Tag: money management

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.

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.