Sweet Dreams: Saving on Meds, Selling Unwanted Furniture

How would you like to save money? Maybe even make a buck or two?

I’m not in the habit of promoting specific companies but will make two exceptions based on personal experience. My reluctance to hype a company perhaps stems from policies in place when I started at Chain Store Age 43 years ago. Back then, writers were forbidden to include in their copy brand names no matter how ubiquitous they might be. Let me illustrate: a “retractable spinning device” was our way of describing a ... yo-yo. Instead of five characters we had to use 25 with two spaces between words. Why? Because yo-yo was a trademark of the Duncan Toys Company and the founder of our company, Arnold D. Friedman, forbade us to include brand names in our articles. After Arnold died the rule was relaxed.  

Cutting Prescription Costs: Recently I received a text message from my AARP-affiliated prescription mail order drug provider. My 90-day supply of Dutasteride (generic for Avodart) was due for a refill. Cost would be $152.30. $609.20 for the year.

So I looked up what Dutasteride would cost on the GoodRx app on my iPhone. After surveying pharmacies near me GoodRx provided five choices, the cheapest of which was at a Stop & Shop supermarket—$28.55 for 90 day supply. $114.20 for the year.

No brainer from which pharmacy I will get my Dutasteride and other drugs IF the cost is lower than AARP’s provider. Gilda and I already selectively use GoodRx for some half a dozen meds (mostly mine). 

GoodRx costs nothing to use. Zero. Nada. Just download the app on your smartphone and input the drug you want, the number of pills, the dosage. When you pick up the Rx show the pharmacist the price quoted on your smartphone. That’s all it takes to save lots of money.

Keep in mind not all of your meds will cost less on GoodRx but it sure pays to compare prices. You don’t have to be a senior citizen to use GoodRx. You just have to want to save money.

Kaiyo Is A Knockout: Old furniture. Wha-dya do with it? Throw it out? Donate it to Habitat for Humanity or some other charity that will pick it up from your home? Sell it on Craig’s List? Give it away on Free Cycle?

Gilda and I found a better way to dispose of our 16-year old leather couch? We sold it on consignment through Kaiyo.com.

This was no ordinary couch. It was an attached sectional with recliners at each end. It fit into a curved wall in our family room. Its longest side measured 132 inches. The short side measured 68 inches. No way Gilda and I were going to be able to move that sucker.

The couch, or sofa if you prefer, was in excellent shape. As luck would have it I saw a Kaiyo truck one day. Its side panels advertised Kaiyo’s service. 

Kaiyo handles good quality used furniture. In our case, I first sent in several pictures of the couch. Kaiyo set up a pick-up date during which an on-site inspection verified the condition of the couch. Had it not passed, Kaiyo would have left empty-handed. No charge. 

Our couch passed. Off it went to the Kaiyo warehouse for further examination and cleaning. On the Kaiyo app I noted how much the couch would be worth. I determined the percentage of the sale price I would receive. Kaiyo set the sale price.  

Our couch sold within two weeks of posting on the Kaiyo Web site, kaiyo.com.

Truth be told, even if it didn’t sell we would have considered our experience a good one as just getting our couch removed from our home was a big, big plus. The $300-plus dollars we made on the sale was a nice bonus. 

For now Kaiyo serves the tri-state New York City metropolitan area and Philadelphia. 

Counting sheep: If you’ve stayed with me this long perhaps you’d also appreciate a sleep tip I read about several weeks ago. Most people I know go to sleep with their eyes closed. I do, too. Most nights.

Sometimes, though, I cannot. So I employ this sleep aid—I go to sleep with my eyes open. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it works.

Simply stare at an object while in bed. Try not to blink. In no time at all your eyelids will get heavy and close. You’ll fall asleep. I used this trick in the middle of the night yesterday after waking up at 2 am.

Sweet dreams. 

Observations on the Political Circus

I’m not interested in hearing any more about Donald Trump’s sex drive during Wednesday night’s presidential debate. I don’t need to hear him deny the allegations of some dozen women or dismiss his X-rated talk on the bus with Billy Bush as mere “locker room” banter.

