Sunday Archive VI: Last Day (Wage Slave Rant Draft II)

Gmail cleanout part six!

This article was written on the same day in February, 05, as last week’s post.  What I often do is rant in a notebook during my commute, then turn the rant into an article for the front page.  Just skimming this, since I can’t be bothered to read it all, it’s pretty clear that this was intended for the front page and what I posted last week was just the first typed draft.  Though this final version is much more angsty and mean-spirited.

This is still a draft, as you’ll see.  I’ve left some parts blank (like where I’m working out my net salary, and percentages and so on).

From February, 2005:

Last day. Capricorn 15’s. Carousel begins.

I wrote a comment on social security along the lines of fuck it, give me back my 8% and, if need be, I’ll lead up an army of execution squads to dispose of the unlucky or unwise who aren’t able to maintain their own retirement.

Since the majority of my friends are liberals and, apparently, my readership is composed of disgruntled single men in their twilight years, I fell under some criticism.   This has inspired me to write the official Nacho Sasha guide on living cheap.

There are several important factors to start off with.  I make $35,000 a year, but I work and live in DC, which is one of the five most expensive places in the US and, worse yet, is filled with Brookstone’s outlets and Trader Joes.  You either want to adjust for cost of living or get a higher paying job.  If you’re not fortunate enough to do this, you can rest easy with the knowledge that I’m serious about the execution squad.  So ramp up your personal debt because, soon, it just won’t matter.  (That should be a liberating feeling.)

The other factor is a big one – I don’t have a girlfriend.  When I do have a girlfriend, she’s usually a deadbeat pop culture whore who needs help untangling her hair, drinks her dinner and spends her weekends rocking back and forth and drawing on the walls.  There’s no chance of having a family because the girls I like have, usually, been sterilized by the authorities.

Another important factor is that I have elderly family members who stubbornly refuse to give up their house yet are dangerously senile and insane.  Being a sociopath who can’t keep his volatile, certifiable girlfriends around for more than a few months, I was elected to “watch” the old folks.  I was glad for the opportunity, and volunteered quickly before the scenario was even outlined, because it meant I could live in a big house on an acre lot by the Metro and the Beltway for $400 a month.

For those of you who do not have this option, there are always parts of your town that have cheap rent.  In DC, you’re looking at Takoma and Fort Totten, unless you want to go even deeper into the twisted heart of cheap housing.  You can land a two bedroom in Takoma for $500 a month, and a little bit less in Fort Totten.  You’ll be living with cockroaches and your neighbors will be noisy and crazy but, hey, I lived in a $1200 apartment in a very tony part of the suburbs and I was living with cockroaches and my neighbors were noisy and insane.  This is the city, there’s nothing you can do.  I worry more about getting shotgunned during a mugging, or the ever-present out of control bread van, or an unserviced Metro train hopping the tracks in a tunnel than I do crazy neighbors.

So, okay, the first step is to live in some sort of hell.  Adjust the cost for whatever you’re making.  No more than  (4800 of 35,000)% of your paycheck should go towards your rent.  And fuck buying a home… You’ll either be working for or the victim of my death squads.  Or you’ll know a realtor friend who can sell you retirement property in the country at a sweet price.  I can give you her details, but she’s only good for Virginia and Maryland.  Get some rural parcel of land, park your $150 Airstream trailer on it and retire in peace.  Die in a rotting trailer full of mice and newspaper?  You bet.  Isn’t that how all death squad leaders eventually die?

Rent:  $400 a month.

Now, food is the most expensive element of our lives.  If you’re my grandmother, you spend $150 on food every week “just because you can.”  That’s a great way to use up excess Social Security money when you’re also getting some weird pension from some long forgotten Montgomery Ward account because, back in those days, when they promised and set up a pension for employees, they meant it.  I don’t quite understand what the fuck is going on with that, but I guess you have to be 80 to remember what it was like.  We’ve also got my grandfather’s social security and pension from the State of Maryland for 50 years of teaching “at the PhD level.”  My grandfather doesn’t have a doctorate degree, but I’m not allowed to mention that in public.  He also gets paid for his World War II service and there’s some sort of weird hush money coming in because he worked on the first nuclear sub and, yes, they killed people.  He also gets a pension from his wayward years at Dupont in the early 50’s.

Then he subs at local schools two or three times a week, which is either one of the most lucrative jobs you can have in Montgomery County, MD  or he’s slinging smack.  I always suspect the latter, because he often says: “I have lots of colored friends!”  And he also says: “Niggers only like drugs, cheap whiskey and our women!”

I once dated a black woman, simply for the shock value.  But when I brought her home, my grandfather pulled me aside and gave me a thumbs up, “About time we steal their women, boy.”  All of my great plans backfire.

Anyway, the old folks are doing well and, being unwise with their money, they spend every dollar of their ill gotten gains as soon as the checks arrive.

