Archive for August, 2010

Reasons for Increasing Debt – 3

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Purchase of a New Car

By Sue Ricketts

Byron dreamed about owning a BMW Z4 sDrive 35i or 35is convertible for years. He bought magazines about cars and almost drooled over the latest gadgets and trim and horsepower and …. well, you know how it goes with young men and their status symbols.

Mom and Dad promised him that if he finished his courses at University in the top 10% of his class and got a job in his field within six months, they would co-sign for a car loan. He was in the top 5% of his class at graduation. There was no student debt to re-pay as there had been sufficient Educational Savings Plan money put away over the years. Even though it took him eight months to land an entry level job in his field, his parents were still willing to sign his loan.

Byron was earning a respectable $48,000 per year and after tax each month he had $2,720 take home. His only other big expense was $925 dollars for his one-bedroom furnished apartment in downtown Toronto. It was such an unimaginable deal he had to take it.

After an exhaustive search he found an almost new 2009 Z4 sDrive 35i in Royal Blue. It was a steal at $61,800. The arrangement was for a 60 month repayment at a low 3.9% interest. Monthly payments were $1135.35. Mom and Dad made him purchase a term life insurance policy and name them as beneficiaries up to the balance of the loan that they would sign for. The dream of a lifetime had come true. He would have to be frugal but it was only himself he had to take care of. Car insurance would be another $250 per month. Still doable for a smart man like Byron.

While he waited for them to clean the vehicle so he could take it home he called his landlord and asked about a parking spot. They told him that it would be $210 per month for an indoor spot or $150 per month for an outdoor one.

That’s when the panic set in and he realized that he would either have to leave the car parked at his parents house in Georgina township all the time or have money to buy food for the month. Most months he wouldn’t be able to buy more than one tank of gas for his grand new possession. If he didn’t go through with the purchase he would have to admit to his parents and the dealer that he just wasn’t ready for this.

Solution:

Always review your current monthly budget and left over income before making a major discretionary purchase. Fulfilling your dreams is great, but keep them realistic.
Be sure to write down all of the expenses which will go along with a purchase; such as gasoline, maintenance, insurance, cleaning, parking, etc. and add 10% in case you forgot something important.
Consider carefully whether this is a good solution to your wants and desires.
Never stop putting away 7 – 10% of your take home income for rainy-day savings. They go a long way toward seeing you through emergencies, sickness, job loss etc. Dreams don’t usually pay any bills.

Empire

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

By Orson Scott Card

Have you ever wondered if history repeats itself? Whether all great nations will eventually follow in the same footsteps of those who went ahead of them.

This time out Orson Card looks back and reminds us that Rome did not become truly famous and take over most of Europe, Africa and the Middle East until it had finished it’s Republican democratic stage. Only when Emperors took over, with no partisan politics to sidetrack them, did they begin to achieve worldwide fame and become the envy of those who were outside the Roman Empire. The first few Emperors of Rome believed that they were serving the people and not their own interests. That they were bringing peace, civilization and education to the unenlightened heathens of the world. They worked to make the Empire great.

Based on these ideas, he has written another superb book – not about the Romans. It’s about what he imagines will happen in the United States to create the Pax Americana, the American Peace, throughout the world. The Romans did not step into greatness until they conquered Carthage in a civil war between the states of the Italian peninsula. Is it possible that a second Civil War in America would accomplish the same? Would people gratefully unite behind someone they believed could take away the threat of death and bullying and hostilities of all types?

The story of the Second Civil War is told from the viewpoint of a small group of Special Ops soldiers who are recruited to perform secret missions both inside the United States and around the world in the not very distant future. As events unfold they worry that they may have been used by forces trying to break up the American government which they have sworn to uphold and obey. They have promised never to kill Americans on American soil. Will they be forced to do so in the service of the government they are sworn to protect?

I suspect that you will be looking for a certain type of ending to this intriguing and interesting tale than what you will find. Don’t cheat and read the last few pages early on. It will spoil a logical outcome based on the storyline. I suspect that this writer could lead people to believe things which are counter-intuitive to the current fashions of thought in the world.

Another great read from a good storyteller.

Reasons for Increasing Debt – 2

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

By Sue Ricketts

(From a survey of 1,000 Canadians taken in the Spring of 2010)

Interest charges

27%

Annette just registered for the University of her choice and she was accepted. She was so excited at being that much closer to independence day – her own independence day. She had worked hard in high school and got two scholarships. One was for a biology student, two years at $1,000 a year and the other was $500 per year for four years.

