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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
My Husband is Leaving me for @TheBloggess
This is unverified but I’m pretty sure if given half a chance he would leave so fast there would be smoke and those black tire track burn out marks.
I read The Bloggess a lot. Mostly I save it up and read three or four posts and laugh so hard I have to clench so I don’t pee and tears stream down my face as I laugh. So today I was reading and I turned to Randy and said, “You have to read this. I wish I were this funny.”
So now it’s fifteen minutes later and he’s delving into the archives and laughing his ass off.
I turned to him a couple minutes ago and gave him the stare. You know the one – where he should know he should immediately tell me – in a completely convincing way – that I’m pretty and funny and way funnier than The Bloggess (I know it’s a lie, but that’s not the point.)
And he tells me what post he’s on.
I was considering letting him go to BlogHer with me, but to heck with that, he doesn’t need to meet chicks that are smarter, funnier, and edgier than I am.
It’s the same reason I keep telling him we will never, EVER sign up for Wife Swap. He doesn’t need to know other wives clean and do things for their husbands. That would make my life a living hell involving cleaning and god-knows what else.
I spent too long brainwashing convincing him I’m perfect for him to mess it all up by meeting someone more perfect than I am. Which wouldn’t be terribly difficult. There are a lot of smart, funny chicks out there.
Maybe I should visit Jenny with a turkey baster and an adult diaper like that astronaut chick. That will teach her to make my man laugh! The hussy.
I bet turkey basters are totally on sale now that Thanksgiving is over.
Tell Everyone You are Poor for the Holidays
If you want to spend less this holiday season, tell everyone you’re poor.
Tell them your stock tanked, your mortgage went up, or something else. If you don’t want to lie, you can just talk vaguely about the economy and then suggest a dollar cap on gifts.
Seriously, everyone has to get it together for the holidays this year. My apologies to the retailers, but you need to get and keep your house in order during tough times. Not feel bad for companies’ lower profit margins and possible extinction. There doesn’t need to be a Circuit City and a Best Buy. Two is one too many for big box electronics. I don’t even know how Radio Shack manages to stay in business year after year, but they do. Maybe the other retailers could take a tip or two from them.
Spending huge amounts of cash you don’t have to give gifts to people is just silly. No one wants you cleaning out your bank account so you can put eight-hundred presents under the tree. Really. Your kids might, but then you may want to think about hitting the dollar store if the pile is what they crave.
My stepdaughter got so many gifts for Christmas last year, I was blown away. From a Wii to a light-up ant farm from the discovery store, she not only got a whole bunch of gifts – they were expensive gifts. My girls will never get a Wii for Christmas – I can tell you that with a surety that comes from wanting to teach them what Christmas is about.
Not colored lights. Not the baby Jesus. I want to teach them the sociological ramifications of being able to convince billions of people to give a damn about others once a year…and how it inevitably backfires because people end up shopping to feel the joy of giving the best gift. Or are buying because they feel obligated.
I look forward to shopping with my girls for a family in need. Getting gifts for someone that cannot afford it and will love what you’ve picked out.
What bothers me most about Christmas is that an undue amount of specialness is attached to gifts given on that day. If I want to buy my kid a bike in October, now I have to find a way to one-up that for Christmas? To heck with that.
As the economy slides into the pit of despair, focusing on family and spending time and more homemade gifts is going to take the place of big gifts with bigger price tags – and I’m okay with that.
At least ten people on our list are getting a six-pack of homebrewed beer for Christmas. Nothing says love like homemade alcohol.
If you don’t have time to make homemade (goodness knows I don’t – hubby makes the beer on the weekends) consider getting things that are inexpensive and bring back a great memory. I plan on giving everyone in the family brag books of my girls. Each one will cost about $7 – plus the beer. I also have some Partylite candles that I may or may not ever burn. Tadum! More gifts!
