Ahhh… I created this blog to write about what I see in the world around me and, obviously, to write about my view on those things in the world around me. Though I haven’t written too much about it on the blog (yet), I’ve really lightened up over the last few years. For a variety of reasons, I’m a much happier person than I might have been even a few years ago and along with that happiness comes a much decreased inclination to judge things around me and get angry at the stupidity that sometimes shows its ugly face.
Now, with that as a base for this entry I am compelled to note that I’m not “mad” at the events below. Not at all. In fact, if anything I pity the people who are in charge of increasing the fundraising outcomes of the institution involved in the story. Read on and find out what I’m talking about…
A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a special reception for a local organization where I choose to donate a few dollars each year. The reception was organized and hosted by a select fundraising team within that organization (which is separate and apart from the full fundraising team that raises money for this institution). I’m blessed to be fortunate enough where I can donate a few bucks each year to several of my favorite charitable causes so I know the deal at these receptions – you go there, the hosting organization does what it needs to do to make you feel welcome and like you’re one of the team, eventually a professional fundraiser comes around and makes either a hard or a soft ask (i.e. they ask for a donation), and then you reciprocate their kindness for hosting the event with a check or commitment for a future check.
Any professional fundraiser out there can tell you that this is the standard sequence of interactions (boiled down to a very simplistic nature) at one of these events. The donors know it going into it, the fundraising team at the organization plans for it, and everyone representing the organization should be prepared to play their part.
Well, apparently this sequence wasn’t so standard at the event that I attend a few weeks ago. One of the first things that I noticed when I arrived was that there were a great deal of people who worked for the organization at the event. At first glance, one might wonder what’s going on, but this is also part of the basics of fundraising. If you’re hosting a fundraising event on your home turf, then you bring out the entire team to meet and mingle with the donors. This organization had a big number of its staff available to talk to the donors when they arrived. Speaking of the donors (and guests of donors, which is another common tactic to grow a donor base – inviting the friends of donors), I noticed that there were probably 15 – 20 donors milling around mostly talking to one another. I didn’t think anything of it since I was just walking in the door.
After getting a table for my buddy and I to sit down at, we went and got a drink and some food to pick at while we sat down. Some five or ten minutes went by and I started talking to my buddy about the fact that it was weird no one had come up and spoken to us yet. In reality, we hadn’t been made to feel welcome since we arrived. Not only were the front doors of this particular building locked (weird), but the young hostess who was supposed to say hello to the people who were walking into the event was busy tapping away on her cell phone when we walked in. Then after we put our jackets down and all through the time we got some food and a drink, no one spoke to us. So after those ten minutes went by, I began looking around with a more critical, fundraiser’s eye.
The first thing that I noticed was the same first thing that I noticed when I walked in – there were a lot of employees for this organization milling around. However, now that some time had gone by, most of the organization’s employees had gotten themselves some food and sat down to eat – with one another. The donors were sitting by themselves (having a good time, by the way) just like my buddy and I were while the organization’s employees (who outnumbered the donors perhaps 2-to-1) were sitting by themselves (equally having a good time). On the surface, the event looked like a lot of fun! People were hanging out, having a drink, chit chatting, etc. But looking at this event through a fundraiser’s eye was scary.
Another five or so minutes went by and one of the organization’s newer employees walked over to the table where my buddy and I were sitting. Without getting too much into the conversation (since I’m obviously trying to hide the nature of the organization as well as the type of event that this was), this employee made a very good impression on my buddy and I. The employee was well-spoken and when they asked for our (non-monetary) support, my buddy and I knew that it was an earnest ask. After this employee moved on, I thought that maybe I was wrong in beginning to judge the inability of this organization to operate a proper, special event fundraiser because this person gave the perfect set up for one of the professional fundraisers to come over and talk to me about giving to the cause.
But that personal, one-on-one follow-up never came.
Oh sure, I saw the head of the fundraising department walking around as well as the head of this special unit walking around – neither of them talking to most of the 15 to 20 donors (and about as many friends and relatives) who attended the event. It was shocking, really. Again, without going into too much detail believe me when I say that this is an organization that has a great deal of experience in fundraising and I’ve seen them throw phenomenal special events in the past. But this event a few weeks ago did not put their best foot forward at all.
My takeaways from this special event were: 1) the organization’s employees must have seen this as an opportunity to get free food and drink without having to work (i.e. socialize and sell the product) for it, 2) the organization didn’t really care enough for me to continue increasing my donation each year since I wasn’t spoken to by anyone whose job it was to raise money, and 3) the new employee who talked to my buddy and I showed just how out of touch the organization’s long-time employees are with the hard work of raising money and building support.