Since Annette was the oldest in a family of four children, her parents were only helping for the first year by giving her $3,000. This seemed like lots of money since she had saved another $2,000 from working part-time over the summers.

The first year just seemed to fly by with only a few trips home to borrow from Mom and Grandma. But when she faced returning in the fall, Annette knew that she needed to apply for student loans to get through the next 3 years. When everything was sorted out she would get a total of $5,000 per year which would arrive about 6 weeks after the start of the school year. She hadn’t worked so hard that summer, just enjoyed meeting her friends again and getting re-acquainted with her home, her family and her town. There wasn’t enough to put a down-payment on the apartment she was going to share off-campus with two friends. They wanted two months up front and that meant that Annette needed to find an extra $400 beside her share of household groceries, books, bus passes and still have money to attend the start-of-year parties with fellow students.

She asked Mom and Dad, but they had no money to give her this time. Well, they gave her $100 and a suitcase full of canned food and KD along with some used furniture. Then she remembered the other thing which had come in the mail at the same time as her college acceptance letter. There was a credit card offer with up to $1,500 approved. There was her answer. She could handle that. Just signed up and waited for the card to arrive. She never read the contract or checked what the rate of interest was. It turned out that the rate was only 19.95% per year. The minimum payment which she agreed to pay each month was 3% of the outstanding balance.

By the time the first statement arrived in October there was $1,000 charged on the card. Her grant arrived but between books and a lot of other things she decided to only make minimum payments on the credit card. Three percent of a thousand dollars is only $30 a month. Easy to pay. The interest rate of 19.95% meant that $16.67 of her monthly payment was interest and she had paid down her debt by $13.33. But Annette wasn’t a math major and she had to get by. This was her time to learn and make new friends and spend time with them at bars and sorority and socials.

Over the year she found things which she wanted to have and the balance gradually crept up. School was getting more intense and she had trouble finding a job which would pay well and let her only work four – five hours a week. After Christmas the credit card company called and offered to increase her limit to $5,000 because she hadn’t missed any payments. No mention was made of the interest rate. Not being a math major, Annette never even thought about how she would ever pay off that debt.

As a student she had borrowed furniture from home and family. The old mattress she inherited smelled a bit funny and that’s when the family told her that Grandma was having a bit of a problem with her bladder and that’s why she’d needed a new mattress herself. Annette was appalled and went with her friends to a furniture store to buy a new one. Before they left the store, a really cute looking salesman convinced her that she should treat herself to a whole bedroom suite to go with the new mattress because the bed she had was so old that they didn’t make mattresses to fit it any more. She wouldn’t have to pay for 2 whole years and there would be no interest if she paid it off before then.

Once again Annette didn’t read the contract. She was so excited at the prospect of having a good night’s sleep on the $1,200 mattress which had no smell and was fitted just for her that she never thought to ask what would happen if she didn’t pay it off in full before the 2 years were up.

The last page of the contract said that she would have to pay 2.75% per month on the outstanding balance or 33% per year. They did spell it out but she never found the time to read to the last page. Legal contracts weren’t her thing either.

The next two years whizzed by with many successes and awards earned in biology. She honestly, just never had time to do more than pay her bills each month. The credit limit went up a bit, but she stopped at a $7,500 limit. School and social life were very intense. This was the time of her life. She needed to enjoy it while she could. And anyway, Annette wasn’t a math major.

Since there was no bill for the bedroom furniture she forgot all about it until a letter arrived one day from a collection agency. You see, she had moved four times since she’d bought it and never given them a forwarding address. They tracked her down six months after graduation. This was so unfair of them. They hadn’t reminded her about the debt. The furniture total cost had been $2350. Now it was nearly three years old and kind of battered because of all the moving and out of style too. With accumulated interest for 30 months at 33% she now owed them $4288.75 or they would convert it to a 5 year loan at 3% interest per month.

She was working as a lab assistant at the school and her pay was very small. Bringing home $2,400 a month before taxes had sounded like lots of money. She had to accept the loan. What could she do? Annette didn’t have time to shop around. Her student loan payments were over 10 years and at 4% interest rate. The balance was $15,000.

And the credit card? Well, it had been maxed out for the last two years and she was making minimum monthly payments on that of $240. She was swamped with debt and having trouble paying rent and buying food, never mind getting that car she wanted so badly. What could she do?

