Stealing from His College Fund to Pay for His Future

No, this isn't the story of how I robbed my child's 529 so I could buy him a hockey kit in the hopes that he'd one day become a famous NHL player (although I'd totally do that). This is the story of a walk to the train station that I took this week.

On my way to work, I always have a buck in my pocket for my paper guy. He hangs out outside my coffee house and sells the local homeless newspaper. Now, I don't like newspapers. I don't like the extra paper waste or the fact that I only ever want to read a few pages anyway, and then I grump at the wad of stuff I have to carry around until I find a recycling bin.

But this guy is great. He's cleaned up his life (he went sober on his birthday one year, making the anniversary an easy one to remember) and he works for a living. But that living isn't much--I've never asked him if he's still homeless, but that's not really my business anyway. He's doing his job and he's lucky to have one (as am I).

So one day, after weeks of him greeting me happily and shooting the occasional breeze, I said to him "I don't want a paper, but I'll buy one off you anyway." I gave him a dollar and I let him resell the paper I just bought.

Yes, I do realize that what I did was just give him a dollar (which didn't make it back to the paper, and frankly, wasn't supposed to), but it was the thought of the thing. I didn't want the paper, but I wanted him to get paid--for being a genuinely cheery person, if nothing else.

I "buy a paper" from him fairly often. I also give money to other people who ask for it when I have an extra buck. It's not hugely often because I always give dollars, never coins--loose change, I keep for my son's college fund.

When I was younger, I asked my family for money for Christmas one year. It was to buy my own new shiny computer. Imagine my surprise when my eldest brother gave me a gigantic pink piggy bank. Now, this could have been the sort of gift that says "stop begging money off the rest of us and save it yourself, Peace," but it was stuffed with a $50 bill, so I didn't complain.

I did, however, keep the pig. Have for 25 years. And I use it--I usually collect a couple hundred dollars of spare change in a year, which is a nice wad to use for a birthday dinner and whatever I'm into at the time. But once we started trying to build a family, that pig became ourchildren's college fund pig. All spare change goes into the pig and, once a year the pig donates its innards to a savings account that is never touched.

So any spare change is our son's, and we joke that, when we spend change, we're stealing from his college fund. Except that, a few days ago, it was amazingly windy and cold and just miserable. And there was a guy outside of one of the convenience stores I pass by on my way to work. And I didn't have a dollar, but I did have about 75 cents in change. I dropped my son's college fund into a street guy's paper cup.

Am I a bad parent? Well, probably, but not because I gave away that money. One problem I find with the world--especially in big cities, for some reason--is that everyone thinks everyone else is out for something. Everyone's got an angle, right? That homeless guy? Probably not homeless at all. And if he is, he's probably only using the money to get high or something.

I don't think that's always true (I'm not naive enough to think it's never true). I think sometimes, people are just down on their luck. And if you have 75 cents, is it that bad a thing to give it to them?

What does this have to do with my son's future? I think respect for everyone is one of the most useful lessons we can impart to our children. I think that meeting someone's eyes when they ask you for money--even if you quietly say "I'm sorry, I have nothing to give"--is an act of respect that teaches a child a lesson. Homeless people are invisible and rudely ignored and so are small children in trouble and women being beaten and countries full of people being murdered by their own governments. It's a brutal fact of life and it just shouldn't have to be.

So maybe, just maybe, tossing 75 cents to an invisible man and thanking him for his "God bless you" as I walk away isn't stealing from my son's college fund at all--it's just making a down payment on a more compassionate, respectful, visible world for him and his children.

How Green Is Your President?

Barack Obama has been in office about a month now, so I thought it was time to see exactly how much damage he's done to the environment.

Let's leave the stimulus plan, which at 900 pages created a minimum of half a million pages of paper waste and attendant ink and electricity usage. That's not just his fault, it's the fault of the Congress, too. (Would they save money, do you think, if they worked electronically more often instead of printing out absolutely everything?) No, let's just look at the president's movements since he took office and do the math from there, yes?

Inauguration Day: Seriously, no way I can assess the environmental damage of the entire day. All I'm going to do here is calculate the miles he actually traveled. The answer there is: miles from White House to church to Capitol to White House and an average of miles to all of the parties. Times five, because that's the number of cars in his typical entourage on that day. This all works out to about 75 miles (remember, it's times five).

