Foobonia and Points West.

As you know, it's sort of useless to discuss any sort of financial planning with Elly. You will no doubt recall the strip wherein John tried to remind her that they needed to think about insurance because of the possibility that he could be injured or killed and thus be unable to provide for their needs. Her response was to burst into tears because of her perception that he was trying to scare her. This is consistent with her behavior when he went missing a few years later: she reassured the children by announcing her clever plan to waste away and die of grief if he turned up dead because she'd have nothing to live for if he were gone. Simply put, she cannot deal with hardship thus cannot plan ahead. John, on the other hand, might not be as stupid or useless. He might, you see, have taken steps to provide for his family after he rang down the curtain and joined the choir invisible by dabbling in the stock market. The annuity he would been forced to accumulate in secret so as to avoid having his decorative nitwit wife whine in terror because it reminded her that he was neither immortal or indestructible would be an umbrella he'd bought against a rainy day. He'd start to think of it as "his" money he was accumulating to give his family after he passed on; it would be thus different from "their" money: the earnings from his dental practice. Every so often the dividends might allow him to splurge and buy something like a stereo and new washing machine as a bonus without really affecting the regular budget. The woman whose frivolous lifestyle he was thus able to support no problem because of his foresight would, of course, ask pointed questions about his spending habits. He'd, of course, allude to the pile of chips the cash for the new sound system came from only to be yelled at. He'd quckly realize that he can't say things like "my" money in front of the shouting bully he'd married because of a need to not tell her about his investment portfolio: she'd want to raid it so she could blow it all on cleaning supplies and sheets that pill up after two or three washings. He'd thus have the choice of taking the offending item back or bribing her with a shiny toy to distract her from figuring out what he meant by saying "my" money in the first place.

As we've seen, the real reason Liz is going ahead with the Settlepocalypse is to avenge herself on an indifferent world. She's got a lot of pent-up rage and she wants to make sure all the people who've wronged her in the past pay and never stop because she's filled with entitlement. In this, she's very much Elly's daughter. Her overweening desire to control every aspect of her children's lives is not only because does she think that she knows best about everything, they owe her. In her mind, she was happy, young, thin and desirable when out of nowhere, she had children and she turned old, ugly, fat and miserable. Since they destroyed her life, she has to control theirs because her idea of justice mandates it. You'll notice that to think that way, she's ignoring something called 'personal responsibility'. It wasn't fate or nasty, smelly, dirty, ungrateful children who laid her low, it was the woman in the mirror. Why is she fat? She has a terrible diet and won't stick to an exercise regime. Why does she look twenty years older than she should? She won't maintain herself. Why is she unhappy? She has unrealistic expectations that can never be fulfilled. Why did her children act up? They were messed up because of her negativity and emotional neglect. Why is she stuck with a husband who won't help? Her high-handed refusal to be helped on his terms saw to that. But saying it's her fault isn't "fair". If she thought like that, she'd have to admit that her domineering, evil mother was right and she is an arrogant, ignorant and reckless know-it-all.

As promised, I'll go into more depth on why the Patterson family are getting more out of his upcoming marriage to Liz than he ever will. To use the least critical and most benign language possible, they piss their money away like idiots. It doesn't surprise me in the least that John and Elly were struggling in their first years because John couldn't be bothered to spend his money responsibly. To him, all Elly's talk about 'budgeting' and the 'need to think about the family first' was just so much gibberish. It was his money so he felt free to spend it on himself. Not that Elly is much better. All the economies she prides herself on can safely be qualified by the adjective 'false' owing to her refusal to learn what things cost and her blaming the banks and utility companies for her idiocy. Mike, if anything is even worse than his parents. That's because, sadly enough, he had a third parent whose advice took precedence over John's and Elly's: this parent was manufactured in Malaysia, ran on house current and had a nineteen inch screen. Not only has his lifetime of passive box-watching robbed him of the ability to look to his sides, thereby causing the odd robot-like behavior howtheduck commented on in his blog, it's also distorted his view of how the world works. Since the flickering blue parent tells him that not only must he buy things NOW (which he does), it also tells him mathematics and accounting are the province of the undesirable, the nerd. This is why he fails to mythologize Anthony like the others. Since Liz's love interest likes math, he barely rates as male in Michael's eyes. Deanna may know better than to blow her wad on shit like her in-laws but they don't listen to her, especially any complains about having to bail out the Noble Scribe. The only reasons I can see that the Pattersons aren't headed for bankruptcy court is that John made enough to cover their wasteful ways. Now that he's heading into retirement, they're heading into not-so-genteel poverty again. Anthony is gonna spend the rest of his life pulling his wife's family outta the financial holes they dug themselves. He may be a skeeze, but not even he deserves that.

One thing you have to notice is that the Pattersons are terrible with money. John seems determined to blow his loot on ego-gratifying toys whenever it would be more prudent to save for an emergency. The smug jackass doesn't see himself wasting cash on trivia, of course. All he sees is the little woman yacking about spending his hard-earned dough on stuff he doesn't see as terribly important such as food, clothing, utility bills, and other pointless, nonsensical excuses women come up with to keep his spending his money on cool shit. He's also transmitted his financial savvy to his son who bribes parking lot attendants, spends his dough at Starbucks and points with pride to his inability to balance checkbooks. After all, a Genius Author can't sully himself by understanding financial documents, can he? Elizabeth, too, is gifted with poor money-handling skills since she regards rental agreements, (especially the part about damage deposits and their non-refundability) as well-meaning suggestions. This makes me fear for Elly's future after John dies. She's probably pinning her hopes for a dignified widowhood on death benefits that don't exist. After all, John can't plan further than five minutes ahead so I don't think he knows to make sure that Elly will be looked after after he passes away. My guess is that there may be just enough to give the two of them a dignified send-off because of his silly romantic belief that she'll probably outlive him by a few milliseconds 'cause that's how it works in the movies. Since she can't really live on Social Security and whatever's left over from burying his ashes, she'd end up like a female George Stibbs, desperately trying to sell the place so she can have enough to move into a retirement home with some sort of dignity. After all, it's not like she can depend on Mike and Liz to help, is it?

I readily admit to posting something similar to what I'm about to say after the Sheet-shaving incident but this week's story line makes it far more central to what ails the Pattersons. Like everyone around them, Milborough's WorstFirst Family don't want to spend too much money doing the things they want to do. The problem is that, since they don't have two clues to rub together, they take shortcuts that guarantee they'll burn through their savings accounts. Case in point: John buys the TTH sight unseen without wasting money on anything like an inspector. It's not just because he trusts George; he doesn't see the need to check up on his purchase to see if there might be problems, like any rotten trees on the property that could fall on the place, that need to be addressed. If he'd had the foresight to crack open his wallet BEFORE something bad happened, he could have had the tree cut down and saved himself the expense of fixing the roof. Now he proposes to remove the tree himself. Given the fact he's not using the proper equipment, he'll most likely cause more damage than the tree did thereby making the renovation even more expensive. Knowing him, he'd try to save a few bucks by doing that himself too, most likely by raiding the funds earmarked for fixing up the basement for April. This is really gonna cost him because the province isn't gonna let him exile the Martian to a basement that isn't up to legal code. The fine he'd end up paying there might well derail his plans to build the Vandal Magnet of Ultimate Doom because he WOULD have to 'sever' the other two lots and sell them to cover his expenses. All this chaos because the smug bastard is too fucking cheap to do things right. No wonder April's losing her mind!!