What should have happened:

Always read contracts completely. If the salespersons, or bank, or lender, won’t wait for you to do that, stop everything right away.
Become a bit of a mathematician. Calculate what the payment amounts are. Not just the monthly payment but the total amount of interest to be paid over the term of the contract.
When taking on credit card debt make sure to call every six months and ask what the best interest rate is. If they won’t give it to you, find out why and don’t hesitate to call any of the other credit card companies out there. Competition is important for your financial health.
Use either a spreadsheet or an accounting program like Quicken to record all your debts. Put important reminders in your electronic or paper calendar so that you won’t forget important repayment dates.
If you must have debt, and most of us do, make sure you use the lowest interest rate source.
Get a consolidated loan at the cheapest interest rate and the longest term which you can negotiate with a banker.
Never accept an offer of credit without getting a competing bid from elsewhere
When considering taking on new debt, always go to your spreadsheet or accounting program and see what will happen to your monthly budget if you take it on.
You are responsible for your debt. No one forces you against your will.

*** Email me so you can learn the difference between Good Debt and Bad Debt. Sue@suesviews.ca

Xenocide – Speaker for the Dead

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

By Orson Scott Card

What happened to Andrew “Ender” Wiggin after he won the Formic wars and saved Earth and all the humans on it? He was sent off in a spaceship with his sister Valentine on a 70 year voyage to one of the Buggers planets. Ender was to be governor of the planet and his sister Valentine, who used the persona Demosthenes, would put the history of their days in writing on the nets by ansible for all the worlds to read. If you don’t know what an ansible is, it’s a device which the Buggers used to communicate instantly anywhere in the known galaxy. Human’s don’t know how they work but they can replicate them and use them without a problem. Oh, yes, the Formics is the proper name for the aliens who Ender defeated and wiped out but most people just call them Buggers because they looked like bugs with multiple eyes and a carapace and huge with two sets of hands and two sets of legs used interchangeably.

Humanity has realized that the best defence against any other alien attack is to be well dispersed throughout many worlds and Ender and Valentine are amongst the first group. For those on board the journey would last 2 years. By the time they reached their destination, everyone on Earth whom they knew would either be dead or very old. On this new world Ender, now 15 years old, finds a maze which was part of his version of the Battle School program which they used to defeat the Formics. By following the clues which he knew from his days at Command School, he finally found what was hidden behind the mirror in the castle room. It was a cocoon which contained the last survivor, the Hive Queen. She could talk to him through his mind because the Hive had no spoken language or writing. Ender feels his guilt strongly at having committed xenocide on a whole alien race and so he agrees to transport the Queen until he can find a world suitable for her to give birth to her children.

They stayed on the first world for nearly eight years and then travelled out again. Spending only a short time on each new planet, they check for suitability for the Hive Queen and then travel on. Ender writes two seminal books The Hive Queen and The Hegemon which become classics to rival all the greatest books of religion from Earth. It changes humanity’s ideas and makes them realize what a horrible thing has been done in wiping out a whole sentient race.

Along the way there are very interesting and believable explanations of near-light speed travel and how the anisibles are able to send transmissions instantly to any part of the universe in real-time. Ender and Valentine travel until Ender is almost 36 years old. But in the time of planet bound humans 3,000 years have passed.

When Ender decides to leave planet Trondheim, Valentine remains behind because she has married and wants to have a family of her own. The next stop for Ender, Speaker for the Dead, is Lusitania. The Hive Queen tells him that she is sure this will be the place where she can stay and allow her children to finally be born. But the Buggers won’t be the only alien life form on this planet, There are Pequeninos, called Piggies because they are small and have noses which are like snouts. There is also a virus which infects all living things on the planet and keeps threatening to wipe out the small human colony which has decided to live there.

This is a great romp through imaginative worlds. There are two more books in this series which will continue the story and fill in the mystery of the rest of Ender’s story.

REASONS FOR INCREASING DEBT – 1

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

By Sue Ricketts

(From a survey of 1,000 Canadians taken in the Spring of 2010)

Day-to-day living expenses

58.00%

Tammy & Jake both worked downtown and were living the life of Urban Yuppies. They searched for months to find the perfect loft appartment. When they finally found it the agent said there were three other couples who had already seen it that day and if they wanted it they had to make a choice now. They agreed and signed a two year lease at $1,500 per month.

Jake came home the next weekend and said he had seen the perfect SUV which would take their mountain bikes anywhere they wanted to go on the weekends. It would only be $498 per month plus tax. Tammy couldn’t very well say no since she had just gone out and spent $600 on new outfits for her job. She was doing well and bringing in over $40,000 after tax.