Look around, regift, spend less, and remember the reason for the season…whether that be religious or love-based in your world. Take the emphasis off of “stuff” and use the economy to do it. Whatever works to get you away from your credit cards and moving toward a great big hug.
How Do You Control Expenses Day to Day?
This is the part of the budget that I’m horrible at. I mean, I stink.
On my Excel Budget Template that I use month in and month out, there is a place to enter receipts. I enter in receipts as we get them, or when Randy gets home from work…okay, I do it most of the time. Once in a while at the very least.
Fine, you got me. Last month I entered in three receipts. Total. For the month.
Tracking receipts is boring and I hate it. I’m finding that my obsession with keeping the budget updated just doesn’t seem to extend to receipt entering. Which is sad, because I know I need to do it. When I don’t do it? I feel like I have been lazy. (and beat myself up over it)
Bill tracking is easy, when a bill comes in I change the text in that row on the spreadsheet to a light gray instead of black, so I know it’s there but it doesn’t draw my eye because it’s gone for the month. It also makes it a lot easier to copy to the new month’s budget because you just highlight all the cells that are light gray and make them black again and save the sheet as next month’s budget. Deleting causes problems I’m not prepared to deal with.
So how do you keep track of your expenses down to the day? I’m not good at micro-managing so this is something where I keep failing. We have the month set up for spend on eating out, personal spend, groceries, and gas – do you just keep going and make sure you don’t go over? Is it that simple? It seems like there should be something….more…to the whole thing.
Oh! I’m getting a new computer! We have been scouring the web as well as those fab home shopping networks to find a great deal. (You would be surprised at some of the deals on those shopping channels, seriously.) What we completely forgot about was Black Friday.
I know, most people live for Black Friday – not us – we rarely go shopping at 3am. But this year we found a great deal on a computer with 6gigs of RAM. Yes. Six. I’m a ram-whore so that means a lot to me. It also has an AMD processor which isn’t Intel – it’s faster. (AMD is faster according to my computer-building geek-a-licious friends, your mileage may vary.) It also comes with a completely unnecessary 21.5″ monitor and a much needed Canon photo printer.
Public Service Announcement: I hate Lexmark printers. At least the one I have. It has been a drag and nothing but trouble since day one.
So I’ll have a new computer to play with this weekend. I’m really excited. Then I get the new landline on the first of December.
It’s like I keep telling everyone who will listen, with all the changes coming up for our family (work raise, eligibility for 401(k), tax return, Christmas bonus, potential client opportunities for both of us, and more marketing for my freelance work) I wish I could wake up and have it just be February 1st, 2009. Sure I’d miss my 6th anniversary (1/1/09) but it would be worth it to wake up in February and just know where everything is for the rest of 2009.
Talk about a fairy tale for the new melinnium *grin* Sleeping Economist. Do you think Disney would be interested?
On Family, Turkey, Social Media and Freedom
Last week I took a week off from every social network out there.
I did have one five-minute stint on Facebook but that’s because an ex from 15 years ago added me because Facebook Friend Finder told him to and he doesn’t know I’m his ex. (I’m sporting my married name now so he wouldn’t recognize that…plus I look familiar if you’ve never met me before so people think they know me from somewhere and then move on.) So I added him as a friend and logged back out. Five minutes – from a woman that usually spends a couple hours a day on social networks.
As if that weren’t enough, I went to bed around nine at night and made an effort to relax.
It was amazing and wonderful.
Other than some reviews and giveaways I’m free as a bird right now. I did next month’s budget already and have not started implementing the steps for my 2009 business plan yet.
I’m seriously thinking about taking the rest of the year off and just, you know, being one with the holidays and my kids and just enjoy it all.
Thanksgiving
We went to Michigan yesterday to see my husband’s aunt and uncle. They’re having Thanksgiving for “his side” of the family and there is no way we’re going there. With no traffic it takes an hour to get there. With traffic? It could take three depending on the weather and other factors.
