Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Blog, page 5

Have Your Life & Money Too

People equate financial freedom with being rich. What exactly is “rich” anyway? Ask a hundred people how much money they’d need to feel rich, and you’d get a hundred different answers. Give them that money, ask them again, and watch the bar for “rich” rise.

I consider myself to be rich. I’ve got a happy life, two kids I’d die for, work that I love to do and I don’t worry about money. You can be worry-free too. All it takes is a commitment to doing the detail and a sense of balance.

If you define financial freedom as freedom from stress, then the road to freedom must be paved with more than good intentions. It requires action: small steps that lead to a big sense of wellbeing. And that’s where doing the detail comes in. To be free means not having to worry. To not worry, you’ve got to take care of all the “what if’s.”

You must save, if you want to have money set aside for the future – tomorrow, next week, the year 2020. You must manage your cash flow if you want to keep yourself in the black, minimize your credit costs, and eliminate the midnight spectre of bogeyman reminding you that you’ve bounced yet one more cheque. And if you want to protect yourself and your family, at least financially, from life’s tragedies – death and disability – you need insurance and you have to make a will and execute powers of attorney.

None of this is difficult. To save you take $5, $10, $25 a week from your cash flow and put it somewhere that you can’t spend it. To invest, you choose a financial vehicle that will put your money to work for you, learn about it, and then do it.

To gain control of the monster credit, you throw the credit cards behind the freezer so you can’t use them for a while, transfer your balance to a cheaper card or a line of credit so you’ll pay less in interest, and you squirrel away as much as you can to pay off that debt so you can live debt free.

For those want to run and hide from past sins and futures that are less than rosy know that anyone can be smart about money. It doesn’t take a special brain. It doesn’t require a degree of any kind. Being smart about money is more about having a sense of balance than anything else.

Balance, of course, is the ability to deal with myriad priorities, giving each just as much attention as it deserves. Set some goals for yourself – make ‘em realistic so you don’t have to berate yourself for failure – and work steadily toward meeting them. Remember, they’ve got to be your goals, not the goals of others around you whom you may think know better.

Today, if you haven’t begun a savings program, decide you’re going to save … (how much will that be?) a week. And if you don’t have a will, decide that by the end of the week you’ll have an appointment with an estates lawyer. And if you haven’t yet established a credit identity, decide that by the end of the month you’ll have chummed up to your bank manager to find out what you need to do to remedy that oversight.

Decide that you’re not going to feel bad, overwhelmed, stupid, stressed, or anything else negative about your money anymore. Instead, you’re going to do something about it – no matter how small those steps – so you can achieve your own sense of financial peace. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and repeat after me: “I am more than what my financial life says about me. I can have anything I want, if I am prepared to work hard. Today I want to ….” Go ahead, fill in the blank.

 

Positivity

I’m sometimes surprised at the way people respond to other people. We see a guy do something fabulous and we react in one of two ways:

a) we’re blown away by what we’ve seen (or read) and motivated to so something wonderful ourselves, or

b) we’re resentful of that person’s ability to do what we wish we could do.

 

If you take another’s work as inspiration, you can use it to propel yourself to achieve something wonderful. That’s taking a positive step. If you take it as a slap in the face, as a light shone on your own inadequacies or insignificance, what could inspire you turns to mockery and bitterness. You’ve stepped onto Negativity Road. How you chose to react to the fabulous things you witness in your life is your choice.

We’re naturally attracted to positive people. Like flowers turning to the sun, we want to bathe in the warmth and light that shines from people who are positive. And when we let ourselves revel in the positive, banishing negativity, we not only become stronger we become more creative.

Positivity opens us. It lets us see more roads, entertain more options. Research on positivity has shown that when people are put in a positive frame of mind, their outlook expands and they can see the big picture. When they’re first made to experience something neutral or negative, their peripheral vision (yes, their actual peripheral vision) shrinks.

You may have heard that by smiling you can actually change the chemistry in your brain. It’s true. Find something to smile about, or force yourself to smile, and you’ll change your orientation (at least temporarily) from negative to positive. That can start a cascade of positivity that can help you deal with whatever crap has hit the fan.

An experiment done by a bunch of very cunning psychologists proved that a physical smile changes how we feel about things. Their cover story: the psychologists wanted to study how hard it was for people without the use of their hands or arms to accomplish certain tasks. The set-up: participants were asked to hold a pen in one of three ways:

1. Between their upper lip and their nose which used the same muscles as we use when frowning

2. Between the teeth horizontally which used the same muscles as we use when smiling,

3. In their non-dominant hand.

 

Everyone had to fill out a questionnaire rating of the funniness of a cartoon. The folks who were holding the pencil between their teeth so their face was using it’s smiling muscles all thought the cartoons were funnier.