Coming out of this event, I re-evaluated my budget for the rest of 2012. Back when I created my budget last year, I planned to donate a few additional dollars to this organization in 2012. However, I was so turned off by the way the organization’s huge number of employees preferred to socialize with one another while eating the food and drinking the drinks that were there for the donors, that I rolled back the amount of money I was going to donate to its 2011 level. In fact, the more that I think about how poorly operated the fundraising portion of the event was (especially since there were a variety of high-level people walking around also doing nothing but eating and socializing with each other), I’m considering rolling back my donation even further.
Like I wrote above, there are several organizations where I choose to donate my money. And look, I don’t expect to have an organization kiss my ass because I cut them a check – that’s not why I donate. However, I wouldn’t mind having a fundraiser come and shake my hand and “dance the dance” with me. I serve on the Board of several nonprofit organizations and – in my nonprofits – I would never tolerate the type of organizational gluttony and lack of focus that I saw a few weeks ago. Frankly, it was so off-putting that I would have fired a few people (yes, more than one) by now.
But, I’m not in charge of the organization who hosted the event nor do I want to be. I’m just an aware, cognizant donor who understands the value of the dollars that I choose to invest in nonprofit organizations. I have a variety of similar special events coming up in the next few months. It’ll be interesting to see which of those nonprofits can keep their house in order during the special events and play the game with the donors the way that it is supposed to be played. Sure, I don’t salivate over the prospect of someone asking me for money at one of these events, but I do expect that my prior contributions will be respected enough for someone to at least consider asking me for a future donation.
Last month, I had a chance to visit a place that I’ve contributed quite a bit of money to over the last few years – the United States Department of Education (USED) in Washington, DC! Okay, so while most people would find no humor or excitement in going to the USED, I found some great sense of fulfillment by actually visiting their headquarters building in our nation’s capital.
The one thing that struck me the most about the headquarters building is that it’s pretty much a fortress. I mean, it’s built like it could withstand any major natural disaster or attack. I honestly think that if a foreign country attacked the capitol, the USED building would be left standing – mocking the foreigners and their wimpy weapons. But that’s just the impression you get from the outside. Once you’re inside you see that it’s really just functional office space. I liked the mission statement of the USED, which was put up right on the wall for everyone to see when you entered the building. Take a look:
The USED's mission statement - give it a read
Pretty good mission statement for the USED, huh? I was down in Washington, DC for a conference on charter schools which I won’t get into in this blog entry. However, I couldn’t help but think that I actually helped build the impressive structure in which the charter school conference was being held in thanks to all of my student loan payments. It was a weird feeling – not necessarily a bad feeling, but one that made me take a step back and think, “Well, here’s the place where my checks have been going for the past few years.” It was just an interesting feeling.
What was not a good or interesting feeling, though, was the physical pain that I endured as I rode Amtrak’s Acela down to Washington, DC. Believe it or not, these asshats actually sold more tickets for the Acela than there were seats for the passengers. Sure, you’ll never get any official response from the Acela people saying that it was standard practice to do that or that they were sorry (apologizing is an acknowledgement of guilt). However, the conductor on the train – who was a very nice guy, by the way – told me and the fifteen other seatless passengers that this was common practice. It was outrageous. So, I rode down to the nation’s capitol sitting on this:
Imagine sitting on this for two and a half hours
Yeah… not comfortable at all. Anyway, I visited one of my two major student loan lenders last month. And while I don’t think that I’ll ever willingly or happily visit the headquarters building of the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA), I’m actually going to be really close to some of their associates starting tomorrow. Turns out that NJHESAA and my company will both be exhibitors at the New Jersey Charter Schools Association conference in Atlantic City this week. I don’t know if we’ll be anywhere near each other, but I feel like being in the same room as those people is going to drive me nuts. Frankly, I have half a mind to walk up to their booth and ask them why they felt the need to treat a highly intelligent, good-natured person (me) like a dumb, moronic piece of garbage every time I called them. And that same half of my mind wants me to ask them why they wouldn’t contact the credit agencies to report their mistaken even after admitting that they made a blunder when they reported that I made a late payment when no payment was actually due. Those idiots lowered my credit score for a few months until I had to go out of my way to get that stupid mistake wiped clean from my record. Idiots.
Anyway, enough of that tangent. The point of this entry is that I visited the USED headquarters building in Washington, DC and I was pleasantly pleased with the visit. I hope that they do their customers well as they continue to ramp up their student loan production.