I’m more interested in having moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News press Trump for details and hard evidence as to why he repeatedly is suggesting the election is rigged and that voter fraud will occur, especially in light of a study by Loyola University law professor Justin Levitt that only 31 of more than 1 billion votes from 2000 to 2014 were fraudulent. 

Trump’s claims sow doubt into our democratic process, while his call for supporters to monitor polling places in “certain areas,” such as Philadelphia, is a not too subtle reference to minority districts, as well as an inference of voter intimidation. 

Since many states allow “open carry” of firearms (at least until December 3 when a new restriction by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives goes into effect), are we going to see armed men and women patrolling areas outside polling stations? You might recall that in 2008 Black Panthers carrying billy clubs were arrested for allegedly intimidating white voters in Philadelphia.

Trump is arguing that the media is conspiring with Hillary Clinton to win her the election. Instead of focusing on her email leaks, the media is preoccupied with his alleged sexual assaults, he says. 

One would think Trump would be eager to seize an opportunity to communicate directly to some 38 million members of AARP, the lobbying group for those 50 years and older, a cohort that is among the most active voters in any election. 

Yet, Trump largely ignored AARP’s request for responses to 13 questions it would print in the association’s October membership newspaper. It hoped for a face-to-face interview, a request Clinton honored. 

Trump, however, did not meet face-to-face with AARP and responded in writing to just six of the questions. In its October election coverage issue, AARP, in an attempt to be impartial, had to resort to printing information from his website, recent speeches and a response to AARP in June on Social Security. 

Clearly, Trump did not take AARP’s opportunity seriously as his written answers were short and perfunctory compared to Clinton’s more detailed responses and the material AARP culled from his printed material. 

Who’s the Lucky One? It is accepted wisdom that Clinton is lucky she is running against Trump. The corollary also is true: Trump is lucky to be running against Clinton. Such is the state of our flawed choices (let’s not even get started on the trouble with Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party’s Jill Stein).  

That said, it is amazing that after more than a year and a half of campaigning there remain some undecided voters. I was surprised to hear on NPR Tuesday an undecided voter wanting to know what type of justice Clinton would nominate to the Supreme Court. Did he not listen to her answer during the second debate? 

“I want to appoint Supreme Court justices who understand the way the world really works, who have real-life experience, who have not just been in a big law firm and maybe clerked for a judge and then gotten on the bench, but maybe they tried more cases,” Clinton said. 

She wants justices who would preserve Roe v. Wade, would reverse the Citizens United decision on campaign financing, would safeguard voting rights and marriage equality. 

Whether she will get her choices through a Republican-controlled Senate is highly unlikely given comments by Senators John McCain of Arizona and Mike Lee of Utah. They said they would block any of her nominees.

Apparently they are willing to gamble the health and welfare of the Supreme Court against the health of aging liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. If they should leave the bench and not be replaced, conservative-leaning justices might become the majority (assuming none of them also exit).

Thus, just as Trump has challenged the legitimacy, first of President Barack Obama and, second, of the electoral process of his successor, Republican senators are readying an assault on the Supreme Court and the duties of the Senate to advise and consent presidential nominations. 

The simple solution to this potential attack is to elect a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Speaking of threats to our democracy, anyone who has listened to the rhetoric of the election campaign cannot help but be worried about the future of our republic.

A corollary: Anyone who has not paid attention to the election should give us pause about the future of our democracy. 

Today I Am Officially Old

It’s not my birthday, so no need to rush out to the Hallmark store for a card (or for those more technologically advanced, to the Internet for an e-card).

I didn’t become old when my AARP card arrived when I turned 50 nearly 14 years ago. It didn’t happen when I retired. It didn’t happen when stores and some movie theaters extended senior citizen discounts to me.

No, today I officially became old, and self-consciously vulnerable, because today, for the very first time, I succumbed and allowed myself to be punctured with a flu shot. For the first time I heeded the advice of health officials to get immunized against influenza. Despite common perception among family and friends that I’m a hypochondriac, the truth is I rarely get sick. I admit to lots of complaints about aches and pains, and a lousy digestive tract, but almost never does my temperature rise above 98.6 degrees.

