Fun with health insurance, part 3

You all remember how I got put on Medicaid for a couple of years, even though the program was meant for the desperately poor. I explain that in part 1 and part 2.

Well, that finally came to an end, and it seems like I didn't bother to post about it. But starting in 2024, I began to buy regular health insurance through my state's ACA website, because I was finally ruled ineligible for Medicaid.

In some sense it is silly for me to buy anything of the kind, because I haven't actually seen a doctor since 2022. My old doctor retired while I was in Scotland during the spring of 2023; I thought about visiting the new doctor who bought his practice, but at the time I was still covered under Medicaid. I figured he probably didn't take Medicaid, and I didn't feel like explaining how it happened.

Since then? Well, my ACA plan assigned me to a doctor, but I've never made an appointment. I don't feel a strong need to. Maybe she could do something about my earwax, of course. But my annual physicals were never terribly informative. My old doctor would try to put me on statins, I would refuse, and then we'd spend a few months when I tried to bring down my blood pressure using diet and exercise. Not an obviously useful way for either of us to spend our time.

Then this fall, Congress declined to extend the ACA subsidies for most income classes. I went online and found that my premium would more than quadruple! In concrete numbers, my new premium would be more than $1000 per month higher than my old one! Of course I was hardly unique in this. You must have heard the story plenty of times by now. Maybe it happened to you.

I started searching online for other alternatives. Could I go without insurance altogether? Could I buy catastrophic-only insurance? And finally I called the insurance company who has been supporting me since I got off Medicaid.

In the course of the conversation, my agent asked: 

"How much do you make every month?"

I told him.

Then he asked: 

"And that's an IRA distribution, right? In other words, the exact amount is in your control?"

"Yes."

"Because here's something interesting. If you brought home $1000/month less than you bring home today, you'd still be eligible for subsidies. In fact, your premiums would be cheaper than they are today."

Say what?

I hung up the phone and went to check whether I could get by on the reduced income every month. Could I do it for at least a year? (After a year I'll be eligible for Medicare, and all the calculations change.) Looking at my expenses over the last few years, I learned two things.

• First, I normally spend more per month than the hypothetical number my insurance agent had suggested.
• Second, I normally spend less per month than I am pulling out of my IRA, with the result that I have been building up my savings account. If I take enough money out of my savings to make up the shortfall in my withdrawals—and if, naturally, nothing unexpected happens—I'll still be in comfortable shape by the end of the year.

Sounds like a plan.

So that's what I'm going to do. It's crazy, but it is what the system requires. For one year I will throttle back my income even farther than I have already done, and I'll make up the difference with savings. And these machinations will cut more than $1000/month (or $12,000/year) off my mandatory health insurance bill.

In case you wonder why some people think the current system is crazy ... well, I guess this is part of why.

    

Blast from the past: Intentions

Hosea's log: Star date 1992-10-11 ... or it might have been 1992-11-10. It was well into the autumn of 1992, and right around the full moon—maybe plus or minus a day. No more than a day.

People who are comfortable with what might be called the woo-woo end of New Age spirituality sometimes talk about "releasing intentions into the Universe." It's not always clear how this differs either from prayer or from magic, but the language is vague enough to offer plausible deniability if one is challenged by a hard-core materialist. "Oh no, I wasn't doing anything supernatural. I was just focusing my attention on a certain goal for the sake of psychological clarity."

The thing is, sometimes it works. Debbie once told me that a few months before she and I met up again after twenty years, she found herself getting tired of living alone after her divorce, and released an intention into the Universe that she meet someone romantically. Then she met me.

Normally I'm not really organized enough to do the same thing, but I remember one time that I definitely did. It was a long-term intention; and while I didn't follow up scrupulously to check every bit of it against a schedule, in the long run it did more or less come true as well.

The time was 1992. I was working a contract job nearly 120 miles from home—by which I mean the apartment I shared with Wife, while she was in graduate school. I drove down on Monday morning and back on Friday evening. During the week I stayed with my parents, which was just a little over 40 miles away from my work. The traffic was terrible, and I wasn't making a lot: enough to pay our rent, but not enough to keep up with Wife's already-riotous spending. But it was what I could get, and all that driving didn't leave me a lot of time to look for a better job.

For some years I had still nursed fantasies of going back to graduate school myself. I had left abruptly (as I describe briefly here) and my faculty advisor was kind enough to hold open my space in my fellowship program for one year. Well, by this time it had been closer to six years, and I wasn't still in touch with him. But I still clung to the fantasy that maybe someday I could go back.