The next time you catch yourself frowning, make yourself smile. If you feel anger rising in your gut, stop for a moment, excuse yourself and go make yourself smile for a few minutes. Want to just kill that idiot who cut you off, was rude to you, or made your baby cry? Pause. Smile. You’ll feel better.

This & That: Blessed Edition

C Wrote: I have read and used both your get out of debt book and your retirement book and feel that we are on track for a decent retirement. We do have some RRSP savings and my husband will be receiving a pension but I will not receive any, other than OAS and CPP, since we have moved too often for me to build a pension where I have been employed. Our story is that my husband is military and we were posted (to Alberta) for what was to be a two year posting. At that time we decided to rent out our home (in Nanaimo) to people that we knew, I took a two year leave of absence from my job and we chose to rent at our new location because of the short length of time we would be living there. The two year posting has turned to four, our tenants have purchased a home and I could not further extend my leave. Our dilemma is: should we continue to rent the home, but through a property rental agency since we live in another province, or should we sell the home and invest the profits. Our financial planner has put together a low risk portfolio that would provide us with interest dividends very close to the amount we would receive from rent. My husband must retire from the military in two years but we are unsure of where we would like to live when that happens, back to this home or to another area closer to family (family that did live in Nanaimo have moved but we still have many friends there). The house will be paid off next year. We have thought that we could use the rent we receive after he retires to offset rent in a location that we might want to try to live in until we make a decision and still have a place to go back to if we choose to. If we sell we should not have to pay capital gains because we filled out a Revenue Canada Subsection 45(2) form with our taxes. Financially, what is the best option? We have to make the keep/sell decision in a few weeks. I don’t want to make any decision that will negatively affect our retirement and would value your opinion. I hope I have given you enough information. I feel that in many ways we are in an enviable position but don’t want to “mess” that up.

Gail Says: You are blessed and you are smart to count your blessings and want to keep them flowing. If you rent the home and use the income to offset your own rental, keep in mind that the income you derive from renting is taxable but that the money you pay in rent isn’t fully deductible so there want be an even wash. You’ll end up more out of pocket than your plan makes it sound. If you had the money invested and used the income to rent, you would still have to pay taxes on the income you earn, but it would likely be at a lower rate.

You’ll have to weigh the pull of friends who still live where the house is against the desire to move closer to family and you have about a year to do it since that’s when you’re free and clear to do with the house what you wish (though if you have a prepayment option on your mortgage, if you sold now and applied the prepayment option, I bet you wouldn’t see much in the way of a penalty.)

Have you calculated what the rental company costs would be as a percentage of the rent you’ll be receiving if you keep the home and rent it out again? (It would be a deduction against the income for tax purposes.) You should.

Some of this feels like an emotional decision (where to live, closer to friends or fam?) and some of it is straight math (will we get enough rent to cover house costs and our own rental costs elsewhere?) Do the math first. Then make a pro/con list for the emotional stuff.

 

A Wrote: Gail, this is both a success post, and a question post. I grew up in a single-parent household financed by a below poverty income. I have a healthy respect for the power and pitfalls of money, and more importantly, what it feels like to not have enough of it. I had a loving parent, and the best home she could provide and that was enough to give me the resilience for what lay ahead.

My success story: When I left for University I did it with meager savings and, not-surprisingly, no financial support. I financed, concurrently, a BA and a B.Ed. to the tune of $40,450 is OSAP debt, despite working summers and minimizing my expenses. When I graduated I made a promise to myself that I would pay off that debt in

I accomplished a $100,000 education with only $50,000 of non-credit card debt (costing me $2100 in interest) which I paid off in a combined 5 years. I was fortunate to have never experienced the hell of credit card debt. I did all of this while saving an almost equal amount. No job was ever too menial; if it paid, I’d do it. Have you ever worked on a sewage truck? #funnotfun. I don’t live a life of excess or flash (case in point: I drive a low km 2006 white Toyota Corolla that I paid cash for). I’ve been both lucky in my jobs and tenacious in my goals and it has worked for me. Mostly…

