FEAR ITSELF

FEAR ITSELF

Yesterday I was talking about “just in case” scenarios and how we spend so much of our time and energy (and money) preparing for the worst.

Then I remembered another one.

A couple of weeks ago, Art and I bought a car. We had done our “due diligence”, reading up on the various models in Consumer Reports, and we had settled on a car that got good marks all around, but especially in the category of reliability. Reliability was of particular interest to us, since our last car had been such a lemon. (Don’t ask – Suffice it to say that our last car was a luxury import from a country famous for its oom-pah-pah and strudel). This time around we went for a family sedan from a country famous for its sushi and Kabuki dancers.

In any event. In retrospect, I think they have something of a “good cop-bad cop” game going on at the dealership. The people who sold us the car were very sweet, very affable, and very friendly.

After we had negotiated our best deal, especially paying attention to the well-advertised low interest financing, we were feeling pretty good. The car was being spiffed up and prepared for us to take it home. Then they brought in the “finance person”. This was a woman who was very buttoned up, very straight-faced, and who was having no nonsense from us.

She started by offering us the famous “extended warranty”. Yes, for about an extra thousand dollars, we could have a warranty that goes beyond the standard three-year warranty. I was confused. Here, this woman’s colleagues had just finished assuring us that the car we had selected was the sturdiest, most reliable we could have chosen. We were congratulated on our good taste and our shrewd ability to discern between the wheat and the chaff, so to speak. But this martinet warned us in hushed tones that our chosen car (although it’s a good car, of course) does have a history of problems after the three-year warranty has run out. I wondered, “Which is true”? Thankfully, my husband is much more decisive than I am. He cut her off at the knees: “That ain’t happening!” he barked.

She then moved on to the special warranty pertaining to the paint. “The paint?” I repeated to myself. “What’s wrong with the paint?” I queried. Well, nothing, but after years of washing, normal wear-and-tear, and sun damage. . . “Nope”, quoth my husband, “Nevermore”. (We had to sign an affidavit stating that she had warned us about the paint, and we had foolishly rejected her generous offer).

She did manage to talk us into keeping the existing alarm system, which is an anti-theft device. Art had to go out to check on something, and while she and I were alone in the room, she told me that, even though she has the alarm system (which she said is a “deterrent”) and the Lo-Jack system (which nabs the crooks in the act), her own car (an exact replica of our car) had been stolen three times in the last year. She explained that the unassuming, low-profile car we had chosen was actually the second most stolen car in the country. When Art came back I tugged on h is sleeve and said, “Maybe we should get the alarm system, honey”. He grumbled and negotiated the price a little, but he acquiesced.

Finally, we left the showroom with our brand new car (streaming little dollar bills as the car’s value depreciated). We discussed the scene in the office of the “finance person”. Art told me that the reason he was so opposed to any of those extra protection warranties was that all of them were based on fear. He was right, of course. All of the “what if?” scenarios are based on our deepest fears.

If you watch enough TV news, read enough newspapers, peruse enough magazines, or indulge in enough cops-and-robbers movies, you can become convinced that the world is a pretty dangerous place, full of hidden pitfalls and malevolent forces. Call me naïve, but the sun is shining this morning, and I just refuse to believe it. To quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

© 2005, Robin Munson

GATHERING NUTS FOR WINTER – A SQUIRRELLY IDEA

GATHERING NUTS FOR WINTER – A SQUIRRELLY IDEA

A very kind reader e-mailed me yesterday and said that it was good to find a blog that was not geared to people under twenty-five.

Phew! That’s a relief to me, because I keep imagining people reading my posts and saying to themselves, “She’s just so out-of-it, so un-hip, so old!

As I think about it, a lot of what I write about is directly related to my age. That makes sense, because the first rule of writing, as we all know, is: Write about what you know. I know something about being fifty-four in the twenty-first century. I don’t know about being twenty-four. Oh, sure, I remember being twenty-four (and by the way, I shudder every time I do), but I was twenty-five in 1974.

The world was so different then. If memory serves, that was the time of leisure suits, wide ties, Watergate, really bad hair-dos, and a time when we were still reeling from the war in Vietnam. It was the early stages of the “sexual revolution”, before A.I.D.S. It was the heyday of Women’s Lib. Some people still smoked pot, and even inhaled (I hear). The seventies were the transition years between the socially and politically explosive sixties and the beginning of the socially and politically conservative (some would say reactionary) ideology that budded in the eighties and came into full bloom four years ago.

So here I am. Admittedly, an aging hippie. My hair is shorter and my butt is lower. I wear new jeans instead of old ones from the thrift shop. My drug of choice is my little white pill (which I only take for getting on airplanes). My live-in lover has become my husband. My only form of activism is this journal that I share with you, gentle reader.

Well, the only true reward for age (apart from having the privilege of being on the earth instead of in it) is wisdom. And the only true wisdom that comes with age is the wisdom of having made your fair share of bloopers. Then you try to share that wisdom with the “young-uns”.

For example, one piece of advice for twenty-five year-olds in 2004 would be to plan for retirement. I can hear you now: “Boring!” But let me tell you why.

I have had the great good fortune of watching my parents’ aging process. No matter what you think you know about “the golden years”, forget it. Nothing in your life so far can begin to prepare you for the physical changes, the financial setbacks, the social restrictions, the steely strength coupled with a gigantic sense of humor that it takes to grow old – unless you, like me, are witnessing the process at close range with someone you love.

Now, you can’t really plan for a lot of this. For example, you can’t say with any reliability, “I probably will need oxygen by the time I’m seventy-five”, or “All of my best friends will be either dead or in Florida fifty years from now”. But you can do one thing: You can plan your finances.

I am by no means an expert on the subject – as a matter of fact, I’m just beginning to learn, myself. But I can help you twenty-five year-olds out there to at least start thinking about all of this.

Remember that your Social Security benefits – if they exist by the time you retire – probably will not cover all your living expenses, or even your most basic needs. Remember that even if you have responsible adult children, they probably won’t be able to cover all contingencies. Remember that an extra twenty thousand dollars spent on a car will probably translate to an extra hundred thousand dollars that could have been saved for your declining years. Remember that you’re probably not going to want to work much beyond a certain age (with very rare exceptions). Remember that you might need medical care beyond a once-a-year once-over from your GP. Remember that you will maintain your right to enjoy life beyond sixty-five. And yes, there’s a very good chance you will live way beyond sixty-five, given the medical breakthroughs we’ve seen in recent years.

There is a wonderful article in the January ’05 edition of Consumer Reports about planning for retirement. (That’s what got me started on this).

But if you’re twenty-five, you probably can’t even think that far ahead, and if you can think that far ahead, I’m probably preaching to the choir. (Sigh). You can’t tell anybody anything, but I’ll probably keep trying.

© 2004, Robin Munson