Then in the fall of 1992 I learned that my former faculty advisor had died. Of course there was no realistic way that I would ever have gone back, but this shattered my fantasy. I wept for him—by which of course I mean "for myself and my lost dreams"—harder than I have ever wept for a dead relative. And then, not long after, I found myself walking out to the parking lot after another long day, after sunset, with the stars twinkling, and the most enormous full moon hanging just over the horizon.

Paying Alfred

I wrote you about getting a call from my old college buddy Alfred, who asked me for a couple thousand dollars. It took me a couple of days to come to a decision, but in the end I wrote him a check for $500. 

My analysis of his situation continues to be that there is a lot he isn't saying. As I explained in my last post, the story he gave doesn't work because the timing is wrong: he says he spent a bunch of money looking after his mother, but she died several years ago. What has he been doing since then, that has gotten him into a financial crunch NOW? The first time I asked this, I got an artful non-answer. When I pointed out that he hadn't answered—and also said, Fine, don't tell me, I don't need to know"—he added that yes, there was more to it: his tutoring business had fallen off during the pandemic. I did not bother to remind him that the pandemic was four years ago, so this explanation is as bad as the other. The timing is wrong. So one way or another, he is not telling the whole story. And if it is that important for him to hide parts of the story, those parts must be pretty ugly. I assume that it's probably something like drugs, gambling, or—at the absolute best—skull-cracking financial stupidity.

How did I make my decision? Partly I just sat and mulled. And partly I read Tarot for it. You recall that I started reading Tarot something like three years ago. What's more, even if you think that the cards really are random, there is an advantage for someone like me—who is often afflicted with indecision—to use an external tool like the Tarot to come to closure. Sometimes, after all, any decision is better than no decision. (For a more thorough account of the mechanisms by which divination works—including at least two mechanisms that even the most hardened skeptic would acknowledge—see this article from October 2016 by John Michael Greer.) I won't reproduce pictures for all the cards that I laid out, but I asked a number of questions and the answers seemed pretty consistent.

If you think that reading Tarot is dumb, feel free to skip the rest of this post. (Though there is a little more narrative towards the end.)

An odd phone call

I got a peculiar phone call yesterday morning. It was from a guy I knew in college—so, forty-some years ago. We were buddies then, but I've really had almost no communication with him since. Oh—one exception: when I went to my fortieth class reunion two years ago (as mentioned briefly in this post), he was active in planning the event so I communicated with him a fair bit in the run-up to the reunion. And we chatted several times at the reunion itself, catching up on the last forty years. Although … now that I think about it, he really didn't tell me much about his life, or his circumstances. But he was good at asking conversational questions.

I'm going to have to give this fellow a name, so let me call him Alfred, after the great Alfred E. Neuman. (There are … reasons … that this isn't a crazy name to choose.) Anyway, Alfred sent me a text message Friday asking for a call over the weekend. He said he wanted my advice urgently on something. So we set up a call for 10:00 am on Saturday. He was cordial and pleasant, asking after my news and then asking what other college alumni I'm still in touch with. I told him I talk to Marie and to Schmidt, and he asked about them. Then he asked about my professional work, and about my professional opinion about a topic that has been in the news a lot lately. By this time we had spent almost an hour in conversation, and it felt like we hadn't gotten to the point yet.

Then he asked me for money.

Paying for Paris

I'm going to post this in real-time, the evening I write it, and not back-date it to go with the rest of the Paris posts. It wasn't really a "theme" during the vacation itself. And it only got resolved in the last few days. So it can sit out here in December as an outlier.

Two weeks in Paris aren't going to be cheap, no matter how you do it. We went in November (not "high season" and therefore cheaper). We stayed in "cheap and cheerful" accommodations in the Quartier Latin, rather than more upscale tourist digs. We didn't go to the Moulin Rouge, or any other expensive entertainment. And still, it … wasn't cheap. Paris never is. 

Watching my aunts split a bill

Last night a bunch of us went out to dinner. This means both my aunts plus my uncle; Mother, Brother and SIL, me, and some of my cousins. The place we chose was cheap and fun. And my aunts made sure to split the bill between them.

I've seen them do this before—come to think of it, this is normal pretty much whenever the family goes out together. If anything the odd part this time was that only my aunts were involved in the split, instead of all the adults (or all the heads of households).

But it puzzles me, just a bit. I know that one aunt is worth millions—by which I mean somewhere over ten million dollars. The other aunt might be worth less, but the house she shares with my uncle is pretty nice and I don't see her economizing on simple things whenever I stay with her. So one way or another they are comfortable. The dinner bill for ten or twelve people (all relatives) was maybe a couple hundred dollars total. Why go to the trouble of splitting it?