They sat and talked about money things. Jake was only earning $38,000 now. He’d been with the company for 18 months and his prospects were good to get a new posting which would bring in a nice increase in wages. It would likely happen when next year’s job review came up.

Three weeks after Jake brought home the new SUV, they decided to take a weekend in cottage country to ride their bikes throuh Algonquin Park and commune with nature. During the weekend a freak storm came up and lightning hit an old tree in the park. This wasn’t unusual. What was unusual is that Jake had pitched their tent under the tree in a secluded part of the Park. It fell on the tent where Tammy was reading a book. Her legs were crushed under the trunk of that huge old tree.

By the time Jake was able to bike to the nearest ranger station and bring back help, she was in very bad shape. The air ambulance came and took her back to the city for treatment. Three days later they had to remove Tammy’s left leg below the knee and her right foot at the ankle. Jake received the news that she would need to spend many months, perhaps years, in therapy and in a wheel chair until she could be fitted with prostheses and might be able to walk again if she could keep her muscles from atrophying.

Tammy was sure that it would be OK because she was covered up to 66.7% of her pre-injury monthly pay. Her boss promised to have the HR person come over to the hospital to explain how it worked. When the lady arrived she said that she had good news and bad news. Tammy’s heart sank when she learned that she would get 66.7% of her earnings, non-taxable, up to a maximum of $1,500 per month. Fifteen hundred dollars times twelve equals $18,000 per year. Their rental lease was $1,500 per month. They had furniture and appliances for the new place on the credit card which had a balance of over $10,000 and minimum payments of 3% ($300) at 18% interest and the new 4 year vehicle lease at another $500 per month.

Jake deserves credit for being able to stick around six months. He wasn’t injured. He didn’t need a physiotherapist every day. He didn’t need to be in wheelchair. He had spent time bringing her up and down the stairs to their second floor bedroom every single day since she came home. He even lived without sex because he was terrified that he’d hurt her. But he still wanted to go away on weekends to cottage country. He still wanted to eat out at least a couple times a week. He missed meeting his “Buds” at the bar downtown after work. He didn’t like to have to do without so many things in order to save money and pay bills. He just wasn’t into that.

How could this have been prevented?

Their first priority should have been to put 7- 10% of their take-home pay into solid savings in guaranteed investments or segregated funds.

They should not have taken on debt before they actually had sufficient savings of at least six months expenses in the bank.

They should have topped up both their workplace benefits for Disability coverage

They should have had a Return of Premium rider on the Disability Insurance in case they never needed to collect on the insurance.

They should have had a rider on that insurance which covered their outstanding payments for at least two years.

They should have used a budget program which told them what would happen if they added another payment to their expenses.

Ender’s Shadow

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

By Orson Scott Card

The authour has gone back to the beginning to fill in the story of the other Battle School Graduates and what happened to them after the Formic Wars, better known as the Bugger wars because of the appearance of the aliens who came to colonize Earth.

Orson Scott Card has been a student of war and military strategies for most of his life. From a young age he read the books on the most famous battles and their leaders throughout history. This has given both series of books – The Ender series and the Hegemon series – a believable feel.

Ender’s Shadow was Bean, Julian Delphiki. Bean is very special. He was born as part of an experiment to increase the intelligence of the human race. He had no parents that he knew of and at the age of one year he had to escape a scientist who killed all of his birth-brothers. He did and managed to survive on the streets of Rotterdam with another group of lost orphans. At that time, no one was allowed to have more than two children. Bean’s group was what happened to the third child. They had to fend for themselves.

To add to his fight for survival he was very small for his age and did not grow until he hit his late teen’s. After being saved by Sister Carlotta he is tested and admitted to Battle School to be trained in the war which threatened all of humanity. He was the youngest child admitted by the International Forces. Bean became Andrew “Ender” Wiggin’s first lieutenant and right hand man of Ender’s Jeesh.

Now we find Bean, trying to free his Battle School friends who have been kidnapped and believed to be in Russia. He misses one person in particular, Petra Arkanian, who was one of the few who respected and acknowledged his genius during the gruelling Bugger wars. He makes it his mission to free her and the others. The world is on the brink of war. Each country want’s to use it’s Battle School graduate to further their ambitions of expansion and power. And if they can encourage another county’s graduates to join them they will do their best to make it so.

