Six months after beginning a program of keeping track of every penny that passes through my fingers based on the tenants in Your Money or Your Life I am happy to say that I’m still with the program. Each night I log in my ledger my expenditures and credit my deposits. It not only reflects what is in the bank, but what checks have been written and what is in my purse. Each month’s receipts are marked and filed in a file box. Should the IRS question our expenditures on my disabled daughter I have the proof of them close at hand. If something needs to be returned for once I know where the receipt is.
My husband is impressed. Several years ago he began the year by writing down everything he spent, but soon gave it up as too tedious. He is much more organized than I so to impress him is really something. I have modified the book’s suggested record keeping to make it simple for me, for if a thing becomes too tedious I will give it up as well. For the most part expenditures are divided into food and non-food with another category for family expenditures such as my mother’s security system and my grandson’s music lessons.
I believe that my efforts have infected the children a bit. All of them are doing better at watching their pennies and not wasting anything. We all are growing gardens and shopping smart. I’ve even managed to put a little aside toward my daughter’s 40th birthday two years hence. I hope to have enough to take us to Las Vegas or Disneyland (her pick) and maybe even enough to take my father’s ashes to Pearl Harbor. My fantasy is for all of us to go which probably won’t happen, but it is fun to dream, even in the midst of a recession. Today I have to decide if I want to spend money on a new toaster or continue turning the bread around to get both sides toasted in the one we've got…
Showing posts with label Your Money or Your Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Your Money or Your Life. Show all posts
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Being Cents-able
I purchased a used copy of Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin and it became one of the many books waiting to be read in my room. Frugality has been a large part of my adulthood out of necessity. This book came up in Internet reading I did on that subject and since I was having a very bad year at work and longed to quit, the notion of being able to live on less was enticing. Summer, home repairs, and a sick mother sidetracked me.
At the end of the summer, as we watched financial institution fail and the stock market fall like a lead brick, we learned that there was a possibility of my husband’s job ending and our income being drastically cut. My quitting was no longer an option, but the urgency to stretch our money was renewed. After some digging through the stacks of books in my bedroom I found Your Money or Your Life and with highlighter in hand I began to read.
The book is not about creating a budget. It is about developing a new appreciation for your time, life energy, and knowledge about where that and your money goes. I am still in the baby steps of financial independence and living the sort of life my heart yearns for, but on the 8th of January I paid off Christmas and today I put $100into savings.
I must note that I am the one reading the book and attempting to change my life. My husband is frugal by nature, makes a great deal more money than I and we have different spheres of financial responsibility. I say this to point out that my finances amount to my salary and the drizzles and drabs of money I get each month. My resources are responsible for food for six, sundries for three, and clothing for two along with gifts and a YMCA membership. That said, if you are interested in my financial journey, read on.
Dominguez and Robin talk about people’s impulse to buy “gazing pins” which is anything an individual has trouble saying no to. Generally these are things that a person collects, sometimes just for the sake of collecting. Their collection has long since surpassed anything enjoyable. I have a cousin who has a collection of china dog figurines that has become an obsession for her. I’ll bet she has 3,000 of them if she has one and if there’s one at the thrift store you can bet she will buy it. My weakness is books. I am getting better at saying no to books, but I am not always successful.
I started the physical act of accounting for each and every penny—and I do mean every penny which includes the ones that I still stop to pick off the ground—in the middle of December. I might have waited until New Year’s, but it actually seemed like a good idea in the middle of Christmas madness to begin to take a hard look at where my money goes so I dug out an old ledger that I’d purchased at Goodwill. This baby is really old, but old things appeal to me and I knew enough of my personality and habits to know that it was going to have to be pleasing to me to do what the book was asking—keep track of every penny.