That I submitted to an injection would be most surprising to my brother and sister. When I became ill as a youngster, not necessarily more often than anyone else yet to reach double-digits in years, but often enough to recoil at the very thought that our family physician, Dr. Harry, would make a house call (doctors did that back in the 1950s, especially when they were family friends, as ours was), I knew the day would end in trauma. 

The irony in this aversion to seeing Dr. Harry is that I really liked him. He was funny. Dr. Harry was from Vienna. He was tall and dapper, with receding, wiry grey hair, bulging eyes and a slightly effeminate manner of walking and waving his hands. Harry wasn’t his true given name. It was Bernard, same as my brother’s. But he said he preferred Harry. Or maybe his wife, Sonia, did. Whatever.

Any visit from Dr. Harry produced laughter. And lots of tears. He’d make me laugh during the examination, poking me where I was ticklish, always asking when was the last time I had a bowel movement. It was decades before I knew the significance of that question.

The laughter ended when I would realize my symptoms called for a shot. That reality seemed to please my brother and sister. Nary a comforting word would they utter. They seemed to relish my fate.

Dr. Harry would vanish from the bedroom into either the kitchen or bathroom where he’d wash his hands and prepare the needle. By this time I’d be screaming. My mother would be holding me down, trying to soothe me, making sure my bare buttocks faced upward. Dr. Harry would slip into the room, say a few nonsensical remarks and quickly, surprisingly, thrust the needle into my behind. I’d scream some more. Cry a little louder. Hug my mother a little tighter. Dr. Harry would retreat to the dinette where he and my mother would gossip awhile over coffee. 

Dr. Harry’s office was in Williamsburg, first floor of an apartment building in a neighborhood already devolving. I didn’t go there often, though I do recall the time I accompanied my sister Lee to his office when she had her ears pierced. I waited in the anteroom as she went into the inner office with our mother. The next thing I heard was a loud, piercing cry. Then another. Closed doors could not contain Lee’s chilling shrieks. It gives me the willies just thinking about those squeals. 

I took today’s flu shot like a man, in my left arm. No sniffles. No hesitation. But as I walked out of CVS, I do admit I had a tingling sensation all down my legs. And my arm hurts. They say that’s normal. 

Cracked Teeth

I’d like to blame AARP for my cracked tooth, but I can’t.

Let me explain. Thursday evening I was leafing through the December 2011/January 2012 issue of AARP The Magazine and came across a nutrition article entitled, “Go Nuts!.” It extolled the virtues of eating various nuts to lower “bad” LDL cholesterol. Almonds, in particular, also were said to reduce insulin resistance, a quality important to someone with borderline high blood sugar levels, as I am.

Friday morning I cracked my tooth on an almond. I can’t blame AARP, however, because almonds have been part of my breakfast regimen for more than 15 years. Almonds, cashews, raisins, red grapes, an apple, a banana, some cheese or Trader Joe’s O’s, with an ample helping of whipped cream—ambrosia of the gods, I call it—have nourished me most mornings.

So you see, it’s not as if I can blame AARP for turning me on to almonds. AARP should have be a little more circumspect in its suggestions, though, considering its age-based membership of 50-plus adults is prone to deteriorating dental work. Perhaps I should have taken a clue from the table of contents teaser copy for the story. It read, “Get Cracking.”

The first time I cracked a tooth on some food was slightly more than 20 years ago. I went to Los Angeles to meet with the president of Vons Supermarkets early one morning at a new concept store, Tiengas, targeted toward the expanding Hispanic community. It was a beautiful store, with lots of food preparation stations, including a tortilla maker in the middle of the store and more fresh food and meat cuts than I’d ever seen (you wouldn’t believe parts of a pig I saw displayed there that I’d never imagined people ate).

Anyway, at the conclusion of the store tour, I was invited upstairs to the manager’s office for some breakfast. As my cholesterol was pretty high back then, I deferred the offer of rancho huevos, essentially scrambled eggs. My host persisted, however, saying it would insult the cook who had come in early just to prepare the breakfast.

On my first bite I felt a crunch. I jumped back asking if the cook had left egg shells in the mix, only to realize I had cracked my tooth on the softest of foods. How embarrassing! How upsetting that I might incur a $550 dental bill for a crown, the going rate at the time.

