A girlfriend of mine was sharing an usually unpleasant story about a recent grocery shopping experience with her 3 ½-year-old. She wanted some words of wisdom – from me of all people! So I gave her some tips that work for us. And since I’m hardly the expert, you might want to share some wisdom of your own.

What works for us:
Truman and I have an agreement. He can have one thing, whether it’s cereal or a toy car that falls apart or some Crush Cup yogurt he will lick once and then toss away. But if he falls into a violent fit, then that one item goes away.

I also consult with him constantly while shopping. I did this when he was too young to talk back, and now that he can it’s even more fun to hear his logic. I say, “Should I get the Breakfast Blend or the French Roast? What do you think?” He says, “I think you should get the blue, Mommy.” I say, “The blue is decaf. We can’t get the blue. So is it the yellow or the red?” He says, “Is French from the country France, Mommy? I like France. What’s decaf? Why can’t we get the decaf?” And so on.

I also started giving him one of those long, thin reporter pads and a pen so he can “write down” and “mark off” his own grocery list. One time, when I glanced away to riffle through packets of ground turkey, he wrote all over his face with the pen. So be prepared for excitement like that.

As crazy as it sounds, I actually prefer grocery shopping with my son these days even if he causes the Windex Wipes display to knock over. Call it our mother-and-son bonding moment, but I actually miss him when he’s not there in the buggy with me.

(photo, JWJourney)

Post from: Blisstree

Pain and Pleasure at the Grocery Store

But, not Jenna Bush. The President’s daughter has been on my television all day long because she wrote a book.

Which brings me to a post I wrote earlier on Quit Coping, called Fair Smair, about fairness and how it’s futile to think about it.

I mean, I could bring up how my family’s economics are such that my child is getting asthma from living in a mold-contaminated home. What does that have to do with Jenna Bush?

Absolutely nothing, except that it’s her father who has put us in a big expensive war and that’s why the gas and grocery prices have doubled in the last two years, which is also why my family works harder and harder to to no avail. We just work to pay for more expensive gas, more expensive health care, more expensive milk, more expensive groceries.

He’s just my dad, she told Diane Sawyer.

Yeah, well your dad is screwing with my standard of living in a very real way.

But, what the hell does fair have to do with anything?

Post from: Blisstree

That Bush Girl

How to Survive on $50,000 to $150,000 a Year

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

• Ten, fifteen years ago, when you looked ahead you thought that if you ever earned $60,000 say, or $90,000 with two incomes in the family, you’d be rich. Yet here you are, you and your wife are pulling in $90,000, and one thing you’re sure of: You’re not rich.
• First, Perception. You are not earning what you think you are earning. Or what you thought you would be earning if you reached this point when you looked up at it ten or fifteen years ago.
• You must stop looking at your earnings as if you were pulling down $75,000 or $80,000 and it were still 1965 or 1970 or earlier. You don’t have the buying power you would have had in those days.
• It could violate your sense of accomplishment – which could also be inflated – but for a sense of reality, you’re better off thinking of your $75,000 to $80,000 as if it were more like $30,000 or $40,000 in old-fashioned dollars.
• Try to bring it more up to date, in 1983 you needed an income of $60,000 to match an income of $40,000 in 1977. Alas, it’s a little like having a big title but not that much power.
• I went into my litany. That 8% interest meant 4% for Uncle Sam, 4% for Mr. and Mrs. Doremus after taxes. And with an inflation rate at 6%, that nice safe bank account was losing them 2% a year. 
• Take $10,000, invest it in anything that returns you 8% a year. In sixty years your $10,000 will have compounded to $1 million. (Providing, of course, that we don’t have 8% inflation, in which case the $1 million will have exactly the purchasing power of $10,000.)
• I regretted the words as soon as I said them. It’s a problem I have. Sometimes things seem so clear to me, I can’t understand why somebody else doesn’t feel the same way I do.
• I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve given extremely sound advice and had it rejected for personal reasons.
• Everybody is searching for the new Xerox.
• They could certainly understand the math, but emotionally their hearts were still in that bank vault.

In 1984, I believe I was in junior high and I have to admit my perception of $50,000 versus the reality of $50,000 was a tad off, just as Mr. Cohen points out. I remember taking a careers class where we looked up prospective careers and their salary equivalents and I admit to thinking $50,000 was a lot of money.

If $60,000 in 1977 was the equivalent of $40,000 in 1984, the equivalent of $60,000 in 2007 factoring in the inflation of gas, groceries and healthcare, would be what? Maybe $15,000?

Post from: Blisstree

How To Survive on $50,000