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thedappleddragon · 3 years

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ugh im big stupid and haven't been posting my shit here for a while. I've still been typing it out in my notes, I just havent transferred them onto here lol. im putting it all under the cut, don't worry

Today was pretty dang nice! I spent a little time outside because it was nice and warm out, I drew a little in my sketchbook and digitally rendered a picture of Anna’s new princess outfit, ran an errand with my mom to pick up a graphing calculator and a pack of soda, ate some Wendy’s, and did a lot of sewing for my dress! I joined the bodice lining and exterior, and did a little over half of the sewing for the skirt. I’m doing French seams so there’s no raw edges on the inside, so I still have to iron it and go over the second round of stitches. My machine malfunctioned for a moment with the thread tangling up in the lower bobbin thingy, so I left it alone for like an hour and it fixed itself lol. I’m very happy with how the bodice came out after clipping all the extra fabric in the corners and test fitting it. I think it’ll be great when it’s done!! Although I may or may not need to seam rip a little bit of the skirt to extend the zipper down so I can get it over my fuckin DUMPTRUCK when putting it on. Right now there’s enough stretch to put it on, but Idk how well that’ll stay after attaching the 2 pieces. Also it might end up making me look fat/preggo in the end with how the skirt lays lmao. I also did a really quick test fit with the sleeves, and I might actually like it better sleeveless? I’ll put one on anyway and go from there to see which I like better. HOORAY this dress has pockets!! But I may have put them a little low lol. I wanted to do a big dress debut at prom, but turns out graduates aren’t allowed due to covid restrictions :( so that really sucks. But we’re still gonna hang out a little bit beforehand, and I can still do a debut. I made a little bow out of some scrap dress fabric, which I want to put in my hair for pre-prom. I think I’ll braid my hair, maybe get some fake flowers from dollar tree and ribbon to add somehow, and put the ribbon either at the bottom or the top, wherever the hair tie eventually goes. I’m so exited to work on it more. I’m kinda running out of white thread tho so I’ll have to get more. Later in the evening i got hungry and made ramen while my dad and I watched a documentary on some of the horrible shit that went on all around the world during 2020, some of which I had forgotten about, some that was really surreal and out of a dystopian movie, and some stuff that was just upsetting to watch. It was still pretty good tho. I got work tomorrow and I’m really sleepy even tho it’s only 12:30 so I think I’m gonna grab a snack and go to sleep soon. Gnight mwah

Yesterday I worked and sewed until I ran out of thread and drew a little bit. Spent most of my shift watering flowers, then I went home and ate for a moment, then watered more and picked dead flowers and talked about avatar and other animated shows with the highschool girl I work with. Came home and hung out for a while, that evening made some good pasta.

Today I justly hung out, then went with mom to pick up a bookshelf and went through strawtown which I thought was a very funny name for a town. There was a cute antique shop in there tho. On the way back we stopped in a sewing shop called Always in stitches. I expected it to be a very small shop, but it was SO much bigger than I thought it would be. They had tons of fabric and quilting supplies, and lots of old ladies working and talking. I picked up a cone of white thread and a fabric sample pack. Then I sewed my dress a little bit. I still have lots to do, and only like 2.5 days to do it. I’ll get there tho. All I have to do is add the skirt hem, add the pockets back in (I took them out so I could see them in normally), add sleeves and hem them, and add the zipper. And attach the skirt to the bodice. I think I’ll be able to do it. I had yogurt for the first time in forever today. Tbh I used just enough to hold together the strawberry and granola bits kgelgskgs. It was pretty good tho. I drew ELEVEN pages in my sketchbook, about 8 of them being a comic about the pony au of our royalty au. I could have done the comic with human characters but ponies are so much easier to draw aggsssdh. I spent 40 minutes typing out the dialogue and editing it on top of the rest of the comic so my friend could read it, but she still hasn’t read my text :( oh well that’s fine lol. The original plot was supposed to be Sam talking to an accidental illusion of me being mean about her blight, but then I accidentally made it something different. I might just draw the alternate ending instead. Update I just did

Yesterday I sewed and went to Menards to buy tile for moms bathroom.

Today was VERY productive, I feel like. I woke up and immediately took a shower and did laundry. I spent some one just sitting on my bed scrolling and researching while listening to medieval remixes of songs lol. At some point I went out to buy subway for everyone and stopped at dollar tree for nail polish and satin ribbon. I made the ribbon into a little choker and wanted to use it for the hem of the skirt, but I was too short. In total I spent HOURS hemming and pinning and seam ripping and ironing and sewing today, but it’s still not done. I gotta kick my ass into high gear if it’s gone be done by Sunday afternoon. I started sewing the bottom hem, but my machine has been doing this weird thing where the fabric scrunches up right past the sewing foot and leaves wrinkles and gathers so loose I can move it around with my hands easily. I think it’s just my tension being too tight or something, I adjusted it a bit and I’ll test it in the morning. I’m too tired and it’s too late at night to be doing that much sewing. I seam ripped the entire back skirt seam so I could extend the zipper a little further down, and I’ll sew it back up once the hem is done. After that all I need to donis connect the skirt to the bocice, fix the zipper, and hem the arm holes. I don’t want to use the sleeves I made because the edges don’t line up at all and I don’t think I would be able to lift my arms, the way it’s built. The nail polish I picked up works way better than I thought it would, leaving a pretty good metallic sheen after just one coat. Way better than I thought for a dollar. I helped mom lay down tile a little bit, ripping up one old tile and helping a bit at a time throughout the day. I kept asking if she wanted help with the actual tiling part but she said no. We also couldn’t get the fuckin box cutter I bought to work. It’s supposed to be easy to replace the blade, but we couldn’t figure it out lol. I’m falling asleep fun. Washed my face twice, trying to take good care of myself before prom so I look good in photos. Gotta wash hair tomorrow. Made hamburger meat

Spent all day sewing and listening to bardcore remixes. Dress is as done as I bother to make it rn

