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Month: November 2023

What is our early retirement draw down plan?

What is our early retirement draw down plan?

What I’m reading & listening to
• Ok, this isn’t *reading* per se but it is a fantastic interview (podcast?) with Tim Ferriss and Morgan Housel. If you haven’t read Housel before, I highly recommend his work and his blog.
• Also in the *not reading* category is this podcast called Backlisted that I want to check out. I am not a podcast person generally but I am fascinated by old books that have fallen out of fashion.
• Walks, tech and protein: parenting your parents.
• Are you the victim of the friendship recession?
• The Best Laid Plans it is never too early to have your affairs in order, or quit working once you’ve reached your FI number.
• Is an $100000 salary enough for a comfortable life anymore? (sub)

I generally enjoyed this article as it was more measured than most pieces. People were honest with their indulgences. Of course my brain honed in on this particular section though:

“In Edmonton, one of Canada’s most affordable larger cities, Liam Hudson has no trouble fitting all his expenses, aggressive savings and some travel into his household budget. The 32-year-old civil servant, who earns $106,000 a year, lives frugally. He drives a second-hand 2006 Buick Rendezvous. He tracks his spending meticulously. And he has made it a habit to put $250 every other week into his RRSP and another $100 into a tax-free savings account, even though he already has a generous government pension.”

NoOoOoOoO!

He should be prioritizing his TFSA if he has a pension. Unless this guy plans to retire early & withdraw that money to live on, the RRSP forced draw down will be a nightmare in taxes at 71! The RRSP is a *tax deferral vehicle* which means that yes, every $1 you put into your RRSP you reduce your income (and tax payable) by $1 but eventually the government forces you to draw from it by a certain percentage every year (depending on your age) starting at 71. So if you have a full pension and suddenly find yourself being forced to withdraw from your RRSP you could potentially be pushing yourself into a higher tax bracket in retirement. Ouch!

“BUT,” you may think, “YOU PRIORITISE RRSPS!”

That is absolutely true! In fact, one of the things that is going to save us from paying capital gains when we sell the condo is that Mr. Tucker and I have a lot of contribution room left in our RRSPs. In Canada, contribution room rolls over indefinitely so you accumulate – and keep – your ability to contribute to your sheltered accounts over your lifetime. This is handy because if you make under $65000 it is generally not worth it to add money to your RRSP but since the amount rolls over and you keep it until you CAN use it, that $11700 (18% of your gross income to a max of $30780 in 2023) will stay on the books so that you can use it later and get the tax break. So when, say, you make $100000 20 years in the future, you can use it to reduce your taxes then.

Of course, some financial experts are saying that the TFSA should be prioritized first because it allows for tax-free growth over the course of your life, which makes sense for everyone. But we are leveraging the RRSP for now and the reasons are multi-fold:

– Mr. Tucker makes a good salary that is in a high tax bracket.
– Reducing his salary generally results in a high tax refund.
– The capital gains from the condo will result in pushing my yearly salary into the top tax bracket. So any reduction in that will mean less taxes go to the government.

It also helps that he plans to retire early so he can take money out of his RRSP when his income is zero and pay less taxes. There is no age penalty to draw down your retirement accounts in Canada.

So our plan is generally as follows:

When Mr. Tucker is retired and has zero income (we will be living on what I bring in), we will not touch the RRSPs until the kids are out of school. This is because of Canada’s Child Credit Benefit (CCB, colloquially known as the Baby Bonus). With his income being zero we can maximize the monthly CCB amount we get from the government until the kids are 18.

When The Youngest turns 18, Mr. Tucker will start to take out the Basic Personal Amount (BPA). This amount is currently $15000* for 2023. This is the amount every Canadian can make in income without paying taxes on it. You would only start paying taxes on $15001 and higher. Unfortunately, the BPA still lowers your monthly CCB payment as it is calculated using gross family income, which is why we are waiting until the kids are ineligible for the benefit. Interestingly enough, the TFSA maximum contribution is $7500 per person for 2023 which perfectly squares with the BPA of $15000. Yes, it will be more in the future but we will have to calculate it down the road.

The goal here is to minimize taxes down the road by moving money from the tax-deferred RRSP to the tax-sheltered TFSA when Mr. Tucker’s income is zero. Both buckets have the ability to grow tax-free over time but only the TFSA is tax-free when you take money out.

