1994-01-11 Woozle writes to Rebekah

Dear Rebekah,

Goodness! I hadn't intended to send you a rebuke for your efforts. As long as we're clear that you're not being meddlesome, I'll explain in more detail.

The $10/paycheck (=week) savings plan is a good one; back when I had no debt I did something very much like that (only I think it was more like $100/month). My only counterpoint was that the best place for us to "save" anything right now is to send it off to the Great U.S. Visa Corporation, since there it effectively earns 18% instead of 3% (and if we need "mad money", we can always run it up again -- but I find the temptation is less when looking at credit margin than it is when looking at a positive balance in a bank account). However, your basic idea was sound. Furthermore, until moving to Georgy, I followed both of your rules of thumb... (Unfortunately, the thumb got caught leafing through a poisoned copy of Aristotle's Treatise on Comedy and has since turned black and fallen off. Such is the fate of the educated in Athens; life here is certainly no garden of roses, named or otherwise...) Anyhow, I am definitely a cookie jar occupant (!), but the cars do get hungry sometimes. (Bad cars. Go to bed without any oil.)

Meanwhile, we're finally beginning plans (itinerarily as well as financially) for the famous Trip to England. (I doubt I would have decided to go if Jessica hadn't expressed an interest in going there with Michael this spring -- so we're going to make it a foursome.) JERS gave us an absolutely enormous Xmas gift which I probably shouldn't have accepted (only partly because I think there might have been some very small, weblike strings attached to it). Even with it, we'll be draining our anemic account once again just as it finally starts getting a little color back. (They call me The Count...) As long as we don't go gallivanting off anywhere else, though, the patient is expected to live. ("Oh yes, I'll live -- but I von't enjoy it." -- Ensign Chekov, U.S.S. Enterprise)

And now having complained bitterly of our dire poverty, I'm going to enclose another installment -- and I know it will seem like I'm doing the Georgian thing and giving you a free helping of guilt to go along with it, but I don't care because I'm not. (So there.) I mean, I'm not Georgian, and I don't know about all that stuff; I'm just repaying a loan. (If you were Northern, you'd have the sense to charge us interest, but since you aren't I won't mention it.) It's in the budget (FY 1997).

For the continued glory of the Klingon Empire,

The Bobbsey Twins