Amy Bloom	The Week of January 23rd, 2005

Master of All Trades

1. What's in your wallet right now?

My Writers Guild card, my license, my AAA card, my health insurance card (two, one from Ms. Magazine, one from Yale), some receipts from my most recent trip to NYC doing a gig for a magazine (need to send those in two weeks ago), twenty bucks, business card from a hairdresser in Boulder who likes my work and wants to give me a free haircut, and two credit cards, VISA and MASTERCARD, no AmEx, thank you very much.

2. What do you wish your parents taught you about money?

They didn't teach me anything at all except that it's not necessary to work in an office, or FOR anyone, in order to make a living. (Thank you, Murray!) My mother taught me, by negative example, He who has the gold, makes the rules.

3. What is your worst habit around finances?

I hate to pay my bills (so I hire someone to take care of that) and occasionally, I yield to impulse on the matter of accessories or a great coat or gifts for my family. I am capable of being very happy in Marshall's or Nieman's, Target or Takashimaya; my tastes are high as well as low, unfortunately.

4. What makes you happy?

My family, my close friends and my work.

5. Personal philosophy around money?

If you don't have it, don't spend it. A family vacation is as valuable and lasting a gift as the more substantive things. If you can buy XX and love it, buy X and live with it.

6. Where does money come from?

For me, from work and luck. I don't object to lotteries or inheritance but that's not in the cards for me.

7. What would you do with a million dollars?

I hate to say it, because it's so dull but I would invest most of the million for my imminent old age. I would keep out about 30k and re-do the bathrooms and try to squeeze out another family vacation.

8. What is your most prized possession?

I love a lot of the stuff I have (photos, jewelry, china from my mother), but I don't much care, in the end. As long as my family is healthy and happy, the rest is ephemera.

9. Who is your role model?

For money? I don't have one, although I admire Suze Orman's common sense. For the committed life? Martin Luther King, Jr. and Grace Paley.

10. What is your greatest achievement?

My kids.

11. What organizations do you support?

Oh—Yaddo, MacDowell, Planned Parenthood, WNYC, Democrats, Southern Poverty Law, and more that I can't remember.

12. What contributions to society do you want to make?

I'd be glad to go on doing what I do—and continue to support the education of disadvantaged children.

13. If you could buy one thing right now what would it be?

Chrysler Crossfire OR three new bathrooms OR all new kitchen, including the Aga, for my girlfriend, who cooks.

14. How do you indulge yourself?

Shoes, boots, expensive skin goop, lip glosses, taxis

15. Favorite activity that doesn't cost a dime?

Reading, reading, reading and tennis

Amy Bloom is the author of a novel, Love Invents Us, and two collections of stories: Come to Me, nominated for a National Book Award, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and numerous anthologies here and abroad. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon, among many other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. Her first book of nonfiction, Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude, is an exploration of the varieties of gender. And if that isn't enough italics for you, she's also a practicing psychotherapist who lives in Connecticut and teaches at Yale University. For more information, visit: www.amybloom.com.

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