Bean enlists the aid of Peter Wiggin, older brother of Ender, who has been elected the Hegemon of Earth. The position has been weakened greatly and has little funding to bring peace to the Earth. Yet he’s determined to find a way to unite a Free People and form the whole world into one tribe.

Engrossing story and not to be missed if you’re a fan of psychology and warfare.

Sales & Salespeople

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

This is a collection of twelve simple steps all salespeople should live by.

1. Being genuinely interested in your prospect’s personal and professional opinions will do as much (perhaps more) to develop rapport as identifying his personality style or discovering if he is a football, baseball, or hockey fan.

2. It’s just as important to disqualify a selling opportunity as it is to qualify it.

3. What the prospect wants and what the prospect actually needs are rarely the same.

4. The prospect’s problem is never what he thinks it is.

5. It’s more important for the prospect to discover that he has a best-fit problem for your solution than it is to demonstrate that you have a best-fit solution for his problem.

6. When the prospect says, “Money’s no problem,” it’s guaranteed to become one.

7. A prospect with a budget and a strong reluctance to spend it is no different than a prospect with no budget at all.

8. The objective of each encounter with a prospect is to either pave the way to the next step in the selling process-and eventually a buying decision-or to end the process.

9. When a prospect states that he can’t make a decision, he just did.

10. The financial investment to obtain your product or service is often less significant than the other “investments” the prospect must make to implement it.

11. Identifying how and by when a prospect will make a buying decision is just as important as discovering who is involved in the process.

12. If you wait for your customers to voluntarily provide you with referrals as a reward for the exceptional service you have delivered, you’ll be waiting a long time.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sales & Salespeople?

By Sue Ricketts

I reprinted this great set of principles from Sandler Training’s latest weekly tips because if you think about it every adult is a salesperson. Even if what you are selling is yourself – especially if your selling yourself.

Somehow, many people grow up with the belief that all salespeople are dishonest and out to “steal” from us. No one can steal from us without us being at least a bit complicit in what they are doing. The idea that we are being taken advantage of by salespeople is not something we can prove, it’s just something which got planted in our assumptions somewhere when someone related a tale of woe because they had a bad experience. Mostly they should have been paying more attention to what was really happening. Or read the whole contract? Or made the cheque out to a company instead of a person? Or not shared their passwords and bank information with anyone else.

Many of the truly successful salespeople I know are engaged by whatever they are selling, they believe in it and have “it” themselves. They know and understand the features and benefits first hand and will give you the honest truth as they see it. Your involvement is to get to know that salesperson well enough to judge if they are telling the truth or not. In other words, can you trust them?

But getting back to the sales tips, I believe that in order to be able to sell one must know, like and understand people. The best sales maxim I’ve heard is this; Most people buy from their friends. So how many friends do you have?

Whether it’s finding a dream job, or just getting a job, the more people you tell what you’re looking for, the better chance you will have to get it. In sales you won’t make a sale if you aren’t able to completely describe what you want someone to buy. Mostly this involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes long enough to understand what their aims are. Them match your “product” to how it will help them meet their goals.

The motivation of the Human Resource person is that they want to be responsible for bringing in the most fitting person who will perform a given function which the company requires. They would also like to be known to their company as introducing the next super star to the ranks. When you are in the interview, you need to know what the job requirements are and convince them that you are able and prepared to show they that you can do them. That you are on their side and understand their needs. Do the research and take the time to create a cover letter for your resume which matches each bullet point as you know them to your proven abilities. They don’t want you because you have a degree or a designation, they want you because you can do the job. If you’re a student, make sure that your part time jobs give you relevant experience i.e. Dealing with the public, not missing work, etc.

Practice being an honest salesperson every day and soon it will become a strength of your character.

Zoe’s Tale

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

By John Scalzi

John Scalzi is one of my favourite science fiction writers. He’s funny, witty and makes his characters feel like folks you know. His Old Man’s War trilogy is a special enjoyment of mine. This book is a re-telling of the final book, but from a completely different view point.

The first trilogy was written by and about a man who survived an amazing transformation from a 75 year old American widower, through two different body changes and a frightening and horrific interstellar war to bring his small family to a newly settled planet in a quiet corner of the galaxy.

Major John Perry became an Ombudsman helping people deal with government agencies. His wife Sargent Jane Sagan, ex-Special Forces Soldier, became the Police Chief for the new settlement. Their adopted daughter Zoe Boutin-Perry became a normal girl growing into her teenage years. As normal as could be for someone who has two spider-like aliens for bodyguards and constant companions who protect her with knives that can kill instantly. This story was the third book of the series and told of their being whisked away to form another settlement called Roanoke far off in another part of the universe.

