Financial Security

Help Me with Accountability, Week 1

Posted on by noemikjames / 17 Comments

So, I’m feeling a lot of emotions about putting this out there, for a number of reasons. Today was a really bad day, and I’m already emotionally spent, which makes writing about this even harder. But I know I won’t have time tomorrow and I made a promise to myself, and all of you, so I’m going to put it out there, for better or worse.

I do want to preface this week’s spending by explaining that this was my one week of the summer to be productive. My daughter was still in full time childcare and I had more time this week to GET THINGS DONE than I will any week coming up. Knowing this, I did most/all of the purchasing for my backyard project this week. You may remember when I announced my spending freeze that I was still green lighting some work in the backyard because I haven’t been down there, let alone spent any money on it, in almost two years. It really needed a little work, and I’m allowing myself to spend $400 back there to get some of the work done. I spent a good portion of that $400 this week.

Also, my father is leaving for a three week trip to Europe on Monday and he is my go-to bike person, so if I had waited on bike stuff I wouldn’t have had him around to help me with it until well into July.

As the above paragraph suggests, I did decide to move forward with the bike. After obsessively researching ways to get around with two kids on two (or more) wheels, I decided a cargo bike would be ideal. (I don’t feel comfortable with a trailer on city streets–they are too wide to tow in traffic.) Then I obsessively researched cargo bikes and realized I could never afford one. I was able to compromise when I found a seat that can accommodate a child over 5 years old on a rack on the back of a bike and a seat that can hold a child up to 33lbs for the front of a bike. My family already has a hybrid bike that would work well enough so I just needed to get the seats. The seat big enough for a child my daughter’s age and size was hard to find and I knew I’d never find it used (I could only find one company in all of California that even carries it) so I bought that new for $280 all told. I found a brand-new-still-in-the-box front seat “used” on Craigslist for $100 (about $75) less than I would have paid retail (the two other used front seaters listed were already sold by the time I emailed).

The bike project so far has cost me $380. I will probably also need to get a double kickstand installed and I can’t seem to find my daughter’s old helmet anywhere for my son to use, so a little more money will be spent, but I’m going to look for the helmet used (or see if a friend has one to give/lend me) and the kickstand won’t be much. I think all told it will be just a little over $400.

My plan is to get comfortable riding the bike and see if my kids are into it. If we all love it I might think about upgrading in a year, when my son outgrows the front seat and we’ll need a whole new set up (which will probably require a new bike). I think $400 is a reasonable amount to spend on trying this (especially after looking at so many cargo bikes going for $2,500-$6,500 dollars) and I can always sell the seats used when we move on from this configuration to make back some of what I spent.

As for the yard, I’m putting down landscaping fabric on one side and then covering it with pebbles that my parents are giving me (I’ll be scooping them out of their side yard, filling bags with them, and bringing them to my house) then planting a few succulents from a failed gardening project at work in that space. (People kept stealing plants from a cool vertical garden I made out of my old art tubs so I finally stopped replanting them–the few that remained got pretty big so I’ll be moving them to my backyard.) I also realized that I just can’t keep up with weeding of the big square in the middle of my yard (plus we can’t water anything right now anyway) so I bought more flagstones to place around the seven big stones I placed two years ago. I’m not going to plant any ground cover between them this year–both to save money and water–so it will be pretty ugly until next year when I can invest more in the project, but at least there won’t be as much soil available for ALL THE WEEDS to grow in.

So, as you look over my spending please keep in mind that this week contains some financial investments I’m making in my life and home over the summer, and is not representative of my spending moving forward. I think next week will be a much better indicator of where my money will be going over the next seven weeks. (And yes, I know I need to work on not eating out so much. Baby steps.)

6/13/2015 Tax on Consignment Purchase (for birthday present $1.29
6/13/2015 Piroshki’s for lunch (son and I) $10.50
6/13/2015 Dinner with Chelsey $47.30
6/14/2015 Laughing Squid (old website hosting–NEED TO CANCEL!) $12.00
6/14/2015 Groceries (Trader Joes) $186.93
6/14/2015 Office Max (Ink for printer, page protectors) $81.51
6/15/2015 Big Kid Bike Seat (New) $281.84
6/15/2015 Gas $50.00
6/15/2015 Landscaping Fabric, pins, yard waste bags $40.76
6/16/2015 Flagstones for yard $238.05
6/16/2015 Sand for the sandbox (my mom gave me) $34.87
6/16/2015 Honey (promised PB+honey sandwiches) $4.65
6/16/2015 Pretzels at park $7.00
6/16/2015 PCIT appointment $150.00
6/17/2015 Baby Bike Seat (Used on Craigslist) $100.00
6/17/2015 20 tickets at Pixieland + 12 tokens + 2 pretzles $35.72
6/17/2015 Bay Bridge toll $5.00
6/17/2015 Inside Out Tickets on Fandango (for 3 people) $31.00
6/18/2015 BART to and from downtown $3.60
6/18/2015 Contribution to pizza dinner with friends $10.00
6/18/2015 Bus to dinner with friends $2.25
6/19/2015 Sandwiches for lunch with mom and sister (+ tip) $20.00
6/19/2015 Mandatory swim cap at daughter’s first swim lesson $8.16
6/19/2015 Rice Crispy Treat reward at first swim lesson $1.00
Financial Security

Well, that explains it! (a.k.a. How did I not know?)

