Dave Barry's Money Secrets
Page 5
Your Health Insurance Benefits
Medical Condition
What is NOT Covered
What Is Covered
Arterial bleeding
Surgery, clamps, sutures, bandages, antibiotics
Mop
Sucking chest wound
Anesthesia, surgery
Cork
Cancer
Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery
Casket wreath* 13
Diabetes
Insulin
Leeches* 14
Hatchet embedded in skull
Removal of hatchet, treatment of wound
Larger hat
Eyes gouged out in hospital by psychopath posing as nurse
Prosthetic eyeballs, therapy
Six-pack
Source: The American Association of Big Insurance Companies That Did Not Get into the Insurance Business to Piss Money Away on the Likes of You
The bottom line is that, if you get injured or sick, you are financially screwed. So your wisest strategy is to stay healthy. Here are some ways you can do this:
1. Don’t smoke. Smoking is the nation’s number one cause of cancer, emphysema, heart disease, death, ugly-ass teeth, and generally smelling like a fire at a condom factory. Also, many smokers—as a result of having to leave their smoke-free office buildings to go outside in the dead of winter and suck on cigarettes while snowdrifts pile up against their legs—are eaten by wolves.
And cigarettes are not just unhealthy: They’re also absurdly expensive. As I write these words,* 15 the average price of a single pack of twenty cigarettes is nearly three dollars, broken down as follows:
The Cost of a Pack of Cigarettes: Where the Money Goes
So smoking is an unbelievably stupid, expensive, evil, deadly addiction that benefits lawyers.* 16 Why, then, do people do it? Many young people start smoking because they think it is “cool.” But it is not cool. It only looks cool. At least I believed it did when I smoked my first cigarette—a Kent, with the Micronite filter* 17—back when I was a fifteen-year-old assistant counselor at Camp Sharparoon.* 18 My theory was that the Kent would cause female staff members to desire me in a carnal manner. But this is not what happened. What happened was I spent the evening on my hands and knees puking on the softball field. This is not something that women find attractive in a man. You rarely hear a woman say: “I’m looking for the kind of guy who is ralphing up a mess of lasagna on third base.” But being a young, idealistic, determined moron, I continued working at smoking until I could do it without throwing up, which is the epitome of smoking pleasure. (“This is enjoyable! It’s not making me vomit!”)
Eventually, I realized that smoking was an insanely stupid activity, and I made up my mind to quit. Many smokers will try to tell you that quitting is hard, but I found that, through willpower and determination, I was able to quit “cold turkey,” without any trouble, in just over a decade and a half. So take it from a former nicotine addict: If you’re not a smoker, don’t start. And if you are a smoker, can I bum a cigarette?
No, seriously, if you are a smoker, and you’re applying for life insurance, lie.
2. Don’t drink too much. Alcohol, like tobacco, is the nation’s leading cause of death. It turns your liver into jerky and impairs your judgment. What do I mean by “impaired judgment?” OK, let’s say you’re sitting in a bar watching an NFL game, and a guy next to you makes some observation that you do not agree with—say, that the Green Bay Packers defensive backfield sucks. If you have not been drinking, chances are you will simply let the matter drop. Whereas, if you have been drinking, you will feel compelled to ask the guy exactly what kind of complete fricking moron he is, despite the fact that (1) the guy was addressing his observation to somebody else; (2) the guy is the size of a Federal Express truck; and (3) no member of the Green Bay Packers defensive backfield would ever, under any circumstances, stick up for you. These facts begin to penetrate your brain only later, as the Emergency Room doctor is explaining what foods you will be able to eat through the tube in your neck. That’s what I mean by “impaired judgment.”
Here are some other signs that you might be drinking too much:
• You find that you need a drink to settle your nerves when you are confronted with unexpected or upsetting occurrences, such as dawn.
• You sometimes make statements such as: “I bet you can’t shoot this beer can off my head.”
• You frequently engage in promiscuous sexual behavior, not always with members of your own species.
• You nod off at inappropriate times, such as at work, or while driving a motorcycle.
• You sometimes wake up on unfamiliar continents.
• You often see yourself featured on the TV show Cops, usually handcuffed facedown in front of a mobile home.
• You find that you spend a lot more time than other people searching for your pants.
• A recurring theme in your home decor is dried vomit.
If you notice five or more of these warning signs in your own life, you need to eliminate alcohol consumption altogether, or at least limit it only to certain very specific times, such as when you’re awake.
3. Eat a healthy diet. Along with tobacco and alcohol, the number one cause of death in America is food. Americans eat way too much of it and have become a nation of enormous waddling giant-butted slugs. This is not their fault. It is the fault of the food industry, which deliberately makes food and foodlike products that Americans like to eat large amounts of.
A good example is Cheez-Its, which are chemically enhanced snack crackers the color of a radioactive traffic cone. Every time I go to my local supermarket, I am forced to walk directly past a flagrant, semipornographic Cheez-Its display, which apparently features a hidden motion-activated snack-flinging catapult, because somehow, without any conscious action on my part, I always end up with a large box of Cheez-Its in my shopping cart. This leaves me with no choice, as a husband and father desiring to protect his family from the threat of non-nutritious foods, but to eat the entire box* 19 myself during the three-mile drive home from the supermarket. This is clearly bad for me, and I only hope that I am able to become part of a massive class-action lawsuit against Keebler before I become too large to fit into my car.