Tbh I was hoping for a little more for today. I’ve spent the last like week or longer working towards this, and going especially in depth the past 3 days. I got all silky smooth, worked for hours on my dress, thought about pretty much nothing except prom day. I was late because my dad had my neighbor come over to take pictures of me in my dress. I thought it was just going to be her holding my dad’s phone to get a picture of us together, but she brought her whole ass professional camera and spent several minutes taking pictures. Then I took the weirdest way possible to get to my friend’s house on accident because google maps said it was the fastest way to get there. But HEY when I did get there I enjoyed hanging out with my friends. We ate some dinner AND??? Sammie I’m sorry if you’re reading this but THE MASHED POTATOES?? WERE S O BLAND????? AFAJSTSTHJST ily but girl. Just a little salt could have gone a long way <3 the steak and especially the green bean casserole were good tho :) dinner was good with the sparkling juice and little desert. Overall everything was just very loud, but that’s to be expected when this is everyone’s first time seeing each other in a goddamn while: actually I think they’ve all seen each other at school without me but hey whatever. I think I fucked up my phone screen on accident by sitting on it while it was in my pocket with my keys, leaving a spiderweb crack in it. I checked and yeah it’s not just the screen protector :( eh I don’t care that much, It didn’t fuck up the lcd screen or anything. We went up to Sam’s room and hung out and talked while she did Liz’s makeup and took pictures, and I borrowed a little of her concealer before photos. There was a little photo shoot in their front yard, and looking at the photos I look a little fat in them but I LOVE all the photos taken in Sam’s room where we were all just hanging out. Idk why but whenever you have to do photos and they say to do a silly one, it never turns out good, but the fun ones you casually take always turn out way better. They’re more genuine :) but then it was time for everyone to go to prom and for me to go home 😔 we only hung out for like an hour and a half. I didn’t want to take off my dress, seeing as I put in so much effort to sew the whole dress and shave and look pretty, so I wore it around the house for a bit until I got tired and went to lay in bed. I watched the mitchels vs the machines, which is a fuckin DELIGHTFUL movie!! Everybody go watch it it’s so cute <3 I also played some Pokémon and watched a little YouTube in bed, but feeling unfulfilled and wanting to do something different, I just didn’t know what. So instead I started typing this up as my sister brought me a cupcake from prom :) I had a bite and put the rest in the fridge, since it was so big and in a plastic container. I texted a friend over Snapchat asking if they had fun at prom, and they said it was kinda ass. I tried relating and saying yeah all school dances are a little ass, and my friend group once had anti prom and played dnd instead, but they just said ‘that’s nice’ back and idk if that means they’re annoyed at me or they’re just tired and didn’t wanna text or what but :( idk. Either way it’s fine, right now all I care about is going to bed. Gnight I guess. Also I keep thinking about that textpost that’s like “diary of icarly” and she talks in these simple-ass sentences and now I feel self conscious about how I write these snafnfs. I already know I write like a child in these, but that’s just because I don’t wanna go through the effort of making this sound nice and professional every day lmao. So child writing it is. Also painted my nails really horribly and it took forever to clean up which made me late

Woke up, went to work, spent a little time stocking, watered indoor plants, then attempting to work the register, and organized plants the rest of the time. I stood behind one of my coworkers as she checked people out, kind of understanding what she was doing but not that much, and read the manual in down periods. She had me check out a couple people, and it was NERVE WRACKING AS HELL. Thankfully everyone was very nice, and my coworker stood by and helped, and right as I was getting my foothold, my boss called for me to work outside and bring in the new shipment of plants. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WAS REALLY NICE?? I was actually able to help some people today!! :D I’m slowly getting better at my job which is nice :) originally I was only gonna work 4 hours, but there were more plants to get and I felt like I could keep going, so I ended up working 6 instead. Every time I come home from the end of my shift I feel bad for not working more and like I should have stayed longer. Tbh I think I could do it if I had a proper break! I’ve been doing 4 hour shifts with maybe a water break in the middle because i don’t know how to ask to go on break ;-; Ike my secondary boss in the garden center is super nice and approachable and friendly but the main boss is like. Terrifying. I never know when he’s joking or being serious and I don’t understand him and assffsfamms it SUCKS. But whatever, I went home and ate some Mac n cheese and laid in bed because my back hurt and played on my ds for the rest of the night. I tried a couple new games, none of which I spent very long on. I tried okami den where you’re the wolf puppy child of the precious games protagonist I think, and idk maybe I’ll give it a better try in the future, but I wasn’t feelin it. I spent like 30 minutes on a pro bass fishing simulator and couldn’t clear the first level because the fish wouldn’t get close enough to my boat lmao. Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games was fun until I lost at table tennis to Mario. I’d play it again. But I have work again tomorrow so I gotta go to bed good night. Having to blast my fan and play drawfee on my phone to drown out moms tv again >:(

Ate a pbj for breakfast? Went to work, moved plants around, took my lunch break, went to subway with an expired coupon, ate at home and times it perfectly so I could watch one section of the new drawfee episode, went back to work, made myself sad thinking about the god girl homunculus from fullmetal alchemist, picked dead flowers off the petunias, left a little early, hung out at home, left to go get mom’s medicine, found my dad at the store, followed him around and shopped for a bit, can home to unload everything, talked with him about buying one of the cars from him so it would be under mom’s insurance after the divorce, talked about being able to hang out at dads apparent after we help him move, ate some of the stuff we bought, and now I’m hanging out in bed again. I picked up my Pokémon black save and played a while today which was nice. I think I’m gonna work more in the next few days, be really busy with shit for like a week, and finally have a breather after the 15th. I really need to switch brain gears back into college stuff soon so I can sign up for orientation and figure out finances and shit, but for now it’s midnight and I don’t have to think about it lol

Today was pretty good, but also pretty boring. I played Pokémon all day since I didn’t have work, cooked some hamburger meat, and went on an errand for mom but got the wrong thing so I went out later to buy the right thing. I got spicy chicharrones instead of regular ones oops. On my drive back from getting the right thing, I rolled all my windows down and loved the feeling of driving around right after sunset when the weather was nice but cool, especially after standing in mom’s loud-ass room trying to ask about her bank card. I thought about going back out to aimlessly drive around the park and back, but instead hung out in my kitchen as my cat fell asleep on my lap. I think I’m gonna get paid tomorrow, so that’s exciting :D I probably made a solid couple hundred dollars if I had to guess. Idk what I’m getting paid per hour, but it’s probably ~$10 and I COULD go through my texts again to see how much I’ve worked, but I don’t really wanna lmao. I should just start putting that in my notes app instead...

Just had probably the most involved, longest dream ever?? It was a mix of infinity train and dangenrompa, we were mostly stuck inside my house, one boy left for years to search for supplies, I tried biking along a tail that disappeared into tree roots and a ditch with grass, cried because we had been in the same car for so long I was afraid they were gonna make us kill someone to get past, and at the end we escaped or something and had to fuck up security cameras and get past loopholes and lots of cereal boxes were involved? Idk there’s just so much I don’t remember. I wasn't sure if I had to go to work today, so I sent my boss a text and just kinda hung out. was making hamburger meat for my mom when my boss called asking me to come in, so I took a shower and worked from 1-5. spent some time at the register, and got way better at checking stuff out :) I learned a couple things, and there was one old lady in particular who was very patient and nice to me while my coworker went to go find a smaller bag of birdseed. when it stopped being busy inside, I went ut to the garden center to help price plants and spent the rest of my shift out there. I got paid too! $9 an hour, 22 hours, $200 in total. hell yeah. not bad, although I literally have no frame of reference on if this Is good or not. after work I went home for a second, then got Hardee’s (or carls jr in the western states). I used a coupon for chicken tenders for me and my sister :) and while I was driving around today, I found myself wishing that everything in life could be as smooth and easy as driving my car through my neighborhood. and then I kinda laughed thinking about how I cried my first time driving on a major road asdjfasjdhf. but seriously I love driving my dad’s silver Volvo!! its so comfy with 4 wheel drive and good petal control, its like always driving on freshly paved roads <3 unfortunately that's the car my dad is taking when he moves into his apartment to use as his full time car instead of his shit-ass blue Volvo, and we’re gonna be stuck with the red Volvo with a really touchy gas pedal and slow break pedal. (idk if you've noticed but we really love old Volvos in this family. they’re all old and boxy as hell and I love em <3 ) then I played Pokemon black and beat the elite 4 and champion in one try with a lot of revives lmao. I was kinda underleveled, right at 48-50 range, same as them. I was angry about stuff and in pain earlier in the shower as I washed my hair, but I dont remember exactly what it was. now I have my soft Spotify playlist going so I can maybe go to sleep soon. oh wait I remember being angry that all I could thin about all day was work, even tho it only takes up a few hours of my day, and then I do nothing all day afterwards. idk it’s just weird.

