My New Years Resolution

I almost decided to post an early net worth, but there's a good chance I'll be in the negative. Fortunately I work tonight, a double on New Years Eve, and that will almost certainly put me over the edge! Here's to starting 2014 in the black!

This year I had a really terrible time catching any sort of traction. I never felt in control of my circumstances in 2013. This wasn't all bad. Darling got a fantastic job, started driving, and added an element of independence to our marriage that I'd never realized we desperately needed. Our living situation, though far from ideal, helped out a friend and provided for more privacy than Darling and I are used to, which was probably also good for our marriage. I partnered in a business, which has had its serious share of ups and downs, teaching me important skills and forcing from me a learned patience I didn't feel capable of. My mantra for most of 2013 was, "this is not about me." It was about my pregnant sister, my aging parents, my husband's career, my friends, my business, my job...This control freak learned more than a little about surrendering these past twelve months.

I never got a grip on what was going on around me. I missed too many birthdays, I was a bystander, at best, to every holiday. I let anxiety and stress overwhelm me. I let my homelessness define me. So my ultimate goal of 2014 is to be present. I won't ask to control, but I do request a sense of preparation. This year I'm arming myself with a calendar and the determination to not let a single event catch me by surprise.

This year I will send out birthday cards, I will purchase gifts in advance, I will respond to invitations with a very clear sense of whether or not I will actually be available. I will eliminate "belated" from my vocabulary. I will approach every holiday not with foreboding but with the joyous anticipation I abandoned in my adolescence.

Not only that, but I will upgrade my holiday expectations from mere survival. For years I have allowed my parents' immaturity to ruin...well, everything. Whether it's my Dad inviting creepy "friends," to the dinner I cook to celebrate my birthday ("I just met him a the bus stop, and he looked like he needed a good meal,") or my Mom getting lost and needing me to come get her ("I'm on a road with no signs and for some reason it's night here...what city do you live in, again?") or my stepmom inviting me to suddenly vital celebrations that start twenty minutes into my shift at work ("what do you mean, you forgot your second cousin's birthday? We're having a barbecue right now and we need you to pick up the brisket!"), I pretty much live in fear of family gatherings. It kind of sucks that the fact of my birthday being only four months away fills me with dread. Not because I hate aging, but because it means any day now my Mom will start asking what "I'm planning," and anything that isn't catered to her will strike her as being completely snubbed. In fact, anything that isn't entirely catered to her, but involves her at all, is so exhausting that last year I just limited my celebration to taking her to the movies.

So this year, somehow, someway, I won't let that happen. I will expect my parents to behave themselves with regards to the holidays, including my birthday, and not blame myself when that is impossible. I will not set myself up to bear the burden of their happiness at the expense of my own. I will not dismiss my wants or needs, I will not be caught unaware and surprised, I will not be defined by guilt.

2014 will be the year I teach myself to celebrate. 

Vulnerable

Baby Bel's entrance into the world ripped me open to extreme vulnerability, and the following two weeks were not adequately gentle. I hadn't pulled out of the hospital parking lot before my Mom called up with some serious crazy to lay down on me. Sleep became the sort of thing I read about in books as R and I worked all hours to build a LOT of product for the last weekend of sales. And then it rained Saturday morning. I got very wet and then sat in the cold in our booth for eight hours, and then I went to work at the diner. By the time I was heading back to our booth the next morning, I had lost my voice. By the time I got home from work that night, having packed up the tent and all the remaining instruments for the last time in 2013, I had a 101 degree temperature.

Throw in some more family drama that breaks my heart and I shouldn't go into, add a dose of what was either my first real-life panic attack or heart attack, and bring to a slow simmering fight between Darling and me that spanned from Christmas Eve to late last night...and you have the second half of December for me. Oh, and money? Don't.mention.money. This is the worse I've been about tracking expenses since 2011.

The clouds didn't lift until Darling hugged me last night and just said, "it doesn't have to hurt," which was somehow exactly what I needed to hear at that precise moment. It doesn't have to hurt. That can be my mantra for right now. Because right now it seems like everything is wrong, and I can't fix anything, but it doesn't have to actually hurt. Not as bad as I've been letting it hurt, at least, and not to the degree that I try and strike out and make others feel as miserable.

Now I have some perspective on life, by which I don't  mean that everything is relatively okay, but by which I mean that I can look at the dozen individual circumstances that make me want to tear my hair out and, well, not tear my hair out. I can accept what I cannot change, as the AA saying goes, and start considering what does need to change.

The New Year provides the perfect stage for such changes, no? More on resolutions soon.

Miracle

Saturday night I helped my sister through the labor and birth of her beautiful baby girl, Bel. I have barely been able to function as a human being since witnessing that miracle. I was in the hospital with her for the twelve hours, at once helpless and vital, witness yet somehow participant. I still feel entirely shattered, still shaky and overwhelmed and vulnerable. I kind of need life to stop for a little bit, let me catch my breath, re-assemble my now variegated pieces into some reproduction of who I used to be. Or I need to watch, like, 200 hours of Dr. Who and coagulate back into something human-shaped.

What I don't need is hysterical, accusatory phone calls from my Mother, a lease drawing to a close, hungry cats to feed, a Christmas bazaar this weekend, $700 worth of product to build, a shift waiting tables tomorrow night, a sick husband, a full trash bin, an empty gas tank, and less than twenty-six cents in the checking account.

But that's what I have to work with. 'Tis The Season to just keep moving.

Specialization Vs. Competency

Lizzie wonders why I should waste my time with truck repair, time that might be better spent with my business. Mechanics is messy and involved, after all, and paying someone to do the most basic work is relatively affordable.

