President Bob Grady opened the meeting at 12:10 PM followed by a beautiful singing invocation by the beautiful M. Craig. The Viscount served us spaghetti, veal parmesan, steamed broccoli and tiramisu. Chicken Caesar salad was on hand as the alternate. A veggie meatball zucchini boat sailed onto the vegans’ plates.

Introductions

After lunch, Bob asked Frank Presson, today’s Greeter, to introduce guests: New member Liz Wilson introduced Keith Duncan, an agent with Allstate Insurance. Sharyn Chesser welcomed back Audrey Tolouian. Bob Grady introduced Dave Gallaher, visiting from the Tucson Club. Finally, Frank welcomed Wendy Reuter visiting from the Pantano Club.

Announcements

Dave Gallaher let us know that this year’s work day at the Triangle YMCA Ranch in Oracle, AZ is scheduled for Saturday, April 25th. That happens to be Rotarians at Work Day around the globe. This will be the eighth year that this work day has taken place and we are encouraged to come and participate. If you happen to own and RV, you are welcome to come up the Friday evening before. Children who are six years and older are welcome. It is also possible for our club to “adopt a cabin”, taking on its maintenance, if we are so moved.

President Bob continued last week’s fun activity of identifying which little know fact applies to which member. It turns out that Andy Kerr had a wicked cool bicycle that he parks next to his Corvette to this day.

Bob announced that the Storytelling work team meets this coming Wednesday February 12th at 11:45 AM at Beyond Bread at Oracle and Ina. Please consider joining this committee to brainstorm for our most compelling stories about our Rotary experience.

We have an opportunity to help an Eagle Scout Demetrius Tsoukaladakis to defray $435 in expenses he incurred with his Eagle Project for the Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery in Marana. He designed and fabricated a flag rack that will hold each service’s flag during ceremonies held for the fallen veterans as well as a new paver path for an Eagle statue that will be installed this coming weekend. Contact Treasurer Andy Kerr if you would like to help him out. Bob noted we had four Eagle Scouts among today’s meeting-goers.

Finally, Bob and Arturo Mojica let it be known that we still need help filling volunteer booths at the Tucson Rodeo (Fiesta de los Vaqueros). In particular, we need volunteers for Parade Day (Thursday) and on the final Saturday and Sunday. Sign up with a friend and help us out.

Queen of Hearts

Bob DeLaney (avec apron) announced sales of $103 today bringing the total to $1605. Wendy Reuter picked today’s winning ticket which belonged to Pat Egbert. Alas, Pat pulled the Three of Spades. There are now thirty-two cards remaining plus a Joker. The odds are improving and the total pot is getting interesting. Michael Troughton will be in the market soon.

Sergeant at Arms

Tom Robertson was very sharp today…in his duties and in his dress (as usual). He took on about 50% of the club and was truly an equal opportunity Sergeant. Various past, present and future birthdays were acknowledged and, God help anyone with a Facebook page who was not wearing a Rotary pin and was identified in Tom’s business bits and brags segment.

Tom acknowledged Tony Spear’s jazz combo, Red Moon Trio, by saying “nice hat, no pin”. Come on, Tony. In his attempted retort Tony managed to shamelessly plug upcoming dates at Café Torino and Hacienda del Sol on February 15th and 22nd respectively. Tony indicated that Red Moon has been “institutionalized” at Hacienda del Sol and will appear monthly. Kudos.

Lots of happy bucks including Maria Elena’s pleasure of having Dave and Susan Gallaher as next door neighbors on fashionable 8th Street in Tucson. Tom also dinged Steve Pender for a recent LinkedIn article and noted that Steve produced a video interview with our own Anita McDonald that appeared in a video shown to honor Anita for her service to Penn State DuBois University.

We noted that Bob Stofft had injured a thumb diving for the dreaded pop up in his baseball league. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Program

Past President and Past District Governor Kirk Reed introduced today’s speaker Rob Roman with Transamerica Financial Advisors, Inc. who had recently done a program at the Pantano Rotary Club and one of whose members, Wendy Reuter, was with us today. Today’s topic was how money works and “financial literacy”.

Rob started with some sobering statistics about the lack of resources (savings) that a large percentage of Americans have and how few of us actually have pension plans outside of social security, 401Ks and IRAs. Perhaps even more scary were the facts that there is $1 trillion in credit card debt and $1.4 trillion in student loan debt outstanding. Rob’s passion is for the national campaign for financial literacy through World Financial Group. In his remarks, Rob drew a distinction between information and education by clarifying that education involving the ability to apply what you have learned. He emphasized that many people have not developed budgets as a tool both to get out of debt and to amass savings and investments. Factoid: Did you know that mortgage means literally “death pledge”?
Rob pointed out that humans don’t know what they don’t know. For example, for many the whole concept of how insurance works is a mystery. And when you get to arcane insurance products for long-term care, it gets truly complicated. This is because the market is still inefficient and changing and that new products such a linked benefit policies have been developed (e.g. riders to your life insurance policy that reduce the death benefit of the policy by the amount that your long term care has cost…). Wendy Reuter told us about the three deaths in her immediate family that had taken place over the past year and how much more aware she is about these financial issues. She said she felt she was fairly knowledgeable about financial matters but after attending the workshops that the World Financial Group offers on Tuesdays and Saturdays she realized she still had much to learn.

Additional scary factoid: $12,000 per month for a post stroke victim’s 24 hour/day nursing care. Rob referenced research by the MIT Age Lab (https://agelab.mit.edu/about-agelabz) which he encouraged us to check out which addresses among other things the problem of outliving ones income in an era of increased longevity.

President Bob gave Rob the coin with the Four-Way Test (which we need to practice reciting) on it as a memento and told him about our commitment to fund inoculation of ten children against polio in honor of his visit to Catalina Rotary Club. Bob graciously acknowledged the meeting helpers today: Andy, Bob, Frank, M., Tony and Tom. He finished with a flourish by quoting Past President (of America) John Adams. “All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”

Action challenges for today: Help out Demetrius the Eagle Scout, volunteer at the Rodeo, help with the Storytellers, help out at Triangle Ranch on April 25th and then spell Demetrius’ last name without looking. See you next week, then beer, beer, beer.