Posted on by noemikjames / 51 Comments

NicoleandMaggie recommended All Your Worth for my financial woes and it became available at the library this week. I’m only three chapters in but I think I can safely say that the premise is to create financial security by balancing your money. In what reminds me of the Zone Diet, their recommended spending 50% of what you make on Must-Haves, 30% on Wants and 20% on Savings.

Right away they help you calculate what percentage of your monthly take-home you’re spending on Must-Haves. These are your necessities, the things you’d have to pay even if you lost a job or were suddenly put on disability. This does not include anything you could cancel if need be (like cable) or anything you can live without (basically all spending except the bare minimum on food–they suggested inputting $650 for a family of four). It’s your mortgage or rent, your insurance premiums, your transportation costs, your required debt repayment. It’s the stuff you have to pay lest someone come knocking.

I filled in the worksheet and did the basic and math and was shocked to find that just over 75% of what we make goes to the basic foundation of our lives. That includes $650 on food, which is way less than we actually spend every month. Immediately it became clear why we have nothing left to put away each month. We’re using almost all of it just to get by.

I don’t know why I was so shocked by this. I knew we cut it close every month. Back when I was paying for our health insurance, the $2,500 premium was putting us over. We had nothing left. We racked up $10,000 in debt the year our son was born because I was part time, I took three months off (mostly unpaid) and my husband’s insurance coverage at work kicked in six months after we were promised it would.

I guess it’s just seeing it in black and white, and realizing how far we are from the 50%-30%-20% ideal they suggest. There is no way we’re ever going to bring our monthly “must-haves” down 25%, not without selling our house, leaving our jobs and moving very, very far from our family, probably to an entirely different state.

There are suggestions for ways to bring down your “must-haves” but we already collect rent on a portion of our house we don’t live in (and it’s clear to me now we will NEVER be able to move into that space like I once hoped). Our insurance premiums are very reasonable. I guess we could ask to lower our required student loan payments, but it doesn’t make a huge difference as we only have to put $500 (of $7,350) toward them every month. I am going to investigate refinancing our mortgage at a better rate but we’re already at 3.25% and I doubt even the increased value of our house (real estate in our neighborhood is crazy right now) would help us get better than that (rates seem to be 4% right now for 30 year mortgages).

So where does that leave us? I’m not sure. I know we can make small changes to start putting a little more away, but it’s never going to be anywhere near 20%. And this is after I read we should be putting 20% away into our retirement! Right now we’re putting almost nothing toward retirement (except what we contribute to our pensions) let alone saving for a rainy day.

This is sobering news. While it’s validating to know we haven’t been squandering some massive percentage of what we make on things we don’t need, it’s upsetting to think that we can’t do much to spend a smaller percentage on necessities.

In three years things will be better. My district is getting a 9% raise over three years which will mean I’m making about $800 more a month (before taxes). I can just plan to put more into my 403b as my salary goes up (1.5% every six months for three years) so that I never even see an increase in what I take home while putting away a larger percentage toward retirement. In three years we won’t have a $1,500/month childcare payment (assuming I can get my son into a T-K or preschool program through the district the year before he starts Kindergarten) which will bring our “must-haves” percentage to 60% if everything else stays the same. I’ll also be done paying off my student loans. My husband will step up on his salary schedule at least once in that time, which will add another $5,000 annually. We’ll definitely be in a much better place, and if we can learn to live on less now we’ll be able to save even more when later we’re making more.

So there is hope, but that light is a few years away at least. And it’s sobering to realize we won’t be making significantly more money anytime in the future. We’re both very close to our salary ceilings. There isn’t much farther up for either of us to go.

In the meantime I want to make small changes toward saving, even if we have to live on a tight budget to do it. I’m really sad to see my dream of moving into our downstairs unit evaporate in the roaring flames of our (disaster of a) financial reality, but we’ll make it work. (Oh second bathroom, I’m so sad to see the dream of you go). We chose to live in this city for a lot of reasons and we’ll have to keep reminding ourselves of those reasons as we make these hard choices. We could leave (in theory) but we choose not to. And if that is our choice, we need to figure out how to become financially secure while we stay.

