Two Passover Lessons during the Pandemic

My family’s Passover Seder last week was certainly like none I’d attended before, but even with people joining us remotely via Zoom while hunkered down in their various apartments, the essential elements of our Seder remained the same, and a few particularly poignant lessons were elevated even further given humanity’s present plight.

Over the past few decades my family has used its own Haggadah, one originally created by our brother-in-law but then gradually transformed to grow along with our growing children.  We’d purchased half a dozen Haggadot over the years, and while all of them had their strengths, none of them did everything well, so rather than use a document that we weren’t happy with, we cherry picked those elements that spoke to us and inserted them into our own family Haggadah.  It’s since evolved into a somewhat permanent book now that our children are adults.

Passover has many themes, but there are two that especially speak to me each year, and in the midst of the global pandemic, their lessons ring even louder:  1) gratitude; and 2) how we may not be slaves, but we are often still enslaved.

GRATITUDE

I’ve written about his topic before, but Passover does such a good job of addressing one of humanity’s most precious gifts that I’d like to touch on it once more.  One Hebrew word that’s in every Haggadah is dayenu, which means roughly “It would have been enough for us.”  In the Seder we recite that many things God did to free the Israelites from Egypt, and after each one we say (or sing) “Dayenu.”  Sheila Peltz Weinberg offers a wonderful commentary on how dayenu can be applied to our lives today, and I’d like to share it here.  I believe this comes from New American Haggadah, a hugely flawed book that includes some absolutely wonderful writings by various contributors.  Weinberg writes:

Dayenu signifies deep acceptance and gratitude.  We acknowledge the present moment.  This acceptance allows us to move to the next moment and receive the waiting gift.  When we greet each moment with conditions, judgements and expectations – “well, this isn’t quite where we need to be” or “wait a second, this is not what we were promised” or “Hey, what’s coming next?” – out expectations keep us tense.  We are not free.  We are not available to receive the next moment.  Our fantasies about the past and our desire to control the future cut us off from the wonders of this moment.  They shut us in a prison of disappointment and suffering.  Dayenu is a great liberator.  It is a jot into the presence of awe, compassion, attentions, and freedom.

I love this commentary.  It addresses the state of being human so succinctly.  When we take stock in our blessings, we are happier and freer, and we can properly live in the moment. 

ENSLAVEMENT

The story of Passover is one of liberation from slavery, but even if we aren’t currently slaves, we humans find various ways to enslave ourselves, failing to live fully in the moment.  I believe I borrowed the following quote from a Haggadah and then substantially expanded it to include many additional ways that we create stress and conflict in our lives.  It speaks to me every time I read it:

We may no longer be slaves to Pharaoh, but are we slaves to other aspects of our lives? 

Are we slaves to our careers?  Slaves to addiction?  To anxiety?  To judging ourselves or others?  To self-indulgence or low self-esteem?  To comparing ourselves to our neighbors, friends and family?  Are we slaves to the past, refusing to let go of the times we’ve been wronged?  Slaves to fear?  Are we slaves to the latest gadget, the biggest, the fastest?  What about jealousy, fashion, sports, TV, computers or consumerism?  To our wardrobes?  Slaves to our lawns?  Home remodeling?  Social media?  Slaves to pride?  To self-pity?  Slaves to constantly striving for perfection?  Slaves to always having to be right or having to get the last word?  Slaves to making excuses for not doing what we know we should do?

Let us all strives to be slaves to nothing except gratitude, love, acceptance, contentment, kindness, justice, beauty, truth and tikkun olam, repairing the world one action at a time.

In the midst of sheltering in place for the past couple of weeks, I’ve observed families, and I like what I see.  I see people taking stock of their blessings, enjoying each other’s company, taking a breath, being kind to each other, slowing down and reaching out for those in need.  What’s happening worldwide is scary and – for many – debilitating, both financially and with terrible hospitalizations and deaths.  But for those of us who are lucky enough to remain healthy and have shelter and food, there is definitely a silver lining to our current situation. 

I feel like the lessons of Passover are more important than ever.  If we can express gratitude, live in the moment, and help those in need, we may find ourselves a happier society when we reach the other side of the pandemic. Hang in there, everbody!