But suing the food industry, important as it is, may not be enough. We also need to accept some limited responsibility for what we insert into our personal mouths and swallow. Nutrition experts recommend that we eat a Healthy Balanced Diet based on scientific principles, which sounds like a fine idea, except that these principles are apparently based on the nutritional needs of mutant rabbits. I say this because these diets always look like this:
HEALTHY DAILY DIET
• 27 servings raw fruit with those annoying little stickers still attached
• 153 servings raw green leafy vegetables such as kale
• .0063 kilogram nonendangered free-range fish, boiled
• 3 servings tree bark
• 43 servings uncooked dirt or gravel
• One live insect
• 126 gallons low-fat water
There are serious practical problems with these diets. Number one is, nobody knows what “kale” is. Number two is, no normal human with a job has either the time or the mathematical ability to prepare and keep track of all these “servings.” Normal humans spend most of their days in a real-world work environment, where approximately 70 percent of their daily food intake is supplied by vending machines, and the closest available thing to a green leafy vegetable is mesquite-flavored potato chips.* 20
So the bottom line is, if you want to eat a Healthy Balanced Diet, you are going to have to develop the self-discipline to quit the junk-food habit and make the time to eat only sensible, healthy meals prepared in advance at home. Like you would ever do that. This leaves you with no choice but to SUE THEIR ASS!
4. Don’t have sex. Sex, along with virtually every other natural human activity, is a leading cause of death. These days you
can’t trust anybody. More and more, we’re seeing cases where people caught deadly diseases from having sex with their own selves. So my advice is, just don’t do it, and if you absolutely must do it, do it only with somebody you are absolutely certain is reliable, such as a spouse or trusted pet.* 21
5. Avoid accidents. Accidents cause more deaths than any other single thing I intend to mention in this particular sentence. Statistics show that more than 91 percent of all accidents occur either on or off the job, or in the home. So these are three places you should definitely avoid. Driving is also out of the question. Wear a helmet at all times, especially when going to the bathroom. Every year more than 650,000 Americans die from head injuries sustained from falling off toilets, yet our so-called “political leaders” do nothing, because they are taking handouts from the powerful commode lobby. Which, for the record, does not wash its hands.
6. Get plenty of exercise. Every year, lack of exercise kills more Americans than the Hundred Years War and all the Punic Wars combined. So stop sitting around on your giant mesquite-enhanced American butt! No more excuses! I want you to get up RIGHT NOW, walk to the telephone, dial the toll-free number, and order one of those exercise contraptions advertised by hyperenthusiastic spandex-wearing physical freaks on daytime TV in between lawyer commercials. Then you can sit back down—you don’t want to overexert yourself on your first day—and allow four to six weeks for delivery. When the device comes, take it out of the box, examine it closely for defects, and—after some basic stretching exercises to loosen up—store it under a bed. Be careful not to strain yourself, lest you sustain a painful back injury and be forced to sue somebody’s ass.
8
HOW TO ARGUE WITH YOUR SPOUSE ABOUT MONEY
The Nuclear Option: Tampons
ARGUING IS A NORMAL PART of being married, like finding alien hairs embedded in the bath soap. In any close relationship between two people, there’s always going to be a certain amount of friction, sometimes resulting in gunplay.
But when you’re arguing, you must keep things in perspective. No matter what particular issue you’re arguing about, no matter how serious it seems at the moment, remember that in the long run, the truly important thing—all psychologists agree on this—is that you must win the argument. If you win, you receive points that can be redeemed for valuable merchandise at the Marriage Argument Prize Redemption Center.
Not really. The truth is that many marital arguments are complete wastes of time involving idiotically trivial issues. For example, my wife and I routinely argue about what time we need to leave the house. Let’s say we’re supposed to be at some event that starts at 7 p.m., and that the place where the event is being held is about a 15-minute drive from our house. My wife and I both agree on these basic facts. The problem is that we don’t interpret them the same way at all.
• How I interpret the facts: I start with the premise that if the event starts at 7 p.m., we need to be physically present at the event at 7 p.m., or, preferably, ten minutes early. Allowing fifteen minutes for the drive, plus ten minutes for finding a parking space, plus another five minutes to walk from the parking space to the event, we need to be in the car, with the engine running, at 6:20 p.m. at the latest. But then I allow a ten-minute cushion in case there is traffic, which pushes it back to 6:10, to which I add another fifteen-minute cushion for the unexpected, such as engine trouble, carjacking, a meteor strike, etc. This now puts our Mandatory Time of Departure (MTD) at 5:55 p.m., or, rounding off, 5:45 p.m. So shortly before then—say, around 5:30—I am ready to go. I am pacing around the house jingling my car keys in a suggestive manner.