It was right about this time last year when I posted an entry on this blog discussing how I owed more in taxes for fiscal year 2010 than I already paid. Don’t get me wrong, I pay taxes just like every other working person via the payroll tax, income tax, sales tax, etc. However, last year was the first time where I actually owed more money to the government because of earning money from jobs outside of my primary employment.
In other words, I did pretty well in 2010 so I had to pay extra money to the government for doing so well. In total, I paid $3,564 to the Internal Revenue Service and another $374 to the great State of New Jersey.
"You can pay me now or you will pay me later." - Irwin R. Schyster
Oh, you might remember that I used a picture of former WWE wrestler Irwin R. Schyster in last year’s post. Well, I thought that the picture worked pretty well and was entertaining, so considering that I just uploaded a post that talked about WWE bringing WrestleMania to New Jersey, I figured that it would be great to bring back Mr. Schyster for this year’s tax news. And speaking of this year’s tax news…
I owe both the Internal Revenue Service and the State of New Jersey taxes again for 2011.
You can go back and read last year’s entry to find out all of the different places where I draw income from (including advertising revenues related to this blog). You can also go back and read last year’s entry to find out some of the different side jobs that I perform each year (adjunct teaching, for example). However, I want to reiterate a point that I made last year: generally speaking, I want to pay these taxes.
There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to find ways to not pay the government according to the tax laws on the books. Unless you’ve got big-time scratch (and I do not), then it makes no sense to go out of your way to hide income or gains from the government. They’ll find out and they’ll nail you for it – so pay your damn taxes. The reason why I’m generally okay with paying these extra taxes is because I made a good amount of money last year.
I mean it’s simple enough, right? You make more money than you pay taxes on so you have to pay taxes on that excess income. Generally speaking, what’s the problem with that? Sure, we can get into a discussion about whether or not I should be taxed at the rate that I’m currently taxed at (I would suggest that I should be taxed at a lower rate). And yes, we can get into a discussion about whether the government uses my tax dollars according to my will or in a manner that I find efficient (the answer is “no” for both of those items), but that’s not the point of this entry. The point is that you should all want to pay more in taxes because if you have to pay more in taxes, then you must have earned more in income during the previous year. Let me repeat that:
The more taxes you pay, the more money you earned.
Keywords: “more,” “money,” and “earned.”
While I think that it sucks and I might be annoyed that I have to send a check to the Internal Revenue Service for some $3,200+ and to the State of New Jersey for some $450+, I’m glad that I worked hard enough and earned enough money to increase my tax liability. Although I do have a bone to pick with the IRS over one aspect of my taxes (the student loan interest deduction), but I’ll get to that in an entry to be posted in the next few days). Also, this year I was better prepared for a higher tax liability because of being so shocked that I owed money last year. So I’m prepared to pay the government this year with very little impact on my regular cash flow.
And that’s a good thing… because nobody wants to open their door and find Irwin R. Schyster waiting on their doorstep looking for a check. No thanks!
While I hope it goes without saying, I still think it’s worth writing that one of the biggest contributions this little blog of mine has made to the greater internet world has got to be that planned, stringent budgeting actually works. How many times have I written about my student loan debt? That’s a rhetorical question so you don’t need to answer it, but the answer would be “a lot!” I write about those student loan payments because I see a generation of college graduates that don’t know the first thing about tackling large financial debts. The simple, mostly unobserved truth about tackling large financial debts is – budgeting works.
That’s it. That’s the secret. Budgeting works.
Through the magic of budgeting you can achieve some pretty amazing financial goals… like paying off about $90 thousand of student loans over an intense, focused three year period. However, we all know that life is a fluid adventure and sometimes the tides change. And when the tides change, sometimes financial goals are forced to change along with them. And thus we have the meat of today’s entry…
I bought a brand new car yesterday!
Actually, I didn’t buy a brand new “car” yesterday; I bought a brand new SUV. It was a 2012 Ford Escape Limited Edition, to be exact. And although the picture above isn’t exactly the Escape that I bought, it is the closest thing that I can find online to the model and color of the Escape that I purchased. In fact, my new SUV looks very similar to the one in that picture.
And yes, there is a larger, longer story about why I needed to buy a new car. I won’t go into the details of that decision right now, but I definitely will tell you the story in an upcoming entry on the blog… so stay tuned!