#thanks for coming to my ted talk #April 2021 daily #may 2021 daily #2021 daily

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afraschatz · 7 years

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35 bits and bobs from the Mill - the IKEA edition

#i wrote something #roblivion #35 bits and bobs from the mill #robert sugden #aaron dingle #liv flaherty #because i write ikea fic in every fandom #why do you ask #for matan4il as always

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catherinep05-blog · 5 years

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A terrific Concept For Couples Costumes

There are an terrible lot of guys on the market who need to have one of many Iron Man 2 Costumes for Halloween. Or superheroine maybe they need to be Tony Stark or Robert Downey Jr. Primarily based on the gross sales thus far, the grownup Iron Man 2 Costume is lighting up the charts, so to say. Of course the ladies don't wish to be disregarded. Women are using the opportunity to grasp out with their heroes in Iron Man 2 Costumes additionally, making them an important selection for couples costumes. Once you've seen this costume, it is pretty clear why each the males and the ladies are grabbing up these outfits this year. The Iron Man Mark 6 Gentle Up Deluxe Costume is just as fancy because it sounds. As an formally licensed Iron Man product it has been designed with care to characterize the outfit this superhero is utilizing to save the day.

Any guy will be able to do battle towards Whiplash and all of these pesky programmed machines. With a ripped torso and muscled arms this armored bodysuit is not just a fairly body. There's an attached real looking looking light up arc reactor and consists of three batteries so this Iron Man will not be working out of power. The robust superhero matching helmet is included of course. I can see why the guys need to point out up at the celebration on this champion's go well with. So what about the counterpart for the female half of this movie couples costume? There are decisions of course when planning out how the two of you may show up at the social gathering. A technique is with a woman's version in the Iron Man 2 Film - Ironette Sexy Adult Costume. Also an formally licensed Iron Man 2 product, this one is identical color as the males's Iron Man 2 costume in a fabric that gives off a shimmer. The ensemble has the upgrades given the Mark VI armor.

For lifelike element gloves and bootcovers are included as well as an eye mask that has yellow lenses. It's a cool look by itself. Put them together and you will get a hot couples costume. Of course if the guy is feeling just a little evil why not select the Iron Man 2 Whiplash Costume. The villains costume has a chest piece that is sculpted for his model of a muscled torso, and it additionally has some very mean trying studs. Whiplash has his glow reactor in the center of the chest and a pair whips. The sexy super spy, Black Widow will not be neglected. Pair her up with either one of many guys' costumes for sleek and sexy couples costumes. This sexy outfit is a deep blue shade of faux leather. The jumpsuit contains particulars like wrist cuffs and a black belt. She seems to be like she's able to kick some you realize what. It may take a superhero to face up to any lady on this Black Widow costume. For any guy that wants to reside out his comic book fantasies he can do just that with the Iron Man 2 costumes. Add one of the women's costumes, make it a couples costume, and he can dwell out his grown up fantasies too.

Sometimes, it's the make up possibilities that entice us to a selected character we will costume up as. The Gothic theme is at all times a popular one, however this 12 months the gothic costumes for teenagers and adults are actually moving out of the shops quickly. The Renaissance goth costumes, and the cooler punkier ones, like the Gothic Fairy, the Corpse Bride and Groom or the Gothic Mummy are fun, not only to put on, however to get made up for. Very gentle foundation and very darkish, smokey eyes are part of the gothic make up charm. In the event you loved this information and you would want to receive details regarding superheroine generously visit our web site. Add some black nail polish, a little gray blush and some darkish blood purple lipstick and you've got achieved the gothic Halloween look. Of course, when you happen to be an grownup, sexy is always successful. You can take a type of Marilyn outfits or get a Greek Goddess Venus or Aphrodite. There's a very cute lady Cop uniform and some naughty, but nice Angel and Fairy costumes.

For the men, there are the classics, the Vampire and the Roman Guard and of course, the Cop if you want a man in uniform. The Disney Princesses, Tinkerbell, Fairy and Mermaid costumes are all the time big crowd pleaser for the women and the boys, nicely, they have Prince Caspian, a Knight, Peter Pan and the Dragon Slayer to select from. The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland open up plenty of costume concepts too. Straightforward costumes are at all times big hits with all age groups. Togas, Scrubs or a White Lab Coat are extremely popular because of the convenience of creating them. You do not have to buy or sew to show your self into a Toga carrying Greek, or a Physician or Nurse costume. Simply get a sheet or a big rectangular piece of material to make your personal toga or borrow some scrubs and a stethoscope from somebody within the medical field.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Just giving out cash to poor people is a pretty good way to make them less poor.

That might seem obvious, but it wasn’t a commonly held viewpoint in development charities until relatively recently. Jacquelline Fuller, who runs Google’s philanthropic arm, has said that when she first pitched one of her bosses on supporting GiveDirectly (a charity doing unrestricted cash transfers), he replied, “You must be smoking crack.”

But in part due to groups like GiveDirectly, and in even larger part due to the success of government programs like Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and Kenya’s cash program for orphans and vulnerable children, that stigma has dissipated. Cash is cool now, at least in some corners.

And for good reason. The most common arguments against giving out cash — that it’s wasted on drugs and alcohol, or makes recipients stop working — have been debunked in repeated studies, and a review of hundreds of studies measuring dozens of different outcomes suggests that cash programs can increase food consumption, boost school attendance, and improve nutrition. If nothing else, cash just mechanically makes people less poor. It’s not a cure-all and has real limitations, but it’s pretty good, and “pretty good” can be hard to find in international development.

One advantage of having a pretty good rough-and-ready way to help poor people abroad is that it gives you something to test against. This is called “cash benchmarking,” and it’s something that cash fans, like GiveDirectly’s co-founder Paul Niehaus, have promoted for years. The idea is that because cash works reasonably well, respects the independence of recipients, and is relatively easy to hand out at minimal administrative expense, aid agencies should test programs to see if they meet their objectives better than cash would. If they don’t, that’s a pretty good argument to either improve the program or switch to cash.

USAID, the American foreign aid agency, made news in October by testing a nutrition program against cash. The two performed about equally well, with maybe a slight advantage to the cost-equivalent cash program; a much bigger cash program had really outstanding impacts.

But as a number of development professionals pointed out after I profiled the USAID program, that’s not the full story. At least two other studies have compared complex non-cash aid programs to cash — and beat cash.

Both studies involve programs commonly known in the development world as “ultra-poor graduation” programs, as they’re meant to “graduate” beneficiaries out of extreme poverty.

