Tag: money

Bud Jet

The subtitle of this post should be: How I have successfully managed to avoid incorporating any money management systems in my adult life to date.

That’s an uncomfortable revelation.

I am triggered by the word “budget” in the same way I was triggered by the word “maths” in my adolescence.

Misshapen demons of indeterminate shape and size would arise in a mist in my head when I heard either of these words. There was something vaguely threatening and out of control to me about money and maths.

Or worse, to an aspiring “artiste,” such as myself, something constraining and restrictive. I was a far too much of a free spirit to be held in the traces by such trifling things as mathematical logic or the spending restrictions of a budget.

I loathed and disdained such restrictions. I devised pictures in my head of small, weak muscled little men, sitting in dark rooms under a hanging light with arm bands holding up their shirt sleeves and half caps on their head. Wearing thick glasses with gold wire rims.

In my head, they exuded an air of punitiveness and judgment and were decidedly “unfun.” Who would want to consort with such lowly people or follow their dictates? Phooey.

Well, since those days of conjuring visions of money banshees and numbers demons in my head, I have matured. Somewhat.

I get the inherent logic of income and outflow. I understand living within your means and why it has stress and financial management benefits.

But my relationship with money is still conflicted. I was scanted – mostly emotionally – as a young child. When my parents’ marriage imploded, I was only 11 and on the brink of adolescence.

Before the implosion, we enjoyed all the perks of a professional middle class upbringing in our small East Coast Canadian town: swimming and piano and ballet lessons. Summer camp. Pony Club. Birthday parties galore both hosted and attended.

Those pre-teen years and until the age of majority was reached should have been a stage of life when I had a cocoon to develop in. Needs fully taken care of. Some wishes met. A warm and safe bed to sleep in every night.

It didn’t go that way for long after the marriage broke down. Eviscerated by business and financial loss, my father doubled down on his miserliness. He did keep a roof over our heads. We were fed and clothed – if parsimoniously. We had the basics. Just.

And only until I was 16. When I started earning money outside the home, the cocoon imploded. Dad moved to another town and left me in the big city to survive on my temporary salary and whatever survival skills I had and would pick up along the way.

Looking back, that was probably too young to be abandoned by parental supervision. Something I only realized in retrospect.

So my internal relationship with money is a bit out of whack. I have the standards and expectations of someone raised in upper middle class affluence. At the same time, I carry the fear and neurosis of a child who had all of her security – including financial – ripped away. And much too soon.

As another tax deadline rises on the horizon, familiar old neuroses are emerging, too. But I have changed my approach over the years.

In prior years, I would stall and upend the tax preparation process for the absence of a single receipt or maybe two worth only a few dollars. I have learned now that ballparking is a reasonable target.

The tax people don’t care if your calculations are off by a few dollars. They care immensely if you decide to avoid filing taxes at all or grossly misrepresent your finances. I have taken extraordinary care over the years to ensure I do neither. With mixed results.

So after what can only be described in my universe of a flagrant spending spree in recent months to get the home I’ve always dreamed of, I am changing gears. I am preparing a “bud jet.” I am addressing the debt that has accumulated and how to best bring it in check.

My husband is of the view – as am I – that paying interest to credit card companies is akin to throwing money away. We are in synch in that regard. What he has – and has always had – is an easy relationship and confidence about money that I never had.

But I’m learning. After a healthy relationship with oneself, with one’s spouse and family and friends, a healthy relationship with money is an essential part of one’s overall well-being. I have learned that lesson about money.

With maths, I have at least learned to tally numbers pretty accurately in my head. That is progress, too. Maths doesn’t so much terrify me these days as confuse me. But I manage the basics. I could likely conquer it if I were so inclined.

So off I go to reopen the Excel spreadsheet I have been working on. I can’t say I love the budgeting process. But I don’t hate and fear it any more as I once did.

I have finally learned money management is my dominion to control.

Not the other way around.

Diderot’s Robe

I’ve often used the analogy of Diderot’s Robe to describe the odd sense of frustration I felt when I was renovating old houses.

A similar sense of dissatisfaction ensued when I acquired a snazzy new something – an appliance, a jazzy new piece of furniture, or even a new clothing item. When is enough?

Buying new things can make old things look bad by comparison. It is difficult to buy one new appliance without wanting to change them all to match. New furniture can make your old furniture look shabby. New clothing usually needs new accessories, like shoes or a piece of jewelry or a bright scarf to “go with it.” Maybe a new coat or jacket, too?

The phrase Diderot effect was coined in reference to French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) who bemoaned the gift he received of a new housecoat.

The effect was first described in Diderot’s essay “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown”. Here he tells how the gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown leads to unexpected results, eventually plunging him into debt. Initially pleased with the gift, Diderot came to rue his new garment. Compared to his elegant new dressing gown, the rest of his possessions began to seem tawdry and he became dissatisfied that they did not live up to the elegance and style of his new possession. He replaced his old straw chair, for example, with an armchair covered in Moroccan leather; his old desk was replaced with an expensive new writing table; his formerly beloved prints were replaced with more costly prints, and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect

The term Diderot effect is commonly heard in discussions of sustainable consumption and green consumerism. A purchase or gift can create dissatisfaction with one’s existing possessions and environment. This can start a pattern of consumption with negative environmental, psychological, and social impacts.

