When do you let yourself be parted from your money?

Where do you all stand on lending money?

Let me expand on that.

Where do you stand on lending money to relatives?

Especially where do you stand on lending money to relatives with whom you are not very close, as in they have never sent you a Christmas card or wished you happy birthday and you have never gathered intentionally except for mandatory family events that include funerals? (Asking for a friend. Really!)

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I borrowed money from a relative – my mom – twice.

Once was to buy a car. The bank loan would have cost 18%. My mom said she would lend me the money at the current T-Bill rate, which was about 7% at the time. She had me draw up an amortization and payment schedule and every month for a couple of years, I sent her a check.

The other time was when I was in a cash-flow crunch. I had just moved to Miami to start a new job. I had to pay the first month, last month, and deposit on my duplex and I wouldn’t be paid either my salary or my signing bonus until the end of the month.

My mom lent me $3,000 for a month, no interest. I repaid her as soon as I got my first paycheck.

I thought both deals were very generous of my mom. I have since learned that some parents do not charge interest to their adult kids when they lend them money and I think that’s just weird. Maybe these are rich parents?

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When a close relative asked to borrow money – about $2,000, I think – from me, I thought I should pay it forward. I asked the borrower to prepare an amortization schedule and to pay me every month. I think I was charging whatever interest my money would have gotten in my savings account.

That borrower – didn’t pay. Well, didn’t pay regularly.

She finally paid it all a while after the loan was supposed to have ended, but I seethed that entire time.

And I learned my lesson.

Do not lend money you are not prepared to lose.

The borrower and I are cool now. But I would not lend money to her again.

Or to anyone.

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A friend’s sister asked to borrow money from him.

The friend and his sister are not close. The sister is 11 years older, so they didn’t really grow up together.

They don’t live near each other and they don’t exchange birthday or Christmas cards.

Friend doesn’t even have his sister’s mailing address. He likes Sister well enough, but shrugs and says that he doesn’t even really know her. Their parents died when Friend was in college and the siblings do not make an effort to get together.

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Have you read Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty?

It’s been a few years since I read it, but some of it has stuck with me.

In particular, I remember her talking about how hard it is for someone in the working class to save money because the money is seen as a communal resource. If your cousin gets thrown in jail Friday night, you have to give him the bail money because if he doesn’t get to work on Monday, he will lose his job. And if he loses his job, he won’t be able to pay his rent. And if he can’t pay his rent, his kid don’t have a place to live. And so on and so on.

You don’t get to say that you’re saving that money to go to college in two years when your cousin needs it right now.

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I don’t come from that kind of background. I suppose within my immediate family, I would give money to my siblings to get them out of jail or help with something urgent or help my mom if she needed it, but that’s where my circle of lending ends.

My friend’s sister told him that she needed to borrow a few thousand dollars because she needed to lend money to her adult son, who is 28 years old and underemployed. Sister was running out of her own money to lend her son. (Sister has a good job. Sister’s ex’s dad just died and Ex will inherit some money as soon as the estate closes.)

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Do you do it?

Do you lend money to Sister for her to lend to Son?

If you do it, do you get a say in how Son spends the money?

(Do you even want a say in how Son spends the money or would you rather just not have that level of involvement in someone else’s life?)

What do you do if Sister does not pay you back?

What do you do if Sister asks you for more money?

This is just what the forced birthers want – a trapped underclass

I didn’t know she was pregnant when the young woman – let’s call her Ruby – who was cutting my hair asked me if I regretted not having children and I told her that nope, I had never wanted them – that my mother, who had me when she was 20 and just seemed – stuck, her many many talents unused or underused.

I didn’t know she was pregnant when I told Ruby that I have so many friends whose moms also seemed very unhappy with motherhood – that the women in the generation before me were trapped and stuck and wanted so much more but didn’t have options.

I didn’t know she was pregnant when Ruby told me that she was still in high school in the International Baccalaureate program and she wanted to be a crime-scene tech but had switched to beauty school because it was easier for now.

I didn’t know she was pregnant when I told Ruby it was pretty impressive to be both completing high school and studying in tech school at the same time.

I did know Ruby had just turned 18 because I asked her, as I ask all young people when I meet them, if she was registered to vote and she told me no, she had just turned 18 a few weeks ago.