Of course the decision is out of my hands: I don't live in the same town, so I'm just a visitor; also, even though I'm over sixty years old, in this company I'm one of the kids because there is a full generation ahead of me (Mother and her siblings). But if I were part of the process, would I play along? Or would I just say, "This is silly; I'll pay it and have done"?

I would want to do the latter. I also know that if I did it too often, I'd start to feel like people were taking advantage of me. I don't know how to make sense of this. It's a puzzle.

Maybe now that I've made a note about it here, that will prompt me to think more about it and come to an answer.  

          

Waiting for the end of the world 1, money

NOTE: I'm writing this about a week later than it's posted, but I'm back-dating it to the day it happened. It's only a week.

Today I had a phone call with the fellow that manages my retirement account, and it was … less than fully satisfactory. Normally we talk every few months. Usually he (or a financial advisor in his office—there is one specifically assigned to my account) explains to me what's going on in the economy, and then makes suggestions for how we should restructure my investments accordingly. I pay a flat fee regardless of buys or sells, so it's not to their advantage to encourage random trading for its own sake; and their contract specifically prohibits them from getting paid by the individual securities for promoting them. Also their fees are proportional to the value of my account, so they make more money when I do. All that is to say that I assume their advice is probably based on what they really think.

That's good to know, because whenever they start explaining the trends in the economy and how those trends suggest this or that redistribution of my account, they might as well be speaking Chinese, or ancient Babylonian. I never have any idea what they are talking about. I mean, yes, I understand when they say they think interest rates will go up (or down), and sometimes I can detect a causal connection to where they say that they think inflation will go down (or up). But how that translates to "We need to sell your shares in the Octopus Amalgamated ETF and buy up shares in Global Mammon ETF instead," … well, the logic behind that narrative transition always eludes me. But it sounds like they know what they are talking about, and I know they make more money only when I do; so I always trust their recommendation and approve it. 

Fun with health insurance, part 2

I don't quite know how to categorize this post. Is it a "diary entry"? Kind of. Is it about politics? No, not really. Do I think you want to hear it? Maybe—it's certainly crazy enough to be funny, if you have the right sense of humor.

Is there any kind of important moral in it? I keep thinking there must be, but I haven't found it yet. So let's go with "crazy" for now.

Part 1 is way back here.

Progress of a kind

The last 24 hours have been … really informative. And they've meant a kind of progress in my relationship with Wife and Son 2 … and maybe even Son 1, though that's harder to tell. But explaining it is going to require backing up for a minute. 

Chapter One: Background

This weekend, Son 2 is breezing through town. A while ago I told you about his opportunity to go to graduate school. Since then he applied and was accepted for January admission. Now that it is December he gave notice at his work and his last day was Friday. This weekend he is moving to the city where his graduate studies will take place, and where his girlfriend has been living for a while. He is taking the long way around to get there, visiting first me and then Wife en route, for a couple of reasons: partly winter weather is forecasted to block the more direct route, and partly there are things in my storage unit and in hers that he wants to take to set up his new housekeeping with. He slept in my apartment last night, and he left early this morning for Wife's place. After that I think he'll wind up with a brief visit to my mother before driving to the new city.

The curious case of Son 2's insurance

A few days ago I got a call from Son 2. His employer is rolling out paid life insurance as a benefit for everyone. He realizes that he doesn't really need life insurance: he's 24 and has no dependents, so there's no urgency. But his company is paying for it, so he figured he'd take advantage while he could.

This means naming a beneficiary. Whom to choose? He's not married, and has no children. And when he called me, he said he'd decided to list me because Why not? and so could I please give him my Social Security number?

Umm, ... sure, I guess so. He added a couple more remarks to fill the empty space in the conversation, but they just made no sense. 

"I figured you'd be sure to have all those numbers handy." Yes, of course. In fact not only do I know my own SSN, but I know Wife's by heart as well. And I've written down yours and your brother's. I could find them if you want.

"I also thought of listing my brother because he's the only other member of the family who's working right now." Wait—did he really mean because, or did he mean although? "But I can't call him at work because they don't allow it." And I guess you couldn't wait till this evening. 

I tried to explain that I have all of these numbers, so really he could pick any of the four of us. I even made a joke of how many times I'd had to fill out Wife's SSN on this or that medical form, so of course I've got it memorized! He laughed and never mentioned Wife in his reply. He wanted my SSN.

I gave it to him, but I also wonder why he asked me for it? 

Magical tales 1, spells for money

There are stories I haven't told you yet. Actually there are a lot of stories I haven't told you yet. For all that this blog is over 1200 posts old, there's a lot of older stuff I never got around to. Maybe some day I'll scan through to see if there are stories that I promised one day and never told—and then tell them. Wow, completeness. What an idea.