Question: Gail, money scares me. It is a genuine source of anxiety as a result of my childhood and teenage experiences. That anxiety has proven useful. It helped me control my spending. Respect the consequences of debt and motivated me to eliminate it. But, now what? I really would love to buy a house one day, but I’m single and in the Toronto market where I live I feel like I will never, EVER be able to afford a home. With my debt gone I’m now saving $2000/month (on top of the maxed out $700/month in employer matched pension I contribute to.) I look around at my friends who all have brand-new things (cars, TV’s, clothes, furniture, homes etc.) and here I am renting a room in someone else’s house with a 10 year-old car, a 6 year-old laptop and not much else. I feel like I’ll never be able to afford a home in this market despite being a money earning, debt eliminating, saving-smart machine. Also, frankly, I don’t know how other people are able to buy homes and cars and stuff like they do. I know other people have their own stories, and they have no bearing on my own but what good is debt-free, financial restraint when it doesn’t seem to get me anywhere, or anything?

Eliminating debt was, for me, relatively easy, though plenty painful; though my anxiety worked in my favor. Now, all I feel is anxiety that my attitude, towards minimizing-debt and maximizing savings, is just keeping me from being able to set the post-debt goal and being able to start living a life that actually feels good, instead of a constant financial slog.

So, with those feelings in mind, how do I set a ‘spending’ goal without feeling totally discouraged at my prospects of achieving it? Especially when my money-spending anxiety says ‘don’t take on financial risks or debt’. Help?

Gail Says: Darling, how great is it that you’ve achieved what you’ve achieved. Well done. As for your future, you get to live somewhere in the middle of the two worlds you’ve described. You don’t have to take on the responsibility of home ownership right now in a market that is over-heated and very, very expensive. Nor do you have to live in a room on someone’s house. You can make your own home. Yes, you’ll have to spend some more money on rent, and you’ll have to make it cozy and ‘yours’, but that’s totally manageable if you’re able to sock away $2,000 a month right now. So you should ask yourself, what do I want my life to look like?

Take some time to think about it. Where would you like to live? What would you like your living space to look like? What would you like to be able to do? Then set about creating the life you want.

Often when we get into “debt repayment” mode, it’s hard to loosen the purse strings. But if you’re debt free, it’s time to start thinking about what you want your money to do for you.

 

K Wrote: I am 25 years old. I have a DC Pension Plan at my work. My employer contributes an automatic 3%, I can contribute up to 5% (which I do) and they will match half of that. That equals 10.5% of my salary being contributed to my pension plan each month. How much extra retirement saving would you suggest someone of my age do to supplement this (through RRSPs, etc.)?

Gail Says: You’re doing great on the retirement front so now you should focus on making sure you have an emergency fund. That means setting aside six months’ worth of essential expenses just in case. So look at your budget. Figure out what it will cost a month to keep body and soul together and then save six months’ worth. You can start using a TFSA and then accumulate any more you need in a high interest savings account. Once that’s done, try to keep maximizing your TFSA.

The Poetry of Don Paterson

Don Paterson was born in Dundee Scotland in 1963 and his poetry has won the Whitbread Poetry price, three Forward prizes and the TS Eliot Prize, twice. He’s a creative writing teacher at the University of St Andrews, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and loves to write sonnets.

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:

rain, braiding a windowpane

or darkening a hung-out dress

or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour

right through the empty script and score

before the act, before the blame,

before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone

beside a silent telephone

or the dress lies ruined on the grass

or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source

along their fatal watercourse.

However bad or overlong

such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through

or when the boom dips into view

or when her speech starts to betray

its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold

on a rain-dark gutter, running gold

with the neon of a drugstore sign,

and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—

all was washed clean with the flood

we rose up from the falling waters

the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

 

 Don Paterson left school at 16 to be a musician. For four years he played the top-twenty hits with club bands and worked with local jazz artists. He didn’t start writing poetry until his twenties. Maybe it’s that musical background that plays through his poetry even now.

 

  Flight

Only when flight

No loner draws

Into those blue heights

For its own lost caust

To play the win’s lass

In the gracile and pliant

Lines of no less

Than the pure instrument

Not till that pure whither

Takes him beyond

his pride in machines

will one, made to win,

outstrip the weather

and be his flight’s end

 

Don Paterson loves metaphor and, combined with his love of music, this makes his poetry sublime.

 

The Dead

Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom;

though they speak with more than just the season’s tongue—

the colours that they blaze from the dark loam

all have something of the jealous tang

of the dead about them. What do we know of their part

in this, those secret brothers of the harrow,

invigorators of the soil—oiling the dirt

so liberally with their essence, their black marrow?

But here’s the question. Are the flower and fruit

held out to us in love, or merely thrust

up at us, their masters, like a fist?