Of Pandemics, Performing and Toilet Paper

Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed
most peculiar, Mama
-        John Lennon, from “Nobody Told Me.”

The lyrics of this Lennon tune keep running through my head.  It seems almost quaint that a mere three weeks ago I was writing about the upcoming baseball season and how my Brewers were in jeopardy of laying a big old egg.  I would take the egg at this point, as even bad baseball is preferable to no baseball, and with the MLB pulling the plug on the start of the season – wisely so – humanity is left to squander away its evening hours without the benefit of America’s Pastime. 

So what to do?  Be productive, I guess, or at least spend time with things that make you feel good.  So far I’ve managed to stay sufficiently busy during the social distancing phase of the Global Pandemic, but I recognize many factors are in my favor.  There are many people who are suffering either from illness, anxiety, loneliness, or sundry other ailments that afflict mankind without the added misery of a pandemic.  It’s important to keep that in mind and spend a moment each day giving thanks.  I am thankful for the following:

1)    I live in a safe neighborhood that allows me to go outside regularly.
2)    I have enough money to buy food, pay for utilities, keep up to date on my mortgage, etc.
3)    Neither I nor anyone in my family is sick.
4)    I live with two other people and have an additional two visitors, so I have plenty of social interaction.
5)    My neighbors are out and about and I’m able to enjoy conversations with people outside my family.
6)    My wife still has her job.
7)    My religious institution is doing a wonderful job of having a virtual gathering each day to learn or converse.

Add to these blessings that we all live in the age when connectivity allows for so many time-sucking pursuits – some of them even moderately noble – that many of us have no excuse not to use our time wisely. A pandemic thirty years ago would have been much more challenging with fewer opportunity to kill time, though I’ve somehow managed to accomplish a number of goals in an old-fashioned manner.  I’ve almost completed gutting my basement, I built a wooden record rack with one or two more planned, I finished recording demos for my next album, and I performed for my neighborhood block with an impromptu duo, to wit, The Highland Avenue Coronavirus Band.

Unfortunately, haters love to hate, and a very sanctimonious and unobservant woman took it upon herself to record a video (while driving her car!) and share it on our neighborhood Facebook page in an attempt to publicly shame us for failing to pay heed to the seriousness of society’s current predicament. I think it’s important to note that social distancing does NOT mean no socializing.  It means socializing at a distance.  When my neighbor Dean and I performed for an hour yesterday in front of maybe three dozen people, families sat in clusters because they’re…um…families, but then sat at least six feet apart from each other, as per Governor Pritzker’s orders for our fine state of Illinois.  The poster of the condemning video apparently doesn’t understand this. Fortunately she received a number of negative comments online and promptly removed the video. Chalk one up for humanity.  And good neighbors.  And music.

Even the toilet paper shortage – a shortage of our own making, mind you – hasn’t gotten me down.  I arrived at a Target store last week right at the opening bell but still too late to grab a package of Charmin, and as I walked out empty-handed, a woman hoisting two large toilet paper packages – one in each hand – offered to share some of her lot with me.  Really, it was the least she could do, as she shouldn’t have grabbed two packages to begin with, but so often humanity fails to do the least it can do, and in this instance she met my low expectations. I told her no thank you and felt a warm fuzzy feeling that maybe, just maybe, we’re all in this crazy pandemic together. 

All this is to say that I hope you’re all doing okay.  If you’re able to volunteer at a food pantry or call on an elderly neighbor, please do so (if you’re healthy).  Keep in touch with friends and neighbors – at a distance – and take some time to do a crossword puzzle, read a book, play with your kids or cook a nice meal.  Hang in there, and pray that come June or July we can once again spend our evenings enjoying nine innings of baseball.

Speaking of which, I may need to amend my predictions for this year’s Milwaukee Brewers.  I’m on it.  Now if only the Milwaukee Bucks would do right and return the money I spent for three tickets to this Friday’s game!

Freedom and Creativity

In Frank Capra’s film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the idealistic young senator says to Miss Saunders:

Men should hold (liberty) up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: "I'm free... to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't - I can... and my children will."

