Simple Solutions

Sometimes, the simple solution staring us in the face still eludes us.

I’ve had a mini-van for over 7 years, and for at least 5 of those years, the placement of the plastic garbage cans has caused me a problem: they get in the way of my sliding door.  I have long, unsightly white scratches on my van door from frequent collision with the cans.  Until today, it was a problem without a solution.

There’s simply no better place for the garbage cans than where they are.  Slimmer cans are not to be found.  My van won’t fit on the other side of the garage without MAJOR rearranging, and there are sliding doors on both sides anyhow.

But this morning, I came home knowing I would be leaving twice more.  I usually crawl through the front seats from/to the passenger side to get in and out, but in the winter THAT becomes a major pain with drippy, heavy boot on my feet.  So I decided to back into the garage for today. That’s when I noticed that when I’m backed in, the garbage cans are not in the way at all!

My front door clears the pole, the sliding doors are obstruction free, and the problem is solved!

I know why I had never considered this solution before.  Somewhere along the way, I picked up the impression that backing into the garage wasn’t as safe as pulling in forward because exhaust fumes get trapped in the front part of the garage instead of being vented out the large open door in the back.  It probably does increase the amount of trapped fumes, but cars today emit a lot less exhaust.  I don’t ever idle my car in the garage so I bet the “increased risk” is minimal, if measurable at all.

Just to be safe, I posted over in NPR’s Car Talk forum to see what others had to say.  But at this point, I’m pretty sure the increased blood pressure I experience every time my car door hits the garbage can is a larger health risk than the exhaust fumes.

From now on, I’m backing in.  Problem solved!

Sub-Prime Surprise?

I don’t understand why everyone is so surprised by the sub-prime debacle. Let’s look at some decades-old factors which have gotten us where we are today:

1. Banks actively encourage people to buy more house than they can afford. All the reasonable people I know who have purchased a house in the last 15 years have been shocked by the amount of credit for which they were approved by the banks. We’ve been in our house for 11 years, but even back then most banks were willing to lend us 50% more than we knew we could afford on a month-to-month basis.

2. The President of the United States told people it was their duty to spend more to help the economy. Bush’s position during the economically shaky period after 9/11/2001 was to encourage people to spend more to prop up the economy, regardless of whether or not they they had more to spend. (Hey – why not? – the government does it every day!) Unfortunately, people listened and in 2005, the U.S. saving rate fell to 0%. More spending equals less savings equals less cushion for the inevitable downturns in life.

3. ARMS. Adjustable rate mortgages are profit centers for banks and bum deals for home owners. The only time an ARM makes sense is when you pay it off before the rate bumps, but no one does that. This modern “ARMS race” has made the market more active as people who normally would have held their mortgages for 30 years are now refinancing every 2,3, or 5 years looking for the best deal, resulting in unnecessary extra closing, appraisal, and title fees.

4. Financial Secrecy. Schools teach math, but not personal finance (at least, not on a high school level) and discussion of money within families is often as taboo as politics or religion. And not only do we NOT discuss finances, we often make monetary decisions based on what our parents did without knowing the financial reasoning. So if you can’t learn personal finance at home or school, where do you learn it?

So now banks and mortgage lenders are is in a bind of their own making. George Bush appears to be uncharacteristically responsive to public opinion, deciding yesterday to help bail out people who are in financial trouble. He’s probably working to help his big business pals, because he’s obviously not listening to the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Bernanke maintains that it is not the government’s responsibility to bail out either individual borrowers or financial institutions who made bad loans. He said that it’s not “appropriate…to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.”

Bad choices have consequences. What a concept! So what do you think? Do you as a taxpayer feel it’s a good use of your money to bail out people who made bad financial choices?

An Interesting Morning

Yesterday was the second day of school, and Megan walked.

You see, last year, the girls had some problems getting up and moving in the morning, even though Megan, the 6 year old, goes to bed at 7:00 and Emily, the 8 year old, at 8:00. So this year, I told the kids that whoever missed the bus would have to walk to school. It seemed to impress them – school is, after all, 1.4 miles away! I figured I’d have at least a good week before the “back to school” euphoria ebbed away and the routine feeling started setting in, at which point I’d have to remind them again to get moving.

But on Day 2, Meg decided not to get up and I decided 45 minutes of nagging was enough. So Megan walked and I accompanied her in the car. She ran the first quarter mile without stopping, I got out and personally walked her across every road, and the first part of the journey was uneventful. Just across from the school, however, I got pulled over by a police car!

Although he sympathized with my attempt to teach a lesson, he told me I was a traffic hazard. Plus, the police department had received 10 calls about a van following a child, so I would have to find another solution. Meg got wide eyes when I told her that a policeman asked why she was walking to school instead of riding the bus! I decided to milk it and told her the policeman said she would have to go to jail if she kept missing the bus (yeah – that one will probably come back and bite me, but I was mad!).

Truth be told, even though the depth of her stubbornness amazes me, I was proud that she did actually walk the entire way to school without complaint – and proud of myself for following through and doing what I said I would do. That said, I sure was glad when she got up without incident this morning! We even had enough time to read a book before she set out for the bus stop. Maybe the lesson sunk in after all. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.