• How my wife interprets the facts: First off, my wife believes that just because an event is scheduled for 7 p.m., that does not mean it will start at 7 p.m. Most likely it will start late—7:15, say, or 7:30—and even then nobody is expected to actually be there when it starts, so an arrival time of, say, 8 p.m. is fine. My wife is of Cuban descent, and she believes this about all events, including weddings, funerals, and commercial airplane departures. She also believes in the Special Theory of Automotive Relativity, which holds that when you are traveling inside a car, there is no passage of time. You can get into a car at 8 p.m. and drive for 15 minutes, and when you get out of the car, it will still be 8 p.m. So if you need to be somewhere at 8, you can leave at 8. Except that my wife will not be ready at 8. She will be ready closer to 8:30, because she will be “running a little late,” because it takes her longer than she expected to apply her makeup. It always takes her longer than she expected to apply her makeup, but she continues to assume that the next time the process will somehow go quicker, as if one day she’ll look into the mirror and discover that she has, I don’t know, fewer eyebrows.
So, starting with precisely the same facts, my wife and I arrive at departure times that are three hours apart. This results in tension between us. We resolve it by calmly discussing our differences, then formulating a reasonable and workable compromise.
Seriously, we get into a big honking argument wherein I accuse her of being inconsiderate and out of touch with the known physical laws of the universe, and she accuses me of being a key-jingling time Nazi. If we’re in good form, we can make this argument completely ruin any chance of our enjoying the event that we were trying to get to.
Eventually—sometimes several days later, when we can no longer clearly remember what the event was—we realize that we’re being foolish. We apologize to each other and sincerely promise to do better. And because we are both mature, intelligent adults, the next time we have an event to attend, we have exactly the same argument. Tradition is important in a marriage.
Two other topics that married couples traditionally disagree about are child care and housework. Every year, these two areas are the subject of literally millions of marital arguments. And while I certainly would never engage in crude generalizations based on gender, all of these arguments are started by women.
The problem is that women have developed a set of extremely rigid standards concerning child care and housework, and they expect men to meet these standards. Women are not willing to acknowledge that men also have standards for child care and housework, but we do. Ours just happen to be different standards, as we see in the following chart:
Area of Concern
Women’s Standards
Men’s Standards
Child Care
You see to it that the children bathe regularly, brush their teeth twice daily, eat three nutritious meals a day, with a minimum of junk food, and wear clean, appropriate clothing. You make sure they receive regular medical and dental care, and that they keep up in school—including homework and special projects. You coordinate their participation in extracurricular activities and sports. At every moment of the day and night, you know exactly where all your children are. When the children are home, you play with them or supervise them in constructive activities. If they are not physically in your presence, you know the name and phone number of the person they are with, and what they are doing. You have memorized the names and phone numbers of the children’s doctors, dentists, and teachers.
You feel you have done a good job if, to the best of your knowledge, none of the children are actively bleeding.
Housekeeping
A house is satisfactorily kept when all floors and carpets are vacuumed, all shelves are dusted, and all beds made. In the kitchen, all counters should be wiped, the dishes should be washed and put away, and the refrigerator should be cleaned, with outdated food discarded. All bathroom surfaces should be cleaned, including the shower tile and grout; the toilets should be thoroughly scrubbed with a disinfectant cleanser.
You should be able to find the remote control in under ten minutes.
Laundry
Dirty clothes should be placed in a hamper. At regular intervals, they should be sorted by color and fabric type, presoaked and/or sprayed with stain remover if necessary, then washed in separate loads at appropriate temperature and time settings,
with detergent, softener and bleach as required. They should then be either placed in the drier at the appropriate setting, or, for delicates, allowed to air-dry. Garments should be ironed as necessary.
For years, you dropped your dirty clothes on the floor, and they wound up coming back clean. But finally one day you got tired of the snide comments from your spouse, plus you needed clean socks, so you took it upon yourself, unasked, to do a load of laundry. With no help from anyone, you put all the dirty clothes into the washer, then into the drier, even though it took you several minutes to figure out how to turn these appliances on. You viewed the result as a success, in that your socks did OK. But many of the other garments shrank from normal human sizes to Barbie clothes, plus all the whites came out roughly the color of Hawaiian Punch. Your spouse was highly critical, so you decided never to attempt a laundry again, and you resumed dropping your clothes on the floor. So now your spouse has resumed making snide comments. What the hell does she want?.
Observing a Child’s Birthday
Months before the child’s birthday, you select a party date and place. You also select a theme and scour the Internet for theme-appropriate decorations, party favors, etc. You arrange for food and entertainment—a clown, a magician, Barry Manilow, etc. You send out invitations, after carefully reviewing the guest list with the child. On the day of the party itself, you turn into a raving theme-crazed lunatic,* 22 barking orders to your spouse such as: “I don’t care if it’s raining, you need to PUT OUT THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD RIGHT NOW.” At the end of the party, when your house is a child-devastation zone with partially eaten chicken nuggets strewn everywhere, you say, “Wasn’t that GREAT??” Then, after a break of about fifteen minutes, you start planning next year’s party.