Graduation programs try to target the very poorest people in already very poor countries. Instead of only giving cash, they give valuable assets (which could be money but could also be an animal like a goat or cow, or equipment like a bicycle or sewing machine) as well as training, mentoring, and ongoing support (and sometimes some cash too, to buy food and keep people going). The hope is that giving some startup capital and some business skills helps recipients build a small ongoing enterprise — a small vegetable or dairy farming operation, say, or a bicycle messenger service, or a seamstress shop. That, in turn, is meant to enable a durable escape from poverty.

Think of it as the “teach someone to fish” approach, to cash’s “just give them the fish already” approach — though it’s still more “give them a fish” than microfinance, which took a similar approach but forced beneficiaries to pay back the asset grant with interest.

I’ve generally been skeptical of “teach someone to fish” approaches to development, not because they’re a bad idea conceptually but because we’ve often struggled to figure out how to teach people to fish effectively.

But recent research has suggested the graduation approach is promising. A massive randomized study published in 2015 by a murderer’s row of prominent development economists — including Northwestern’s Dean Karlan and MIT’s Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, among others — found that a graduation program tested in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru significantly increased income and savings, reduced hunger and missed meals, and improved mental health, on average. It worked in every country but Honduras, where people fell behind when the chickens they were given died of disease.

Longer-term studies have also found promising results. A large-scale trial in Bangladesh covering more than 21,000 households found that even at a seven-year follow-up, graduation programs reduce poverty and increase assets among recipients. A non-randomized paper, also in Bangladesh, found that a graduation program still had large effects after six years, and while they dissipated a bit by nine years out, they didn’t evaporate — income was still significantly higher.

The two newer studies also reach promising conclusions — and in particular find that the graduation model outperforms a simple one-off cash transfer. The first study, conducted in Uganda by Oxford’s Richard Sedlmayr, UChicago’s Anuj Shah, and Save the Children’s Munshi Sulaiman, evaluates a program run by a long-running group called Village Enterprise in Uganda, which has run more than 100,000 trainings over the past three decades.

“It looks a lot like ultra-poor graduation, but is less intensive, and therefore, less expensive,” Innovations for Poverty Action, the development economics research group that conducted the evaluation, explains. It costs about a third as much and runs for only one year, whereas graduation approaches generally provide training and mentoring over two years.

The people targeted were extremely poor. More than 95 percent engaged in subsistence farming to get by, and 87 percent lived on under $2 a day. They were randomly given either nothing; a cash transfer of $119.40, paid once; or the Village Enterprise program, which included business training, a capital grant in cash to use to start a business, mentoring from other businesspeople, and a “business savings group” to help entrepreneurs in the community borrow money to invest and save profits. (Some groups also got variations on the Village Enterprise program, or a cash transfer plus some therapy-like sessions.)

So what did the researchers find? The short answer is that the full Village Enterprise program appeared to work: Recipients consumed $7.33 more per year per person (which may not sound like a lot but is for ultra-poor families), and in particular were able to buy more food. The researchers found that the result was driven by recipients earning more self-employment income. That’s exactly what the program is meant to do: give people training and assets so they can start small enterprises and support themselves.

Cash was another story. “Contrary to expectations,” the authors write, “consumption estimates are markedly negative among cash transfer program beneficiaries.”

Let that sink in for a second. Giving people cash led them to spend less, not more, money.

The money, instead, appeared to be used for loan repayment. That can be really good. A lot of very poor people in Africa have very high interest rates on debt, and it might make more sense for them to pay down debts first before starting businesses if those businesses don’t have high returns. But it meant that their day-to-day standard of living didn’t improve as much as it did among the Village Enterprise recipients, whose consumption went up.

“For reasons we cannot fully explain, transfer recipients appeared to derive less economic value from their assets than microenterprise beneficiaries did,” the study authors write. They speculate that, “left to themselves — without training and mentorship — beneficiaries struggled to make productive investments, maintain them, and derive sustained value from them.”

This is just one study, and even the authors caution skepticism when interpreting the results: “The point estimates of the cash arm are puzzling and could warrant some suspicion.” Cash isn’t supposed to make you spend less money, after all. It’s one data point suggesting that a more comprehensive anti-poverty intervention could outperform cash.

The second study, authored by Munshi Sulaiman from the first study, along with University of Illinois’s Reajul Chowdhury and UC Berkeley’s Elliott Collins and Ethan Ligon, looks at a similar “graduation” program pilot in South Sudan, implemented by BRAC, the Bangladesh-based development group that pioneered this whole approach.

The study assigned 250 households near the BRAC office in the city of Yei to a full graduation program, with training in business skills and specific trades (like gardening or rearing livestock), transfers of assets like goats or gardening equipment, support meetings with other participants, and transfers of food to help support participants as they got their new businesses up and running. Another 125 households were assigned to receive a cash transfer equal to the amount spent on business assets and food for people in the graduation program. Another 274 were a pure control group.

Unlike the Uganda study, the South Sudan trial found that both the graduation approach and the cash transfers increased consumption in the near term, particularly spending on food, with the effect about the same for each. But only recipients of the graduation program had significantly higher assets. Cash recipients spent a little, saved a little, and shifted a bit away from growing crops toward other professions. But they didn’t set up durable enterprises.

“Cash transfers appear to increase consumption and possibly shift investment from agriculture to non-farm activities, without a related increase in wealth or income,” the authors summarize. “Conversely, the [graduation] program increased wealth and directly shifted work from agriculture to livestock, with increased consumption in the short run.”

The South Sudan results are a little easier to make sense of than the Uganda results. It stands to reason that cash should increase spending on basic necessities like food in the short run, as the South Sudan study found. But it’s also totally believable that the results of both would be short-lived.

Think about what you would do with a sudden cash infusion, perhaps one as big as your normal annual income. Would you start a small business — or find ways to spend it or save it without fundamentally transforming your life and job? Indeed, a study released this year comparing graduation to a strict asset grant without training found that the training and mentoring is necessary to get gains in consumption.

Again, these are only two studies, yet to go through peer review. And like any approach, ultra-poor graduation has its limits. A randomized trial in India, published in 2012, found no benefits from a graduation program because it mostly moved people out of regular agricultural jobs where they could’ve earned just as much. In other words, when the economy is functional enough that other paths to escape poverty exists, adding a graduation option might not help much.

Skeptics of the graduation approach also note that describing the results as “escaping poverty” could be a stretch. As Stephen Kidd and Diloá Bailey-Athias note in one skeptical piece, the large-scale six-country graduation study from Dean Karlan, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and their collaborators found that consumption only grew by between 4 and 12 cents per person per day. That’s meaningful for the people affected, many of whom were living on under $1 a day, but even the study authors conceded that “the average effects are not very large and do not correspond to our intuitive sense of what it would mean to be liberated from the trap of poverty.”

We need more comparative work, over a longer time horizon, to get a fuller picture of how cash stacks up versus a TUP approach.

But if the finding that transfers to the ultra-poor outperforms cash holds up, that’s not necessarily a bad result for cash as a movement. Indeed, it’s an illustration of how having cash as a benchmark can make it easier to identify really good interventions that go beyond just handing out money.