Do you have any idea what percentage of your spending in dedicated to “must-haves?” Do you think you’re anywhere close to the 50-30-20 ideal?

{My first weekly spending post will go up this weekend, even if it happens late Sunday night. Thank you for all your thoughts on the bike idea. I will discuss my decision on my first weekly budget post.}

Life

I’d say a 3

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

My prescription ran out and there were no more authorized refills so the pharmacy had to contact my psychiatrist and since it’s been ages since I’ve been in for a proper visit, my psychiatrist’s office had to contact me.

When she asked me on a scale of 1 to 10–ten being the worst–how I would rate my symptoms of depression I was surprised to find myself answering with “I’d say a 3.”

My depression really is under control right now. Most of the time I feel downright content. It’s a unfamiliar place for me be, but I’m enjoying it. I feel very grateful that I’ve round a medication that works well for me. It only took ten years and numerous prescriptions, but it was worth the wait.

This coming week is my daughter’s last week in preschool. I’m feelingly strangely nostalgic about it. She’s been there for three years and it’s almost unimaginable that we won’t be returning with her after Friday.

{Of course we will be returning with our son when he turns two in October, so I don’t have to get too sad about leaving. We’ll be back.}

I’m looking forward to this week as it’s the only one where I’ll have my son’s nap time to myself. I have a lot planned, more than I could ever get done in five two-hour time slots. We’ll see what I actually accomplish.

I’m planning on having a garage sale on Saturday morning to see if I can get a little cash for our DVDs and kids’ books and toys. Some of what I hope to accomplish this week is making and distributing signs around the neighborhood and gathering and organizing everything I hope to sell. This is my first garage sale rodeo so if you have any suggestions please send them my way. I officially have no idea what I’m doing.

Tuesday is our first appointment with the PCIT therapist. I’m nervous about what she’ll say but also eager for help. I hope it’s worth the (considerable) cost.

My husband and I moved the elliptical machine from my son’s room to ours over the weekend. The thing easily weighs a couple hundred pounds and moving it was a major pain in the ass–my lower back is NOT happy about the effort exerted–but it fits really nicely on my side of the bed (much better than I expected) and I’m really excited that I can use it early in the mornings or late at night now. It’s a whole new world of exercise availability.

I’m researching a bike configuration that will let me get to and fro with both my kiddos. I know I just started a spending freeze but I’m trying to get everything used to keep costs down. Being able to bike to my daughter’s camps would be ideal–the location is too far to walk and the parking in that area is horrible. It would also be very helpful once my son starts preschool/daycare as they are moving to a site with impossible street parking and only four designated spots. It’s going to be a disaster picking up starting in October. Really, I’d love to grab groceries and run errands in my neighborhood without my car–I envisions many opportunities to bike instead of drive. I’m curious if you all think this is going against my spending freeze. I was thinking more along the lines of clothes/shoes/books/toys but maybe I’m just making excuses for myself? What are your thoughts?

By the time you all have read this I’ll have woken up at around 7am instead of 5am for the first weekday this summer and for that I will be very grateful. Those extra two hours of sleep are my biggest gift this summer. I shall revel in every minute of additional slumber.

I’m still working on a catchy name for our budget stuff. I promise I won’t let it fall by the wayside, I just need to finish up some contract work first.

What are you looking forward to this week?

Life

The Run

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

Thank you everyone for your support on my last post. I am excited that others are interested in writing about their budgets as well. Let me think of a catchy name and make some artwork and we can link up to each other when we tackle the subject of budget so that everyone feels supported. Accountability will be had by all!

And now I think it’s time to talk about something else besides money. Savvy?

{We’ve been reading a pirate pony comic book A LOT lately.}

I have never considered myself “a runner,” but I have enjoyed several “running seasons” in my life. I ran a lot in college, mostly in the last two years and especially the year I lived abroad in Madrid.

I traveled around much of Europe the year I lived abroad and my running shoes went with me to every city. My favorite memories of most cities involve exploring somewhere unexpected in my tennis shoes. I have very fond memories of running that year in Europe.

One of my most treasured memories is of an early morning run in Paris, up the Seine from the Musée d’Orsay to the Eiffel Tower. It was January, and the mornings were dark. The night before it had snowed in the city (supposedly the first time that had happened in seven years) and the city was sleeping under a thin blanket of frozen white. The pre-dawn light made the snow almost glow.

It was a Sunday morning and I didn’t see one other person on my seven mile loop. There was only my feet crunching in the snow and my breath billowing past my face. I started at my favorite museum (the friend I was visiting lived next door!) and ran up the Seine until the Eiffel Tower loomed above me. I remember standing there, completely alone, the city blanketed in white, wondering how in the world I was lucky enough for this to be my life.