So we visited instead, so they know we care and we don’t have to drive there on Thanksgiving. This may be our new tradition. Travel the weekend before and get your love spread around.
With my great-grandmother going in and out of reality, my grandmother lonely and getting more bitter by the day, my crazy but loveable aunt, her boyfriend of fifteen years, my shut-in uncle and a possible visit by my cousin and her completely worthless boyfriend….it’s my idea of a family gathering!
Or a Lifetime movie. Whatever.
My family is so different from my husband’s family. They all look awesome on the outside, with homes that could be in a magazine and never talking about subjects that are politically incorrect. They don’t hug and I’ve never heard one say, “I love you.”
My family sounds like a wreck on paper – because they are – but there is so much love at a family gathering at my house. You KNOW everyone is stoked to see you! You get hugs like a wedding party exiting a church, there is tasting of food and laughter and fighting and drinking and singing.
Yes, singing.
So we do our best to visit his family members and then we go to my great-grandmother’s house for the actual holiday. It’s been working well and the visit yesterday was great for the kids and we had a good time. I think they did too.
Freedom
We had been wrestling with the decision of where to go for Thanksgiving for a week. Do we go there or do we stay here. It was confusing and we felt like there was no good answer.
I love it when option “C” – none of the above – saves the day. Getting stuck between two decisions is something that happens to me a lot, and just saying, “none of the above” out loud gives me the freedom to look at other options to solve the problem.
Really, what I want more than anything is to stay home for Thanksgiving. I want to enjoy the family I have created and that I nurture every day. I know it will happen eventually. Until then, I give thanks that it will happen someday.
Finance Fridays: Jealousy Edition
My children are running amok. Yes amok.
I let them skip their nap because I want them to go to bed sometime between now and 8pm (CST) – normally I’m a little more lax on the bedtime but not tonight.
Randy isn’t home. He’s out celebrating with his department from work at Dave & Busters. Possibly the coolest arcade for both adults and kids ever created – I mean, it has a bar. So you can get all liquored up and play video games.
But I’m here. With toddlers. That I haven’t had a break from all day. They’re lucky they’re cute, that’s all I’m saying.
Ok, end of the jealousy of my husband and on to my plans to take over the world.
On to the finance updates.
The Budget
The December budget is done. I’m getting better about making the budget in advance instead of on the last day of the month. Doing the budget right before the last electronic payment of the month comes out (car insurance) means I have accurate numbers, a good idea of if we’ve met the budget for last month, and if there is any money left over.
This month, there will be a little over $200 left over. We’re going to just leave that hanging out in the regular bank account so it can continue to be the savings that can be accessed in a pinch instead of putting it into the “takes three business days to access” savings.
The Debt
By the end of December our debt will look like this:
- Mortgage
- Two student loans
- Government debt for unemployment
- Bill collector debt
We were all prepared to have a payment come out of our account automatically for that bill collector debt from the company that wouldn’t call us back.
It didn’t.
So we are going to let sleeping dogs lie and ignore it until they call us again or contact us in order to set up another payment arrangement. We certainly won’t be giving them electronic access to our bank account again. Until then, it will just sit out there and we will focus on the savings account.
We can’t do anything with the student loans, including paying more on them than the payment currently scheduled, because they’re in rehabilitation until Feb. and April of 2009…so those are in a holding pattern.
I’m not messing with the government debt until I’ve saved it up in one lump sum and can pay it off with one check – better not to ruffle the feathers of the government and just let them keep taking my state tax refunds until that time.
Getting Another Car
We need another car. If the kids are going to school, if they are going to be in any activities, if I’m going to take them to the park or to grandmother’s house…it is a necessity.
The “new” car will be a beater that Randy drives to work. Emphasis on cheap, paid in full, with good gas mileage. We plan to go to the loacl auto auction.