Liberty has taken on an expanded meaning these days as we have access to virtually any piece of knowledge ever conceived of by the human race – good, bad or otherwise.  And it begs the question: can you have too much freedom?  Can having the freedom to do everything keep you from doing anything?

I thought of this while listening a while back to the podcast Unspooled, a fine series in which actor Paul Scheer and film critic Amy Nicholson spend an hour discussing each film of the AFI’s top 100 movies compiled in 2007.  It isn’t a perfect podcast, but I like that the two hosts lack pretension and are often watching movies for the first time, enabling them to see through some of the hype. 

Scheer and Nicholson also make astute observations about society from time to time, and no more so than during their podcast for the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Near the end of the episode, Nicholson reveals her concerns about human creativity, and whether its been stunted since this movie’s release, when VHS tapes allowed for cheap home viewing.  She says: “What changed in our generation when we were able to make Raiders the number one VHS tape and watch Raiders non-stop…are we stunting our imagination?  It worries me not because I don’t like this movie, it just worries me on my larger scale of somebody who wants more random creativity in the world.”  She goes on to share a story about Quentin Tarantino coming of age just before the VCR became ubiquitous, when after seeing a movie he’d buy the film score on LP and imagine the scenes while the music played, eventually coming up with his own scenes, reimagining the movie over and over again.  Similarly, Scheer said that after watching Return of the Jedi, he’d go back home and write down everything he could remember in chronological order so he could read it back and get to experience the movie again.  Viewing it at home wasn’t an option. Had Tarantino and Scheer grown up in the home movie era, perhaps they wouldn’t have become filmmakers or actors.

Does having immediate access to so much information at our fingertips hamper creativity?  Do we – in effect – have too much freedom?  Freedom to see almost any movie at any time at any place.  Freedom to look up almost any fact about science or human history with a few keystrokes.  To read any piece of junk written by morons.  To watch gangs of people fornicating.   In the Age of the Internet and constant connectivity, do we have the ability to say no to what’s available to us and proactively pursue an original thought?

In the aforementioned Unspooled episode, Scheer concludes, rightly so, that “we’re always living in a culture that adapts to what we have.”  After all, were it not for recorded music, we’d have to rely on performances or hearing music in our own mental jukeboxes.  Were it not for the written word, we’d have to remember stories our grandparents told us so that we could then tell them to our children and grandchildren.  The written word has given us much, but it would be foolish to say that it hasn’t hampered some of our capacity to tell stories verbally.  Likewise, being able to look up facts on Google at any time has probably hampered some of our ability to remember, and studies have shown that the Internet has most assuredly shortened our attention span.

Nicholson concludes, “I feel like something in us is just stuck because we’re not using our imagination anymore, we’re just hitting rewind.”

Next week I’d like to look at films in particular and how it’s not all doom and gloom. Creativity survives.

Stay tuned…

Cost Savings Techniques

Last week I referenced a New York Times article by Alina Tugend about finances and how many of us compare what we have to those around us and may even be bewildered by how others can afford things we can’t.  In this article, Tugend referenced a website I had never heard before called Mr. Money Mustache.  This website is a rabbit hole of mega proportions, throwing you into a world where every decision you make has financial repercussions.  It’s also a helluva lot of fun, with fantastic advice for people of all income levels, and I particularly love to read the forum where people chime in on various topics, ranging from the sensible to the absurd. 

Mr. Money Mustache is all about achieving financial independence by making smart decisions, and it’s just one website that’s proliferated the F.I.R.E. movement, which stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early.”  There’s even a new documentary available on-line called “Playing With Fire,” which summarizes the trend of people eschewing mainstream habits in favor of gaining freedom from the spending treadmill. It’s great stuff, and even if you don’t go in whole-hog the way some disciples have, there’s plenty of advice to get you on your way to saving more, borrowing less, and giving yourself a better chance to pursue what you want in life rather than what you have to do due to your financial situation.

I’ve written before about my family’s philosophy when it comes to finances, but I’d like to highlight a few things we’ve done over the last twenty years or so that made an impact.  True, we still have spending weaknesses (for me: records, musical instruments, concert tickets and eating out), but by and large we’ve been able to put our family’s money where it matters most to us (namely, retirement, college savings, trips, and charity).  Here are a few things that have worked well for us:

1)     I cut my own hair.  Yes, I’m fairly bald, which makes this a lot more doable, but it’s an option for many of us.  Savings: about $250 a year over the past 15 years.  Total:  $3750.