Over Memorial Day we rented a cabin near a lake with some friends. May was unseasonably chilly and I was nervous we’d be stuck at the cabin in 50* weather with four kids and nothing to do. Sure enough we woke up on Saturday to a cold, misty rain. I was devastated.

We walked the kids up to the lake anyway, to enjoy the view. In the parking lot we stopped to chat with two men who were clearly going for a run. They said a trail looped all the way around the lake; it was 3.5 miles long.

I had packed my running shoes and a sports bra, hoping I’d be able to sneak away for a quick jaunt at some point. By mid-morning the rain had stopped but it was still foggy and in the mid-50s, too cold to take the kids to swim at the lake, so I asked my husband if I could go for a quick run.

And I went.

It.

Was.

Awesome.

I was expected the trail to be a fire lane of some kind, and that’s how it started, but quickly it became a hiking trail that was always well marked but rarely level or clear of rocks or roots. Some sections required scrambling up huge boulders. I was definitely ill equipped without trail shoes and I’m lucky I didn’t twist my ankle or fall and break my wrist. There were definitely long sections that I had to walk for safety reasons.

Running around that lake I was reminded of what a gift running has been in my life. I would never have attempted that 3.5 mile trail if I hadn’t wanted to go on a run, and I would have missed some stunning scenery and breathtaking views.

That first morning was cold and foggy and it rained for part of the run. But it was also quiet and still, with almost no one on the trail. Watching my breath billow in front of my face I was reminded of that magical run up the Sen. Immediately I felt at peace.

The morning we left I woke up early to run the lake again. The second time it was sunny and almost warm, but still early enough that the trail wasn’t overrun with hikers. I took my phone to capture some of the majesty and to remind myself of what a joy running far from home can be.

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Financial Security

Help Me with Accountability

Posted on by noemikjames / 19 Comments

I’m going to ask you all for a favor. I want to hold myself more accountable for my spending–both sticking to my no-shopping ban over the summer and how I spend on food and consumables–and I’ve heard one good way to do that (increase accountability) is to join a group or enlist friends. I’m too lazy to go looking for an online group I can join (the prospect is daunting) and I’m too embarrassed to share my financial shortcomings with the friends I’ve made this year. The only place I feel comfortable enough putting myself out there is in this space. So I’m going to post a weekly budget update, complete with screen shots of my updated budget app. This will require I actually update my budget regularly and it will mean that you all will be able to see what I spend my money on. I really do think I’d make different spending choices if I knew all of you would eventually see them. It’s not that I think you’d shame or even criticize me for how I spend my money, but I know you’d be honest in your commentary.

And I hope you will.

{I also know I’d more closely scrutinize my choices if I knew I had to share them.}

So what exactly am I asking of you? Just to help me hold myself accountable by gently reminding me if I ever miss a weekly post. Updates will be over the weekend (I’m being ambiguous on the day to give myself a little leeway as far as getting the posts up goes) and they will cover the Sunday through Friday of the week before. If Monday rolls around and I haven’t posted my budget, I’d really appreciate it if you’d call me out on it (nicely of course). And if you notice I’m eating out a lot, or have a suggestion for a way I could avoid purchasing something, please feel free to offer those comments. I need help on this, and I am humbly asking for it.

If I make a big purchase {::cough:: Costco ::cough::} I will include an itemized list of what I bought and how much it cost. Hopefully there won’t be too many of those because I won’t be buying much this summer.

My no-shopping ban starts on Saturday, the first official day of summer. I’ve decided there will be no book, toy or clothing purchases until 2016 (the only exception is for my daughter’s Kindergarten uniform, which is different than her Pre-K uniform was). This is where I needlessly spend my money and even I can recognize that we don’t need anything in those areas for the next six months. This summer is the juice cleanse before the overhauled diet. Changes will be made.

{I haven’t decided how to deal with Christmas, but I figure I’ll have a better idea of how to handle it after six months of not buying stuff than I do now.}

So, will you join me in my budgetary overhaul, and help me hold myself accountable? I would really appreciate it.

Have you ever joined a group to hold yourself accountable for a weight loss, diet or financial goal? Did it help you achieve your goal?

Financial Security

Financial Aspirations (or a Lack Thereof)

Posted on by noemikjames / 42 Comments

I have been thinking a lot about my financial aspirations, or my lack thereof.

The truth is, I don’t think much about where I want to be financially. I find financial planning to be both boring and daunting. It is an area I know nothing about, and I’m not interested in knowing anything about, but that I have to know something about. Oh and it’s totally overwhelming.

One of the blogs I’ve been reading is written by the wife of a couple that has big plans to retire early (like, WAY early) in 2017 to a homestead in the woods. She is in her mid-thirties and pregnant with her first child. Together they save 70% of their income and they are on track to meet their goal of retiring in 2 years. They are already looking at plots to buy so they can start building their house.