Of course, this is a generalization of the plan that will depend on the TFSA contribution room for us both, the amount of the RRSPs when we start to draw down as well as projections for the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement. I suspect that we will end up drawing down the RRSPs and paying a bit of tax upfront so that we aren’t forced to withdraw minimums at 71. But because so much will change in the 20 years, it is ok to have a general plan for now and adjust as necessary.

Overall, the goal will be to reduce as many taxes as possible in retirement and maximize the benefits available. Who even knows what will happen with the TFSA and RRSP in the future? There is talk of eliminating the minimum withdrawal at 71 and so many things can happen between now and then that this is just a roadmap based on the current rules.

Life, nah, nah, nah, nah
In other news, The Eldest came down with covid over the weekend. The rest of us are all testing negative but she is holed up in her room convalescing. Thankfully, she is having an easier time of it than when she came back from Paris and was violently ill. That’s probably because she was in peak immunity due to having her booster two weeks ago!

Today, my plan is to get through some of my library books. Although I think a New Year’s Resolution should be for me to actually write down where I get book recommendations from (I always forget and so I can’t credit the source), I have surprisingly been unable to put The Lost Supper: searching for the future of food in the past down! I slogged through the intro and was worried that it would all be similarly boring but it hasn’t been! Despite being exhausted, I ripped through the first section and got through half of the second before I couldn’t keep my eyes open. He is such an engaging storyteller, interspersing fact with history. I am 1/3 of the way through it and will probably finish it today.

I got the new schedule for the condo fees today and so I am glad that the appliances are coming Friday and we can get the condo on the market. I know I say this every time I mention it but we are so done!

Have a lovely Monday, kids!

*Yes, he will have to pay taxes upfront on the amount that comes out of his RRSP that we will get back at tax time so he will actually be withdrawing more money here. But to simplify things for this example, I’ve stuck with that BPA amount.

Do I can Instagram?

Do I can Instagram?

What I’m reading
• In completely non-shocking news, the rich are getting richer.
• Visual Capitalist on 20 most common investing mistakes.
• Death by 1000 small fees: hidden charges are getting ridiculous for sure.
• Early retirement in England, mostly the preserve of the wealthy. This is discussing ER in your 50s and 60s, which is more of the traditional ER definition.

On the tail of yesterday’s post, I am really trying to stay off social media and as we head into the end months of the year. It is one of the reasons I started writing here again regularly: it keeps me from doomscrolling social media (or what I have left of it namely, Instagram). I was saying to Mr. Tucker last night that I keep thinking about the quote by Tom Eastman:

I’m old enough to remember when the Internet wasn’t a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four.

It really stuck with me because the algorithm keeps serving me up tweets, fb and tumblr posts that keep getting shared and shared. I have seen many of them myriad times as they get recycled and the algorithm picks old ones back up again and cycles them through people’s feeds. While I enjoy them – after all the algorithm does a great job of determining what I like & what I will share (thus continuing the cycle) – it’s not adding much value to my life and so it is time to cut another app out. I admire Mr. Tucker and his complete disdain for social media. He will just delete the app and move on with his life. I need to learn from him, to be quite honest.

Over our morning coffee, I said to Mr. Tucker that it’s weird that socially it is totally normal for people to pick up their phone during a conversation but not say, pick up a book and start reading. There is an urgency in checking one’s notifications that makes scrolling acceptable. Even when Mr. Tucker and I sit down in the mornings, I feel sheepish about picking up a magazine and reading that I don’t feel that if I pick up my phone and start to scroll Instagram. It’s such an odd phenomenon.

I loved the idea behind Mouse Books which sadly now looks defunct. Dutton has a more modern pocket series of books as well that you can still buy. I feel that this would be a good solution for the in-between times: in the doctor’s office, waiting for the bus, in line practically anywhere and in the bathroom (remember reading the back of a shampoo bottle? My children will never know the suffering of forgetting to bring a book to the washroom).

I’ve discovered that I scroll the most under two conditions: when I feel bored or when I feel anxious. Anxiety happens when I watch movies and there is tension in the story, for example. I pick up my phone as a way to alleviate it even though building tension is a crucial part of the movie watching process. I also pick up my phone when the boredom settles in to alleviate that feeling, which is probably just anxiety from the fact that my brain is stuck with its own thoughts. BUT then I complain that I don’t do enough creative work on the projects I want to accomplish (ie: writing here, painting, knitting and video work). But the most rewarding projects require you to sit with the boredom. If I did, I would eventually resolve to pick up a project that is a bigger hurdle to start. The phone is an easy win, settling down to do a creative project requires you to push through that boredom and anxiety.