Roanoke was not allowed to use any technology for fear that they would be found and annihilated by the dreaded Conclave who had decreed that humans would not be allowed to expand any further. The new settlers were chosen from ten of the most established planets which humans occupied, none of which was Earth.

The situation is saved by Zoe going off with her bodyguards to speak to the leader of the Conclave. In exchange for warning him about some conspirators in his own ranks, their colony is spared and Major Perry finds a way to change the history of humanity.

Now John Scalzi has done an amazing thing. He has retold the story and it’s just as exciting as the first time. But this time it’s told through the eyes of teen-aged Zoe. For a middle-aged man writing as a teen-aged girl, this is very well crafted and believable. This telling fills in some of the details from the first story and fleshes out the characters of Zoe’s friends. It clears up a couple of plot dilemmas from the first story like what happened to the native inhabitants of Roanoke and how did Zoe handle the death of her first boyfriend so well?

I challenge you to read both books and see what you think. Do the stories compliment each other or conflict? Do you enjoy both tellings equally well?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

By Michael J. Fox

For those of us who remember Alex P. Keaton and Marty McFly it was a sad shock to hear of his early onset Parkinson’s Disease. Yet it has been very inspiring to see how he’s handled it. How he has kept one foot going after the other and not given up and hidden himself away from the world.

In this book Michael has written down for us to share, his speeches given at commencements around the country when he received his honorary doctorates from various higher education schools.

He tells how his Mother once lamented when he was going off to Los Angeles to continue his acting career at the ripe old age of 18. She said that she would “never be able to tell anyone about her son the Doctor”. Now he has degrees but not for acting.

He dropped out of high school without graduating in order to pursue acting. He never bothered much at school and was admittedly a poor student. What he was doing instead, with all sorts of passion, did come from one of his teachers though. A drama teacher introduced him to a local theatre group in Vancouver. He had found his life-long dream job. He spent his nights performing and staying up till late. It wasn’t a surprise then, that he slept through a lot of the day classes and never became an “A” student.

Even so, Michael J. is a truly inspirational person having taken his lessons from the School of Life. Graduating from a misspent youth and a bout with alcoholism changed him into a dedicated husband and father. But the biggest change came when his doctors told him that he probably had 10years left to work. At the time he was just into his 30′s.

Michael went through all the five stages of accepting death according to him, but is not angry or depressed and is openly accepting his burden. He won’t die soon but will always carry the very visible symptoms of uncontrolled and uncontrollable movement wherever he goes.

He writes about his Parkinson’s Foundation and the objectives he’s set for it and himself. He speaks openly about his family. When he was diagnosed his son was just a toddler. A lot of soul-searching and heart-wrenching went on before he and his wife reached a calm place where they are today.

This book will make you realize just how small your troubles are when compared to what others have to bear. When you’d like a dose of inspiration, this is a great book to give you that.

The Donor

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

By Sue Ricketts

I am IX (Ish). I live a wonderful life! The climate is always comfortable in my soft padded room which has no sharp corners. That’ so that I won’t get bruised or damaged in any way. I have an excellent diet but I never have to hunt, fish plant or harvest. It’s all brought to me by the Keepers after they’ve added vitamins and hormones to help me grow better.

Every day I am led outside to walk across the fields, feel the sun on my skin and spend time in the shade of the tall trees. I spend hours with the others talking, exercising, telling each other stories from the older ones who came before us.

We all know that when we reach certain ages – four years, ten years and twenty-five years we will go into the large green building on the other side of the forest. No one ever has returned from there. When the wind blows from there the smell happens. It’s always frightening and disturbs us for days. The Keepers tell us it is nothing to worry about.

As to the other people with whom I live; some are choice young, some are feeders, some are breeders. I am Ix and I just became breeder stock last spring. Now I am put into new rooms with another human. I am expected to allow him to do physical things so that I will produce more humans. I have no choice because the Keepers tell us what to do.

What if I didn’t? Well… I’d go back to feeder status and then go to the green building sooner.

Today we watched as one of us pulled up a plant in the forest and chewed it. Suddenly he began foaming and coughing and in minutes he froze in place on the ground.

When we returned and told the Keepers they were very angry, shouting about the waste of potentially good human-stock. Keepers would go hungry because of that. We didn’t understand how that could be?

Tomorrow when we go to the forest, I will find the plant for myself.