But you, my dear readers, you don’t have money arriving from long dead companies where you worked for 20 years building widgets.  You, like me, are going to the supermarket and fawning over olives and caviar yet putting expired bread and opened ham packages into your cart.  This is okay.  Do not seek to better your place in life.  The best thing you can do is let your stomach shrink.  I happen to be fortunate enough (from a financial standpoint) to have a crippling, permanent nerve injury in my face.  Combined with the fact that I never really enjoyed food or had a serious appetite, I can survive on some low grade shit.  I run to the Chinese grocer and get a big, fat bag of rice for a few dollars.  Combined with seaweed from the Japanese grocer and “liberated” soy sauce, I can feed myself for a month on rice.  Elbow noodles, boiled and salted down, can last me days.  Every once in a while, I grab expired throwaway chicken and cook it up, dropping it in the freezer to last six days or, sometimes, much longer.  When engaged in an unrewarding sexual relationship with a bad woman, I can force them to buy food and cook for me.  Often, friends and family members become horrified by my habits and bring me food.

Overall, my monthly food budget is $50.

With me?  We’re up to $450 a month, food and lodging.

I drive a 1990 Acura, which I’ve started patching together with duct tape and string.  I’m a good driver, but I live in a bad zipcode because my grandfather sells crack on the corner.  Car insurance is $60 a month.  If anyone works for Geico, let me know what a better zipcode is and I’ll get a PO Box there.  Health insurance is covered by my company…barely.  I take a vicious cocktail of pills to keep the nerve pain in my face at bay, but they only cost $15 a month.

We’re up to $525.

(Note:  Learn how to repair your car.)

On the luxury angle, I have a Netflix account.  Luxuries can be a big hole for most people, but the great thing about having nerve damage is that I don’t enjoy eating out, or even hanging around and talking with people.  I have friends, sure, but I tend to be at their mercy most of the time, and they make concessions for my strange behavior.  They either have Netflix or make me bring my Netflix over.  I see a movie in the theaters once a year – Christmas Day.  Otherwise, wait till it shows up on Netflix.  My friends and I either watch movies at home, talk quietly about things in kitchens and living rooms, or go to dive bars where we can huddle in booths and whisper in dark corners.  My dates follow the same pattern.  So, going out rarely costs money.  At dive bars, splitting pitchers of beer between even two people, the cost might be $15 each.  If you’re in a mixed drink mood, you can do that at home.  In fact, buying booze and going to someone’s house is cheaper all around.  I work weddings nine months of the year, so about 80% of my booze is stolen.  Maybe I spend $20 a month on a bottle of vodka – watch for sales!  Also, I rarely go out.  One or two Saturdays a month.

Total luxury budget:

Netflix — $17.99
Booze/going out with friends — $30, on average.

We’re up to $573.

Utilities are covered by my rent, and you can still find this at the $500-range apartments around DC.  I have elaborate plans involving the theft of electricity and avoiding a water bill, if you’re interested.  You’ll read about them in another article.  In the end, though, I’m left with phone and internet.  I don’t have cable TV… In fact, my 15 year old TV is in the attic, not even hooked up to the antenna.  I download everything I want to watch, which isn’t much.  Outside of Netflix and what DVD’s I have (a big thanks again to the Greatsociety readers who got me shit from my wishlist), I write, or listen to stolen music, or read, or surf the net.  Mostly, really, I write.

I don’t have a landline phone.  I just go with the cellphone, which is a $39.99 monthly bill.  The internet, DSL, is $29.99.

We’re up to $643.

This leaves me with my student loan payments.  That’s $167 a month which, apparently, is going nowhere.

So we end with a monthly cost of living at $810.

My net pay each month is ……..  I lose $60 to commuter costs and 6% to my 401K (the company I work for matches that amount, so 12% goes to the 401K).  That leaves me with $1648.  $838 a month going directly into investments.

Okay, yes, I’ve made sacrifices.  I don’t eat, I live in some weird, child-like limbo, I drive a beater car that smells funny, I don’t watch TV, I don’t go to movies, my friends think I’m deeply troubled… But, well, it’s all about financial freedom.

When I lived in my $1200 apartment and ate out several times a week and lived high and mighty, I was a sad little clown.  Why?  Because I spent all my money and, even when I was balls deep in a legal aide or drinking single malts with a cocktail waitress, I had a feeling of vast, Saharan emptiness.

Then I exiled myself.  I started to stuff my mattress with the saved money and, you know what?  I felt rejuvenated.  If I wanted to cut loose and go out, I could.  If I wanted to spend six weeks abroad, I could.  If I wanted to just sit on the money, masturbate, and giggle, I could.  In a material world (ooh-oop), financial freedom is all it takes to pull the scales from your eyes and see, once and for all, that you can escape the cruel arms of Lady Life and transcend to a state of grace.

So, you see, fuck social security.  8% more in my paycheck is 8% more stuffed in the mattress.  And when I retire, I’m going to do it in my 50’s, because I’ve had it up to here with every single one of you.