets
and mouthpieces are made step-by-step for another hour.
My daughter, a trombone player, made the only purchase which
was a custom mouthpiece for her new hand-made custom trombone (that I have yet
to pay a dime for) that we purchased last month that ran us $83 including tax.
I took everyone out for a big
lunch, of course, at Portillo’s in Northlake.
One of the things that I like about being home is getting to
collect our mail.
I realize that it is an old-fashioned notion, but I like to get
the mail before my wife does for some reason.
Sometimes she tossed out a financial-type of mail with
personal information on it without ripping it up or putting it in our shred
pile, which used to drive me nuts. I use
the past tense because she no longer does that now that my identity has been
completely stolen and her B. of A. credit card including her own personal
identity questions have been stolen twice in the last few months.
I just like to get at it before she does and the stupid joke
that I make almost every time is, “Darn, there is no big check in the
mail.” I write almost because every so
often we receive a gift check from her father or a dividend from a project that
my late father must have done over twenty years ago.
Every quarter we receive a “Big Fat Check”
from Ebates as a result of some of the online shopping that my wife does.
When she gets the mail those days, she hands the check to me
or points it out in our mail slot and tells me “Here is the big check in the
mail that you have been waiting for.”
So being home today and getting the mail out of our box when
we returned home from our trip, I saw that all seven pieces of our mail were
addressed to me today. This is not
common. Although all the utilities are
in my name, my wife typically gets a few solicitations per day and has her own
credit cards and what not. Our children
each get a few pieces of mail per week, typically music- or dance-related.
Not that I expected a heart-felt letter from a friend or an
invitation to a party or whatever, but I was nonetheless surprised to see that
all seven pieces of mail had something to do with money. We usually get at least a few things that do
not have to do with money, but today is not one of those days.
The seven items in my mail today, in alphabetical order,
are:
- A 2018 annual fund solicitation from the Alzheimer’s Association, Illinois Chapter;
- My Chase credit card statement;
- Our Citizens One home loan mortgage statement;
- A Duane Blanton Plumbing solicitation;
- A 2018 annual fund solicitation from the march of dimes;
- Our Nicor Gas statement; and
- Another bill from State Farm for our homeowner’s insurance.
 |
| All seven pieces of mail today referenced money. |
One thing is that I have been more charitable of late. There are a few reasons for this.
One reason is that in most of the vast amount of self-help
and financial reading that I have been doing for the past two-and-a-half years,
since the beginning of 2016, virtually all of the authors write about giving
back. It’s not all about Gimme Gimme Gimme. There is satisfaction of giving back, and it
is also the right thing to do.
Even before reading this, I was an annual giver to Ronald
McDonald House ever since they put me up there for four nights when our son was
suddenly rushed to Lurie Children’s Hospital about five years ago. He has been hospitalized again since then, but I do not
care to get into that.
The time when he was rushed from the suburban hospital where
I drove him while he was experiencing severe chest pains at the age of fifteen
to the children’s hospital downtown was one of the scariest and most stressful
things that I have lived through.
Discussing whether our son should have open-heart surgery or not with my
wife over the phone and then in person was extremely stressful.
After being awake for over two days straight, I will never
forget the feeling of being driven over to the Ronald McDonald House in Chicago
where a beautiful room with a brand new bed and a huge gift basket filled with
treats was waiting for me after filling out a form with someone.
I am not ashamed to write that tears filled my eyes, as I
had never been given something like that in my life. My parents and relatives were always very
generous to me, but I had never been given something that felt like charity
before.
Long story short, after my son was discharged and I checked out of Ronald McDonald House, the associate asked me for a
minimum $40 payment. She explained that
$10 per night only covers about ten percent of the cost of putting someone up
for the night, but asking people to contribute a little something makes them feel better about staying
there, like they are not completely accepting charity.
She asked if it would be a hardship for me to cover the $40, since it was
not mandatory, just something that they encouraged. I asked her to add an additional hundred
bucks to my “bill,” but I would have gladly payed two or three times that
much. Before Ronald McDonald House was
mentioned as a possibility, I was looking up hotels for $300 per night in the
vicinity.
When the mail showed up that December asking for a donation,
I gladly wrote out a check for $50 as the first actual monetary donation that I
had made to a charity over ten or twenty bucks.
The next year, and every year since, I have sent $100 to
Ronald McDonald House, and I hope to be able to send a lot more than that in
the future. It would please me greatly if I could send $1,000 or more, but I am not in the position to do that these days. I have too many other bills that I am Privileged to Pay.
Earlier this year, I received an email solicitation from
Lurie Children’s Hospital mentioning that for every dollar donated, my favorite
sandwich chain, Jersey Mike’s, would match the amount.
So I sent another $100 to Lurie’s which, with the $100 that
I will send to Ronald McDonald House this December, will be my financial
donations for the year. Besides handing out somewhere around fifty bucks to people begging for money.
