We used to live in Germany but we had the luxury of using the banks on a US Army base. However, I seem to recall that using a credit card usually gave a good rate of exchange (not that there are any very good rates these days since the $ is low against the euro). So it seems to me that you could open an account at any bank stateside and he could withdraw funds with a debit card from the numerous ATMs and get a pretty good exchange rate. You could set up a way to quickly deposit funds into his account without being on his account it seems to me. The only drawback I can see to this plan is that there are limits to how much can be withdrawn on a given day; to pay rent he might have to withdraw over the period of a couple of days. He might want to call a German bank and get some advice straight from them. Most people use their German bank account to pay all their bills. They set up automatic withdrawals for rent and utilities. If the American bank could transfer the funds monthly to a German bank that might work out even better. We kept a German bank account for our rent and utilities, but we had to make a manual deposit each month. They all speak English, or have a colleague who does.

Joyful, I've often thought the same thing. Cash is king, they say. A while back a friend gave us a $50 GC to a specialty restaurant as a thank you. Her tastes tend to run in a slightly different direction than mine. Shortly after she gave the GC, I became pregnant. That restaurant serves a lot of things that pregnant women are told to avoid, and frankly at that point their food choices just didn't sound good at all. Not to mention that they have very restricted hours and my DH works a very long schedule. Long story short, there were so many strikes against that restaurant for us that I never got around to using the GC before it expired. I was a bit sad when I found it. It was just not a good idea, but she'll never know we didn't use it. Whenever someone gives us a GC as a gift, I try to use it ASAP just so it won't expire (I don't think they can by law here in California, but the restaurant one did so who knows?), or so I won't lose it. I like GCs less and less as time goes on. Then it always seems like there's $3 or some small amount left on the card that doesn't get used. That's especially true with the prepaid credit cards we've gotten- the problem there is that you have to ask for a split transaction and sometimes I don't know how much is actually left on the card. I've learned that when we get one of those it's best to use it against a larger purchase so we can ask for the split transaction and know for fact that there is actually $50 on there. Of course the last time I tried to use one of those, the girl didn't know how to process it (she claimed we needed a PIN number, we found out later that we didn't), so rather than use the gift "money" for the thing we were buying, we had to put it on our CC and figure out how to use the other card later. Maybe I'm just dumb, but the more I use these things, the more I hate 'em! Of course with that said, I still buy my nephews gift cards for Christmas! I think they really enjoy getting the card and fantasizing about what they will get with it. Sorry, this turned into a personal rant! :) - here's a smile for you, Joyful. Q

HoneyBear is around one year old now and we have only had him about 5 months. He still will wet in the house periodically if we don't take it on ourselves to put on the leash and take him out every two hours or so. He poops in the house a few times but mainly outdoors and on his walk. He is a funny dog about his eating too. I can put his food out for him and I have to coax him to come and eat. When he does he growls if I get near his food and would probably bite too. He eats some and goes through the motions of burying it in plain sight. Our previous little dog did that too. He has issues and they are tiring to deal with, but we must. Paul

We offer first to family/friends. If nobody wants it, it goes to charity. My MIL was sure her house stuff was worth money. It wasn't. However, family members were happy to take the big furniture, so she didn't feel bad. Oddly, the various tschotskes DH and I couldn't stand, made her several hundred $$$ from an estate liquidator. Who knew, LOL? There is a wonderful charity here run by our city. They collect ONLY business clothes - cleaned, pressed, on hangers - suitable for job interviews. Low-income residents can go to their various training classes, which include what to do/not to do on job interviews and how to properly fill out job applications. For those attendees who don't have nice clothes for interviews, the charity allows them to pick two outfits for free. When my DH and I retired, we brought them enough to fill an 8' clothes rack. My MIL just passed away and I realized many of her clothes also qualified as "interview ready". DH and I cleaned out our closets again. His was clothes that had gotten too small or shrunk (he's fond of 100% cotton and some of that stuff shrinks more than others). I had hung on to some of my favorite work clothes, including some designer stuff, but finally decided after five years of retirement it was time to pass them along. So there went another 8' clothes rack out of the house last week! We also sorted through our books. We have around 2-4,000 books at any given time. Out went a load of those yesterday to the local library for their monthly sales. But the core of our collections remain: my art books, his hobby reference books, and the fiction novels we deem worth keeping and re-reading. Of these, only the art books are worth anything, and only to collectors. After I sorted through my art books we asked a couple of friends if they were interested in any that we planned to get rid of. They took two paper bags full. They were happy and so were we! Our collection is valuable only to us, especially since much of it is out of print. I used to give very elaborate dinner parties in the '70's. I had six different sets of interchangeable dinnerware and handmade bronze flatware, with lots of serving pieces collected from various places. Entertaining has changed and nobody does this stuff any longer. The main part of the dinnerware was a classic Mikasa bone china with an embossed gold rim, in a service for 12. None of my Millennial friends was interested in it, but fortunately one of our younger Boomer friends was complaining about her grandmother's soft-paste china. Such patterns can't go through the DW so she had to hand-wash it, so as a working mother (she was the breadwinner, in fact) it was too time-consuming to use often. She was familiar with our china and said she would be thrilled to have it. Made her ecstatic, and opened up space for new plain china for us. Yes, I still have the bronze flatware. Nobody else wants it, like silver it has to be kept polished or in bluecloth. Doesn't take up much room in a drawer. Oddly, one of the modestly valuable things I own might someday be thrown out by some relative who doesn't realize what they are. Back in the psychedelic '60's when impresario Bill Graham presented unknown local bands at the Winterland ballroom in San Francisco, for publicity they did not only posters, but fliers and postcards. I have half a dozen pristine, unused postcards of concerts listing Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Cream, Moody Blues, Blue Oyster Cult, etc., stuffed in a box in the garage.