2)     My family hasn’t had cable TV for 19 years now.  This is a much more doable proposition today than it was in the year 2000, and if you haven’t already done so, I urge you to cut the cord.  Savings: about $1200 a year for 19 years.  Total: $22,800.

3)     My wife and I have used Republic Wireless for our cell-phone service since 2014, spending on average about $250 per phone verses the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy that cost upwards of $1000.  Additionally, we spend about $25 a month each for phone service.  Today, that’s not a huge savings, but in 2014 it was.  All told, I figure we’ve saved about $3000 in phone costs and about $1200 in service costs since 2014.  Before then I didn’t even have a smart phone, so the total savings is even greater.  (NOTE: I’m ashamed to admit that some of this savings has been offset by my family still having a landline.  My wife won that battle, but family harmony is worth every penny!).

4)     We cut our own lawn, shovel/blow our own driveway, and don’t pay for any kind of landscaping except for tree removal.  At the low end, I figure I’ve saved about $60 per month for six months a year, and maybe another $150 a year for snow removal.  Let’s call it $500 a year, or $9500 savings since 2000.

5)     During my children’s school years, they were allowed to eat one hot lunch per week.  Every other lunch had to be made at home.  Cost savings: not much, really, as school lunch prices are very reasonable in Illinois.  But I feel like over the long haul this rule taught my kids to be more self-sufficient.  My now-adult daughters pack their own food most days and don’t go out to eat as often as they might otherwise.

6)     I save a lot on purchasing cheaper wine at my local liquor store, which often sells overstocked or older wines at huge discounts.  I often buy $15-$30 bottles of wine for $4 each.  Savings?  Well, let’s face it.  Wine isn’t a necessity, so the real savings would be giving up drinking altogether, so I’m not adding this in my calculation.  But it is another example of approaching purchases with a little more wisdom.

7)     My family hasn’t purchased a new car since 2007, and we still own it.  Our other car was purchased used, and that’s the only way we’ll go in the future.  If there are two rules to follow when it comes to spending: always, always pay off your credit card debt each month, and keep your car for as long as possible (and by slightly used cars).  Savings?  Hard to calculate, but let’s figure $100 a month for the past 12 years.  Total: $14,400.

8)     Keep your appliances and outdoor equipment for as long as possible.  I just broke down and purchased a new lawnmower after 17 years of using the old one.  And here’s the real miracle: our kitchen refrigerator is now older than our 22 year-old daughters.  How?  Well, for one, we’ve been lucky.  But also, we don’t particularly care what our refrigerator looks like (it’s not exactly pretty at this point), and I vacuum off the dust from the coils a few times a year.  Who knows if this was the difference, but it’s nice not to have to purchase another one!  Total savings: about $2000 minus the electricity we’re undoubtedly paying for a terribly inefficient appliance. 

9)     We do a lot of home maintenance projects ourselves, outsourcing only when necessary.  And it’s important to understand that I didn’t grow up handy in any way, shape or form.  I’ve simply read, watched videos and asked lots and lots of questions from my friends who are better equipped for this sort of thing.  In the end, we’ve managed to do a few things well, including all interior painting, changing electrical outlets, installing a new circuit board for our boiler, installing our own ceiling fans, installing all of the toilets, sinks and faucets, repairing drywall, etc.  It all adds up.  Also, don’t forget to change/clean those filters on your air conditioners, humidifiers, etc. and stay on top of your auto maintenance.  Savings?  A helluva lot, but hard to measure.  I think conservatively at least $20,000

10)  We put our non-investment savings into an on-line account that earns (currently) around 1.8% interest and we locked our mortgage in at a really low rate (2.8% I believe).  Smarter still would be to not have a mortgage, though opinions vary on this. 

11)  We only pay for a fee-based financial planner, rather than asset-based.  I wrote about in-depth earlier this year. 

12) We clean our own home - not a given where my family lives. I have no idea how much a service costs, but let’s conservatively say $50 a month or $600 year. Total savings over the past 19 years: $9500.