Or are they the lords, asleep amongst the roots,

granting to us in their great largesse

this hybrid thing—part brute force, part mute kiss?

 

 

Umami

Growing up, most of us learn that there are four kinds of tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. But as a cook and a lover of food I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that there is another taste that helps me enjoy so much of the savoury food I love.

As early as the late 1800,s the famous French chef, Escoffler, thought there was a fifth taste, which he believed was at the centre of his success. Over in Japan, they were paying attention to a fifth taste as well, and in the 1900’s Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda pinpointed it. As he sipped his seaweed soup. It wasn’t salt or sweet or bitter or sour at work on his tongue or in his brain. It was something altogether new. Something yummy. And that’s how the naming of the fifth taste Umami – Japanese for pleasant savory taste – came to be.

Technically, umami comes from glutamates and ribo-nucleo-tides, which occur naturally in many foods. When glutamate breaks down – when you cook meat, or when cheese ages, or when a tomato ripens in the sun — it becomes L-glutamate, and that’s when flavour start to pop. And when the glutimates and ribo-nucleo-tides combine, they enhance each other giving more depth and breath to the flavour.

The complex flavours of certain foods – the rich, savory, unique taste that cannot simply be categorized as sweet, or sour, or salty, or bitter… that’s umami. Think about the intensified taste in a sun dried tomato. Or the richness of soybeans fermented into miso, or the pungency of dried shiitake mushrooms… that’s umami. My favourite of all cheeses – Parmigiano Reggiano – is considered by some to be the most umami of all western ingredients. That’s probably why it works it’s way into so many of my recipes.

 

RRSP Misconceptions

Routinely I get letters from people who tell me why RRSPs won’t work for them. I’m not sure if they’re trying to convince me or themselves. Most of their arguments are based on misconceptions like these:

The markets are in the crapper. What’s the point? Hey, an RRSP isn’t an investment; it’s a registered savings account. You put your money into the RRSP and the taxman treats it with kid gloves. How you choose to invest is a completely different subject. You can choose from the safety of a savings account, to mutual funds, indices and individual stocks. And current market gyrations shouldn’t be a huge issue if you’re saving for retirement that’s 20, 30 or 40 years down the road. Of course the markets are going to go up and down; that’s what markets do. If you don’t have the stomach for the slips and sides, stick with fixed-income investments. Which leads to objection #2.

Interest rates suck. What’s the point? The point is to set something aside for your future. The point is to not spend all the money today, so you have some money for when you’re no longer taking home a paycheque. The point is to even the playing field between all the folks with access to company pension plans and those without. Besides, interest rates won’t always suck (just like markets will not always go up.) If you’re not happy with interest rates, learn more about investing so you can take advantage of alternatives with potentially higher returns

You’re double-taxed on RRSPs. No you’re not. When you put money into an RRSP, you get a tax deferral on the amount you’ve contributed. You’re only taxed once, when you take the money back out. People who focus on all the tax they’ll have to pay when they start making withdrawals from their RRSPs or RRIFs are losing sight of the fact that for all the time the money was inside the RRSP it was growing on a tax deferred basis.

A single $5,000 RRSP contribution invested to earn just 4%, assuming a marginal tax rate of 35%, would grow to $10,799 outside an RRSP over 30 years. Inside an RRSP you’d have $16,217. That’s $5,418 more inside the plan than outside the plan. Contribute the $1,820 in tax savings to the RRSP, and in 30 years, you’d have an additional $11,094.

People come up with all kinds or reasons for not using RRSPs to plan for retirement. Maybe that’s why so many people skip making an RRSP contribution every year. Such a shame. A wasted opportunity really.

Do You Know How Lucky You Are?

Sometimes when the caca hits the fan it’s hard to think about how lucky we are. Hey, I’ve been there. Sad children, sickness, divorce, unemployment, any of life’s challenges can make you feel lower than the belly of a snake. But focusing on what’s not working in our lives won’t get us to a better place.

If you want to see how lucky you are, start counting your blessings. Sure, you may not have as much money as you wish you did to take the kids on vacation, but you have those beautiful children. And maybe you wish you didn’t have to spend so much money on groceries, but you’re eating, which is better than a lot of other folks around the world. A mortgage payment, as hefty as it may be, means you have a home of your own. A truck payment means you have a way to get around. And all that money you can’t spend because you have to save, means options to deal with life’s emergencies and, ultimately, retirement.