I am glad that facebook has stopped allowing Canadians to post news articles because 80% of my usage was posting news articles and then discussing them with my friends. A friend recently told me that this blog reminds her of my old livejournal because I would constantly be posting news roundups in the morning. At the time I did a news link email for my organization as part of my job so it was a natural extension of that work. So thanks for being cheap, facebook! It’s kept my eyeballs off of your ads because I no longer enjoy your site! So it’s good to be back to more long form writing.

It’s about 1.5 months until the end of the year and this is when I typically review:
1 – My mailing lists: what am I still receiving that I don’t read or that doesn’t add value to my life? I need to stop spending so much time deleting junk email or mailing lists I don’t really want to be on.
2 – My online paid subs: do I still enjoy the content from X creator enough to keep paying?
3 – The media subs: digital and print. While I think I will never be able to get away with canceling Spotify or Netflix (thanks, children), I do need to probably stop the New Yorker. I love the magazine but it’s way too much and I never get around to reading them. I often don’t read every Saturday newspaper but I do want to support journalism and I also get a tax credit for supporting Canadian content (which is why I will also keep The Walrus). I canned Canadian Notes & Queries and The Canadian Literary journal as well.
…and finally…
4 – Do I give up Instagram? Do I make rules around its consumption? It is really my last hold out from random scrolling (praise Jeebus I never got into TikTok) of stories.

Finally, I got together with The Americans* last night and we chatted and played Trivial Pursuit. Because I was imbibing some Greyhounds (vodka/grapefruit/soda) I feel confident enough to tell you that I won the game**! Despite the fact we chat every day on Signal I do miss their faces quite a bit. It was nice to pick up a game and just hangout.

Have a great weekend!

*these ones are mine, get your own
**I most certainly did not

Don’t make decisions on perception

Don’t make decisions on perception

What I’m reading
• [Early Retirement] was not what I expected. Honestly, I have never loved the acronym FIRE (in my head it should be FIER, which is the French word for pride) but I don’t begrudge people using it. They know what it means to them. I prefer FI just because in the early 90s when I read Your Money or Your Life that is the term they used – and it is via FI that allowed me to stay home with my kids, start a business, go back to work etc.. But I absolutely LOATHE when bloggers nitpick about people saying they’ve achieved FIRE but they still work. It’s like when people say “dividend investing isn’t a thing.” Of course it is, people have defined their terms and so the clarity is there. Being pedantic about it is just weird.

• Yes, and… this reminds me of a meme I stole from the internet:

A lot of the “this is the worst of times” suffers from the knowledge of history. Being in the middle of WWII when things were absolutely dicey (most people don’t realize how close it was at one point) was horrific. But from our place in 2023 where the Allies won, it doesn’t seem so scary. Sure, things definitely feel pretty terrible right now but how much of it is real and how much of it is just perception? We spend so much time on our phones and as a result of that the algorithm feeds us things that confirm our perspectives because that content keeps our eyeballs on their ads. It makes us more fearful and makes us believe things are so much worse than they are. It reminds me of this Dara O’Briain bit from 2009:



The Economist published this fascinating chart recently about how the pandemic has broken people’s views on the economy. The economy in the US is actually doing well, but people don’t believe that it is. It’s the first time since they started tracking sentiment that there has been such a wide gap. I suspect a lot of that is due to how we are constantly being fed doom and gloom from various social media sites. They call it doomscrolling for a reason.

But even if you go back and read economic headlines from the past, the only way we really knew things were good or bad was in retrospect. 2010-2020 was unprecedented for growth but for a lot of that period there was a lot of doom and gloom predictions floating around. This is a very good reason to ignore the noise and just focus on your goals. If you had believed a lot of the advice from “experts” you would have made some terrible decisions. Just leaving your money in an index fund for the entirety of that decade would have made you a very rich person. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Trust the process. Stay the course.

Faith, Hope and Carnage (and alcohol)

Faith, Hope and Carnage (and alcohol)

Link
• Why are things so expensive in Canada?