As is so often true, I missed my dad at this point because I remember him using just such a ledger to keep track of our family finances and his and my mother’s checking account. Each month the bank sent him their canceled checks and he would let me put them in numerical order and then he wrote them down in the ledger in columns according to what they were for. I remember it looking complicated and that may be why I’ve steered clear of such accounting, but Dominguez and Robin do not suggest that you use some complicated method or program. Just do what makes sense to you and pretty soon you’ll be making cents. Okay, no dad to call on, but I made something up for myself.
I started out small. For the last half of December and all of January I kept track of spending in two categories, food and nonfood, and of course a running balance showing deposits and expenditures. I color coded things. Nonfood, deposits, and balances are purple. Food totals are green. Expenditures are red. In conjunction with this I am being religious about saving receipts. Because I receive self-addressed envelopes from institutions I do business with, but respond on line, I have a cache of envelopes I am too frugal to toss out. As New Year’s approached I took twelve of these and marked them for the months of the year. Another Goodwill find, a large file box with dividers, became designated as the home of the envelopes as they fill up.
On New Year’s Eve I wrote the totals for my food and nonfood expenditures for ½ of December on the envelope, licked it shut, put it in the box and turned to a fresh page in my ledger. Across the top I wrote “January 2009’ and kept exactly the same sort of records. These are little mundane pleasures like the pens, but whatever floats my boat, right?
Because of my having shopped for Christmas for twelve months instead of one and because I was watching every penny during the latter half of December I was able to zero out the balance on my credit card on January 8th. I felt like confetti should have fallen from the ceiling, but I did my own little dance of joy.
Making the month and my money come out even has been problematic for me, largely I suspect because I haven’t paid attention to my spending as much as I thought I was. Immediately accounting for every penny I spend has had the effect of making me think not twice, but three times, before I do it. Taking the time to sit down and figure out what was food and nonfood and keep my running totals and balance of everything from what is in the bank to what is in my wallet has had a calming effect on me. And I know that at any given moment, assuming my math is correct, I know exactly how much money I have, not just in the bank, but altogether.
Since I get paid on the last working day of the month as far as I am concerned my financial month ended with one last trip to the store after work today. When I ran my numbers I came out with $109.56 at the bottom of the page. Eureka! I came out ahead and before I can go spend it on any gazing pins I went to the computer and transferred $100 from my checking account to savings.
For February I have added categories to the ledger. I am keeping track of charity, health expenditures, money I spend on my mother, lessons (grandson’s violin lesson, my daughter’s tutor, the YMCA), as well as food and deposits and, of course, books. Stay tuned for the continuing story of my financial renaissance.
At the end of the summer, as we watched financial institution fail and the stock market fall like a lead brick, we learned that there was a possibility of my husband’s job ending and our income being drastically cut. My quitting was no longer an option, but the urgency to stretch our money was renewed. After some digging through the stacks of books in my bedroom I found Your Money or Your Life and with highlighter in hand I began to read.
The book is not about creating a budget. It is about developing a new appreciation for your time, life energy, and knowledge about where that and your money goes. I am still in the baby steps of financial independence and living the sort of life my heart yearns for, but on the 8th of January I paid off Christmas and today I put $100into savings.
I must note that I am the one reading the book and attempting to change my life. My husband is frugal by nature, makes a great deal more money than I and we have different spheres of financial responsibility. I say this to point out that my finances amount to my salary and the drizzles and drabs of money I get each month. My resources are responsible for food for six, sundries for three, and clothing for two along with gifts and a YMCA membership. That said, if you are interested in my financial journey, read on.
Dominguez and Robin talk about people’s impulse to buy “gazing pins” which is anything an individual has trouble saying no to. Generally these are things that a person collects, sometimes just for the sake of collecting. Their collection has long since surpassed anything enjoyable. I have a cousin who has a collection of china dog figurines that has become an obsession for her. I’ll bet she has 3,000 of them if she has one and if there’s one at the thrift store you can bet she will buy it. My weakness is books. I am getting better at saying no to books, but I am not always successful.
