It’s time again for Link-O-Rama Mama, where I lazily link other people’s well written and thoroughly researched articles.
Amassing Great Stores of Money. Why?
The story of a Salt Lake City homeowner who happened upon a hidden stash of cash in his new home hit the internet on Thursday. How much cash? $45,000 is how much! And I don’t know about you, but I’ve repeatedly had that dream where I find an extra room in my house that’s chock full of my heart desires. (My most repeated childhood dream featured a door in the attic which led to a whole bunch of Sasha dolls in a sunny meadow.) For Josh Ferrin, this was his doll and meadow moment, although he did the right thing and contacted the deceased former owner’s children to return the money.
Unfortunately, the focus of the article was about the finder of the cash, whereas I wanted to know more about the amasser of the cash. (“Cash amasser?”) Did he die early and suddenly, and was that why the money had not been earmarked? Was he a terrible miser, going without important needs in order to stockpile a secret emergency fund? I need more information! Although for now, I am enjoying filling in the blanks using my own imagination.
Mormon Pirate? Yeah, I’m going with Mormon pirate.
Click HERE to read the article in its entirety.
Materialistic and Proud Over at Get Rich Slowly
J.D. Roth over at Get Rich Slowly posted a question yesterday from Crystal, an unabashed and unapologetic spender, which last time I checked had garnered 173 reader responses:
“I’ve read your blog for a while now, and it always inspires me, but I stop just short of embracing the frugal lifestyle. Why? Because I’ve tried it and discovered that I am, in fact, very materialistic.
For instance, I have tons of clothes, shoes, and bags — and I use them all. I have over 30 purses, and I change them out every day. I have a separate work and leisure wardrobe, and I very much enjoy getting dressed in the morning. I also love laying out my clothes for the next day, choosing between outfits, and so on.
You get the picture. I love Stuff, and it makes me happy. I’m not in real debt (no student loans, no car payment, only $3,000 total of credit-card debt with a total monthly payment of $110, towards which which I pay $200) but I also don’t save anything. I have a mindset that store-bought is much better than home-made (like laundry detergents and the likes).
Am I a lost cause? How can I re-frame my mind when fashion/celebrity/shopping is my passion?”
It’s hard to read the letter without putting on a 1980’s Valley Girl accent, “Like, oh my God, gag me with a spoon!” But the readers were actually not as hard on Crystal as they could have been, and the comments were all over the board, running from she needs to make more money, to no, she’d only spend more money.
Essentially it brings up the debate of is there anything inherently wrong with loving retail and the high life? After all, somebody needs to be buying news stuff so that it can trickle down to the thrift stores for the likes of us.
Click HERE to read the original post.
What You Do Every Day is More Important Than What You Do Once in a While
It’s not new, but I do like The Gretchen Rubin’s Secrets of Adulthood. From the above Happiness Project aphorism to “What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you–and vice versa.” It’s a funny list of straightforward truths that don’t naturally occur to many of us until we hit our 40’s.
My favorite? “Outer order contributes to inner calm.”
It is worth a read, so click HERE to read the entire list.
Do you have any links to add to this Link-O-Rama Mama? Please share yours in the comments section below. Or better yet, share your links over at The Non-Consumer Advocate Facebook group.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I had to comment, because I too have repeated house dreams, and I have a Sasha doll! I had no idea of the story behind them. I’ve kept her (& wardrobe) since childhood and my sons enjoyed playing with her when little.
I had a Sasha doll from my childhood as well, which is why I recognized what they were when I found five!!! of them once at Goodwill for $4 apiece. I turned those puppies around on eBay selling them for $200 – $1000 each.
That was a good day.
How old is your Sasha doll?
Katy
I shook my head at the “only $3000 of credit card debt” line. Only?? Really?
Me too Kristen, any debt is real debt. She must not realize at an interest of 21% her debt is more like $20k.
If I recall the story of the man who stashed the money in his home, one of his children(I think it was one of his children) said he had suffered during the depression and never got rid of the attitude of “fear” if you will of having nothing again.
My grandparents grew up dirt poor so the depression didn’t really make things worse for them, but I do know many older people who were children during the depression and fell hard from middle class to poverty stricken. They have that same attitude. They are careful with money and always make sure they have cash and food on hand because they were deeply scarred by what happened to their families during the depression and have never really felt like it wouldn’t happen again at some point.
My mother just passed away…she was a child of the Great Depression and was always, always worried about money. Having it, losing it, being stolen…worry, worry, worry. When we started going through her things, we found purses, purses, wallets, wallets, wallets – all with “cash money” tucked away in little zipper pockets, in the “secret compartments”… it was strange and a little sad.
I also saw the story about the “cash finder”; in the story I saw, one of the children of the man who had hidden the money said that was what he did in lieu of more traditional saving. So, while $40K+ is a LOT of cash to have hidden in a house, it doesn’t sound so crazy if you consider that it may have been serving as his retirement fund.