Talking over my predicament several days later with a friend who headed our company’s human resources department, we agreed I would submit a worker’s compensation claim. After all, the only reason I put the eggs into my mouth was because the Vons president insisted. It was clearly a work-related claim, I reasoned.

The compensation board agreed. I received full reimbursement for the crown.

The same happy result cannot be related about the fate of the Tiengas experiment. Management closed the stores after determining Hispanics preferred shopping in traditional stores with enlarged ethnic offerings rather than their own supermarkets.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

One year, or as the song “Seasons of Love,” from Rent put it, “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes...”

A year ago, as publisher and group editorial director of Chain Store Age, I ran a mid-to-high-single-digit million-dollar enterprise encompassing a monthly magazine, a Web site, e-newsletters and several conferences. Today, I run errands. A year ago I supervised two dozen associates. Today, I plan activities for one.

My last commute to the office at 425 Park Avenue took place a year ago today, June 18, 2009. It was a trip I made for more than 32 years, driving to the White Plains Transcenter parking garage, riding Metro North into Grand Central Terminal, walking up Park Avenue to 55th Street, taking the elevator to the 6th floor.

Forced retirement, even if welcomed, as it was by me, has confronted many of my demographic cohorts. The number of unemployed age 55 and over increased 331% between January 2000 and December 2009, going from 490,000 to 2,114,000, according to AARP. To paraphrase a lyric from the song “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof, “It’s no great honor being a statistic.”

Yet, please don’t read this and wonder if I am depressed. I am not. I have no regrets about what happened. The economy tanked. Publishing tanked. Our area of coverage—retailing, specifically capital spending by retailers—tanked. We made cutbacks, within my group and within the whole company. They weren’t enough. The role of any manager is to prepare the next generation of management. I did my job well. Two associates were ready to take on my responsibilities. Sure, I would have liked to continue, but the prudent corporate move was to reduce overhead. I was treated fairly.

I’m often asked if I’d like to work full-time again. No, not really. I’ve paid my dues. Publishing is an especially brutal business these days. Not that it ever was a 9 to 5 job, but the Internet has made it even more of a round-the-clock profession. I do miss the recognition. Last week I participated in a retail industry panel discussion and was humbled to hear the other panelist describe how he followed my commentary over the years. For three decades I was the voice of Chain Store Age. Nothing, nothing was published without my seal of approval. But Chain Store Age was not mine to hand down to my family. It was my job, not my equity. In return for value received, I produced value. Call it rationalization, if you will, but I’ve come to the belief that at some point one has to say, “I have enough. Enough to do what I want to do. Enough to live the rest of my life in comfort. Enough to hopefully leave something to my children.” Each person will determine their level of “enough.” Hopefully, I’ve calculated correctly.

I enjoy most days. That’s no different than when I was working. Occasionally I do wish Gilda or some of my friends were already retired so we could have play dates. But even when I was employed my closest work-friends already had left the company. For most of my working life I ate lunch in restaurants with one or more of them. During the last few years I ate too many meals at my desk. Few things were as lonely as eating lunch by oneself. For some reason, it’s not as lonely in retirement.

In case you’re wondering, I keep fairly busy. I don’t sleep late. I usually get up within 30 minutes of Gilda’s departure for work sometime between 7 and 7:30. I rarely nap during the day. I don’t watch much television—usually a DVR’ed tape of the prior night’s Daily Show and maybe The Colbert Report during lunch, and perhaps an old movie. I write several hours most days (these blogs don’t show up mysteriously, you know). I do a little consulting work for a few companies. I exercise, mostly walking in the neighborhood. I run errands, do the shopping midweek to avoid weekend crowds. Once a week I deliver meals to homebound seniors. I don’t nosh—I weigh a few pounds less than a year ago. I play sous-chef for Gilda, prepping salad and other foods for her return from work—as I might have previously written, during our marriage we have divided the chores thusly: Gilda cooks (really well), we both eat (sumptuously), I clean. I am content.

I actually have one regret. I had hoped to read a book a week in retirement. Not even close. I won’t embarrass myself by detailing my paltry output, or should that be input? Whatever.