I started the physical act of accounting for each and every penny—and I do mean every penny which includes the ones that I still stop to pick off the ground—in the middle of December. I might have waited until New Year’s, but it actually seemed like a good idea in the middle of Christmas madness to begin to take a hard look at where my money goes so I dug out an old ledger that I’d purchased at Goodwill. This baby is really old, but old things appeal to me and I knew enough of my personality and habits to know that it was going to have to be pleasing to me to do what the book was asking—keep track of every penny.
As is so often true, I missed my dad at this point because I remember him using just such a ledger to keep track of our family finances and his and my mother’s checking account. Each month the bank sent him their canceled checks and he would let me put them in numerical order and then he wrote them down in the ledger in columns according to what they were for. I remember it looking complicated and that may be why I’ve steered clear of such accounting, but Dominguez and Robin do not suggest that you use some complicated method or program. Just do what makes sense to you and pretty soon you’ll be making cents. Okay, no dad to call on, but I made something up for myself.
I started out small. For the last half of December and all of January I kept track of spending in two categories, food and nonfood, and of course a running balance showing deposits and expenditures. I color coded things. Nonfood, deposits, and balances are purple. Food totals are green. Expenditures are red. In conjunction with this I am being religious about saving receipts. Because I receive self-addressed envelopes from institutions I do business with, but respond on line, I have a cache of envelopes I am too frugal to toss out. As New Year’s approached I took twelve of these and marked them for the months of the year. Another Goodwill find, a large file box with dividers, became designated as the home of the envelopes as they fill up.
On New Year’s Eve I wrote the totals for my food and nonfood expenditures for ½ of December on the envelope, licked it shut, put it in the box and turned to a fresh page in my ledger. Across the top I wrote “January 2009’ and kept exactly the same sort of records. These are little mundane pleasures like the pens, but whatever floats my boat, right?
Because of my having shopped for Christmas for twelve months instead of one and because I was watching every penny during the latter half of December I was able to zero out the balance on my credit card on January 8th. I felt like confetti should have fallen from the ceiling, but I did my own little dance of joy.
Making the month and my money come out even has been problematic for me, largely I suspect because I haven’t paid attention to my spending as much as I thought I was. Immediately accounting for every penny I spend has had the effect of making me think not twice, but three times, before I do it. Taking the time to sit down and figure out what was food and nonfood and keep my running totals and balance of everything from what is in the bank to what is in my wallet has had a calming effect on me. And I know that at any given moment, assuming my math is correct, I know exactly how much money I have, not just in the bank, but altogether.
Since I get paid on the last working day of the month as far as I am concerned my financial month ended with one last trip to the store after work today. When I ran my numbers I came out with $109.56 at the bottom of the page. Eureka! I came out ahead and before I can go spend it on any gazing pins I went to the computer and transferred $100 from my checking account to savings.
For February I have added categories to the ledger. I am keeping track of charity, health expenditures, money I spend on my mother, lessons (grandson’s violin lesson, my daughter’s tutor, the YMCA), as well as food and deposits and, of course, books. Stay tuned for the continuing story of my financial renaissance.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Voluntary Simplicity
Confessions of a PackratThe notion of “voluntary simplicity” in connection with me seems crazy. Simplicity is not one of my characteristics. Packrat is. I come from a long line of packrats. My mother has a T-shirt that says “I’m not a packrat, I’m a collector.” We have to be forgiven. My mother was raised in a house that not only contained her parents’ trumpery, but her grandmother’s as well.
Many afternoons were spent by my cousin and me exploring our grandmother’s basement and the trunks that contained generations of interesting clothing and artifacts. Grandma Mills gave us leave to poke around all we liked except for the trunk which contained the belongings of our mothers’ brother. The uncle we would never know in this life had been thrown from a horse in front of a truck and killed at age thirteen and obtained instant sainthood in the minds of our grandparents and to the confusion of his preschool age sisters. I am now the keeper of many of Austin’s things, including a cigar box almost identical even to the contents to the one in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’m not about to get rid of them, but I do consider myself a recovering packrat.