But in some cases it's not just laziness or indolence. In some cases I feel genuinely funny telling the stories. Of course, that's why I have the blog in the first place: so I can tell true stories without having them traced back to me later. So here goes.

I've mentioned several times now that I've started following John Michael Greer. He writes about a lot of things, including politics and magic. And I'd noticed that several times he mentioned casually in passing that it's a bad idea to do magical spells to ask for money to drop into your lap. So one day last fall I sent him a question asking why.

I know someone that I think may be doing some kind of magic for money to drop into her lap. (Haven't confirmed yet, but from circumstantial evidence.) [Of course I was talking about Wife.] I know you have said this is generally a bad idea -- I mean, as opposed to doing magic that some venture turn out successfully, which is different. Have you ever written a full post explaining the likely consequences? If yes, can you please point me to it? If no, what are they?

His reply was straightforward:

That's one of the classic mistakes beginners in magic make, until they get enough instant karma to teach them why it's a bad idea. What happens is this. If you do magic to get money without earning it, your intention implies that someone else ought to earn money and not get it. That guides the blowback straight to your door. Everyone I know who tried this kind of magic ended up suffering a sudden financial loss -- their job went away, or their investments took a nosedive, or their car got totaled and the other guy's insurance refused to pay, or something like that. It's as reliable as tomorrow's sunrise.

If you want to do magic to become wealthier than you are, on the other hand, that's easy. Do workings to help you find opportunities to make money, and then follow through on them. You'll have to work for it, but you can do very well indeed that way.

Fair enough. I contacted Wife, asked her if she was doing such magic (She said, "If you were in my situation, wouldn't you?"), and sent her this information. I told her I had stumbled randomly across it on the Internet.

But I also started to think about it. In the first few years of our marriage, Wife used to do spells or prayers like that very regularly. (You remember that Wife used to be Wiccan, right?) After a few years, she let them taper off. I never kept a log of when she did such spells and when she didn't, but I have a rough, general idea.

Also, Mr. Greer regularly claims that magic is an empirical science. He claims that you should be able to trace cause and effect in magical workings. So I thought about it, and tried to figure out if we had experienced the kinds of sudden, unexpected financial losses that he talked about. Here's what I came up with.

1984: Wife and I marry. We both start graduate school, at the same place.

1985: Wife's graduate department accidentally screws up her paperwork, with the result that she loses her funding. 

1986: Wife interrupts a burglary. For various reasons she decides she has to drop out of school and leave town. I take a leave of absence (that later becomes permanent) to follow her. Wife gets a well-paying job right near the new town where we settle. A month later, she's fired. She gets a second job doing something similar, also paying pretty well if not quite as much. After two weeks, she's fired. (Finally she gets a third job, with a 37-mile commute. I get a job.)

1987: The heat in our apartment goes out in February. (Strictly speaking, this is the landlord's expense.) Later, we move. At this point we are both driving old hand-me-down cars from our parents. Her car dies. After a lot of searching we buy her a new car. Then my car dies.

1988: We buy me a cute little second-hand VW Bug. Then its reverse-gear breaks. For several months, until we can afford to get it fixed, the only way I can back up is to put the car in neutral and push. Good thing it's a VW. 

Also this year (I think it was the same year!), Wife decides we need a chest freezer in our garage. That way we can buy meat in bulk, you see, because it's cheaper-per-ounce that way. So she buys the chest freezer. Then she plunges into an orgy of shopping, and fills the whole thing with meat. A little later, we are doing some kind of work in the garage that requires temporarily unplugging the chest freezer ... and we forget to plug it back in. All the meat spoils. The stench is so overpowering there is no way to clean the freezer. There's a construction site across the street, and we get their permission to toss the whole works―freezer, meat, and all―into their dumpster. I have no records to tally up how much money went straight down the tubes because of that foolishness.

1989: Wife gets a new boss, whom she hates, and leaves her job. (I forget if he fires her or she just quits.) She gets a new job that she hates even more. Also my job is thrown into tumult. The contract is being changed at a high level; and even though my role is pretty insignificant, I somehow get caught in the gears. In the end I learn enough diplomacy fast enough to save my job, but my two co-conspirators both lose their jobs with extreme prejudice.

1990: Wife is admitted to another graduate school in a new town, so she quits her job and we have to move. My car is totaled on the freeway. I "borrow" my grandfather's car. Its radiator explodes, and I borrow another old car from my parents.

1991: I don't remember. There was probably something.

1992: My work relocates three hours away so I have a crazy commute on weekends and have to find a way to stay there during the week. Somewhere along the line the car I've got from my parents also dies.