Without a direct comparison to cash, it was easy to look at studies of TUP programs, even massive ones like the six-country study, and wonder if it could all be so much simpler. TUP is an approach that pairs a raw transfer of assets, in the form of either money or specific goods, with training, mentoring, and sometimes savings incentives and food support. It makes sense that that would help, but it’s also complicated to implement, and if transferring cash assets alone does as much good, then scaling up cash programs instead sounds like a better option. It’s just less administratively difficult.

But that isn’t, so far, the finding. And if TUP’s advantage holds up, that means we’ll have found something really special: a targeted intervention, tested in a number of very different countries, that helps more people out of poverty at a lower cost than cash. That’s a high bar; cash is already pretty good. And finding stuff that clears such a high bar is a big deal.

Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.

Original Source -> Giving out cash is a great way to fight poverty. This approach might be even better.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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fesahaawit · 6 years

Text

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border

[What up, what up! If you’ve ever considered transporting large amounts of cash across international borders, this post is for you ;) As told by Sarah Li Cain from High Fiving Dollars who hopes to never have to do this again! And if you’re reading this on Black Friday – good job. We’re running a site-wide sale today where everything’s 100% off :) Enjoy!]

***********

This is the true story of how we transported $20,000 in cash across international borders. I would have loved to been able to provide photographic evidence of this, but frankly I was scared out of my mind when my boyfriend (now husband) and I decided to actually go through with this.

Instead, here’s a photo of the two of us back in our youth:

[please tell me why I thought those glasses were cool?]

Before I get into how we actually carried across all that money, let’s go over why we actually did it.

I lived in China for 8 years. I must have really liked it because that’s where I met my husband, got married and had a kid.

Among the cool things you get to do? Visit really crazy places. One of the most memorable places was a restaurant called “Modern Toilet” where you literally get served chocolate ice cream in toilet bowls. I’m not kidding.

[The food wasn’t bad!]

While there were many great things I loved about China, unfortunately the major drawback was their banking system. (It has gotten noticeably better over the years for expats, but at the time we were living there it was terribly frustrating)

Language barriers aside, doing any kind of international transactions was a pain in the ass. My husband and I each saved quite a bit of money in our accounts living there, and we both needed to transfer this money into our home country’s accounts to pay bills and for other reasons. This meant that every month or so, we had to go to the bank to do two wire transfers: one to my bank in Canada where I’m originally from, and another into my husband’s account in the U.S..

The rules in China, however, are that you’re only allowed to transfer a certain amount of money internationally every month. On top of that, whenever you wanted to make a transfer you not only needed your IDs, but a whole slew of paperwork as well. This included our work contracts, our Chinese tax returns, official declarations from the government about how much we made, and a stack of forms from the bank. There was also no online banking or instructions/bank tellers who spoke English there at the time (7 years ago), so we had to rely on Google Translate to figure everything out.

I waited at least two hours every time I went to the bank on a good day, and it wasn’t ever fun for the tellers either. They had to stamp every freaking piece of paper, get approval from the manager for every button they pressed on the computer, and all the while trying their best to speak broken English.

My husband didn’t fair any better during his visit either. In fact, he’d go multiple rounds trying to make the transfers happen while each time wasting two hours and then at the end being denied over and over!

We even tried giving Western Union a shot to see if it’d be any easier (and cheaper).

Nope.

We ended up paying almost 10% in fees alone and it was equally as frustrating.

Then one day my husband joked that we should just buy a briefcase and carry all our cash over when we both went home for the holidays.

I’m always up for a challenge, so why the heck not? What could go wrong?

It was about three months from the time we decided to bring cash across to the U.S. and Canada to when we actually did it. Our plan was to exchange our money into U.S. and Canadian currency first, hide it in our apartment, pack it all in a suitcase, and then deposit everything once we landed in our home countries.

We looked up the maximum amount we could each carry across the border, and it came out to $10,000 USD per family. Since my husband and I weren’t technically married yet, that meant we could each carry $10,000 across the border without raising any eyebrows (or so we hoped).

Unfortunately, once again our plan hit some road bumps.

When we tried to convert our Chinese currency (RMB) into U.S. and Canadian dollars at the bank, we were met with solid resistance. The manager would literally give us “a look” and then flat out refuse to speak to us. We later found a translator who told us that it was virtually impossible for even locals to get foreign currency, and that the amount we were requesting was unheard of.

After grilling a local friend for alternatives, we eventually decided to take out Chinese RMB in cash, and then take that directly to a currency exchange stand in order to convert it over. She warned us that these places are usually located in sketchy areas, however, and that not so reputable people hang out there (though I hear it’s not the case anymore). These places will also try to rip you off by giving you decent exchange rates, but then sneaking in counterfeit bills.

So off my husband and I went. We didn’t want to do too large a transaction at first just to be safe, so we started with $1,000 and found a place to exchange our money. My husband is six feet tall and I’m pretty sure that helped keep the loiters at bay. When we got our money, we hid around a corner to check each and every single bill to make sure they were legit, and then went on our merry way when it was good.

It took us about six weeks to exchange $10,000 each. You’re only allowed to exchange a certain amount each time, so we had to make multiple visits which was for the best as neither of us enjoys carrying around too much cash at one time.

During this time we hid the money around our apartments. I literally stuck hundred dollar bills under my mattress among other places as I was so paranoid about someone breaking in! We also hid money:

In jacket pockets

In shoes

In crockpots we barely used

And in tupperware

When it came time to go visit our families at Christmas, we gathered all our money in one place and planned how we were going to pack it all.

I don’t know about you, but seeing $20,000 in physical cash is A LOT. We had it stacked on my bed and it looked like a giant mountain to me. I looked at my husband and literally asked if I could swim in it. After all, it was a once in a lifetime experience!

Next thing we knew, we threw a bunch of bills up in the air and were frolicking around in money. There’s something about doing backstrokes on a bed with $20,000 that does it for you :)

Finally, We Carry The Cash Over

Now came the hard part: how do we actually carry all this cash? Without getting stopped at the border?

We crossed off the suitcase idea as that would just be way too suspicious, and eventually figured that dispersing our money was the way go to. The x-rays will show we had money, but at least there wouldn’t be huge stacks all in one place.

Here’s what my husband did:

Bought special cargo pants with multiple pockets so he could take the cash in and out when going through security

Sewed secret pockets in his laptop case

Rolled up t-shirts in his carry on luggage with money in it

Carried cash in his wallet

Here’s what I did:

Hid cash in my laptop case and purse

Stuffed some money in my bra (this was before those fancy machines at the TSA security check)

Stuffed money in my makeup case

Put bills in-between pages of the books I was “reading”

Keep in mind, we weren’t doing anything illegal although it sure as hell felt like we were. In hindsight we probably went a little crazy on hiding everything, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with people either stealing from us or being stopped at the border. Our track record up to this point hadn’t been that smooth.

Then off we went!

Step #1: Go through security in China and board the plane. Success! We stated we were carrying cash, but nobody asked us how much so we easily got our exit stamps.

Step #2: Relax on the plane. Fail. We could barely sleep, as we were just too paranoid the entire trip.