I didn’t know Ruby was pregnant until she explained that she had missed school the week before because she had been in the hospital for some pregnancy complications.

I did know she was pregnant when she told me she wished she had appreciated the free rent and food she got when she still lived with her parents – when she told me that she was now living with the father of her baby, who is older and has a job with health insurance.

I did know she was pregnant as I counted back silently when she told me she was due in May, just after graduation.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about when Roe was overturned.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about how the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature don’t want to expand Medicaid coverage for new mothers from 60 days postpartum to a year.

Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) to schedule a vote on a bill that would expand Medicaid coverage for new mothers from 60 days to a year after giving birth.

The bill — SB 110 — would instruct the state Department of Health Services to seek approval from the federal government to expand Medicaid coverage for postpartum women to 12 months. It passed the Senate on a 32-1 vote in September but hasn’t moved any further in the Assembly in part because of Vos’ opposition. 

“We are here calling on Speaker Vos to bring this bill to the floor and help address disparities and maternal outcomes in our state,” Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said during a press conference organized by Protect Our Care on Wednesday. “Wisconsin must act so families in my district and across the state have the opportunity to access a crucial support system that will address the racial disparities brought to light by the Black maternal health crisis.”

Wisconsin Examiner

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about Wisconsin’s infant mortality rate, which is not the worst but is also not the best.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about maternal mortality rates, which are worse for Black and Hispanic mothers.

U.S. maternal mortality worsened during the pandemic, especially for Latinas. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. saw 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020, up 18.4% from 2019. For Black women, the maternal mortality rate jumped 25%, while for Hispanic women it surged 44%.

While researchers are not clear on why Latinas saw such disproportionately higher mortality rates in 2020, the overall trend in the U.S. has been that women of color have had poorer outcomes in childbirth.

Latinas with private insurance plans have a 22% higher rate of severe pregnancy complications than non-Hispanic white women, according to a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association study. Low-income Hispanic women on Medicaid have a 28% higher rate of complications.  

CNBC.com

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about the public schools here and access to childcare.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about how the Wisconsin Republicans want to relax child labor laws. This in a state where we already have companies breaking existing laws in ways that are very harmful to children.

Wisconsin-based meat packing contractor Packers Sanitation more than $1.5 million for employing at least 100 children, some as young as 13, to clean dangerous equipment such as bone saws and skull splitters in plants across the U.S. The company claimed it wasn’t aware that those workers were minors but said it has since taken steps to improve the way it verifies employees’ ages.

AP

And I knew she was pregnant and had not had a chance to not be pregnant when I thought about how her dreams were now dead.

The Bros who treat elections as a game will be just fine even if their opponents are elected so they don’t care. The interests of a$$hole white men are almost always represented no matter who is in office.

First. I will give her campaign team their due – Janet Protasiewicz did win the election and because of that win, we now have a decent shot at getting fair election maps in Wisconsin and also restoring legal abortion.

I don’t know if she won because of their management of her campaign, but she did win.

But.

What was her campaign team thinking when they decided to make their puerile idiotic insider jokes about Dan Kelly, Protasiewicz’s opponent, being someone who has carnal knowledge of horses part of the campaign?

WHO DOES THAT?

Here’s what happened.

The players

• Dan Kelly, whom ultra-conservative MAGA-adjacent Scott Walker, then governor of Wisconsin, appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2016 to replace a justice who had retired. That term finished in 2023 and Kelly was running for the seat in the 2023 Wisconsin spring election
• Janet Protasiewicz, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court in the same spring election.
• Protasiewicz’s campaign team, led by campaign manager Alejandro Verdin.

Two huge issues would be going to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is why this race was so important

• Abortion. With the overturn of Roe v Wade, Wisconsin’s 1849 (you know – before women could even vote) law criminalizing abortion kicked back in. Kelly was adamantly anti-choice. Protasiewicz is not.
• Gerrymandering. Wisconsin has among the most gerrymandered voting maps in the country, leading to an unfair imbalance between Democratic and Republican legislators in Madison.

Protasiewicz’s campaign team discovered in a focus group that some – how many? more than one? – voters thought Kelly looked like someone who – I don’t even understand how anyone says this or even comes to this conclusion – has sex with horses.