This woman doesn’t have a budget. Her spending plan is to not spend anything. Ever. They only spend money on the absolute essentials. She writes a lot about how it’s easy not to spend money on anything because every dollar spent on things they don’t need is being taken away from their dream of retiring early and homesteading in the woods. It’s easy not to buy stuff when you feel that doing so is robbing you of your ultimate goal.

Reading her blog I wondered if being money conscious would come more easily to me if I had some set goals. Then I tried to think of a financial goal I could work for.

And I thought. And I thought.

And I couldn’t come up with anything.

Is that sad?

I mean, I wanted to buy a house, and we did that. And then I wanted to live within our means, and we’re doing that. And now I want to be saving, but that goal is so amorphous and undefined.

I considered paying down my student loans faster. Right now I’m set to have the remaining $7,000 paid off in 2 years. If I scrimped and saved to put another $100 a month toward that debt I’d be done a couple of months faster. I tried to get excited about that goal. I waved it front of my face (metaphorically, of course) every time I had the urge to buy something unessential, but the idea of paying off that debt a few months earlier didn’t do much for me. Even when I told myself I could start having a cleaning lady once a month when the debt was paid off, I still felt pretty blase about the whole thing.

I reminded myself that I’ve been woefully neglectful of my children’s college funds (ie they have not been created yet) and that we need to start aggressively putting money in 529s, but again I find it hard to conjure any real sense of urgency. The cost of a four year degree is already so daunting and the projected numbers are outright devastating, anything I might save now feels ineffectual. The same goes for my retirement. All of these goals are so far in the future and so shapeless as to remain devoid of substance. I can’t imagine ever having enough money to retire, and many articles assure me I won’t, so it seems silly to deny something now just to put it toward a retirement fund that will never support me anyway. My generation will have to work until we’re in our 70s anyway, so what’s the point?

Of course there is a point, and I believe strongly in saving for retirement; I’ve been doing so since I was 27. But putting more away for the future is not a financial goal that helps me save today.

I think I just have to set up a budget that automatically contributes to these funds and my goal will be to stay inside that budget. Maybe that is how I will make this work. I don’t see myself embracing any financial goal that will inspire me to stop, or even drastically reduce, my spending. I don’t think what works for this woman will work for me. And that is fine, as long as I figure out what does work for me.

What are your financial goals? Do they inspire you to spend less?

Financial Security/Minimalism

The Budget

Posted on by noemikjames / 15 Comments

So I haven’t written much about my budget lately.

That is because I’ve been doing a pretty piss poor job of sticking to it.

I have been doing better. I have been making positive changes. But I’m not meeting my goals of staying within my budget or even tracking my spending accurately. As far as my budget goes, I’m failing pretty miserably.

But I am making better financial decisions. I’m not buying as much stuff and I’m saving a little each month. These are definitely improvements. Still, it feels a lot like I’m the kid who’s really bad at math, the one who has failed every semester for her entire academic career. Sure, one month she may turn in all her assignments, but some of them are only partially completed, and she’s going to get an F on the test anyway.

I taught a “remedial” math class a couple of years ago; I know what it’s like for those kids. They are so far behind, they have missed so much, and they just don’t get it. Some of them are never going to catch up. Many of them are never going to pass out of Algebra. (Did you know that not passing Algebra is the number one reason California high schools students don’t graduate or pass the high school exit exam?!)

I watched so many kids try really hard to dig themselves out of the hole they were in that year in math class. Some made truly valiant efforts but in the end the result was a 58% F instead of a 33% F. Sometimes it feels like I’m making improvements, but I’m still failing, I’m just not failing so exceptionally.

I keep telling myself that while I have a long way to go, I’m taking steps in the right direction. We all know what a journey of a thousand steps starts with.

The thing is, I can’t keep failing at this. Our financial future is at stake. My family’s security hangs in the balance. I owe it to my children to figure this out. It’s so, so, sooooo important.

And unlike a lot of other really important things that I feel I fail at (ahem, offering my kids consistently well balanced meals) this is measurable. My progress can be tracked in very real terms, with actual numbers. Hence the failing math student analogy.

Like so many things in my life, the first few months I did a really good job. Then I fell off the wagon. Spectacularly. One thing I will always do is fall off the wagon spectacularly.

I know the answer is to get back on. I KNOW this. I’m doing it. I’ve thrown one leg over the edge of the back. I’m struggling mightily to haul myself back on. I’ve told myself that I WILL start tracking my spending again. I’ve told myself that I WILL stick to my budget. I’ve set up incentives. I’ve talked to my husband. I’ve tried really hard to make it happen, to make it work.

I’m realizing that restricting my spending is a lot like other areas of my life, I’d do a lot better if I just stopped cold turkey. Moderation is NOT something I excel at. I’m pretty good at unwaveringly denying myself, but letting myself enjoy a little something here and there? That never works. I always fall down the slippery slope into absolute excess.

