Giving Up Half a Million a Year to Teach Literature

ERGGGGHHHH. Why do I even read anything? Everything makes my blood boil or annoys me. I can't figure out why I was annoyed by a story in CNN Money, featuring a fellow who built a biz (earning $500,000/year!), sold the biz (for several million bucks, and now teaches literature as a TA at the University of Chicago. He's now making around $13,000, a year.

I'm at the end of my semester, toiling away, for thank heavens, more than $13,000. So why does this article annoy me? Some things that come to mind.

1. The other underpaid TAs don't have several million dollars in I-Bonds backing them up. They face an uncertain (to put it mildly) future, even as they spend most of their 20s getting their doctorates.
2. Why should people who teach literature be so underpaid?
3. And moms and dads who are shelling out for the University of Chicago: the person who is teaching your kid ($50,000/year for tuition, room, board) may be one of these TAs.

Help me, Readers. Should I be annoyed by this? Are you? Why? Or am I being a crabby person (as my students have been telling me of late) who should be applauding this guy who has given it up for Shakespeare? Who has reached the mythical state of FI (financial independence) to follow his heart?

Isabel Marant et Moi

***As you read the following frivolous post, I will be blissing out at Jazz Fest****


The other day, the New York Times featured an article on a chic New York store featuring the chic designs of the chic Isabel Marant:

ALL the hot girls are going berserk for Isabel Marant, the young Frenchwoman whose label has mastered the jet-set bohemian look associated with carefree Parisian chicks: that thrown-together, cigarette-hanging-from-pouty-mouth style that pretends to shrug off effort. “Quoi, this? Pfff. I slept in this shirt, you silly child, and these pants were on the floor.”

This is a fun article, very well written, with some good advice. For the writer realized that she could approximate the general look of the line--army jackets, sweatshirts--for very little, albeit in less amazing fabrics.

I'm sure my regular readers know where this is going. Yes, I am the proud owner of an Isabel Marant glazed linen anorak/raincoat/not sure what it is. It jumped out at me at Goodwill last year. I had never heard of the label, but there was a je ne sais quoi about it. It is, I must confess, Isabel's cheaper Etoile line. It also has a care label that says "Do not wash. Do not dry clean. Do not iron."

I haven't yet figured out how to wear the garment, but it looks neat--and very French--on the hanger. This is a typical thrift store tale: you see something amazing, you have to buy it, it IS an expensive treasure, now what the heck do you do with it.

At least I won't yearn for an Isabel Marant item. I have one.

A Gift from Italy: Stale Bread Pizza

On a little procrastination break, I was perusing the New York Times. For some reason, I clicked on a story about a glamorous woman who has a restaurant empire: Donatella is her name. There was a picture of one of her specialties--stale bread pizza--which I immediately knew was in my future meal plans. We have tons of stale bread since Mr. FS has been baking for many years.

To my delight, they gave us the recipe!

Not only a recipe, but a blog post.

Whoever tries this first: how is it? I'll report back soon.

Budget Kitchen Renovation: Bling

Frugality and Bling? A contradiction in terms? No, I don't think so. In fact, bling can be the frugal person's best friend. As in clothing, so in kitchens. Every mother tells her daughter: "Just make sure the shoes and bag are OK. The rest will be upgraded (or downgraded) by those two items."

Thanks Mom, for your good advice, though I don't always follow it.
Having a kitchen where everything is of high quality is very expensive. But you can pick and choose. So a killer stove (like Duchesse's AGA!) can be a centerpiece. A neat farm sink: ditto. And--though some may disagree--a sculptural hood also has a bling factor. Following is my bling.

Stove Hood. A former colleague, who was weird in many, many ways, asked, when she heard I was planning to re-do my kitchen, if I would be willing to give her my stove hood. I had never paid much attention to it, since it came with the house. I took a look and it hit me: one element of bling. It's a Thermador with infrared heat lamps! It also provides good ventilation: my kitchen never is filled with greasy dust, as in previous kitchens. Cost: free with house.

Sink. I wanted a farm sink (aka apron sink). These are expensive and difficult to install (hence expensive labor). I discovered the IKEA Domsjo sink, which at the time was $300.00. I called and discovered that shipping would be $200.00! Then, I learned that one of Frugal Son's pals had to go to Houston to get a visa. I offered to pay his gas if he bought my sink. SUCCESS! Ikea, by the way, deserves my love because the sink is constructed so that it can be laid atop any countertop, thereby eliminating the costly cut-out and installation. My contractor was impressed. Cost: $360.00, including gas for a Civic Hybrid.

Giant old cupboard. One good idea is to sub a neat piece of furniture for overpriced cabinets. We already had this. We bought it from a woman who owned the fanciest clothing and furniture stores. It remains the most expensive thing we have ever bought in the furniture category. It has been in our possession for about 20 years. Following the cost-per-wear theory of clothing purchases, I have to say that the cost-per-year is very low. Original Cost: Too embarrassed to mention!

We have 3 bling items, more than the basic requirement of one. Do you agree with my bling idea for kitchens? And, what is your kitchen bling?

A Stroll Through Some Blogs: Simple in France saying NO

As I thought about strolling through some of my favorite blogs--both old and new (to me)--I decided to first highlight Simple Life in France, whose guest post I read yesterday at Early Retirement Extreme. That post is now on her own blog as well. Perhaps because Simple is living in France, with her French husband, I thought of being a stroller in French, a language that exists in some deep part of my memory, courtesy of some outstanding teachers, M. Giordano, M. Moore, and M. Danon, to name only the three best.