Reducing the Bills
We’re setting up a landline and reducing the number of minutes on the cell phone plan. That will save us $100 or more a month on phone charges. We have serious telecom issues in this house. Finding the right balance to usage to price ratio has been tough.
We may also look into putting our homeowner’s insurance and car insurance with one company. If our credit didn’t look like a crime scene and Randy could stop getting into an accident every three years we would have done it already. We check once a year to see if we can do better, but I ran a homeowner quote today and before the credit check it was over $200 more annually than the rate we pay right now, and that was with the discount to have both policies with the same company. Yuk.
Savings
In addition to the $200/mo. that automatically goes into an ING Direct account, I’m looking at possibly setting up a separate $200/mo. automatic savings deposit into an eTrade savings account. The %3.30 percent I’m seeing on the teevee is appealing. I’ll have to research if that’s a “for real rate” or a teaser rate, but it’s not a bad plan to keep the money in a couple different places.
So it seems the overall theme for 2009 is going to be Saving. Saving as much as possible as fast as possible to create a real nest-egg for just-in-case type circumstances.
If we can swing sending the kids to preschool plus saving $400/mo. I’ll feel amazing about where we’re at financially.
Income
Randy will be (hopefully) getting a raise along with his January review. That’s all I can say about that. I have my business plan and will begin doing the research to put that into action next week. In addition to what I do now I’d like to take on one additional client during the first quarter of 2009 and see how it works out.
I want to be very cautious not to go overboard and burn myself out. Not if I want to work with corporations. I’d rather have less work and deliver consistent high-quality. That’s how a referral-based business is born.
We Shall See
With all the budgeting and whatnot, there is always a chance for plans to go awry and things to work out differently than one would hope. So…while my estimates and plans are not best case scenario, they also aren’t worst case scenario…and that means a lot can change from month to month.
Meltdown Over Toddler Choices and the Domino Effect
This week, after a couple of not-overwhelming deadlines, I decided to take my recently re-found groove (aka I don’t feel half-dead this week) and make sure to spend some time away from the computer and on my butt in the playroom with the kids.
We sang the alphabet song and twinkle, twinkle little star. We continued to potty train Abby and she’s almost accident free. (We have switched from the now-extinct brownies to M&Ms – much smaller.) Everyone is doing great and I feel better than I have in months.
Then the mail came and the Park District brochure came.
Normally this is where I’d flip through, sigh because my kids were too little or we couldn’t afford anything, and then I’d have a hopeful moment for the day when it was possible to put them in activities.
So, when I looked and found things Abby and Sadie were old enough to be in, I started to get excited. When I saw the prices and realized they weren’t that bad (we just used to be that poor) I got really excited.
I thought, “Hey, I should put them in an activity!”
Note: I never understood before kids how moms became taxi drivers. Now I do. I am still absolutely against overscheduling my kids.
But…I’m thinking I’ll only put them in one. That can’t possibly be too much, right?
Of course that means choosing one. Which one do I choose? Tennis? Ice skating? Swimming?
Who will their friends be if we put them in tennis? Will they have better friends with less chance of becoming a heroin junkie if I put them in swimming? Will they have sex at 13 if I put them in ice skating?
…and so the meltdown begins...
When you look back over your life, do you see how everything is connected to everything else? I wouldn’t be working at home now if X hadn’t happened and X wouldn’t have happened if Y hadn’t happened and so on and so forth all the way back to when I was born.
If I pick the wrong sport, my kid could get hit by a car. Not because of the sport, but by picking that sport my kid will be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because of my choice.
The pressure of knowing I’m putting them in school (and the drama of choosing a school) and sending them out of the house feels like I’m tipping that first domino of millions that will determine the course of their lives.
So the last verse of Que Sera Sera (the Doris Day version) keeps looping in my head:
Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, what will I be
Will I
be handsome, will I be rich
I tell them tenderly.Que Sera,
Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que Sera,
Sera
What will be, will be.