I have lived this effect and continue to struggle with it. I have a pretty good idea where it started.

My comfortable and financially secure childhood – while unstable – was ripped away from me at 11 years old. The transition from a life of comfortable middle class privilege to a life of poverty was gradual when I look back at it now.

I mostly recall that what had formerly been easy to acquire or take part in no longer was. There used to be riding lessons and swimming lessons and dance lessons and summer camp. New clothes to start every school year. At Christmas, we counted on the new cotton nighties and slippers from my grandmother. After I turned 11, these all went away.

My Dad moved us to another province. My mother was no longer in my life, except nominally. By sixteen, I was living on my own in a big city. My father moved an hour and half away to his own new home in the country.

I used to watch my peers in amazement who never seemed overly troubled by money issues. They needed something, asked their parents for it and got it. I remember asking my father for anything new or necessary made me feel I had deeply insulted him. I was – by even asking – doing something horribly wrong. What exactly I didn’t know.

I found myself in harm’s way when I didn’t have – or wouldn’t spend – the money for taxi fare. I was occasionally trapped in a dicey situation where booze and drugs were flowing much too freely. The boys at those parties could be presumptuous and opportunistic.

Sorting out my relationship with money has been a lifelong struggle and continues. As I look around, I don’t believe I am alone in this troubled relationship with money and things. Cumulative credit card debt is staggering. Indeed the debt burden of the USA is staggering itself.

A storage company in my Canadian hometown is erecting building after building as people seek out a place to keep their excess goods. I am one of them. They are doing a land office business. Think about that. Paying huge sums of money to store items because we don’t have space or a use for them in our present environment? Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?

Our way of life and consuming is wildly out of balance. I chuckle at the allure of “big box stores.” I once read Costco and Sam’s and Wal-Mart give consumers the dual psychological satisfaction of “thrift” and “abundance.” Local grocery stores offer so many BOGO items that I may soon need to rent a storage locker for my excess canned goods.

I once longed to win the lottery., Who wouldn’t want a magical solution to their money problems? Who wouldn’t want guaranteed financial security? Who wouldn’t want the joy and satisfaction of taking care of friends and loved ones who would benefit from the help? And who hasn’t seen or heard the common stories of lottery winners whose lives spiraled downward and out of control just a few short years after their windfall?

I so get Diderot’s dilemma. I have lived it. It is hard to answer the question, “When is enough?” Like so many other of life’s big questions (and money, given its central role in our health, comfort and well-being is certainly one of them), it is time to make a truce with money.

To befriend it but not make it my master. To acquire what we need without being showy or arrogant (tell that to a Leo!!). To get off the credit card merry-go-round. Diderot knew why.

“I was absolute master of my old dressing gown”, Diderot writes, “but I have become a slave to my new one … Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain”.

tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect

Off-Putting

Today’s writing prompt: What have you been putting off doing? Why?

Taxes.

I know I am not alone in this. The prompt is timely as I am remiss in providing my accountant with all of the necessary records and statements to get the verdammtes things finished.

I believe my aversion to taxes is connected to other money-based fears I have.

My father was a miser. In retrospect, I would call it an identifiable disorder. I know his miserliness emerged from childhood trauma. In his childhood, he experienced severe emotional and also financial lack (though not wildly different than others of his generation).

His miserliness in coin and spirit defined him and his life.

By contrast, my mother was exactly opposite. She freely and frequently spent money she didn’t have. She would not concede that there would be a lack of anything in her life – no matter what reality showed her.

In both parents, money issues came from dysfunctional childhoods and plagued them to their grave. In fact, their money management styles only became more deeply entrenched as they grew older.

My father exhibited visible pain when his caregiver selected a package of ham only slightly more expensive than the ham offered at the lowest price. She switched them out and bought the lower priced (and lower quality) ham. His relief was palpable.

For awhile, he ran an ice cream parlor. That was a sweet semi-hobby (pun intended) my father took on in retirement. For his grandkids, it certainly was. But Dad drove his employees up the wall. He hung around the shop all day and would not stockpile perishable items, like bananas.

When someone came in and ordered a banana split, Dad would get in is car, trundle down to the supermarket ten minutes away to buy one. One banana. I can’t imagine his strategy was all that great for attracting repeat business when a customer had to wait 20-30 minutes for an ice cream treat. I can’t imagine any money he saved by not stockpiling made up the cost of his gas.

My mother was completely opposite. A bit of a scofflaw if I’m honest. When the banks came after her in her dotage for unpaid loans, she actually took them to court to argue that she hadn’t made payments on the loans because the banks miscalculated the interest.

I can’t imagine the legal logic she deployed to make that argument. I never saw the argument written down on paper. I’m not she ever did write it down or would have dared. I only know Mom lost that case to the banks. She often said, “The banks never lose.” She knew that going in.

I know people who actually do their taxes themselves, every year and submit them on time. I do not understand those people.