Is that even a thing? Yes, I know it’s a thing that happens, but is that an insult in common usage? I have never heard that before but then I do not hang out with bros.

So they learned that at least one person in all of Wisconsin, which has a population of 5.9 million people, snickered and thought Kelly looks like someone who commits bestiality.

And they decided to make that part of the campaign.

They included images of horses in ads for Protasiewicz.

Oh aren’t they so clever! Aren’t they so funny!

But that’s not even the worst part.

They bragged about it.

Yes.

Verdin went on the record and talked about what they had done.

Earlier this week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on an interview Protasiewicz campaign manager Alejandro Verdin gave on “The Downballot,” a podcast produced by the liberal Daily Kos. During his appearance, he admitted that the internal joke was taken “to another level” when the campaign hid images of horses in negative campaign ads.

Kristen Brey, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Dude.

WTAF?

This is the bullshit that makes candidates look bad and affects elections.

Yes, Protasiewicz did win.

But what about this fall? Wisconsin is a battleground state and there are persuadable Republicans who might vote against the Orange Monster.

But not if they think the Dems are assholes.

This is a state where people voted against the recall of Scott Walker a decade ago not because they didn’t think he was a jerk but because they disagreed, on principle, with the idea of a recall.

The persuadable voters could be looking for a defendable reason to vote for Trump. To justify voting against the Democrat. They don’t want to vote for a Democrat. The persuadables hate Trump but they also hate Dems so what are they to do?

These jerks put everything at risk for a stupid insider joke.

And it wasn’t even funny.

In a movie made in 1986 about 1960, it was apparently unthinkable for a woman not to get married

I watched Peggy Sue Got Married for the first time since it was released in 1986 and what a big fat lie the “change her destiny” part is.

Did the writers hate women?

Are they Republicans from now sent back in time to write a movie about how to keep women trapped?

Because she does not change her destiny.

She tries and tries and tries but the only options the writers give her are to marry one of two other male characters – both of whom she tells she does not want to marry anyone – or to stay married to Charlie, her high-school sweetheart whom she marries after getting pregnant at 18 and is then the husband of 25 years she is divorcing when the movie starts.

Even a current (2022)(need I say male?) reviewer thinks Peggy Sue did the right thing by staying in her marriage with Charlie at the end.

By allowing Peggy Sue a second chance to rediscover why she fell for her husband and reconnect with family members that had passed away between the past and the present, Peggy Sue Got Married boldly alters the textures of time travel tropes to reinvent the genre as a gentle fantasy of small shifts rather than a genre exercise of epic proportions….

Even more importantly, the titular character also discovers a newfound agency over her decisions and personal expression through addressing regrets from her past directly, setting Peggy Sue Got Married apart as a timeless treatise on self-confidence and self-discovery. 

Collider.com

In her first go round, she got married to Charlie at 18 because she got pregnant. She did not have agency in that decision in 1960 for sure.

And in when she is in the past, just about to return to the future having broken up with Charlie (and not pregnant), he literally kidnaps her and physically restrains her from returning to the future on her terms.

She is not addressing her regrets.

She does not get newfound agency.

The last scene before she returns to the present, she is sobbing. She tries so, so hard to change her path. And she fails.

This is not a Happy Ever After story.

This is a story about a woman being trapped.

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Compare Peggy Sue to the delightful 13 Going on 30, made in 2004.

In this case, the protagonist, Jenna, travels forward in time from her 13th birthday to when she is 30, where she discovers that she turned into a mean girl when she was 13 and her life is now kind of crummy.

She does address her regrets. She does get newfound agency. And when she has the chance to change her 13-year-old actions so she can have a different future, she does so.

(And the movie has a way better soundtrack.)

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In Shakespeare, the comedies tend to end in weddings and the tragedies end with everyone dead, or at least the protagonist dead.

Here, we have two stories that end in marriage.

But only one of them is a happy ending.

Jenna’s marriage is a happy ending: she is reunited with her childhood best friend, the adorably nerdy Matty who grows up into Mark Ruffalo.

But Peggy Sue’s marriage is not. It’s everything she didn’t want and everything she tried so hard to escape.

Maybe the writers didn’t hate women.

Maybe this was a commentary on women’s lack of power and agency in 1960 and maybe every single person who reads it as a happy ending is getting it wrong.