• The New Escapologist on on a video of a video floating around about how 9-to-5 culture sucks. I was telling Mr. Tucker that in 2002 when I lived on one side of the city it took me 15-20 minutes to get to the other side of the city for work (by car). When I went back to work in 2012 it took me 45 minutes to get from one side of the city to downtown (by car). For most of 9-to-5 history, people lived close to work or within a reasonable commute. But cities haven’t been moving people as efficiently as they should be and now commutes are longer, traffic is worse and public transport is a farce.

Books & booze
I’ve been reading the book (or, really, the very long interview) Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Séan O’Hagan. I have been enjoying Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files quite a bit this year since discovering it so I figured it would be very similar. I was not wrong. It’s funny because I am very much goth-adjacent but have never really listened to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. So this week I am changing that and going back and listening to some. I find it very strange that I didn’t listen to this in the 90s but I suppose we can’t know or experience everything.

I didn’t know anything about journalist, Séan O’Hagan but it’s clear that these two men have known each other for awhile. So when I googled him, I came across this piece he did for The Guardian in 2002: I Can See Clearly Now. I don’t know if it is serendipity or the universe colluding to send me love letters for change or what but Mr. Tucker and I had justjust been discussing making 2024 another sober year.

For some background, like other people we started the pandemic in 2020 by increasing our alcohol intake substantially. Having a backyard with a pool makes it also very easy to slip into long, leisurely summer days of floating on top of the water with a drink – especially when there is no where to go and nothing to do. By the fall however, it had become abundantly clear that we were spending a lot of time and money on alcohol. So on Halloween night 2020 we quit alcohol for a year.

Like O’Hagan, quitting alcohol wasn’t as much of a worry as I thought it would be. I braced myself for the need to sooth with alcohol and I just didn’t have as bad of an experience as I had been anticipating. There were some difficult moments – specifically when we rented cottages on Manitoulin Island with two other families – but they passed quickly. But of course at my friend A’s birthday party on Halloween 2021, I was back in the cups.

Honestly, I have never gone back to my previous levels of alcohol consumption. Since then I have been more of a sporadic and not habitual user. It’s been a bit weird because I can’t tease out whether or not it is because alcohol really affects my PLS or if I just have naturally gravitated away from the stressful years where I used alcohol as a crutch? Maybe both? The pandemic definitely eliminated a lot of stressful elements from our lives after we got over the initial stress of being in a global pandemic. We no longer hosted elaborate holiday meals no one appreciated (but felt obligated to attend). Holidays became joyous, small affairs. We no longer had to rush around from activity to activity for the kids or entertain people who imposed their unwanted, judgement-filled visits on us. The last stressors we truly have that are weighty at the moment are the condo and Mr. Tucker’s job – and getting rid of one means we will get rid of the other!

[I was going to opine here about how sobriety culture is now replacing wine mom culture it seems but I feel like that would be a distraction. Perhaps a post for another day but in general, alcohol is most certainly poison but so are a lot of things. Having said that, sobriety has zero risks aside from being pegged as not fun at parties]

At any rate, it’s interesting that Mr. Tucker and I have always jived when it comes to our behaviour – both good and bad. So it isn’t surprising that we are matched in our current alcohol consumption. Since 2024 will be the year we a> take up gaming again; b> he will hopefully retire it will be interesting to see how that changes many things in our lives. Until then, we head into the holiday season with a budget for some celebratory drinks.

Life update: Christmas, condo & the Youngest pondering high school

Life update: Christmas, condo & the Youngest pondering high school

Links
• Used wisely, carefully: a bit of a bad thing can be good

• Great tools for Canadians from TriDelta determine the value of your final estate and the donation planner.

• Three ways to build wealth with dividend investing (TD Bank video). I follow all three of these speakers online even though they all have different styles of building wealth. In fact, I follow a lot of people – even people I vehemently disagree with – because I feel like it’s important to challenge your own assumptions.

• Disengage: Modern life subjects us to all-consuming demands. That’s why we should reflect on what it means to step away from it all.

• Moneysense magazine did a poll about the worst money advice and these are the (fascinating and unsurprising) results.

• A fantastic read. The Snack Cake Economy: how I learned about money in prison.

• Retirees tend to be happier even if their finances aren’t great.

A life update
In an effort to rein in our spending we took stock of all the food we have in our pantry and freezers and plan to budget a minimal amount for food this month with no eating out. Our CSA dropped our last basket off two weeks ago and so we do need a few fruits and vegetables as well as a few staples. Otherwise, we are trying to work with what we already have.