Even with hired help to get the dreaded taxes done, my neurosis hangs on. I am a procrastinator extraordinaire when it comes to tackling my taxes. Or I go the opposite way. I binge produce my statements only to have the whole process slow and eventually shut down because I missed sending one statement in the annual batch.

It is an immaturity to be sure. It is also clearly a neurosis. A crazy mix of my mother and father’s belief and treatment of money. I save every receipt and invoice and bank statement like Gollum holding on to his “Precioussssss.” Unlike Gollum, I don’t get the same emotional or psychological satisfaction from grasping and holding on to fading pieces of paper.

During my recent hoard unload, it was beyond satisfying (and embarrassing) to throw out batches of receipts and paper clutter I had been hanging on to for decades. It is important to mention that not once in all those years of hoarding receipts in case of a tax audit, did I ever have to face one.

Yet there is a teeny-tiny voice inside that says if you start throwing away receipts now, you just KNOW the tax department is going to come for you. Maybe. Maybe not.

I only know it seems like a silly (but essential) habit of receipt hoarding I have had my whole adult life.

So there. I am making my fears known and facing the buggery tax returns. I’ve done that before and it is usually enough to get me partway through the backlog. I need to do it again. Ad infinitum it would seem. Or at least annually.

So guess what I’m doing today? Honest? Likely anything but taxes unless the money gods conspire to inspire me. Sigh.

Qzzohsnzlk, One event can change your life

I needed a humorous distraction today. This appeal landed in my inbox from a hungry entrepreneur.

Hey Qzzohsnzlk, One day I was casually scrolling on Facebook and came across a business conference invitation. I didn’t know the host but from what I could see, the information was exactly what I had been looking for…“

I believe the sender of that message meant to address it to me. It landed in my inbox after all. But the name Margot – my name – showed up nowhere in the invite, the salutation, or the body of the email.

It would have been personally addressed to me if my name was Qzzohsnzllk [quiz-oh-sen-zilk – my best effort at spelling it phonetically].

It is clearly a technical glitch. (Or is it? Now I wonder if I am the only one. I wonder if there is a whole population of Qzzohsnzlk relatives out there for me to track down.)

As a child, I was a devoted fan of Mxyzptlik [Mix-yez-piddle-ick] in the Superman comics. Myxyzptlik is usually presented as a trickster in the classical mythological sense. He possesses reality-warping powers which he uses to torment Superman and make his life difficult.

All that aside, I mostly just loved saying his name: Mix-yez-piddle-ick. It felt like the password to a secret club where you gained admittance only if you could say the “secret” name.

That is sorta how Rumpelstiltskin tried to trick a young woman. Through circumstance, the husband believed his wife could spin straw into gold when it was, in fact, Rumpelstiltskin who had done it. The young woman was clearly in a bind from which R. would only extricate her if she could guess his real name.

R. gave her three chances and the challenge was not going well. Had she not followed him one night and overheard his name said at a campfire, he would have taken her firstborn son. She guessed right, he didn’t and thus the story ends well for the wife, though R. was pretty ticked about it all.

And speaking of fairytales, you gotta laugh at some pitches that pop up in your inbox. Absolute strangers are taking an absolute flyer on seducing you into parting with some serious coin with their bold promises.

They work hard to get you to pay them money to find out how THEY did it (whatever “it” is, but usually almost instant fame and wealth). This pitcher apparently made $100,000 IN HER FIRST THREE MONTHS and now “so can you.”

She assures us her journey was not entirely a cakewalk: “I showed up. Got the answers, did the work, and the results came quick!“

Deliciously vague, no? As a curious type, I have questions. What did she show up for? What were the answers she got? What were the questions she asked to begin with? What work? And what were those quick results you got? I need to see the evidence.

I’ve pretty much learned what does and doesn’t come quickly in life. I have learned that the most valuable things and things we truly value take time to acquire and grow. Family. Career. Friendships. Equity.

I have also learned the value of getting someone’s name right as a basic element of a successful marketing pitch.

I get the appeal of the “get-rich quick” schemes. I have been in financial hot water before. There are a few times I would have grabbed and held fast to a blade of eelgrass if I thought it would help me improve my situation faster.

The nice lady closed with this: “Qzzohsnzlk, sometimes you are only one idea away from a major breakthrough.”

Copy that. I have decided – no personal slight intended – I won’t sign up for your life coaching, get-rich quick scheme … I mean, offer. In my world, that counts as a minor if not a major breakthrough.

It comes down to this. I followed gurus and chased mentors my whole adult life. No question they were valuable. But at a point, your definition of success and the path to get there must be mapped out by you. That is, we apply the lessons we have learned and hold our breath. Of course, we all need support and encouragement and a few bucks here and there to get by.

I’ve learned a true feeling of success and the self-esteem that goes with it starts when you are finally conducting your own orchestra, not just sitting in first chair. I wish the life coach lady well. I know she is only trying to make a living like the rest of us. Who knows? She may be fabulous at what she does for many people. She just isn’t going to do it for me.

Respectfully yours, Q