If you have never donated to charity by stroking an actual
check, or by putting it on your credit card like I did with Lurie Children's Hospital, let me
tell you what happens.
Like getting on the magazine "sucker list" that I am on due
to subscribing to numerous magazines over the years, the word gets out somehow
that you have donated to charity.
Perhaps these organizations solicit you through a third
party who also solicits for other organizations.
I do not know, but I do know that after donating to Lurie Children's in April, I have received numerous solicitations to donate.
I almost forgot the second reason, which pertains to who I
am and what this blog is.
Mensch is a Yiddish word meaning someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being "a real mensch" is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous. (Rosten, Leo. 1968. The Joys of Yiddish. New York: Pocket Books. 237).
My mother is a big-time mensch in so many ways that a blog
by her would be better-received than this one and you would likely enjoy her
writing more than mine. Add a quarter
century of being a high school and college English teacher, and her actual
writing skills are far superior to mine.
Also, if she only had twenty dollars in her purse and saw a
pitiful-looking scuffed up beggar on the street, she would most likely hand her
twenty to that person.
Years ago, she was driving me somewhere in Chicago and, at
least three times, she handed dollars to people begging in the
intersections.
I said something to the effect of “You can never have enough
money to help out everyone who is begging for it in the streets of Chicago.”
She replied by saying that if she could help a few people
out who, by unknown circumstances, were down on their luck and needed the
dollars more than she did, that she is glad to be able to help them a little bit.
That line alone could set off numerous hours and many pages of
debate.
Were the beggars alcoholics?
Heroin addicts? Were they just
released from prison? Were they child
beaters? Were they the kids who never
tried in school? Were they bullies who
deserved where they are now? Were the
women trying to escape abusive relationships?
Were they people who never caught a break, ever? Were they too lazy to work?
We’ll never know.
All we know is that my mother and I were driving for a nice
dinner out together in downtown that she had paid something like $250 per ticket for, and she was willing to hand
out five spots to three or four different people who walked up to our car
carrying signs asking for money. Some of
those people may have made more that day than you or I did. I’ll never know.
What I do know is that my mother has been donating to Greenpeace for many years and I cannot even guess all the things that she donates to
now. I know that there is some education
fund for low income students that she donates to, but I forget what it is.
The other things are boring and typical.
Citizens One is our mortgage statement, which reminds me
that I need to refinance our mortgage within the next two to three months after
having put it off for far too long.
As of today, my wife and I owe $126,235.73 on our home that
may be worth about $250,000 on a good day.
Nicor is the natural gas company that serves the suburban
Chicago market. I have been paying this
bill automatically for a very long time, at least twelve years, and this
correspondence informs me that $27.19 will be automatically withdrawn from our
checking account on August 28th.
That for using 22.79 Therms in the twenty-eight day span of July 6th
through August 3rd.
My Chase Visa bill was actually for $1,113.31, however that
has been reduced by $200.
The entirety of those charges were for $752 plus the
refunded $200 security deposit for renting a farmhouse in the vicinity of the
Wisconsin Dells for three days last month.
The other $150 was for three meals out including Moosejaw Pizza and High
Rock Café, two of the better places that we ate in the Dells.
The State Farm insurance bill is still screwed up and is a
“last chance to pay” letter. I called
and had the insured value of our home reduced by a hundred grand a few weeks
ago, thus the amount billed should be about $450 for the next six months rather
than the $562.50 on this bill.
“Like a Good Neighbor” my ass!
Duane Blanton Plumbing has made thousands off of us. We live in an old neighborhood where the
sewer connections from the houses to the street have all failed by now.
Twice, we have paid Blanton around three grand to replace
rotted pipes out with PVC. Together, the
five thousand plus that we have paid this company has replaced the entirety of
the pipes leading from our humble middle class home to the sanitary sewer
system across the street from us.
A little portion of this offers a $25 coupon for any work
performed.
It’s like a jinx when you get something like this from a
plumber, thus I do not dare throw it in the recycle bin. I know that if I do, I will come to regret
not getting that paltry $25 off.
Since I have dubbed myself “Money Mensch,” I am supposed to
write that every $25 is important, that money is fungible and that fortunes
have been built off of $25 increments. All of which are true.
After all, if I make $25 this
month by selling thirteen copies of the book detailing my experiences as a Probation Officer, I would be pretty happy.
Why then shouldn’t I care about saving $25 on our next big plumbing
job? I don’t know. Will you tell me?
Anyway, that is the long story about my mail today.
Pretty boring, but I found it kind of interesting because
all seven were just about money. Here’s
what you owe us, please send us a donation and here’s how much we are taking from
your account.
The best part of all is that besides detailing the $2,200
and change that will be leaving our checking account soon between our mortgage,
our homeowner’s insurance, my credit card and our gas bill, I will take the
dime out of the March of Dimes solicitation, put it in our change jar, and I
will be ten cents closer to finally becoming a true Money Mensch.
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