The Youngest and Mr. Tucker went to an information night for a specialty high school in the area and they came home eager to do an application! I was pleasantly surprised when they sent it to me via email to edit and give them feedback. The application process opens soon and so I am happy to see that they are taking it seriously. Apparently they took 58 students (plus 20 on the waitlist) into the program last year but had 120 applications total. It’s an almost 50% acceptance rate so if they work hard I am sure they will have a shot. So cross all of your fingers for my kid, please!

Condo
I was joking with the Americans* in the group chat that the condo situation feels cursed and that I need to hire someone to sage the place. Every time we get close to the end, another thing blindsides us. On Friday Mr. Tucker went to finish things up only to lose a FOB in the parking brake of the car and then got stuck in a work emergency. So he ended spending most of the time there on a call.

We went to buy appliances only to discover that one elevator was down so that we couldn’t book one to get the appliances upstairs. So now that we are nearing the end I have so much trepidation about what new and exciting derailment is going to happen? We’re trying to stay positive but man it feels like every time we get closer to the end, we get tripped up.

We ended up researching appliances last night and plan to head out and buy them this week and have them delivered on a day that Mr. Tucker books off (see story below!). We will get those in, stage that place and then throw it up on the market as soon as we can. Mr. Tucker – who has absolutely zero faith in the unseen/unknown/spiritual said to me today, “I really hope that whatever the universe is playing at, it’s playing at because it is helping us with the timing of selling the condo.” I honestly hope so as well!

The series of unfortunate events that have delayed the renovations and caused us so much time and given us so much anxiety has done one thing for me: it’s lessoned my nostalgia. I used to hem and haw over selling it vs. renting it out and now I just want it gone. It’s been an anchor on our time, our energy and our finances and it is 100% time to move on from this phase of our lives. So I’m thankful for small miracles, I suppose.

The Holidays are upon us
Last week was used book Advent Calendar day! It’s one of my favourite days of the year and since it is so popular you need to get there early to queue up if you want some good ones. A local bookstore spends a lot of time wrapping up 24 books and packaging them by language, age, genre, media (comic/dvd etc.) I made Mr. Tucker take the afternoon off work this year because last year he did not and of course it was chaos. Last year, I was left scrambling trying to manage the weight of the books while he stood outside in the parking lot on a work call, balancing his laptop in his hands. We vowed never again! It’s actually become a bit of a family joke that when he says the words, “Oh it’s pretty dead at work today, I will just hop out to do X…” all hell breaks loose at work and he’s stuck managing a crisis.

Well not this year!

This year I had him take the afternoon off and the book adventure was smooth sailing. We then hit IKEA because I love their Christmas paper shop and we needed a few extra tubes for this year. I had wanted to hit the cafeteria for lunch but unfortunately we had a delivery arrive of computer components and we didn’t want to leave them sitting out on our porch for too long. Still, it was a productive day.

I know people hate me for it but I generally do all of my Christmas shopping at the start of November. In fact, aside from a few small things for stockings I am pretty much done. I just generally love the fall and early winter between Samhain and the Winter Solstice/Yule that I don’t want to spend it worrying about shopping. I also learned the hard way that a lot of things can sell out very quickly. For example, The Eldest wanted a specific Advent Calendar this year and by the time I got around to ordering it, it was sold out! I managed to find it on another website so crisis averted but had I waited she would have been sorely disappointed. Yes, if you are sensing a theme: we love Advent Calendars more than actual Christmas gifts so we tend to spend more of our money there.

When life was busier and our minds were more chaotic I would wait until Christmas Eve where Mr. Tucker and I would get drunk, throw on the The Vinyl Café Christmas collection and get wrapping! But an older and wiser me has decided to instead do a bit of wrapping during the daytime when the kids are in school. It worked out really well last year and I managed to get it all done by December 1st. That way I managed to enjoy the crafting and friend and family get-togethers during the month without stressing about all of the other drama. December is also my birthday month so I spent a lot of years not celebrating because it was just too much to add yet another task to the list. Now that I have a handle on the season I do plan a nice dinner with the family this year, which will be a lovely break from our normal routine.

*These are my Americans, get your own

People like good news about their bad decisions

People like good news about their bad decisions

Links
• I absolutely adore Katherine May’s books and have bought myself a copy of Wintering to re-read during the dark days ahead. Her newsletter is a lovely read about how to feel grounded in turbulent times.