Week One: As I recall, he spent the first week pretty much in DC, so maybe we say another 35 for that, to cover going to and fro trying to get the stimulus and such off the ground.

Week Two: One trip to Williamsburg, VA via Air Force One. 500 airplane miles (AMs) round trip air, plus 100 car miles for the week.

Week Three: DC to Camp David to DC (200 miles via helicopter, roundtrip); DC to Elkhart, IN to DC (1000 AMs roundtrip); DC to Fort Myers, FL (900 AMs), to Springfield, IL (1050 AMs), to Peoria, IL (90 AMs), to Chicago, IL (135 AMs). Add at least 150 car miles for the whole week.

Week Four: Chicago, IL, to DC (590 AMs); DC to Denver, CO, to DC (3000 AMs roundtrip); DC to Ottawa, Canada, (projected back to DC) (1000 AMs roundtrip). Say 200 car miles for the week.

Miscellaneous: Because the president uses the White House Helicopter to go to and from the local airport and other places, I'm adding 100 helicopter miles to his entire time in office so far. Also, I'm assuming the gas mileage of an SUV for the car miles [~15 mpg]--which, granted, might be overstating the efficiency of his vehicles.

Let's do the math now (I love math!): (560 car miles [.5 tons CO2]) + (300 helicopter miles [.7 tons CO2]) + (8625 airplane miles [4.0 tons CO2]) = 5.2 tons of CO2 used.

By one person. In one month.

If we assume that this is an average month, by the time the president finishes his first (and hopefully not last) term, he will have burned 250 tons of CO2 on travel alone--I'd love to know the energy profile of the White House and its grounds, but I'm thinking that might be a state secret.

So? Ways he could reduce this impact? Some are simple yet complex (stop driving around DC with two cars ahead of you and two trailing behind--which would probably be perceived as too much of a security risk) and some are much more difficult (not meeting face to face with other world leaders is a problem as it paints you as elitist or worse). I do wish more worldwide discussions would be held via conference call. I wish there was some sort of international security flight service so that dignitaries from countries nearby each other could all be picked up in the same secure plane and flown to whatever conference they're heading for.

Heck, I'd like to wish our president flew a more fuel-efficient plane!

While none of that is ever likely to come to fruition, I do think it's interesting to think about the impact that the global village is having on... well, the globe. We want to see friends and family from across the world, we need to connect with our clients hundreds of miles away... It's all complicated.

So the next time you think about driving the five blocks to the sandwich store, remember that every mile you don't drive is one that a world leader can use to hobnob with other world leaders.

...

Doesn't sound like much of a trade-off, huh?

What exactly is the cost of living?

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
--Anita Koddick
(Donate a mosquito net at Nothing But Nets and help prevent deaths by malaria)

People talk about the cost of living. They talk a lot about how people the world over are farther in debt than they've ever been, how people are living far beyond their means, how if we all just bought only what we could afford, we would all be stronger and more financially secure.

So let's look at that. For example, here's a typical day's food for me when I eat at home (we aren't factoring in the days I visit Starbuck's in the morning and a local Italian joint for dinner):

• breakfast
  1 cup Special K cereal (approximately 50 cents per serving)
  1/2 cup skim milk (~ 50 cents)
• Snack
  1 apple (organic, so $1)
• Lunch
  Usually a stew of some sort, with meat ($4.50-$8.00, depending on the meat and the vegetables chosen)
  1 cup berries and plain yogurt ($1.50--not a pre-made fruit yogurt, but fresh fruit and nonfat yogurt)
• Snack
  1 oz. chips (50 cents if you buy a bulk bag of chips)
• Dinner
  4 oz. meat ($1, less if it's on sale)
  1 cup green beans ($1 [organic again--pricey])
  1 cup roasted potatoes ($1.50 at least)
• Bed time snack
  1/2 cp. ice cream (50 cents)

Added up, that day's food cost me about $14. Now, I do spend the extra money to buy organic food and I do buy brand names and as you'll notice, I do eat meat (working on that). I suppose if you didn't you could probably buy all of that for about $9. Maybe. If you had the time and place to cook. That also (because I do count calories and buy lowfat foods) all came to 1450 calories, which is a little less than a normal-sized woman my age and height should eat to get her entire day's worth of vitamin and mineral requirements.