There will always be times when you get frustrated, even angry at your circumstances. Psychologists now know that our brains are wired to respond and remember negatives more strongly than positives. That’s what stopped us from being annihilated as we were evolving.

According to Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and author of The Happiness Hypothesis, “bad is stronger than good” is an important principle of design by evolution. “Responses to threats and unpleasantness are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures.”

If you want to be happy, you have to work at giving equal time to the good stuff in your life. There are sunny days and rainy days both. The trick is to remember that even when it is pouring with rain, you are blessed so count ‘em. As good old Dr. Seuss said:

“When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad…
You should do what I do!
Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky!”

If you find it hard to remember just how lucky you are, it’s time to start a gratitude journal and write down the tings you’re grateful for at least once a week.  Studies show that people who keep gratitude journals are more optimistic as a whole than those who focus on the potholes in their lives.

Counting your blessings before you fall asleep or when you first wake up in the morning is another way to focus on how lucky you are. What better way to pull positive energy into your life than saying thank you for the gifts you’ve been given.

This & That: Kitchen Sink Edition

S Wrote: I have a debt question for you. When I was 19 (27 now) I had a $1200 MasterCard I couldn’t handle , stopped making payments, collectors found me , I made a “deal” with them, then I ended up moving abroad, forgot all about it and never finished paying it off. So six years later I don’t know where this debt is or how I go about finding it and fixing it?

Gail Says: Once it went to collections you did all the harm you could to your credit score. Paying it off at this point doesn’t win you any points with anyone. Getting busy establishing a credit history that demonstrates you’re a good risk is the best you can do at this point.

 

R Wrote:   Gail, I’d like to start with one of your books. Can you explain how your brand new book is different that your old one?

Gail Says: Debt-Free Forever focuses on learning about what you have been doing with your money, making a budget that will actually work and creating a debt repayment plan that is concrete and actionable.

Never Too Late is for people planning for retirement, whether they are 20 or 50. It emphasizes the importance of saving and helps you figure out how much YOU should save.

It’s Your Money is a financial planning book written for women that covers all the parts of building a solid financial foundation including cash management, credit identity, risk management. This book also guides you on what must change as your life changes (you marry, have babies, etc.) or if the caca hits the fan (you get divorced, become widowed, become disabled).

Money Rules is the common sense of money. Very often there are rules that shouldn’t be, and I clarify those. I also give rules that make managing money make sense. Renting is NOT a waste of money. It isn’t your money until it’s in the bank (so don’t spend your bonus before you actually get it). Your banker is not your friend.

Money Talks is about how to have those difficult money conversations everyone seems to avoid. Through scenarios I offer dialogue you can use if you’re at a loss for words. And each scenario ends with a list of steps you can take to deal with bullies, entitled, selfish or guilt-riddling people, just to name a few.

   

S Wrote: I have a question about tracking money. I have a debit card that only allows me to take out cash at the ATM (something I put on it) and I take out my weekly variable spending ($140) and I track that. But, than my chequing account I have bills that are automatically withdrawn. I want to be able to track my chequing account weekly too. Where would I track it?

Gail Says: You need to learn to use a spending journal doll. It’ll give you a real-time reflection of what you’re doing with your money whether you use your debit or credit card, online bill payments, or write cheques. Go and read this blog about tracking your spending. You should, of course, have a budget. Once you’re tracking where the money is going by writing it down, you must then integrate the spending journal and the budget. Every month you have to enter your spending journal entries into your budget to see if you’re staying on track.

 

L Wrote: I need some advice! I work in Alberta for an oil and gas consulting firm. I am very lucky to have a great employer who is actively seeking cost-saving strategies to help keep our people employed through these tough economic times. I am a very loyal employee and am trying to understand the economics of our new reality by doing some research possible cost-saving strategies. The biggest idea on the table is the one of wage decrease vs. hour decrease. I’m having a very hard time finding the pros and cons of these two situations and was wondering if you were in my position, which scenario would you advocate?

Gail Says: Perhaps I can reframe this for you. You must choose from:

a) work less hours for the same pay (hr. decrease)

b) work the same amount of hours for less money (wage decrease)

In the end you’ll have the same amount of money. But in the first instance, you’ll have more time to do the things that can fill your heart with joy.

   

F Wrote: We are currently in position to significantly either pay down our lines of credit or our mortgage. We recently sold one property and renovated and moved into another. The lines of credit were used to help renovate the move in property. We now find ourselves in a debt vs debt standoff. Do we pay the mortgage that would leave us roughly with a $70,000 mortgage and approximately $150,000 in lines to tackle or do we pay off the debt entirely which leaves us with about $15,000 free and a mortgage of approximately $290,000?