I didn’t want to go the cold turkey no-shopping route because I knew it wasn’t sustainable and I didn’t think it would teach me the skills of shopping in moderation that I will clearly need. Now I realize that I need to start with some cold turkey no spending rules or I’m never really going to get started. It’s like the juice cleanse before a major dietary overhaul. It helps with the sugar and carb addiction that’s gotten out of control. After I’ve exercised my “no spending” muscles I can try to really flex them by making harder choices about what I actually can buy, and when.

So this summer I’m not buying anything non-consumable. The only things I’m allowed to buy are those we go through and then throw away like food or TP or laundry detergent or, well you get the idea. The reality is I have enough of that kind of stuff bought in bulk that I probably won’t have to buy anything except food, and I want to put some pretty strict regulations on those kinds of purchases too.

The one thing I’m letting myself get are some things for the back yard (I really need to work out there this summer–that is another area of my life I haven’t shared because, well, the back yard = yet another FAIL). I will create a spending limit for that project and when I hit it I WILL STOP. (I’m writing that in capital letters to remind myself of my own determination.)

I’m reading some blogs about frugal spending. Some of these people are saving 70% of what they make! One woman hasn’t purchased one piece of clothing (used or new) in 18 months! Their frugality is impressive, to be sure, and the message is very much that once you make the habit, it’s easy to stick with it.

Except she is clearly someone who has felt stressed out spending money and so always did so sparingly. As someone who has ALWAYS had a spending problem, since the moment I clutched my first hard won quarters in my grubby little hand, I narrow my eyes at her assurance that it will become second nature. She seems a lot like the kid who is really good at math, who just gets it and doesn’t even need to try. Sure she puts in the work and gets the homework done, but she can do that because she understands what is being asked of her. It takes her a fraction of the time to get the job done, and she can do it well. The kid who isn’t as good at math couldn’t get three problems done in the same amount of time, and she wouldn’t know how to do them anyway.

I’ll keep reading the frugal living blogs, because it’s inspiring to see how others can live happily spending less, but I know I’m never going to be like those people. I’m never going to go 18 months without buying a single scrap of clothing. I’m never going to save 70% of what I make. Part of the reason is I don’t have a financial goal that drives me like they do (more on this later), but part of it that I’m just not the kind of person who will ever be able to live like that. And that’s okay. I can still make sound financial decisions, spend less and save money without living so frugally. And it’s going to start this summer, with a shopping ban. Wish me luck.

How would you like to change the way you spend money?

Parenting & Family

A Simpler Summer

Posted on by noemikjames / 17 Comments

I have one more week of school and then I’m home for the summer.

Nine weeks, with both kids.

I don’t think there is a way for me to accurately convey how terrified I am.

It’s kind of embarrassing actually, how scared I am of spending nine weeks with my kids. The prospect of being alone with them didn’t used to inspire this kind of fear, but at their current ages they present a combination of challenges that really terrify me.

I’ve enrolled my daughter in some half day camps but they are each only four days long and they end at 1pm. My daughter will be home just in time for my son’s nap. There will be no breaks this summer.

I am trying to figure out how and when I’ll work out. I’m trying to figure out how and when I’ll plan for next year. I’m trying to figure out how and when I’ll get things done.

Yes, I’m terrified, but I’m also harboring a considerable amount of hope. It’s tenuous, and slips easily from my grasp, but I gather it up again at the end of each day and I’m getting better at keeping it in place.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I need for this summer to feel successful. I realized pretty quickly that I need to simplify.

Everything.

Everything needs to be simpler.

It’s starting with our stuff. The Great Purge of 2015 rid of us many unnecessary items, but the job is not complete. I finally feel like I can manage all of our stuff (which is a massive improvement), but I’m coming to realize that it still takes way too long for me to manage it. I spend a lot of my time with my kids cleaning up after them and I don’t want our days to be dictated by our things in that way. If I want to keep the house free of debris, without always bending down to pick something up, we have to have a lot less stuff.

I’ve been very mindful of what I’m perpetually picking up and I have a good idea of what we need to get rid of. The stuffed animal collection will be cut in half (I’ve already done that twice in past purges but holy shit we still have a lot of stuffed animals). The bins full of random toys will be reduced from three to one; the same will be done to my son’s boxes of board books. I’ve dismantled our (considerable) DVD collection, only keeping the kids movies that aren’t readily accessible on Net.flix (ahem, Dis.ney). Only about one tenth of my daughter’s library will remain in her room: a (very) small portion will migrate to her brother’s room and one small box will go into storage to be rotated out but most of her books will be getting the boot.