Step #3: Get across the U.S. border! (We made our first stop in my husband’s country before heading to Canada). My hands were shaking the entire time as I filled out the immigration form – I felt like I was lying when the form asked if I was carrying more than $10,000 in cash, but I checked the “no” box.

Then it was the moment of truth…

I walked over to the customs agent, he looks at me and then down at the form, asks me where I’m staying (I manage to utter “my future in-laws”), looks back down again, and then stamps the passport and says, “have a nice time.”

And just like that it was over! WE DID IT!!

My husband had the same experience clearing customs, and it was a piece of cake getting the second half of our money into my Canadian bank as well.

Pretty anti-climactic, I know – sorry – but what a whirlwind getting to this point… I’m just super grateful I never have to deal with this again. Though I have to admit, it was pretty fun swimming in all that money for a few minutes!

Anyone else ever launder move large amounts of cash across the border? Any tips for anyone who may have to do it themselves one day?

******* Sarah Li Cain is a financial storyteller who weaves practical tips and strategies into her work so that others trying to change their mindset can see themselves in the starring role. She loves answering reader questions on her blog, HighFivingDollars.com, and openly shares her financial struggles through different experiments she runs. Check out her “Ultimate Guide to Money Mindset Mastery!”

Other fun gems for your viewing pleasure today:

That Time I Woke Up From a “Bill Coma” and Started Saving My $$$!

That Time I Borrowed $14,000… Then Gave it Right Back

That Time I Got in (Another) Car Accident…

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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heliosfinance · 6 years

Text

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border

***********

Instead, here’s a photo of the two of us back in our youth:

[please tell me why I thought those glasses were cool?]

Before I get into how we actually carried across all that money, let’s go over why we actually did it.

I lived in China for 8 years. I must have really liked it because that’s where I met my husband, got married and had a kid.

[The food wasn’t bad!]

We even tried giving Western Union a shot to see if it’d be any easier (and cheaper).

Nope.

We ended up paying almost 10% in fees alone and it was equally as frustrating.

Then one day my husband joked that we should just buy a briefcase and carry all our cash over when we both went home for the holidays.

I’m always up for a challenge, so why the heck not? What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, once again our plan hit some road bumps.

During this time we hid the money around our apartments. I literally stuck hundred dollar bills under my mattress among other places as I was so paranoid about someone breaking in! We also hid money:

In jacket pockets

In shoes

In crockpots we barely used

And in tupperware

When it came time to go visit our families at Christmas, we gathered all our money in one place and planned how we were going to pack it all.

Next thing we knew, we threw a bunch of bills up in the air and were frolicking around in money. There’s something about doing backstrokes on a bed with $20,000 that does it for you :)

Finally, We Carry The Cash Over

Now came the hard part: how do we actually carry all this cash? Without getting stopped at the border?

Here’s what my husband did:

Bought special cargo pants with multiple pockets so he could take the cash in and out when going through security

Sewed secret pockets in his laptop case

Rolled up t-shirts in his carry on luggage with money in it

Carried cash in his wallet

Here’s what I did:

Hid cash in my laptop case and purse

Stuffed some money in my bra (this was before those fancy machines at the TSA security check)

Stuffed money in my makeup case

Put bills in-between pages of the books I was “reading”

Then off we went!

Step #1: Go through security in China and board the plane. Success! We stated we were carrying cash, but nobody asked us how much so we easily got our exit stamps.

Step #2: Relax on the plane. Fail. We could barely sleep, as we were just too paranoid the entire trip.

Then it was the moment of truth…

And just like that it was over! WE DID IT!!

My husband had the same experience clearing customs, and it was a piece of cake getting the second half of our money into my Canadian bank as well.

Anyone else ever launder move large amounts of cash across the border? Any tips for anyone who may have to do it themselves one day?

Other fun gems for your viewing pleasure today:

That Time I Woke Up From a “Bill Coma” and Started Saving My $$$!

That Time I Borrowed $14,000… Then Gave it Right Back

That Time I Got in (Another) Car Accident…

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

0 notes

jotawakening-blog · 7 years

Text

24 Fentuary, 5A 169: Planning to Rebuild

As per the plan, I begin my search for the items I need to rebuild King Alvis’ statue at my inn, the King’s Axe. I ask the innkeeper whether he knows anything about an axe belonging to the King, but he says he doesn’t: his ancestor named the inn that, for whatever reason, but there’s no axe around that he knows of. A search of the inn, to see if the innkeeper might be lying, turns up nothing, either, so I proceed to the second part of my plan, the visit to the Consortium palace.

I enter the palace through the garden doors, and am surprised to find none of the trappings of a royal court, or even a well-appointed bureaucracy. Rather, the activity that seems to be taking place is commerce, with multiple little shops arrayed in the palace’s chambers. Their nature varies greatly, but I begin with the one selling clothes. The owner, Agmundi, is none too glad to see me: she seems to be prejudiced against humans, perhaps with good reason, as the only clothes she sells are tailored to the dwarven body, and human customers just waste her time trying on wares that will never fit them. I ask her why she won’t make human-sized clothes, and she replies that I should bring that up with her supplier, her sister over in Keldagrim-East. She doesn’t seem to have an opinion of her, either, holding it against her that she’s ‘lazy enough’ to be living in such a dump. Well, I’m no economist, but if she’s working for you, you’re not entirely lacking in responsibility for her living conditions…

The clothes Agmundi sells are of decent make, but nothing fit for a king, so I move on. The shop next to Agmundi’s is a weapons forge, selling war hammers made of metal up to adamantium in quality. The owner’s a bit of a jerk and there are no axes on sale, so I move on to check out the shops on the other side of the foyer. Along the way, a dwarf approaches me and ask whether I can recommend an item for him to spend his money on. Eventually, I steer him toward the idea of getting new clothes: the ones he has on, he admits, are a bit drab for Keldagrim-West.

Also on the bottom floor are a general store, which sells more than the usual range of stock, but nothing eye-popping, much less useful for my mission. There’s also a machine shop that services dwarven steam technology and sells tools for others to do the same in their own right. It’s not up my alley, either, but it did seem to attract a gnomish professor (this one, I can say with confidence, actually from the Grand Tree) who’s been studying the dwarven race’s technological advances. The shop also employs an apprentice, who tells me he used to be a great engineer, but seems very much down on his luck, now. I wonder what happened to bring him to grief…

The upstairs of the palace is where the real action is at: a grand trading floor athwart the Kelda, called the Trade Octagon, ringed by the offices of the various trading companies that make up the Consortium. The stairs from the lower floor bring me very close to the offices of one such company, the Yellow Fortune, which is notable, I find out, for employing only women. I continue around, visiting the offices of the eight major companies and stealing bits of their employees’ time to ask them about their business. I first visit the offices of the Blue Opal and Purple Pewter, which appear to be quite typical. Past them is the office of the Red Axe, about which I’ve heard a fair bit, not all of it good. It turns out, unfortunately, that I can’t assess the rumours for myself, because the company staff are busy in a meeting with those gnomish emissaries and shoo away visitors.