1993: We buy another new car. Wife fails her qualifying exams and leaves her graduate program at the end of spring. She finds short-term jobs, but not until November 1995 does she find a job that she can hold more than a year. Also in 1993 I get my first solid (non-contracting), professional job in the field that leads to my career.――The next year (1994) we buy a house and start to think that we are joining the professional middle class. After a while, Wife stops doing magical spells to get money to drop into our laps.

... or at any rate she pretty much stopped until we sold the house and she was once again living on her own. I don't know what she did after that, but I think she started up again. Also her financial situation started deteriorating.

My memory is a little sketchy for this kind of detail that far back. (I can remember stories; but after a while the dates blur.) But I'm pretty sure this is close to accurate. And it means that for most of the first ten years of our marriage, Wife was doing magical spells to get money to drop into our laps. And for most of the first ten years of our marriage, we had at least one major financial crisis each year. So yes, maybe that counts as being "as reliable as tomorrow's sunrise."

If so, a concatenation of that many dramatic coincidences does kind of suggest that magic may work. Also, don't try this at home.

   

Magical thinking for the win

I told you back in August that I had started trying to learn to read Tarot. Among other things this means that I start most days with a quick check of what I need to know about the day. As often as not, I get white noise, or combinations of cards that make no sense.

But I've also used the cards, from time to time, to answer Yes/No questions. Should I apply for this job? Will there be anybody useful at this job fair? Is this plan for seeing Marie a good one? And there the answers have looked kind of reliable. One of the questions that I have asked not infrequently is whether to apply for this or that job, and I get the answer No pretty reliably. Of course I think this answer is great, because I don't really want another job at this point (or at any rate not just any old job). And in my mind I have this fantasy that I should spend the time instead producing content: writing a book about the stuff that I do professionally, or writing philosophy, or some damned thing. Even just writing more of these blog posts. (I did an inventory yesterday of ideas I've had, that I haven't written up yet, and came up with more than twenty new posts each for this site and for the Patio. Let's see whether I get off my ass and write any of them.) 

Fantasies don't pay the bills. And even if that's not an immediate concern for me right at the moment, it feels a little presumptuous to say that I am "supposed" to be spending my time doing this or that. Besides, even if you accept the whole idea of consulting oracles, I've read that it's unreliable to read for yourself about any question where you really care about the answer, because your opinions are likely to cloud your judgement or skew the reading.

Funny thing, though — it turns out there's a website whose owner will read Ogham for you for free, as an oracle. How accurate are her predictions? The people who leave comments seem to be pleased with the results she gives them, though that may be nothing more than selection bias. In any event she's never heard of me before. And it's free, so it can't hurt to ask. Right?

Anyway, a couple days ago I submitted a question:

Dear Kimberly,

I've been trying to learn Tarot for a few months now, but I'm often still baffled by the images so I'd like to cross-check something with you. Just at the moment I'm out of work; but several times I have had the experience of seeing a job posting that might be a possibility, asking about it, and getting a very clear "NO" from the cards. OK, maybe they were all just bad places to work. But it's happened enough that I want to ask: Am I supposed to be doing Something Else with this time, instead of just looking for another job? If so, what?

Thanks very much!

Hosea

And her reply was as follows:

Hi Hosea,

Yes, my Ogham agree with your Tarot -- you need to be doing Something Else.

They provide Quert or Delight well-dignified to answer your question.

Then she went on to give me a bunch of advice about saving money; some of her suggestions are things I'm already doing, and others aren't terribly practical for me right now. But of course she's never heard of me before, so how should she know the details of my situation? I did try to ask her a follow-up question, ("So what exactly should I be doing instead?") and got no answer. Maybe I'll ask again next week.

In the meantime, though, she confirmed that I'm not "supposed" to be looking for work right now. Maybe the way I phrased the question prejudiced her answer, but I still think it's interesting that that's what she said.

       

Pleasantly surprised

Background

I got an email today from Wife. The context is that when my company-paid health insurance ended in September, I dithered for a while and then signed up for a COBRA policy. I told the boys I'd cover them until they could sign up for insurance of their own through their jobs; I told Wife I'd cover her through December. After that, I said, either I would cancel her coverage or I would deduct the cost from her alimony check: her choice.

OK, strictly speaking it's not even "alimony" at this point. Our Separation Agreement ties the amount of alimony to my salary: right now I am unemployed and have no salary, so legally I should be paying zero alimony. But I told Wife I didn't want to be an asshole, so I am continuing to make payments as long as I can afford it. I have explained that if some day I can no longer afford it, she should remember that there is nothing legally binding about these payments.

On the other hand, the cost of COBRA coverage for her totals just over 50% of the size of those payments. So if I deduct that from her payments, she won't have a lot left. At the time, I suggested that she look for cheaper insaurance.