More of my clothes will go, and more of my books. We moved my husband’s LP collection to a shelving unit we bought not long ago and put his turn table above the television so his music shelf can go. We already moved what was left of my daughter’s toys into the small shelves under her semi-loft bed and got rid that big piece of furniture. The DVD stand is gone and when my daughter’s bookshelf is donated we’ll have gotten rid of four considerably sized pieces of furniture. Nothing is coming in to take their places.

When we purged in January of this year I never thought we’d be doing such a drastic follow up so soon, but this definitely feels right. Before I got rid of stuff because I wanted to, now I’m doing it because I need to. I won’t survive this summer if things continue this way. I need space in my heart and mind to just be, and I won’t have that when there is shit everywhere.

I want this summer to be simple. I want it to be about walking to the park with lunch ready in my backpack, sitting in the living room building with blocks, constructing forts under my daughter’s bed, wrapping play silks around our shoulders and becoming someone else.

I want this summer to be screen-free. And I want to keep my sanity.

We need this. All four of us. We need to find ourselves again, because something deep within us has been lost to the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

I have thought a lot about what I want, and need, to be happy, but I still struggle to pin it down. It seems I’m pretty good at identifying what I don’t want, but I’m shit at recognizing what will actually make me happy. So many of my parenting decisions have been based on negatives I’m trying to avoid, not on positives I want to embrace. For the first time I think I’m finally seeing a clearer picture of what I want our family life to look like. And I think this summer just might be our opportunity to build its foundation.

Sure I’m terrified, but I also have some serious aspirations. I appreciate this time I have with my children, and I’m grateful for the professional guidance I’ll have at my disposable. I do think that I can do this, that we can do this.

In one week I’ll start to find out.

What do you want this summer to look like? 

Uncategorized

Stories

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

Someone here recommended Crucial Conversations and it recently became available from my library. It’s a really incredible book about how to best execute the important exchanges in your life, especially the ones that bet derailed because emotions run high.

In the sections about emotions the authors talk about where those emotions come from. Why do some people react to a situation one way (with calm introspection) while another person reacts differently (lashing out in anger)? The answer is obviously emotional response, but what causes the opposite responses?

The answer? Stories. It’s the stories we tell ourselves, almost instantaneously, that set us on a path toward righteous indignation or understand. These stories are integrated into our path to action so blindingly fast that we aren’t usually aware of them, or we’re not aware that they are stories–stories we fabricated–and take them as truth.

I have found this whole idea of stories really fascinating. I had never articulated the question of why I become so emotional so quickly, of where my negative reactions originate, but as soon as it was articulated for me I recognized its value. If I can start identifying my stories, even after I’ve told them, hopefully some day I can be more present in the spinning of them. This could totally change my life.

I read about “my stories,” as I’ve come to call them (yes I watched soap operas once), a few days after I wrote the post about hitting my daughter. I’ve been identifying my stories surrounding that incident, and our need for therapy, ever since. I’m getting better at recognizing that the way I’m narrating something in my head is not necessarily the truth. There are other ways one could think about all of this, more positive, empowering ways.

I’ve tried to tell myself those stories. I’ve thought about what others–mostly you all–would say to me if I wrote a post about it (like I did yesterday) and I imagined what you would say (all the things you said yesterday). I see those stories (the ones where I’m being proactive in supporting myself and my daughter) and recognize that they are valid, but I can’t seem to appropriate them. I can’t seem to wipe away my story (that I’m a failure) and insert the more positive stories in its place.

My story makes me feel hopeless and overwhelmed. It makes me feel isolated and alone. It’s not a good story. I don’t want this story determining my emotional reaction. I want the other story. The one where I’m being proactive and supportive of myself and my daughter. I want to embrace the story where going to therapy is not only de-stigmatized, but celebrated. I WANT THAT STORY. But I can’t seem to make it mine. The other story keeps seeping in, a corrosive poison that disintegrates the positive story and hardens into something negative.

It’s really starting to piss me off.

I’ve been watching for my stories in all the areas of my life, and what I’ve noticed as been truly enlightening.

Telling negative stories, it seems, is my forte. I’m good at it. Really, really good at it. Exceedingly good at it. I’m the many-times gold medal winner at telling negative stories. It’s pretty much all I do.

How did I get this way? How did I become a person who tells unnecessarily negative stories to herself so she can feel bad? When did I get sucked so deeply into a spiral of shame and guilt and anger that I can’t claw myself out, even when I’m aware of it spinning all around me?

I didn’t learn it from my parents. I didn’t get it from my friends. I want to say depression, I keep circling back to that origin story, but I’m not sure it’s accurate. Depression definitely warps your thinking, spins stories of worthlessness and despair. I wonder if depression went in and corrupted the mechanism of my story-making, damaging the foundations upon which all my stories are written.