The word flaneur came to mind, although its use in cultural studies, owing to the work of Walter Benjamin and others, takes it in other (theoretical) directions from just strolling about. Needless to say, in the age of the internet, I googled flaneur and found a site devoted to the concept. Here is an epigraph from the Arcades Project Project that does seem to apply to my stroll through the blogosphere: "Taking a walk is a haeccity . . . Haecceity, fog, glare. A haecceity has neither beginning nor end, origin nor destination; it is always in the middle. It is not made of points, only of lines. It is a rhizome". (1000 P 263)

Simple in France's post (on both blogs) is about saying NO. She perceptively points out that saying NO to things you don't really want is the easy part; it's dealing with friends and family that is difficult. Of course, one can find new friends (sometimes--true frugal friends are rare); one has to deal with one's family.

In my comment on ERE's blog, I mentioned my recent moment in class. I had gotten there a few minutes early, and everyone was exclaiming over the BIG diamond on someone's engagement ring. I feigned interest, and then a student inquired about the location of my ring. I said I didn't have one. "Why?" I answered that I hadn't wanted one.

This admission led to a long moment of rather uncomfortable silence, followed by one student saying "That's neat." I think she was trying to make me feel better.

Then another student said, "You ARE Emersonian." I was so happy! A real life example.

Emerson says, Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

That, like saying NO, is the easy part. The harder part is dealing with friends and family. Emerson is aware of that: A man must know how to estimate a sour face.

Simple in France recounts some of the sour faces--and comments--she received when she discovered that she actually preferred some aspects of the frugal life. Believe me, my $30 wedding (that was for the license and the German measles test) did not elicit admiration from family members. Neither did my decision NOT to let my kids go on the yearly overpriced Disney tip with their schoolmates.* Some of my NO moments were so shocking to my family that--even in this space of relative anonymity--I will not share them.

What is interesting is that saying NO is understood when followed by "We can't afford it." And I find that in a cowardly way, I sometimes say that for--as Mr. FS says--"protective coloration." But when you say NO for the reason that something is not worth it (in general or to you), you will get those sour faces.

*** I wrote a post long ago about how I did not let my kids go on the Disney trips, but did happily spring for school trips to Japan.

Budget Kitchen Renovation: Waste Not

OOPS: Remember my kitchen renovation "series"? It has been shamefully neglected. Here's the third installment, which I drafted on my birthday, January 20.

In addition to being pathologically frugal, I am pathologically against WASTE--of time, money, or resources. That may be why I picked up about 20 pairs of pricy men's shoes that were left out for the trash near my home and transported the whole lot to Goodwill. That may be why I told the nice rep at Powells who offered to overnight a book they mistakenly left out of my order to forget it: I'd just take a refund.

It makes sense, then, that I am horrified to see the usual scene when a home changes hands: perfectly good--or at least pretty good--cabinets, carpets, and other items littering the garbage pickup area as the new homeowners seek to make their mark on their new home. That didn't happen with us. We bought a house we loved that was a little too expensive for us. We were able to do that because we had saved a large down payment. We were so horrorstruck at the expense of the house (and the 30 years of payments to which we had committed ourselves) that we left things as they were for a LONG time. The kitchen in our new house was a cheaply done reno, perhaps 5-10 years old. The one nice detail was the Mexican tile, installed, no coubt at great expense, over an old wooden floor (erghhh).

The kitchen continued to deteriorate. To stave off a renovation, Mr. FS painted the ugly cabinets, which improved things a bit. Finally, after 10 more years, we realized that the kitchen was really shabby, the cabinets were really crumbly. The kitchen had crossed the line.

So we went up and down the expense continuum. Finally--and I will spare you the years of agonizing indecision--I accepted my frugal nature. And accepted thereby a truism of frugality: use what you have. The more you can keep or re-use the more reasonable your renovation.

What we kept:
THE LAYOUT. This is a real saver. Moving an appliance is very expensive.

THE FLOOR. OK, I'd prefer the wood under the Mexican tile, but there's no way I would pull up the tile.

THE COUNTERTOP. The countertop is just some oak flooring that was laminated. It is quite scruffy. But we like it. We were planning to replace with old heart pine, but the contractor uttered the magic words: "Do you want to keep this?" A few bits were rotten, but I had the idea of filling in with old wood. It looks good!

If I'd had nice cabinets, you can bet I would have re-used some.

Any other waste not tips for kitchen renos?

From the Wall Street Journal: The Foreclosed Families of Abacus

My students and family laugh at me because of my overuse of the word poignant. Their laughter is justified; I think I used that very word in this very space in citing a sonnet written by John Milton.

One hardly expects to see a piece that (implicitly) calls for social justice in the venerable Wall Street Journal. Yet there is one. Alongside all the "I really can't relate to this" articles on the Goldman Sachs suit, the outsize bonuses paid to the loyal troops, the outsize profits of the banks, and all that, we have a photo essay of the houses (middle-class one and all) and families (ditto) whose mortgages were bundled in the "Hope this fails" package put together by the math whiz M. Fabrice Tourre on the instructions of his higher-ups.

See it here.

I'd say poignant is justified.