I cross the Octagon, which is loud, very busy and utterly uninterested in a human who’s not selling anything, and see what companies can be found on the other side of the floor. For starters, there’s the Brown Engine, which is known for only accepting men into its membership. Kind of a patronising policy, if you ask me, but then again the Yellow Fortune does the same, and I don’t know enough about dwarven gender norms to pass judgment. There’s also the Silver Cog, which prides itself on its superior management, the White Chisel and the Green Gemstone.

All this is interesting enough, but I have other things to do than watch the trading, so I climb the stairs at the back of the Octagon to see what’s on the upper floor. This turns out to be a great, yet empty, throne room, dominated by an eight-sided table and a throne draped in brown cloth. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say this is where the Consortium leaders hold their councils. It’s a stately place, but completely deserted right now. Since there’s nothing for me to see, I descend all the way to the ground floor and check out the gallery on the eastern side of the Kelda.

Unlike the shops on the western side, the businesses here are market stalls, selling a more specialised, but not necessarily any less fine, set of wares. The tenor is very dwarven, and some of the items on sale sound downright odd for human ears, such as the ‘freshly baked’ bread at the bakery stall that’s only two months old and hard as a rock. Next to the bakery is a gem-cutter’s stall, whose owner, a dwarf named Hervi, dragoons me into some work: he needs tin, and he needs it now. Not wishing to disappoint, I dash of to the bank, but alas, I don’t have enough tin there to fulfil the order. That means a trip to the mines outside the city. Fortunately, there’s tin in abundance there, and I’m able to satisfy the order in good time. Hervi pays me quite generously for my services, and after looking at his wares out of politeness, I move on.

The shop next to his is selling crafting equipment, albeit with a smaller selection of items than the really renowned crafting stores in Al-Kharid and suchlike. Since I’m not in the market, I move on, stopping at a stall that sells crossbows. The craftsman running it, noticing my interest, is kind enough to walk me through the process of crafting a crossbow, from whittling the stock, to smithing the limbs, to boiling sinew for the string. In addition, the guy talks me into buying a pouch for my bolts, which promises to be quite a space-saver when I’m out in the field! Otherwise, his stock right now mainly consists of crossbow parts, and I’m not much of a fletcher (I blame my early dependence on chargebows), so I keep going.

The final two stalls of interest are a silver stall run by the Silver Cog that sells various wares of that metal, including holy symbols, and the clothes stall of Agmundi’s sister, Vermundi. She doesn’t happen to have many clothes in stock— most of her production, except the drabbest items, go to her sister— but she’s willing to listen when I tell her I’ve got a special order for her consideration. It turns out she’s more than willing to make some period-authentic clothes to model the statue on, but she doesn’t know much about the typical designs of the day. For that, I’ll need to speak to the librarian in Keldagrim-West.

I thus head over to the library and ask Hugi what he knows. Being a competent librarian, he is able to point me toward a book called the ‘Scholar’s Guide to Dwarven Costumes’, which contains drawings of many of the outfits of the dwarven kings. He tells me it should be on one of the top shelves, being an old and infrequently consulted book, but doesn’t know exactly where. So I look for it, and in short order find it on one of the shelves upstairs. (I somehow missed that the library had an upstairs, last time I was here!) I check it out and bring it back to Vermundi, who studies it and tells me what I’m asking for should be very doable. The only problem is, her sewing machine (another masterpiece of dwarven engineering!) has run out of fuel, and I’ll need to supply her with coal and wood before she can make anything. Fortunately, coal and wood are something I have on hand, and I light up the machine. Vermundi makes very short work of making the clothes, for which she charges me the cost of the materials: two hundred coins. She even promises to return the book to the library for me: I get the feeling she really enjoyed this assignment!

Well, that’s one item down and two more to go: the boots and the axe. I have no idea where I might find those, but perhaps Veldaban might, at least for the axe. I go over to the barracks, but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t, in fact, know anything, and is quite busy to boot. So I go over to the weapon smith’s next door, Santiri’s, and ask him if he knows anything. After I explain to him that I need the axe to rebuild the statue (an incident that he suspects was no mere accident) he reveals that the axe has been in the possession of his family for some time, after having been lost for several centuries. His ancestor found it in the river, and unfortunately this means it’s in a sorry state, partially eaten away by rust and with the sapphires on the hilt missing from their sockets. He’s not even positive that it’s the King’s original axe, but no one has a similar claim, so for all he knows, it is. He’s generous enough to let me borrow it, but cautions that it’ll need to be restored before it’s in a fit state to be used as a model for the statue. The sapphires should be easy enough to replace (indeed, I do so right after I’ve finished talking to him), but the metal will need the expertise of an Imcando dwarf to bring it back to its former glory. Well, as luck has it, I know where the last of the Imcando dwarves lives, and I can probably get him to work on this project.

The last item I need for the statue are some boots of suitably fine make. I spend a few hours traveling the city, but none of the clothiers have any leads on where I could find a pair (and Agmundi even makes me bring her tin from the mines— hell knows what for— before she reveals to me her ignorance!). Finally, I get a lead from the armourer, Saro, who tells me he had something like that in stock: a pair of boots fit for a king! Unfortunately, the boots were bought by Dromund, one of the wealthiest dwarves in town and a notorious eccentric, and since him having the boots in stock was very much a one-off, I’d need to negotiate with Dromund directly.

I visit Dromund in his house by the bank and Black Guard HQ. Unfortunately, negotiations don’t go well: he initially suspects me of being some kind of spy for the Black Guard, and then flat-out rejects my offer to buy the boots off of him. And he’s not wearing them, either: he’s got them on display in his front room as some kind of strange… art exhibit? Ostentatious show of wealth? Who knows? Anyway, it becomes clear that I shall have to swipe the boots, hopefully without getting caught. Given how suspicious of me Dromund is, though, I can’t just simply lift them… I’ll need to use magic! I think it’s time to try a new spell that I’ve had in mind for a while, but never deployed: the telekinetic grab. I grab a law rune and try casting the spell, but Dromund objects to magic use in his house, so I’m forced to stake out the outside. It turns out I’m in luck, though: the display table is within sight from an open window, and all it takes is one quick hand gesture and some muttered words for the boots to come into my possession! How long before he realises what happened, I wonder?

So, overall, quite a successful day. The only thing I need to do before the reconstruction of the statue can commence is get the axe repaired, so it’s time to leave Keldagrim and get on my way. I think I shall travel overland to Ardougne, following the readings on the enchanted key, and visit Karamja from there to return Kangai Mau’s tribal totem and check in with my friends in Tai Bwo Wannai: they tend to be in need of help quite often. It’s getting late, but I get going all the same, and make it to Seers’ Village, where, of course, I have free lodgings in Camelot.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #giantdwarf #blasidar

0 notes

fesahaawit · 6 years

Text

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border

***********

Instead, here’s a photo of the two of us back in our youth:

[please tell me why I thought those glasses were cool?]

Before I get into how we actually carried across all that money, let’s go over why we actually did it.

I lived in China for 8 years. I must have really liked it because that’s where I met my husband, got married and had a kid.

[The food wasn’t bad!]

We even tried giving Western Union a shot to see if it’d be any easier (and cheaper).

Nope.