What I expected her to write

I expected her to have done nothing since then, to have been paralyzed by the need for action. I expected her to be frightened and panicked, and therefore angry and accusatory. I expected her to have forgotten just how far I have done her favors during this process, and to demand more because she needs it.

I was wrong on all counts.

What she wrote instead

Her email was clear and detailed. She explained that naturally the best case from her perspective was something other than what was available, but she fully recognized that it wasn't available. She had, in fact, found and signed up for an alternate insurance plan, and described in some detail what it will and won't cover. Therefore, she said I should go ahead and cancel the COBRA insurance for her at the end of this month. She also expressed gratitude for everything I have done for her so far, and ended the email by mentioning some happy things that have dropped into her life lately.

She said nothing about her needs. She thanked me and demanded nothing beyond what I had offered. She did ask a couple of clarifying questions about what expenses she could slide under the wire, but they were all posed as pure questions and not disguised challenges.

And I was just a little bit stunned. Has she been able to do this all along, and just chose not to? Or has she been practicing? Has she turned over a new leaf somehow? Is she in the process of another dramatic personality change, kind of like the one I wrote about a few days ago, but in the other direction? That last option sounds far-fetched, but who knows? I suppose anything is possible. Anyway, reading her email was a little bit like preparing for a step and then finding that it's not there. Almost disorienting.

But I was pleasantly surprised.

Does this mean that my long-standing fear of her is going to be out of date some time soon? That might be a lot to ask, but I suppose anything is possible. I guess we'll see.  

  

Fun with health insurance, part 1

NOTE: I am writing this post in January 2023, but posting it back here where it belongs chronologically. Anyway it's really just a placeholder. But it's a topic I refer to glancingly from time to time.

One of the consequences of losing my job has been losing health insurance. Last month I tried to buy some privately through the ACA exchanges, but for a variety of crazy reasons that didn't go as planned. In the end, I signed up for a COBRA continuation plan from my company. Yes, I know COBRA is supposed to cost way more than any ACA plan. This time it doesn't. The world is crazy.

I explain what happened when I get to part 2, which also tells you how the whole situation plays out over time. Part 2 is dated January 2023. You can find part 2 here.

      

Retirement planning through sortilege

I feel stupid writing this, but that's probably good for me, isn't it?

One of my big topics during this time is to figure out what the hell to do next. (See, e.g., the 6-word slogan I've out on my masthead: So what do I do now?) In line with this concern, I've started learning to cast simple tarot readings, using the instructions that John Michael Greer posts here. Do I believe that the tarot tells the future? Probably I have to answer with Niels Bohr and say, "Of course not …."

But I will add that Wife seemed to have a pretty good success rate reading Tarot back when we were together, or at any rate when she was still in her stride as a self-confident witch. I don't know if she still reads today, or with what level of success.

Anyway, one of the big questions I've been concerned with lately is whether to invest the money that I have collected in my 401(K) account from work with the financial advisors that I first mentioned here. And the answers I've gotten have been, … well, … not encouraging.

For these questions I've been using a variant method, not quite the one Greer explains in his post that I reference above. This is a method that Wife taught me years ago. 

1. Think of a yes/no question while you shuffle the cards.
2. Turn over the first three cards.
3. Count each upright card as a "Yes," and each reversed card as a "No." Majority wins.
4. If you want more commentary on what it's going to look like, read the cards themselves.

Over the last couple of days, I have asked these questions in several different ways.

• Can I trust XYZ with my money? Answer: No. (8 of Cups reversed, Sun reversed, King of Wands upright. But I flipped the cards as I turned them over, which normally I don't do. Does that matter? Should I count the reversed cards as upright and vice versa?) 
• Will XYZ treat my money dishonestly? Answer: No. (10 of Pentacles reversed, 8 of Swords reversed, 2 of Wands upright.)
• Will someone else handle my money better than XYZ? Answer: Yes. (Magician, Hermit, Page of Pentacles, all upright. I assume the Hermit there means "Keep looking," but how in the hell am I supposed to find a magician to invest my retirement account with?)

Finally this afternoon I tried a different way to word it: Are XYZ the right people to invest my money with? And the answer came up like this:

Strictly speaking, I suppose that's a Yes, isn't it, because two cards are upright and only one is reversed. But it doesn't look like encouraging commentary. The way I read this, it's telling me:

• Eight of Swords: I'm only choosing them because I feel like I don't have any other choice. And it's true that I haven't been interviewing anybody else, but that's because up till now all their answers to all my questions have sounded really reasonable. And when I look them up on the SEC website there are no outstanding complaints against them.
• Queen of Swords reversed: I'm at risk from some kind of deceit. Either that or an older woman will be badly disposed towards me. (But XYZ is a small firm and all the analysts are men. This couldn't mean Wife, could it?)
• Five of Wands: And there's a risk of family fights if I go ahead. Family fights? That's how Wife always read the 5 of Wands. But I can't really imagine why choosing this investment advisor over that one would cause family fights. How is that possible? On the other hand the little booklet packed in with the cards says, "Imitation, as, for example, sham fight, but also the strenuous competition and struggle of the search after riches and fortune. In this sense it connects with the battle of life. Hence some attributions say that it is a card of gold, gain, opulence." I suppose gain and opulence sound nice -- certainly a lot better than family fights. Hmm.