Gail Says: Unless you have an open mortgage or one coming up for renewal, paying off a mortgage has fees attached…significant fees. Also, a line of credit is “callable” debt, meaning the lender can demand it back at any time. A mortgage is not. If it were my money, I’d pay off the lines and then redirect the credit line monthly payment amount to a high interest savings account so I can make an anniversary prepayment against my mortgage each year.

Gail’s Beef Stew

Does anything smell as wonderful as a pot of stew cooking on a cold day? I make this in a batch and freeze about half in smaller containers so that when I want a quick meal I have one ready for the microwave. Sometimes I add pearl onions. Sometimes I add a tin of clams. Sometimes I add white potatoes. Hey, it’s all about what’s goin’ on in my fridge and my taste buds on the day. When I want an extra thick gravy, I’ll add a pack of Knorr mushroom gravy mix so my bread has something to really hang on to!

 

Gail’s Beef Stew

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1.5 kg well-marbled cut in 1-inch
1 tbs Montreal Steak Spice
3 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
2 ribs celery, diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 large sweet onion, diced
2 tbs tomato paste
1 cup dry red wine
2 sweet potatoes, in medium-sized cubes
3 large carrots, 1-inch thick chunks
2 parsnips, 1-inch thick chunks
2 cups mushrooms chunks
1 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves
2 cups beef broth
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

 

Melt butter, add garlic and sauté until tender. Remove the garlic (reserve) and add the onion. About half-way through cooking, add the flour and stir until the mixture browns slightly. Add the beef broth, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, thyme and bay leaves. Cover and simmer.

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan. Add meat and sprinkle with Montreal Steak spice, Cook over high heat until the meat browns. Then add to covered sauce and continue simmering. Let this cook for about 20 minutes. Then add wine can continue to cook for another 20 minutes. Then add veggies. Keep covered and cooking until the sweet potatoes are tender. Salt and pepper to taste.

Toilet Paper Problems

My daughter Alex has a pal who shares a house with two friends. They all work. One of them likes to keep things nice and neat, the other two, not so much. It’s a regular source of conflict. Perhaps the thing that drives Alex’s pal the most nuts is his roommates’ unwillingness to change the TP roll.

Let’s face it, there us nothing more frustrating than ending up having taken a huge dump only to discover there isn’t enough toilet paper left on the roll to take care of business. Surely the last guy on the throne must have known the next guy would be in trouble?

What is it about changing the toilet paper roll that is so hard to do? People prop the new roll on top of the thingy you shove inside the roll and think that’s it! Do you have mate or children or roommates who refuse to stick that dookicky thingamabobby into the toilet paper roll and put it back where it should be?

Believe it or not, there was a study for that. A pair of psychologists from the University of New York wanted to know what was behind our TP sloppiness. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan found that it may not simply boil down to laziness, no matter how much your mother yells that at you. It’s a lack of intrinsic reward. Like doing the dishes, the job is boring and unimportant to everyone but the most fastidious. What’s the point really? It’s no big deal if we just perch the roll right there. Who is it really harming?

If, like me, you threatened to cut off your children’s left arm and beat them over the head with the soggy end if they didn’t change the roll properly, you might be flogging a dead horse. According to the researchers, to be something truly worth accomplishing a task must meet three psychological needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness. Let’s face it, there’s no real competence needed to change the TP roll. And the task is low on the scale of making us feel like we’re in control of our lives. But on the scale of enhancing our relationships, this is where my “we’re all in this together” rule of household chore management comes in. Hey, I have time to change the toilet roll in your bathroom, or drive you to your music lesson. Next time I have to change your TP, you can walk to basketball, soccer, or hockey!

I think that whole “its boring,” or “it’s just not worth the effort” thing spills over into all kinds of areas in people’s lives. I know people who don’t take out the trash regularly. They pile crap up everywhere until it becomes a health hazard or they get cited by local officials. I know folks who don’t clean out their fridges, folks who can’t be bothered to tend their yards and dopes who ignore the day-to-day management of their money.

Not everything in life can be rewarding. Some things you do because the consequences of not doing it isn’t worth the hassle. Like paying taxes. You won’t even believe the number of people who write to me whining because the taxman has finally caught up with them. Gosh! Couldn’t see that coming, eh?

So the next time you sit down and pee, and you use the last – or almost the last – of the toilet paper, put a new roll on the spindle and prop the almost finished roll on top. Look at you, so grown up!