We ended up paying almost 10% in fees alone and it was equally as frustrating.

Then one day my husband joked that we should just buy a briefcase and carry all our cash over when we both went home for the holidays.

I’m always up for a challenge, so why the heck not? What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, once again our plan hit some road bumps.

During this time we hid the money around our apartments. I literally stuck hundred dollar bills under my mattress among other places as I was so paranoid about someone breaking in! We also hid money:

In jacket pockets

In shoes

In crockpots we barely used

And in tupperware

When it came time to go visit our families at Christmas, we gathered all our money in one place and planned how we were going to pack it all.

Next thing we knew, we threw a bunch of bills up in the air and were frolicking around in money. There’s something about doing backstrokes on a bed with $20,000 that does it for you :)

Finally, We Carry The Cash Over

Now came the hard part: how do we actually carry all this cash? Without getting stopped at the border?

Here’s what my husband did:

Bought special cargo pants with multiple pockets so he could take the cash in and out when going through security

Sewed secret pockets in his laptop case

Rolled up t-shirts in his carry on luggage with money in it

Carried cash in his wallet

Here’s what I did:

Hid cash in my laptop case and purse

Stuffed some money in my bra (this was before those fancy machines at the TSA security check)

Stuffed money in my makeup case

Put bills in-between pages of the books I was “reading”

Then off we went!

Step #1: Go through security in China and board the plane. Success! We stated we were carrying cash, but nobody asked us how much so we easily got our exit stamps.

Step #2: Relax on the plane. Fail. We could barely sleep, as we were just too paranoid the entire trip.

Then it was the moment of truth…

And just like that it was over! WE DID IT!!

My husband had the same experience clearing customs, and it was a piece of cake getting the second half of our money into my Canadian bank as well.

Anyone else ever launder move large amounts of cash across the border? Any tips for anyone who may have to do it themselves one day?

Other fun gems for your viewing pleasure today:

That Time I Woke Up From a “Bill Coma” and Started Saving My $$$!

That Time I Borrowed $14,000… Then Gave it Right Back

That Time I Got in (Another) Car Accident…

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

0 notes

fesahaawit · 6 years

Text

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border

***********

Instead, here’s a photo of the two of us back in our youth:

[please tell me why I thought those glasses were cool?]

Before I get into how we actually carried across all that money, let’s go over why we actually did it.

I lived in China for 8 years. I must have really liked it because that’s where I met my husband, got married and had a kid.

[The food wasn’t bad!]

We even tried giving Western Union a shot to see if it’d be any easier (and cheaper).

Nope.

We ended up paying almost 10% in fees alone and it was equally as frustrating.

Then one day my husband joked that we should just buy a briefcase and carry all our cash over when we both went home for the holidays.

I’m always up for a challenge, so why the heck not? What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, once again our plan hit some road bumps.

During this time we hid the money around our apartments. I literally stuck hundred dollar bills under my mattress among other places as I was so paranoid about someone breaking in! We also hid money:

In jacket pockets

In shoes

In crockpots we barely used

And in tupperware

When it came time to go visit our families at Christmas, we gathered all our money in one place and planned how we were going to pack it all.

Next thing we knew, we threw a bunch of bills up in the air and were frolicking around in money. There’s something about doing backstrokes on a bed with $20,000 that does it for you :)

Finally, We Carry The Cash Over

Now came the hard part: how do we actually carry all this cash? Without getting stopped at the border?

Here’s what my husband did:

Bought special cargo pants with multiple pockets so he could take the cash in and out when going through security

Sewed secret pockets in his laptop case

Rolled up t-shirts in his carry on luggage with money in it

Carried cash in his wallet

Here’s what I did:

Hid cash in my laptop case and purse

Stuffed some money in my bra (this was before those fancy machines at the TSA security check)

Stuffed money in my makeup case

Put bills in-between pages of the books I was “reading”

Then off we went!

Step #1: Go through security in China and board the plane. Success! We stated we were carrying cash, but nobody asked us how much so we easily got our exit stamps.

Step #2: Relax on the plane. Fail. We could barely sleep, as we were just too paranoid the entire trip.

Then it was the moment of truth…

And just like that it was over! WE DID IT!!

My husband had the same experience clearing customs, and it was a piece of cake getting the second half of our money into my Canadian bank as well.

Anyone else ever launder move large amounts of cash across the border? Any tips for anyone who may have to do it themselves one day?

Other fun gems for your viewing pleasure today:

That Time I Woke Up From a “Bill Coma” and Started Saving My $$$!

That Time I Borrowed $14,000… Then Gave it Right Back

That Time I Got in (Another) Car Accident…

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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heliosfinance · 6 years

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That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border

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Instead, here’s a photo of the two of us back in our youth:

[please tell me why I thought those glasses were cool?]

Before I get into how we actually carried across all that money, let’s go over why we actually did it.

I lived in China for 8 years. I must have really liked it because that’s where I met my husband, got married and had a kid.

[The food wasn’t bad!]

We even tried giving Western Union a shot to see if it’d be any easier (and cheaper).

Nope.

We ended up paying almost 10% in fees alone and it was equally as frustrating.

Then one day my husband joked that we should just buy a briefcase and carry all our cash over when we both went home for the holidays.

I’m always up for a challenge, so why the heck not? What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, once again our plan hit some road bumps.

During this time we hid the money around our apartments. I literally stuck hundred dollar bills under my mattress among other places as I was so paranoid about someone breaking in! We also hid money:

In jacket pockets

In shoes

In crockpots we barely used

And in tupperware

When it came time to go visit our families at Christmas, we gathered all our money in one place and planned how we were going to pack it all.

Next thing we knew, we threw a bunch of bills up in the air and were frolicking around in money. There’s something about doing backstrokes on a bed with $20,000 that does it for you :)

Finally, We Carry The Cash Over

Now came the hard part: how do we actually carry all this cash? Without getting stopped at the border?

Here’s what my husband did:

Bought special cargo pants with multiple pockets so he could take the cash in and out when going through security

Sewed secret pockets in his laptop case

Rolled up t-shirts in his carry on luggage with money in it

Carried cash in his wallet

Here’s what I did:

Hid cash in my laptop case and purse

Stuffed some money in my bra (this was before those fancy machines at the TSA security check)

Stuffed money in my makeup case

Put bills in-between pages of the books I was “reading”

Then off we went!

Step #1: Go through security in China and board the plane. Success! We stated we were carrying cash, but nobody asked us how much so we easily got our exit stamps.

Step #2: Relax on the plane. Fail. We could barely sleep, as we were just too paranoid the entire trip.

Then it was the moment of truth…

And just like that it was over! WE DID IT!!

My husband had the same experience clearing customs, and it was a piece of cake getting the second half of our money into my Canadian bank as well.

Anyone else ever launder move large amounts of cash across the border? Any tips for anyone who may have to do it themselves one day?

Other fun gems for your viewing pleasure today:

That Time I Woke Up From a “Bill Coma” and Started Saving My $$$!

That Time I Borrowed $14,000… Then Gave it Right Back

That Time I Got in (Another) Car Accident…

That Time We Carried $20,000 Across The Border published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

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