It Isn’t Saving

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Clarissa

September 19, 2016

N is reading a book on how to save money (for Klara’s college) and every suggestion in there angers me.

“You can save money but eating at home instead of eating out! Hanging the clothes out to dry on a string instead of using the dryer! Not using the dry cleaner’s and instead using substitute dry cleaning methods at home! Get rid of one of the cars!”

I say, let’s also save some cash on not letting the poor fool (who will do all this housework) go to the dentist’s, not buy her clothes or shoes, and lock her up at home to avoid any money being spent on her needs.

It ain’t “saving” if somebody has got to pay for it with their time and effort.

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9 responses to “It Isn’t Saving”

Shakti

September 19, 2016

“You can save money but eating at home instead of eating out! Hanging the clothes out to dry on a string instead of using the dryer! Not using the dry cleaner’s and instead using substitute dry cleaning methods at home! Get rid of one of the cars!”

Have you read Helaine Olen’s Pound Foolish? That book addresses exactly that kind of tips.
College costs have risen exponentially faster than inflation. Even if you did all of that penny ante nonsense the money you’d save, at average rate of return in a market portfolio wouldn’t pay for anyone’s college and grad school expenses.

I do all of that (except the car because a good public transportation system does not exist where I live), but seriously it’s not going to fund my retirement (ha!) or some future child’s college expenses.

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1. Z
  
  September 19, 2016
  
  Right. These measures will not save nearly enough and may well have hidden costs. Or, they’re already being undertaken. A friend of mine lives in an apartment where there is one bathroom per two apartments, and does not have a refrigerator but uses an ice chest, and shops at Good Will, and by these economies is able to fund some (still shoestring, but interesting and at times foreign) travel she could otherwise not afford. But that’s much less than what college costs would be and it is very economical indeed.
  
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xykademiqz

September 19, 2016

It ain’t “saving” if somebody has got to pay for it with their time and effort.

Absolutely! Thank you.

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Socal dendrite

September 19, 2016

Yes!!!

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Alex

September 19, 2016

Doing those things is a very good idea, and it may be very worthwhile time and effort, but you’re right, it’s not saving. Doing work to have money to put away is investing.

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Jones

September 19, 2016

Speaking of saving, you may have missed this bit from Razib Khan:

The Unz Review —
“The ending of the liberal interregnum”:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/the-ending-of-the-liberal-interregnum/

“Though I hope that [Alice] Dreger and her fellow travelers succeed in rolling back the clock, I suspect that the battle here is lost. She points out, correctly, that the total politicization of academia will destroy its existence as a producer of truth in any independent and objective manner. More concretely, she suggests it is likely that conservatives will simply start to defund and direct higher education even more stridently than they do now, because they will correctly see higher education as purely a tool toward the politics of their antagonists …”

“Dreger already points to the path we will probably have to take: gut the public universities even more than we have … But much learning will be privatized, and knowledge will spread through segregated’safe spaces.’ Those of us who read and think will continue to read and think, like we always have. We just won’t have institutional backing, because there’s not going to be a societal consensus for such support.”

It was a good project and a worthwhile prospect while it lasted, but …

Castalia has been infiltrated, therefore Castalia must fall so that there may yet be something left to save.

The barbarians aren’t at the gate anymore — they work in university administration now.

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cliff arroyo

September 20, 2016

“It ain’t ”

You used “ain’t”? Eeeeerkkk!

I shall now repair to the fainting couch, you make wake me in 15 to 20 minutes and I would appreciate a gin fizz to help me regain my composure, or maybe make that 30 minutes and make that two gin fizzes.

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1. David Gendron
  
  September 20, 2016
  
  At least, she doesn’t use it in a formal writing.
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  September 20, 2016
  
  I always wanted to try a gin fizz. It sounds very Southern.
  
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