Purchasing this Escape a pretty big event for me for three reasons. First, it’s the first brand new car that I’ve ever purchased. Second, it dramatically alters my strict budget. And third, there is a new level of certainty in what used to be a very expensive part of my financial life. Before I woke up this morning, I woke up every other morning of the 13+ years that I’ve been driving and had a bit of an apprehension about the car I was driving. Sure, that apprehension was much less pronounced when I lived at home with my parents and right after I purchased my 1999 Chevrolet Blazer, but for the majority of the time that I’ve been driving I’ve been driving a beat up old car that just made it between trips to the service station.
If you’ve never been in that type of position with your primary method of transportation, then take it from me – it sucks. There’s nothing that makes a driver of a beat up car’s stomach sink faster than driving along and hearing a weird noise out of nowhere. Whenever that happened to me, I didn’t get frustrated with the machine (because that’s just crazy), but I did get annoyed because I saw money just flying out the proverbial window.
But along with my new car, I made sure to get a 5 year/100,000 mile extended warranty that covers pretty much anything that could go wrong in the car. It also provides an incredible amount of “other” stuff that comes in handy like free towing, free roadside assistance, free gas fill-ups if you run out of gas, free rental cars when the Escape is being worked on, and so on and so on. I know most people say to stay away from these types of warranties, but I’ve had my cars breakdown too many times and been left between a rock and a hard place that I knew purchasing this extended coverage was the right thing to do.
Oh, and last week I became a member of AAA at the “Plus” membership level. I think I’m about as covered as I can be!
Like the picture above, this one is not a direct image of the inside of my Escape. Instead, it’s a standard picture of the interior of an Escape Limited Edition that I found online. This is pretty much what the inside of my SUV looks like – including the nice touchscreen display in the center. There are a lot of buttons and functions on that touchscreen – I have to sit down to figure them all out. One thing that I know for sure is that there are a lot more functions available with this Escape than are available with the Ford Fusion. And that’s not a knock on the Fusion, but when I sat down in both machines – I knew that I wanted the Escape.
And that was an odd realization, too. You see, when I was negotiating to buy a new car yesterday, I was negotiating with the salesman to buy a brand new Fusion. It wasn’t quite the color that I wanted and it wasn’t quite the model that I wanted, but the price was reasonable (just north of $20 thousand). However, as I sat there waiting for the salesman to come back from the owner of the dealership I realized that I was negotiating for the wrong car! So when the salesman came back I told him to forget about the Fusion and get me a price for the Escape.
After owning the car for about 24 hours, I’m glad I made that game time decision. It was absolutely the right thing to do.
The reason that I wrote this entry, though, was to let my readers know that this purchase alters my student loan repayment plans. By sticking to an aggressive repayment plan, I hoped to have my student loans fully repaid by December 2012. However, now that I have this machine to pay for, that timetable changes. I owe a little bit less on the truck than I still owe on my student loans so it is an easier debt for me to get my mind around and conquer. Once I receive the final financing papers, set up my online payment account through the finance company, and make my first payment I’ll have a better idea of how much I have left to repay on the car. Suffice to say, it’ll be slightly over $25 thousand for sure.
I have no intention of stopping my student loan repayments (which I could do because of how much I’ve overpaid to date). Instead, I intend to readjust my budget and pay off both the student loan and the car in a reasonable, quick, efficient fashion. A good budget is able to change with the tide.
Again, I won’t go into the gory details of how I was left with no choice but to buy a new car. That brief story will be released on the blog in an upcoming entry. However, I’m glad that I purchased the car that I wanted and didn’t just “settle” for any car on the lot.
The other day while I was flipping around the internet I came across a video that decried the very existence of the penny. The video is below for you to take a look at, but suffice to say that the people who put this video together have no love for the one cent piece! After you watch this short video (which I found very entertaining), I have just a few thoughts down below. Enjoy!
So what do you think? Should we get rid of pennies? Personally, I like pennies because if I have a few floating around my pocket, then I can potentially pay for an item with exact change. More importantly, though, I keep a jar of change in my closet that I clear out once each year around Christmas so I can buy myself a little gift. Each year, the jar usually yields about $85, which isn’t so bad (this year, it provided about $167, but that’s because I haven’t emptied it out in two years). Many of the coins that get dropped into my change jar are pennies.
Plus, I think pennies make it easier for young people to learn about money. I’ve seen some pretty impressive presentations prepared by the community outreach sections of traditional banks that talk about the full scale of money – from big bills down to the one cent piece.
Anyway – do you have any thoughts on the penny? Should it stay or should it go?
From time to time, we will send out exclusive information to mailing list subscribers only. Your e-mail address will not be sold or transferred to any third parties by joining this list.
Quote of the Moment:
If you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t pursue it. — Joseph V. Palazzolo (Me), USA Today – May 20, 2011