I’m not as bad as some family members who could probably benefit from medication. One relative sobbed over lunch one day, “My neighbor died and her husband had a dumpster in front of the house before I knew what was happening. I just know Pat will do that if I die first.” You think? This woman has trails through her house of stuff. Not only do I not want to be her, I want to create a life that is less cluttered physically and emotionally. We hang on to things for a variety of reasons. I’m trying to let go.
Before the lazy days of Summer were abruptly ended by the realization that we were free falling into an economic recession, I had obtained a copy of Dominguez & Robin’s Your Money or Your Life. Reading it and getting serious about creating new patterns of living became imperative. The philosophy behind the book and what has become the voluntary simplicity movement is not a budget, but a different way of consuming and living and seems to be the perfect reading material for a season generally given up to conspicuous consumption and perfect for making New Year’s resolutions.
Your Money or Your Life is about figuring out what “enough” looks like. I’m working on that. I have already figured out what “too much” looks like. It is about living simply so that other may simply live and walking gently through this life and Earth.
With snow and ice slowing down the pace of life I have been able to focus on organizing some things with an eye to paring down my entirely too large pile and beginning afresh with a New Year. It is a mighty task I’ve set upon for I’ve been collecting for more years than I would like to admit to. It may well take me all of 2009 to get to where I’d like to be, but it’s the journey that counts so I keep plugging away at eliminating things and accounting for every penny of my money. This time next year I hope to have less stuff and more financial independence.
You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve got to get back to creating the life I want to have.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Your Money or Your Life
I know I have enough. Despite the fact that my husband’s job will end sometime between now and the end of next year I know we can make it and if I didn’t buy one more “thing” I’d be fine. My Christmas wish list says specifically nothing that requires dusting or feeding, but includes time with my children and only consumable things like candles and incense.So for my continuing process of discovering what is “enough” and working the Your Money or Your Life program I’ve sent for a copy of my earnings statement from Social Security. I know our financial advisor has one and I could call and ask him how much I’ve earned in my lifetime, but I want one of my own. They come each year as a birthday gift from the government and since I’ve never had a high paying job I find them depressing to look at, but in the spirit of working the program I will truly examine it when it comes in an effort to see my financial worth although I realize that this is not my worth as a human being.
I know that between us, my husband and I have assets enough that we ought not to become a burden to the children although we will never live in luxury, but I think we can do better which will include in divesting ourselves of a lot of stuff that we’ve collected along the way. I am planning a big trip to Goodwill. This morning I pulled more Amy-never-wears-clothes out of her room. When shopping for her last weekend my husband had said, “Amy, you have to get rid of an item for each one you are getting.” We have probably eliminated five for each item she got.
Paring down our pile will probably take the three years we’ve set for ourselves in which to get ready to relocate to the coast. We spent a collective 114 years acquiring it, but each bag that goes out the door is a step closer to our goal of living simply and reaching financial security.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Literally weeks before the stock market beginning its downward free fall this year I had ordered a used copy of Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Voluntary Simplicity is something I had a rudimentary knowledge of and thrift and I are old friends, but I have entirely too much stuff even if most of it was acquired from thrift stores and garage sales. My New Year’s resolution will be not only to see how little money I can spend and how much debt we can pay off, but to pare down our pile. We could not sell our house and move to the coast right now if the economy was great. There’s no way that all our junk that fills a five bedroom suburban house will fit into a three bedroom country Victoria. Besides, I do not want to leave a mountain of things for my children to dispose of someday. Instead of having them get a dumpster, I am making trips to Goodwill. Figuring out what “enough” looks like is a central theme in Your Money.So I’m beginning my journey already. Because my daughter recently got some new clothing this morning I began going through her dresser and closets, pulling out things she hasn’t worn in ages and bagged them up for Goodwill. We are planning a chicken coop and a vegetable garden for Spring which should add to our table and entertainment.
I will be reporting on my successes and failures and I invite your stories about what you’re doing to save money and simplify your life.
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