13)  Here are a few examples of ways to save a bit, but more importantly, to reduce waste.  We do these more for the environmental impact than anything else.

a)      This is my favorite: instead of using Swiffer sheets to dust our hardwood floors, we use pieces of fleece leftover from family blankets we made some time ago.  Simply dust, shake the fleece outdoors, and wash.  We’ve been using some of these pieces for over a decade.

b)     We’ve used almost exclusively cloth napkins and real dishes, even when entertaining, for the past 20 years or so.  I abhor using paper and plastic products when avoidable, and cloth napkins look nice and are easy to throw in with the laundry.

c)      I’ve started to use my own utensils and napkins when going to eat at a fast-food restaurants.

d)     We’ve used cloth grocery bags for the past 25 years or so.

e)     We print on both sides of sheets of paper.

f)     For our cats’ litter boxes and our dog’s poop bags, we use the bags that come with products we already purchase: cereal boxes, toilet paper or paper towel packaging, insulated envelopes that come in the mail, etc.  Of course, not having cats and dogs to begin with would provide even more savings – both financially and environmentally – but how to you say no to this face?

There are undoubtedly a lot of other things I could mention.  If I add up all the above highlights, we’re looking at around $85,000 in savings plus the interest earnings and savings from a low mortgage rate.  Not bad, but these days, that can be wiped out awfully quickly just through a kids’ college education.  Crazy, isn’t it?  But it all adds up.  The website Mr. Money Mustache, along with the good counsel of people like Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey, can do a lot to get you on your way to cost-savings.  I hope some of my aforementioned examples speak to you as well.  Happy savings!

Finances, Budgeting and Keeping up with the Joneses

The New York Times recently posted an article on finances and how many of us compare our own lot with those around us.  Too often, we might be reminded of what we don’t have rather than what we do, perhaps leading to feelings of ineptitude or inadequacy.  It’s human nature, I suppose, and these feelings might be more acute in the United States, where the individual is mythologized so vehemently with tales of the self-made millionaire.  We want to believe that what we have is a result of what we’ve earned, and if we don’t have as much as our neighbor, it must surely be because they’re doing something right and we’re doing something wrong.  I generally don’t harbor strong jealousies, but I must admit to being bewildered by the sheer volume of opulence that surrounds me in the Chicago suburbs.   Surely, there can’t be that many investment bankers and surgeons, can there?

But as the Times article highlights, when it comes to finances, things may be a bit more complicated than they appear.  A successful friend of mine once touted that he was a self-made achiever, failing to mention that his parents had paid for his college education and his first car.  People can be very sanctimonious when it comes to finances.  Sure, some people are well-off and have earned every penny, but for others wealth might be – in part – due to a sizeable inheritance or familial assistance with a home purchase or college expense.  Hell, if my wife and I hadn’t saved money for our three kids to go to college, we might be living a fairly opulent lifestyle too!  For others, opulence might merely be a mirage paid for with massive amounts of debt.

Regardless of the circumstances, we all make financial decisions, and it’s important to align those choices with our values.  Far too many of us make short-sighted and boneheaded financial choices, as I’ve written about before, but if your choices are guided by your values, then it doesn’t matter what your neighbor has or doesn’t have: you’ll be putting your money where it matters most to you.

So as you drive past your neighbor’s house, keep in mind that they might not have saved for college tuition as you did, or that they don’t put away a large percentage of their income for retirement as you do, or they don’t give a sizeable amount of money to charity as you do.  Or maybe they do and still have enough leftover for a Tesla and a luxury vacation to Tahiti.  If so, good for them! 

And if you’re someone who hasn’t been able to do any of the above, who maybe has made poor decisions in the past, try making a financial plan according to your values, align your choices according to that plan, and stick to it as best you can without worrying about keeping up with the Joneses.  You might find that you have more money available than you realize to put towards what’s important to you. And consider reading my blog from three years ago about twenty pieces of financial advice that I wrote for my children.

The Times article mentioned a blog I had never heard of before: Mr. Money Mustache.  Next week I’ll write about this, the FIRE movement it espouses, and some personal money-saving strategies I’ve found useful.