The thing is, I can see using the Tarot to focus your thinking about a subject, to help you frame a question, or to inspire you to look at aspects of a topic you had hitherto ignored. But when all the visible evidence says that XYZ firm look honest and competent, when the contract requires them to act as fiduciaries and has safeguards built in to prevent bad behavior, and when the cards still look ambiguous or depressing -- at that point isn't it just magical thinking to reject what's visible to your eyes because of invisible hints? People have been ruined by magical thinking. Knowing that hasn't stopped me from indulging in it throughout this transition (see, e.g., here and here) but I try to keep it reined in.

Oh well. I'll make a decision some day soon.

      

Retirement

A few weeks ago, I started talking to a financial advisor who is somehow connected with the job search consultants that the company provided for us. I figured that I should get some advice what to do with my 401K, since I hadn't looked at it for 15 years or so. In fact, for a while I wasn't getting statements because of some screw-up with my address. I could have gone online, but rarely got around to it.

When I did finally get around to it, a couple of months ago, I realized I needed advice even more than I had known I needed it before. There's a lot of money there. It's funny that even though this is an anonymous blog, I don't feel safe typing the number here -- not even a round approximation. Money really is a huge taboo for us, I guess.

But it's enough money that the advisor's first calculation said I could retire now if I want to. I'm only sixty, or almost. I told him to assume I would live till at least ninety, because it is a nice round number. He said I could retire now, unless I were sabotaged by a combination of an unfavorable inflation rate and an exceptionally poor stock market.

Of course he made a few assumptions. One is that I keep living in my one-bedroom apartment. Another is that I stop paying alimony. The Separation Agreement has a provision that drops in my salary (not "income," please notice!) mean drops in alimony, so if I retire then according to the Agreement Wife's alimony fades away to zero. There were other plausible assumptions too.

And then I could retire. Now. Not find another job, ever.

I asked him to recalculate with a couple of the input numbers adjusted to be a bit more accurate. Then I asked, What if I keep paying the alimony (even though I'm not required to)? (Just because I might like to  -- you know -- not be a jerk.) What if I double my rent by moving somewhere else? (So that I might have a guest room some day, or a study?) Well, of course those assumptions make it harder to retire now. 

Harder. Not actually impossible. But maybe I should work for a few more years. 

I don't know what to think. I don't know how to process this. 

How many times in the last few months have I stopped to ask, What if I didn't have to find another job? I can think, at least, of here and here and here and here.

And maybe I don't. Wow.

     

Feels like a long month

It feels like it has been a very long month.

I've had a couple of screening interviews: one for a job six hours from here that I really don't want, and one for a job that they said could be done remotely (though the office is about three hours from here). The second one also produced a real interview, by Zoom, late Monday. I think it went OK. At any rate there were no embarrassing silences. I can't tell whether they liked me, and in any event they were still in the middle of interviewing other candidates. We'll see.

On paper the job is perfect for me. I was excited while I was doing the interview. Now I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere. I find myself hoping I'll be rejected on the first pass.

I started a blog under my real name, about my real-life work. No links from here, though. Sorry.

Debbie visited for a night. Her plan was to visit a number of her friends in this town, and to spend the nights here. No, nothing happened in that sense -- I mean, no sex. Also she got sick for most of the night with some kind of gastrointestinal bug. I slept through it but she told me the next morning.

Debbie also has a number of hikes she wants to take me on. I've been trying to exercise more, so that these might even be possible. But I'm tired and I'd rather nap.

Last Saturday I had a routine physical checkup. My blood pressure was a little high, so they asked me to take it at home when I'm relaxed and send them the results. I'm doing that. But I've also stopped drinking in the last few days, to help pull down my blood pressure. I'm sure it's good for me, but I miss it.

Next month Wife is moving in with Son 1. He seems to have his eyes open about the whole thing. I think it is the most despicable thing she has done in a long time. Why hasn't she found some other form of income? Why does she insist on being so god-damned dependent? 