• I’ve long been a big fan of alternative housing which is funny for someone for whom accessibility is a top concern. Still, this is a good piece about living on a boat. I wish it was more of a choice for many people

• Which cities have bubble risk in their property markets?

• A dollar is a medium of exchange, not a store of value. Some great points here!

• A great non-fiction-ish short story on the real costs of inflation in business and life.

People love good news about their bad decisions
This is why things like Girl Math and Little Treat culture gain traction on TikTok and other social media sites. It feels good to get confirmation that your decisions are in line with the decisions of others. We are, after all, a tribal species.

Unfortunately though, all of these videos and commentary from influencers has very little application to your own personal situation. As the adage goes in personal finance: the only person who cares about your money is you. It doesn’t matter how many videos you watch extoling the virtues of getting a “little treat” in the form of an $8 latte a day if you are miserable because you are sinking in debt – and you don’t even enjoy the latte that much. You need to take a look at your own situation and decide whether or not certain things have value and make you happy. Ignore the noise from the internet telling you that you can ignore any purchase under $5. It’s just “girl math!” What they aren’t telling you is that $5 once a day is $150 a month.

I think the challenge is when a treat becomes, over time, a habit. No one can decide that line for you but if you truly enjoy eating lunch out every day to the tune of $15 a day, then that is probably something you can decide to keep. But if it means you’re upset that can’t afford to go to a fancy dinner with friends because you’ve blown all of your spending money, then maybe review that habit. It’s on you to make those choices and no one else can make them for you.

Yes, there are systemic challenges that are happening and we should all be pushing for change. There is a housing crisis, a recession looming, pensions have gone the way of the Dodo and it can be easy to throw up your hands and say, “screw it, I am going to make myself happy today.” If you choose to do that, who am I to stop you? It’s your life. I am not going to judge. In fact, I don’t care at all. The only person who cares about your money is you.

I see so many people bemoaning standard personal finance advice,

“That wouldn’t work for me!”
“I don’t want to give up my lifestyle!”
“I need X!”
“That sounds like deprivation to me!”
“We need two cars!”
“I can’t eat leftovers!”
“I deserve this for working so hard!”
“Why bother saving, I’ll never be able to afford to buy a house/go on vacation/retire.”

You know what? You are absolutely right. Please carry on.

Do you think Dave Bach or Suze Orman give two shits about what you do with your money? No. They’re busy rolling around in the piles of cash because they’ve been on the personal finance scene for forever and a day spitting out books, getting speaking gigs, plying their trade. All your criticism of typical advice to get your financial affairs in order doesn’t matter one bit. The truth is, it’s very basic and it works. The info they’re peddling isn’t even new or revelational: they are saying the same stuff that you can read on the internet for free any day of the week.

Pay off your debt.
Live below your means.
Save the rest.
Have money in the bank for emergencies.
Save money and invest it long term.

You can bitch and moan all you want that it’s hard, or that you feel judged or that it doesn’t leave you much room for fun things but all it is, is information. You can ignore this information, or you can use it as a springboard to change your life. No one else cares.

Cashless society?

Cashless society?

Our city was a test city for Interac ETF/POS transactions in the 1990s so I remember using debit machines at a very young age. Of course, cashless payments have become king since the pandemic and my children always want their allowances in e-transfer rather than cash.

Over the past few years are city has been hit with weather events that have caused multi-day outages. This has prompted us to buy a generator, solar chargers for devices, and to plan better for what seems to be a yearly inevitability. When the Derecho hit last year, we were in Toronto and when we were driving back home my family texted me to remind me to a> fill up the car on the way back because many gas stations were closed & the others either had long lines or were out of fuel; b> get out some cash because at many places, debit was down as well. To this day we try to keep some cash in the house in order to weather a multi-day outage.

Astute readers will know that I got on the internet about 2-3 years after the debit pilot started here. So I am firmly emmeshed in the great technological future and have been since I was a teenager. But recently I came across Brett Scott’s Altered States of Money Consciousness blog and it’s giving me pause. While I do enjoy having the benefits of technology for many of my financial transactions, I also think we should be wary of eliminating cash completely. I highly recommend the piece 10 reasons to fight a cashless society.

Hope your Wednesday is lovely and that your pillow sacks are plump from last night’s trick-or-treating! I always let my kids stay home the day after Halloween. So they are sleeping off their sugar crashes.