I may go mad eventually, but overall I’m much calmer now than I was yesterday. I just don’t want to kill my kids or turn them into teenage pregnancy stories or have them in an alley shooting the drugs.
It all starts from one decision. Mine. To put them in tennis or swimming or ice skating. Unless it’s putting them in the wrong school that tags them with a horrible fate.
Don’t you hate that feeling where you realize you are basically in control of your childrens’ fate? Too much power and responsibility. Maybe if they could just wake up and be 18 tomorrow…nah…they’re too cute to give away all the single digit years.
What will be, will be.
Weird afterthought: This fear may be hereditary. My mother told each of us kids as far back as I can remember she was sure we were going to die by the time we were 18. She was so sure. Maybe that made us more vigilant and kept us alive, but I never plan on telling my kids the same thing. It was really creepy. *laugh*
Day Out At The Costco With Both Toddlers
If someone could showed me a video five years ago of me trying to wrangle two toddlers in the Costco bathroom who each ran into a separate stall…well…
If you then showed me how I looked running back and forth between the two stalls trying to get everyone on a toilet (without falling in) and going potty without getting their clothing all wet with pee…well…
I guess one of the reasons the human race keeps going is that no one warns us how hard the hard times really are. Even in the middle of a really fun day out of my house with a friend and her baby, the restroom incident is something I pray I never have to repeat again.
Did I mention I left my house today? Yeah, I know. First time since January I think.
I had a lot of fun. Surprisingly, my toddlers are pretty rock star awesome in public. They listened, they stayed where they were supposed to, they didn’t cry, they didn’t whine.
They had a really good time.
Today is probably the first day I’m really looking forward to getting a second car so I can take the kids out shopping during the day. Or to the park. Or to some little class that lasts two hours at the Park District.
I’m sure all you rock star moms out there figured it out a long time ago, but today was the first time I felt really secure that I can actually do this with my girls. By this I mean go out of the house with them and not be the mom that everyone feels sorry for when they look at her awful children that she can’t control.
But they’re not. They said, “please” and “thank you” for every sample, they shared with each other, and didn’t fight.
I’m reallly happy about this. Tired and half dead with exhaustion – but really, really happy.
For those of you dragging your babies hither and thither since they were born, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that. I chose to take the whole going out in public thing slowly. Starting with family once in a while, then family more often, then friends’ houses, then the store now and then with all of us, then individually to the store with one parent and now…both kids, one parent.
Because I just don’t believe in little ones leaving the house so much when they’re itty bitty babies. Not my babies. I don’t think it does anything bad to them, but why force all the excess brain overload of, you know, the world when they can be home and learn in a familiar place?
It’s worked beautifully for us. Maybe after a few times of doing this Randy and I will take the kids out to eat. You know, months from now, not next week.
Alright, I’m going to go jam the kids full of CapriSun to reinforce Abby’s potty training. Yea. (Abby is down to no accidents during the day and diapers for nap and nighttime.) Sadie? She is dry 24/7 no problems.
Social Media and Social Networking Detox
Nothing said by a stranger should have the ability to rile me up.
I need to focus on the business plan we made last week and finish redesigning the cover of my book so it can actually, finally go to print.
Last but certainly not least, I need to make a list of companies I would like to do work for and find out who to talk to in order to make that happen.
In order to make all of these things happen while still taking care of my kids and staying sane, I’m going to attempt a five day (one business week) detox from all social networks and social media. The only online activities I will participate in are:
- Reading and commenting on blogs.
- Posting to this blog and post another giveaway Monday and Wednesday on MommyBlog Reviews.
- Checking and responding to email.
I am going to see what a week with focus and determination can bring. Plus I would like to know for sure I’m not completely addicted to Twitter.
If anything good happens, I hope someone lets me know. Otherwise, I’ll have to spend my week in the dark…maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I’ve had enough molehills for the week and it hasn’t even started.
Wish me luck!