I've started to fight with Marie about how she pays for her travel to see me. I told her the same thing I once told D, that I have to pay for all her trips after this. She balked. We talked. No resolution. She's also been hurt ever since I decided not to go to Sticksville that in my worst-case planning I considered moving in with my mother but not moving in with her. She said she offered. I didn't remember that she'd offered, and I can't imagine a world in which I move in with her.

Maybe I'm depressed. Ya think?

      

Blackmail

 Wife has discovered a new way to blackmail the children. Or at least (for the moment) Son 1.

You know that I'm out of a job. I have severance through the end of August and a little bit into September. And I have applied for Unemployment Insurance, for whatever that adds up to. (Not much.) According to my Separation Agreement with Wife, the alimony I pay is partly dependent on my income: if my income drops too far, the alimony goes to zero. (It never turns negative, though.) So if I don't get a new job by September -- or at any rate October, just to be certain -- Wife's alimony stops.

She explained all this to Son 1 over the phone one evening, in a dead panic -- the kind of panic she gets in where there is no way to placate her or to reason with her. And she kept it up until he told her, "It's going to be fine, Mom. If your alimony runs out you can move in with me." (Son 1, remember, has a job and his own apartment now.) Apparently that let her calm down.

And that's great and all, except … God in heaven, who ever thought this was a good idea? In the first place Wife is crazy and emotionally abusive. Beyond that, how is Son 1 supposed to live a normal life as a young man if he shares an apartment with his mother? 

• What happens when she starts telling him not to spend so much time playing video games? Properly, at that point he should throw her out. But if his whole motivation is that he doesn't want her to be homeless, will he be able to do that? 
• What happens if he wants to bring a young woman home for the night? Does he tell her, "It's fine, my mom won't mind?"
• One point I mentioned directly to him on the phone is that when you are responsible for paying somebody else's bills, you cannot help but judge their spending. So it is a foregone conclusion that if she moves in with him, one day he'll find himself screaming at her, "For God's sake, woman, why did you go spend money on that, of all things?"

But of course he doesn't want her to be homeless. That speaks well of him. But it really bothers me. I see it as the opening wedge, as her putting her nose in the tent in such a way that Son 1 will never get her out again. She would love that, but it's wrong.

I also can't help wondering what she has been doing for the last eight years since we've each lived alone? Did she never understand that one day the alimony would run out? It runs out when I die, for example. If my income ends when I retire, it runs out then. And there was always the possibility that I might be laid off. Did she really take no steps in all that time to secure some kind of income on her own? Of course she often says that she can't get a job, because of her various illnesses. But surely there are ways to secure an income of some kind without working a regular 8:00 to 5:00 job, or without having to type 150 words a minute in a legal office. Flannery O'Connor suffered from lupus just as Wife does, but it didn't stop her from writing. Has Wife really been willing to be simply dependent for the rest of her life, and to leave it at that?

Apparently so. And it's very sad.

       

Son 1 has a car

No sooner did Son 1 get back to my place after driving Wife around all weekend — swearing loudly he wasn't going back for at least a month — than she called him again. Someone in her church owns a car dealership, and was getting a car in that might suit him well. If he bought it he could give her back her second car that he is borrowing.

He went up, looked at it, and ended up buying it. Or rather, she bought it for him out of her savings, listing the two of them as co-owners, and he's going to buy her out over time plus 3%. He is insured through her and he's going to pay her the extra increment that he will cost her. They haven't settled on payment terms yet, but it sounds like car payment + insurance + student loan payment will be close to $1000 a month. And he hasn't actually started working yet.

On the other hand he's got a car, while I still don't. Am I ashamed of that? Yes, kind of. To be sure, he wouldn't have it without Wife's intervention. And she used to play that role for me too ... the spur that got me off my ass to get something done.

On the other hand that's kind of an excuse. I'm supposed to be the adult here, right.

Sigh.

Sent from my iPhone

Banking

Met with Wife at the bank today: to take my name of our joint checking account, to close our joint savings accounts (both of them), to close some other miscellaneous accounts we don’t need any more, and to take my name off the safe deposit box. We checked it first: the only stuff in it is hers: her family Bible, some negatives of photos of her ancestors, and a few other ancient keepsakes.

 

Two accounts we can’t close right now. One is a line of credit in both our names; the only way to take my name off it is to close it completely and then let Wife reapply for a new one. They are going to get her some information about which credit products are available. The other is a savings account for Son 1 that really should be changed into an adult account (since he’s no longer a minor) but that requires him to be there. Some time this summer.

 

It was a “long lunch” … I guess I was gone from the office a couple hours. But it sure wasn’t hard work. We got to sit down the whole time, in a nice, air-conditioned office. We were pleasant to each other. Distant, of course, but pleasant.

 

Why am I so tired?

 

Must be getting old ….