It could be depression, it could just be who I am. I’ll never really know where one starts and the other ends, but I suppose that ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Where these defeatist stories come from isn’t what’s important. What is important is figuring out how to rewrite them with a more positive slant.

My stories are a debilitating force in my life. My stories tell me that my husband would do x, y and z if he really loved me and so I feel resentment toward him, or that my daughter struggles because I fail her in some way and so I feel like a failure as a parent. I will be working really hard to change them. If I can manage that, it will improve every aspect of my life, especially my marriage and my attempts at parenting. So I keep working on it. Every day. And I have hope that over time, I will be able to change the stories I tell, and with them the emotional responses that follow.

Have you ever thought about the stories you tell? Are the generally positive or negative? Have you ever worked to change them?

Parenting & Family

Disintegration

Posted on by noemikjames / 25 Comments

I’m sorry I went dark for a week.

I’ve been struggling. Struggling with what I wrote about in my past post. Struggling with the fact that I wrote it at all. That I put it out there. That it can’t be taken back.

After I wrote that post, I just… couldn’t. I didn’t even respond to the comments. I just shut down my wordpress tab in my browser and went about my business.

I was in denial.

My daughter turns five this Sunday. I need to stop telling the stories that aren’t completely mine to tell. The ones that belong to both of us: those stories I need to keep close.

But it’s hard because I feel really alone and I can’t help but want to put it out there so that others don’t feel so alone. I want to think that the anonymity I strive for is infallible but we all know it’s not. I can’t write about my daughter under an assumed name and be confident that it will never come back to her. If my words, here or anywhere else, ever caused her pain I would never forgive myself.

I will be drawing the line moving forward. I’m not quite sure where that line will be, or what will reside on either side. I’m assuming a lot less will be said because of the line. It’s a relief. And a devastation.

Did it seem like I put that post up with out a care in the world? I churned out some thoughtful paragraphs on parental instinct and not trusting my own, and then dropped a bomb at the end, without even the hint of a wind change.

But that bomb was not a wind change. It was a sea change.

I hit my kid. Sure you can argue about what that really means given the circumstances and the history. I’m sure it means something different to each person reading it. I’m sure it would mean something different to you if you ever had to hold such a thing, to own it, to never let it go.

For me, it’s been a very heavy burden to bear. It’s been a sign, a massive, blinking billboard, shouting at me that I’ve failed. Not because I broke down in that moment and did something I regret, something I promised myself I would NEVER do, but because I let myself end up in that moment feeling so powerless and overwhelmed.

I thought I could handle it. I thought the books and the articles would tell me what to do. I thought she would grow out of it. I thought I could manage it in the meantime. I thought it would work. The alternative was… well I didn’t really know there was an alternative.

A friend of a friend has done CPIT before. It’s how I learned about it. I know this woman, tangentially. I have chatted with her in the fits and starts that characterize multi-family play dates at the zoo or a playground.  It wasn’t totally random for me reach out to her for her thoughts on CPIT. I even, to my surprise, already had her number in my phone.

I was really glad I called her. It was very helpful to know what to expect, to both temper and bolster my expectations. She assured me it would help. She counseled that it would be slow going. She and her daughter have been at it for over a year.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, to somebody outside, looking in. Does it look like taking your kid to the doctor? A specialist of some kind?

It doesn’t feel that way. It feels… devastating. My child and I are going to therapy. Because she hits me. My child is just five years old. This is not what I thought motherhood was about. No one ever told me about this.

It’s hard not to think that all this is my fault. That I did something wrong. That I failed in some way. Some profound, irreconcilable way. Already the necessity of these steps weighs heavily. How will I shoulder the weight of declarations, or even suggestions, of things like “insecure attachment”? How will I keep telling myself that my choices were the right ones, that my daughter hasn’t suffered for me working full time?

How will I trust myself again?

I have been told I make things into four alarm fires. That I blow things out of proportion, get worked up over nothing. I’m trying to keep this in perspective. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s not a prediction of our future. It’s not a determination of my abilities as a mother. We just need some extra support. Eventually it will get better.

But I can’t help but think that this signals a disintegration of something, something essential, something profound. No one talks about needing this. No one admits it ever gets so bad that they can’t fix it, they can’t wait it out. I don’t know where I belong anymore, in the parenting community. I’m not a part of the “parenting kids with a diagnosis” club but I certainly don’t feel a part of the “everyone else” club.

I feel very much alone.

And I doubt anyone reading this can tell me they understand, because I don’t think they’ve ever been here. I’ve admitted to a lot of taboo thoughts and feelings about parenthood and usually someone can tell me that they get it, they understand, they have been there. But not with this. This sets me apart. This makes me different.

No one wants to be different. Especially not in this way.

I talk to the therapist for the first time today. I hate explaining it because it seems worse when I say it out loud. My only goal it to keep from crying.