I make considerably more than $14 a day. I can very comfortably afford to eat all of that and keep trim and keep money in my pocket. I can easily live within my means and still keep myself nutritionally stable.

The US Census defines a single individual (termed "unrelated individual") living below the poverty line as one who makes just over $10,500 a year. A family of four living below the poverty line makes only twice that, not four times that.

$10,500 a year works out to $28.76 a day over 365 days. So, my meals for an average day would take half of that person's salary if he or she lived here. If you financially slimmed down that menu to $9, it would still take about a third. So, little money left for housing, clothing, anything...

Yes, you can eat more cheaply in a metropolitan city such as this one. You can. The menu can be varied to some extent, but the basic truth is, living within your means when you have little in the way of means is extremely difficult. Let's not talk about the fact that, even if you are in dire financial straights, a single person who actually has a place to rent, will get no more than a maximum of $150 a month in food stamps--half what it would cost to buy all that food. And to get that maximum, you have to beg--because you don't feel like life is hard enough for you already!

Now, I get this information from the US Census and my state's department of human services. I cannot discuss living within your means in the vast areas of the world where people live on less than a dollar a day because I do not know how much things cost there. I couldn't even tell you what it costs to live in New York or LA or Denver. I only know here. And they say you should write what you know, so...

What I can say is that things like soup kitchens and food pantries and aid organizations do a lot more than just give a handout. If you work a minimum wage job (current federal minimum wage in the US is $6.55) for 40 hours a week, you make, after taxes, approximately $10,900.00. Imagine raising two kids and supporting a spouse (who has to be stay at home whether he or she wants to or not because you can't afford the $400.00 a month minimum daycare that one child costs, much less two) on a wage that means one day of 1450 calorie meals for one person eats up a third of your daily income. And remember that that doesn't include days you have to take off because you're sick (because you probably don't have paid days off) or days the company is closed (because you don't have paid holidays) or the days you're not slated to work because the company just can't employ you full time. And if you and your spouse can figure out a way for one of you to work nights and the other days so that the children are taken care of, does that really make things better? Yes, you'll get more food on the table and the chance to keep the table, but is that a marriage anymore if you never see each other?

Aid from social community-based nonprofits help preserve a little dignity and a lot of family--if the aid is available.

So here comes that part I was talking about in my last post where I say there are things you can do.

Educate yourself:

• Read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. It's an interesting experiment of a woman, who normally makes quite a lot, taking off a year to work for minimum wage. (At least she can go back to her paying job and the royalties she makes off her books.)
• Check out the US Census Household and Individual data by subject index--or your own country's census bureau website. It's full of very interesting and eye-opening information.
  

Use yourself:

• Call your local church or look in the phone book for a community food pantry. Ask if they have soup kitchen days you can volunteer at. Ask if they have enough people to help keep the pantry stocked and organized. Ask if you can donate just a couple of hours a week--even less in some places is a help. My local church does a sandwich Sunday the third Sunday of every month, when people can come in between services and make bag lunches and give them out to the homeless and needy people who live around the area. It's a great way to do something to help change things, and it requires about an hour a week of your time.

Use your means:If you have money you can donate, there are tons of people who will help you get it to the right people.

• Share Our Strength is a group devoted to helping feed underfed children in the United States. They even have some fun things like The Great American DineOut, which allows you to raise money for the charity simply by going out to a fine restaurant.
  
• Friends of Man is a charity that is completely volunteer. 100% of the money you donate goes to people who need it to pay their rent or their medicine or their food. Grants are small and specific, so if you are one of those who believe that giving money to charities is bad because the money never makes it to the people who need it, this may be a good place for you to look.
  
• There are tons of other groups who will take your money, of course, but I think a good way to spend that money is in your local community. Even the richest areas have homeless and poor people and people who are struggling to get by. Call your local social support groups, and I'm sure they'll help you figure out how you can help in your local area.

_____

Meanwhile, here's your human rights link for the day, brought to you by Amnesty International:

• Struggling for Women's Rights in Somalia: A Q&A with Zam Zam Adbullahi, a human rights activist in Somalia, the capacity building officer for Coalition for Grassroots Women Organizations (COGWO), and the Chairperson of the Somali branch of the African network for prevention and Protection of child abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN).