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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
New Workspace – New Priorities – Old Stress
Right now I’m blogging from my living room – a huge change from being in my office environment doing office-y type things. I’m trying to find a good balance between getting stuff done and being a good parent. I’ve really enjoyed the past few months where my focus has been a lot more housewife and a lot less breadwinner. My kids get into less trouble, there are fewer murals of crayon love on my walls, and they seem to be bonding with their little sister faster than I could have hoped. There is no jealousy because I’m more available – even with a new baby – than I have been for them in the past couple years. They’re thrilled to have this kind of access to mom, so they don’t notice that a lot of that attention is going to the newborn.
But even with all the enjoyment and happiness there is this little hint of a feeling inside me. It’s like a churning kind of feeling. The paranoia that comes with not actively working. Sure, I should be working soon…but I’m not right. this. second. and that worries me on a deep level.
It also worries me that I may never be happy being a housewife unless I have some way of bringing in income. This probably comes from my great-grandmother who raised me with a few primary beliefs:
- Don’t rely on anyone else to take care of you. Marriage is about partnership, but if something happens, you need to be able to take care of yourself and your family solo.
- Women weren’t meant to sit around taking care of babies. They will never be truly happy unless they can provide for those children with more than hair and makeup and a pleasant attitude to make sure they get fed. (Sounds a lot like #1 now that I write it down – she was an ace at reinforcing her beliefs!)
So I’m trapped in this place where I don’t know if my feelings are my own or if they are just a remnant of my childhood teaching. Great-gramma also taught me that nothing is ever good enough – things can always be improved or done in a better way. So, even if I am taking care of my children and making an income it probably won’t feel like enough.
But how do you recalibrate your soul for the proper definition of “enough”? I don’t see how that’s even possible.
I’m torn. Thrilled to be a great parent to my children, enjoying letting my husband take the lead and letting him support the family…but feeling a serious lack of great businesswoman in the mix.
The laptop in the living room is a start. Now I plan on using it to create something good that will quench the junkie-like craving for money/security that I can’t seem to shake. Sure, I could pick a number and when my savings account gets to that tell myself that’s all the security I need…but that would be so arbitrary (I know there are guidelines – 8 months of income … 6 months of expenses … but how do you REALLY know how much savings is enough?? You can’t!) So I just set the goal higher and higher every time we get to one.
There are worse things to crave than financial security, I guess.
Spending Too Much But Not Really
So…we paid for a bunch of stuff in advance to buy ourselves some breathing room.
- We won’t owe anything to the martial arts class until next June or July (we paid for a year in advance and got a %20 discount)
- We paid the first semester of preschool for both girls and won’t owe anything until January (only got a $25 discount for paying in full, but better than nothing).
- Car insurance? Yep. Six months’ worth (over $100 savings for paying in full!!) paid out this month.
The key is to make sure we’re saving enough that we can keep up these bulk payments. I went a little crazy shopping for baby – this is the first baby where we had extra money I could use for shopping so it got a little out of control.
Now we are, as a family, trying to cut back and live like paupers again…no matter what is in the savings account. It’s so easy to get sucked into spending $40 here and $35 there – but WOW do those “not so big” purchases add up…and FAST! I know that’s a no-brainer thing to say, but it doesn’t matter how much you know something or people tell you something or you’re in agreement with something – when you see it, when you feel it – all added up in your bank statement it’s enough to take your breath away and you suddenly understand it on a whole new level.
I’m trying to come up with a plan to pay off the student loans. I want those gone *so* much I don’t even know how to put it into words.
I did start listening to Dave Ramsey again – just to keep my head in the game and eye on the prize and any other catchy phrases for not losing focus you can think of!
The savings account is nice, but reducing baseline expenses is where my personal stress reduction fairy lives. That’s why I’m doing the whole “going debt free” thing. It’s just what makes my psyche happy.
I hate having monthly bills. They just make me nervous.
Toll Free Panic Attack
Today the phone rang…when I checked the caller ID it was an 800 number and underneath just said, “Toll Free Call.”
I damn near freaked out completely trying to figure out if I knew who it was, or why I’d be getting a call from a toll free number. Finally, with my heart racing, I let it go to voicemail and then used Google to look up the number and find out who the heck had just called me.
You see, even though it’s been almost a year since we got rid of our consumer debt (we’re still rocking student loans and a mortgage) I still freak out when I see a toll free caller on my phone. That old “debt collector is calling” fear still lives somewhere inside of me, just waiting to burst out unexpectedly based on caller ID.
Turns out it was an automated message letting me know Lane Bryant was having a sale. I called back and opted out of the phone list, because even though I do shop there, I certainly don’t need to know, by phone, about every upcoming sale.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea – I think that could be great for some people that like being called and “in the know” – I especially appreciate there was a way to opt out of the calls.
But how long do you think it takes for the panic to go away when I see that 800 number on the phone? Is that panic forever? It’s a shame that my brain has been trained to freak out and I didn’t realize it until now.
First Step to Financial Control
If someone dropped you in the middle of a forest and told you to find the ranger station to get home, it would kind of suck.
You wouldn’t know the right direction to go and if you started walking you would have no idea if you were making any progress or if you were going backward.
Budgeting and getting your finances together is the same way.
If you randomly decide to start paying your debts lowest to highest without knowing if you even have ten extra dollars a month to throw at that debt, you may dig yourself deeper into debt or find yourself not being able to afford payments on other bills (like the electricity) if you just start spending more money without knowing how much you have to spend. Even if the spending is for awesomeness like debt repayment.
Making a Map
If you were dropped in the middle of the forest with a map, you could figure out which way that ranger station was and get your happy ass out of the forest before you were eaten by mosquitoes and other scary forest creatures, right? (Even if you don’t know which way North is…if it was get to the ranger station or become Cheetah food…I have total faith in you that you could figure it out.)
Your finances are your forest, no one else’s. That means the best person to make a map of the area is you!
Even better? The very first step involves one piece of paper, one pen/pencil, and your memory – for a start.
Make one column called Income and one column called Expenses on a piece of paper and start scribbling. Your mortgage/rent, electric, gas, cable, phone, tv. Don’t play the “I don’t know how much the bill is” game with me, either. You can look it up online or make a good guess or check your bank records. It doesn’t have to be exact to start with…but you have to have some idea.
If you find you have to keep looking things up because you have no idea how much your bills are – that means you’re doing the right thing and this mapmaking is totally in order.
Now get your income down. Everything counts! Do you get $4/mo. from your blog? Add it! Figure out where every penny that comes into your house comes from and write it down.
The Goal of the List: Are your expenses more or less than your Income?
Knowing where you are right now can really help you understand if you are stressed about money because you don’t have enough, or if you are stressed about money because you could be doing better.
Not having enough money is an emergency situation that needs to be looked at and solved immediately. Either by drastically reducing expenses or getting another job or a more reliable income from home.
If you have enough but aren’t sure where the extra is going, start keeping track of how much you’re spending at the gas station, at fast food or restaurants, at the bookstore…you know, the money you spend when you aren’t paying attention. See what expenses you can reduce while tracking your spending to balance out and keep that extra money in your hand, not down the tubes.
Mutual Funds vs. Stocks
I know according to most financial advice people I should not, under any circumstances, invest in the stock market in any way until my debt is cleared up.
Screw that.
I don’t want to pass up clearance prices now to come back in five years when the market has stabalized. If that makes me reckless, so be it. It’ not like I’m financing a new car or something.
Here’s my question:
Why would I invest in a mutual fund?
If I choose five stocks (or 10 or 15) isn’t that (basically) the same thing as being in a mutual fund but without the fees?
I understand that a mutual fund has a manager that watches the stocks within the fund and makes changes as appropriate, but how is that different than day trading? (Other than the fact it’s someone else doing the day trading.)
It seems to me that a diversified portfolio of stocks is basically the same thing as a mutual fund. Ok, a diversified portfolio is more like a Blue Chip Mutual Fund or something…if I bought shares in a Technology Mutual Fund it would *not* be diversified except within that sector.
I hope this isn’t the dumbest investment question on the face of the earth, but it has had me confused for a while now. I guess I just feel more comfortable making my own decisions than handing my money over to some fund manager and hoping for the best.
Your thoughts? I’d love to know your answer to this!
Finance Update (finally, right?)
Whew. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about finances, right?
Our finances are solidly ok. We have our baby emergency fund (a la Dave Ramsey) and it will be greatly improved when I receive the check from my formerly-freelance-now-employee gig for the month of April.
A whole month’s check we expected around the 10th that still hasn’t come as of today, the 23rd. Really, both Randy and I are amazed that we haven’t needed it. We even paid out $450 to a writer this month…all on only part of the income we thought we were going to have coming in this month.
Which gave us an idea.
What if we just put the checks from the one gig straight into savings when we get them?
Sure, it would mean living on the lower-income gig, but why would that be so bad? Sure we could use it to make slightly higher mortgage payments and slightly higher student loan payments…but why not save that money and then, when there is enough, pay off one of the student loans entirely instead of using the snowball method?
I understand if we were spenders that this just wouldn’t work, but really, now that we have enough money and aren’t always freaking out and thinking when we have an extra $20 it might be the very last extra $20 we will ever have (and I’m not exaggerating, that’s really what it felt like) we’re way less likely to spend it on stuff we shouldn’t.
Really, once you have the feeling of having money in a savings account you just don’t touch, it becomes easier and easier not to spend the money. We are less likely to be lured in by sales at the store – knowing that if we really needed it we could shop around or wait until the next sale – because there will be money if we need it.
So, in just a couple years it seems we’ve gone from not being able to put 10% of our income into a savings account to deciding to put 50% of our income into a savings account.
We are officially living *way* below our means and it doesn’t feel like we’re giving up a thing.
Amazing.
Image Source: xymonau
Budget – Can You Remind Me What That Is Again?
I was doing so well.
Keeping up with every payment, keeping track of how much we spent on groceries, on entertainment ($0) on eating out on .. everything.
I was a budgeting rock star.
This month we spent a crazy amount of money so far – and it’s only December 5th! A new computer, a desk to put it on, and various and sundry other things. What I’m saying is we went from having $1400 in the bank to $200 almost overnight.
For real.
We used to do this back when we had more bills than money. We’d have $200 extra dollars (usually because we forgot about a bill and thought it was paid when it was not), and the minute we knew it was extra, it would be gone – fast. Usually we’d go over the extra amount and then end up paying a hundred or so in overdraft fees…all because we had extra money.
Now we know that every dollar is going somewhere, savings or investment, bill or grocery shopping, there is no "extra" money. That’s been working really well.
But, you see, it’s bonus season in December…which ends up closely followed by January tax filing season – and that means two hits of cashflow into our account that we are not used to.
So we went out like gangsters (or mob wives if you prefer) and whipped out that fat roll of bills and spent like the money was on fire.
Oops.
But I don’t feel guilty – we didn’t buy worthless stuff and we didn’t spend over what we have for the month. There is still extra – but it’s not really extra – it has a place it needs to live.
The savings account.
That Pesky Bill Collector is Back
Oh! Remember in Why Bill Collectors Are Idiots when I was talking about calling the company and them completely ignoring my calls and not returning them?
They sent us a mildly threatening letter!
Here’s a short quote (I thought you might find this funny)
We have not received a response to our previous notice requesting full payment of the above referenced account. We must assume more firm and direct collection action will be required to collect this past due obligation.
More firm and direct action? What, like returning a phone call?
I emailed three lawyers on Monday who work with debtors rights but haven’t received a response yet. I really just want someone to handle this so Randy and I don’t have to. I want them to go through the verification process and everything else so I can be sure these idiots don’t get the money they’re requesting and then lose a payment or forget to credit the account.
I’m worried my debt is not enough to be worth a lawyer’s time.
But I feel I have to try. I mean, when a company doesn’t return your three messages about paying them and then sends a letter threatening more firm and direct collection action…I just don’t feel like they’re on the ball, know what I mean?
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.
