The Most Important Lesson I Learned This Christmas

Give the gift you would most like to have for the Yankee Swap. That way, when you get stuck with it at the end, you won’t be so disappointed.

If You Forgot to Get Holiday Gifts for Your Favorite Authors...

A happy thought on which to end the week.

As you may know, we’ve been working Dave Ramsey’s system to stop paying debt interest to big banks and improve our standard of living. Well, this past week, I finally got paid for some contract work I did last year (yup—more on that in a bit), and this check will finally put us over the top. We’re not out of debt yet, as we still need to pay off Sallie Mae, but this will eradicate that last credit card payment, for the cards we cut up in June. Behold the power of extra work!

And just as significantly, we now are no longer worth less than $0.

I think my theme for this week is: life is getting better.

If you’re a Gilmore Girls fan, you might remember the episode after Rory and Dean had their affair, the one in which Dean’s wife Lindsay discovers Rory’s “heinous letter in Dean’s jacket.” Oy f***in’ vey! See, this is what happens when children grow up only on the outside.

And Rory and Lorelai, walking through the town common, almost run into Lindsay and her mother (whose name apparently is Theresa). At which point Theresa begins tearing into Rory, ignoring Lorelai’s urges to calm down, escalating her tone to the point of “You little monster!”

Links and things that I’ve run across recently.

Even a Quasi-Government Agency Occasionally Does Something Right

True story:

Waiting in line at the post office, thinking I should probably see if I can buy stamps online and just have them delivered. Finally got to the front of the line.

“I need a book of stamps,” I said.

“You’re in luck!” said the woman behind the counter, grinning ear-to-ear. “We have those!” Fetched one from a nearby drawer.

“Excellent!” I said. “I thought you might.”

Never got around to checking for that online thing.

Black Bear, Black Bear, Where Have You Been?

We had a little excitement here in the Boston area, as a wild black bear made its way through Medfield, Norwood, Dedham, Needham, Newton, and into Brookline.

I think this is the last Dave Ramsey story I’ll tell for a little while. (Or at least the last big one.) But I have to at least tell this one, because I’ve already told it to several friends, several times, and it’s turned out to be a hoot.

Dave Ramsey is famous for cutting up credit cards on stage. And for using the word “stupid” repeatedly during the process. And this is a story of the first credit card I ever had. I had gotten it while still a teenager, through a deal with AAA. And I still had that credit card years after I had dropped AAA. I kept it after the account had been sold to MBNA—Yikes!—and finally to Bank of America—Crikey! I charged up that card, and paid it down, and charged it up again, and paid it back down, and charged it up— like a freakin’ yoyo. That poor card was so tired, I had put it through so much: it had a dog-ear in one corner and a tear on the opposite one. But it kept going, and I kept it around, for “emergencies.”

(You can see where this story is going, right?)

According to Dave Ramsey, money arguments are the number-one cause of marital strife.

Now, I’m not sure where he got that factoid. And I don’t actually know whether it’s true, because marriages—as all relationships—are more complex and nuanced than a single cause. Regardless, it is surely true that money arguments are a leading factor in failing marriages.

In early 2009, after a series of bad software development jobs, I sunk into a deep depression. At the time, I attributed my mood to the bankruptcy of the software industry— And I still believe the industry in general is broken in several key areas, and needs to be fixed. But I later discovered, my problem was mostly connected to my own reactions, my own thoughts, going through my own mind, what Perry Marshall calls “inner head trash."

I just received the funniest credit-card offer ever!

Ever since my Beloved got us a membership in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, I’ve been listening to him way too much. And proof that I’m listening to him way too much is that I’m starting to think of jokes that he might make. And I also imagine myself writing this with a vaguely southern accent.

So I get home this afternoon, and there, in my mail, lying on my so-needs-a-visit-from-a-vacuum-cleaner rug, is proof that the economy must be turning around.

Yes, I’m referring to the bane of all junk mail: a credit-card offer.