I was writing another post when the truest answer made itself available to me: I find mechanics a great deal of fun. I had a fantastic time playing under the hood last Sunday, and was not the least bit surprised to find myself looking forward to a more in-depth look at my engine.

So much as I've always resisted car-culture, the engineering aspect is fantastically interesting to me. I like building. I like to know how things come together and pull apart. The same basic principles can be found in almost everything I enjoy, from baking to woodworking.

Most important, I like the feeling of competency that comes from understanding these systems. I have a great deal of respect for people who can look under the hood and know what they're seeing. I know that helping to replace my own tires and possibly repair my own brakes in a couple of weeks won't make me a master engineer, but I also understand that it will greatly enhance my understanding of the machine I've bet my livelihood on. This is one of those points where the line between frugality and sustainability blur. I feel that learning basic mechanics will empower me to get the absolute most out of this engine and each of its components. Even as I spend more money on oil, high quality filters, and recommended fluids, I will extend the life of the each piece to the degree that it will pay for itself. At the very least, I will know enough to protect myself from unethical treatment in the future. If someone tells me my brake pads are dangerously worn, I will be able to see for myself if that is the case. I can prevent dry rot in my tires in the future with basic maintenance I'd never before heard of. I won't come dangerously close to running out of coolant again.

Culturally speaking, Americans are told that to develop a passion is to pursue a career. If I really want to understand engines, I should be a mechanic. Otherwise I'm wasting time. I have been told I should be a professional baker, a farmer, and (believe it or not) a candlestick maker. The things is, a professional carpenter has a hard time finding time to work on cars, and a professional baker needs to sleep when the seedlings are best watered. There is a lot to be said for specialization, but I crave a general competency. That's one of the reasons I've explored so many careers, and ultimately what brings me back to waiting tables time and time again, the one job that offers me the flexibility to explore all of my passions!

The Gift of Forgiveness

I always harbor a certain degree of guilt this time a year. The holiday season is barely underway, but already I know that not everyone on my list is going to get gifts, handmade, baked, or otherwise. At best, there will be a card. High hopes dash, year after year, against a reality that seems to me much more miserly than frugal. It's not helped that, as a waitress, money is always scarce this time of year. It's not helped by the fact that my crafts business may pay out, but couldn't come close to really paying for itself. And never mind the weather forcing Darling inside so that he can't quite take advantage of his own profession.

For years now I have tracked my income and expenses, tabulated the results and - come the months of November and December - come up short. I find myself wondering about this yearly attempt at frugality, this annual downfall, and whether or not a little credit or one of those holiday loans really would be the end of the world.

This year, however, something clicked. Somewhere between calculating my tabulations for November and writing up the priority list for December, I understood what financial integrity really means.

Darling and I, as well as everyone else on the entire planet, have limited resources. Everyone's limit is different, and that fluctuates for most of us month by month. But the fact is, we can't do everything for everyone all the time.

The point of my tabulations is to really pinpoint what Enough means to Darling and me, and to feel completely confident in our understanding of what we actually have vs. what we perceive. Most important, at least to me at this point, my tabulations reveal how much I have to give, and the consequences of over-stepping that line.

Suddenly, I'm not being selfishly frugal or overly miserly. I'm paying my bills. Any money I set aside - if I do manage to set anything aside this month -  is not taking away from my nieces, nephews, or God children. Any money set aside is done so in recognition that, holidays or otherwise, the truck tires have dry rot and we need the deposit for a new apartment ASAP.

Which doesn't mean I'm not going to get everyone gifts. It means I'm not going to feel guilty for not getting everyone under ten a new tricycle. There's an important difference there.

This is a valuable epiphany even outside of the holidays. Year after year, month after month, I find myself setting absurdly high and often contradictory goals. I want to aim high, but I'm over the guilt and remorse cultivated over years of failure. I finally have enough data to feel totally confident that going back to college, achieving debt freedom, purchasing personal health insurance, and saving tens of thousands of dollars while working part-time just isn't possible, and hasn't been possible, under any of my personal circumstances. I finally have a good idea of what it means to set achievable goals.

Car Maintenance 101: My Journey Begins

"Opinion must become conviction before it has any potency to change the ordering of life. I saw plainly that I must either bring my thoughts to the point of conviction or discard them altogether." 

 -W.J. (William James) Dawson  

Or, as I told myself early yesterday, "less talking, more walking."

I've experienced a long, hard struggle regarding vehicle ownership. Despite myself, my husband and I are in the charge of a Toyota Tundra we call Bertha. After years of self-hate and resentment for my dependent relationship with Bertha, she has only recently endeared herself for me for her amazing influence on my marriage.

Darling has had a license for many years, but did not really drive. That was my fault, because I'm over-controlling, a trait that does not seem to be dispersing with age. To be fair, though, he really didn't want to drive or feel comfortable at all behind the wheel. So we were both nursing unhealthy tendencies via our attitudes toward driving.

Those behaviors were - and are - mirrored in every aspect of our lives. So when the day came that Darling absolutely had to drive in order to move forward with his career, whether either of us liked it or not, the shifts affected EVERYTHING. It introduced a new balance, a better balance, a harder balance.

I've been going on and on about priority lists because they solidly represent the new, stronger partnership Darling and I have been enjoying. My husband has contributed income for years, and has contributed more in the past than he does today, but these days it's so much more than money. Driving the truck every day forced him to step up, forced me to step down, and it's just been better.

Which means I have to stop looking at Bertha as the representation of all that is wrong and evil with the world and start treating her like the tool that she is: a hugely complex and valuable piece of machinery. The mechanics of which I am almost entirely ignorant. The ignorance of which could cost me way more than gas ever will.

If I'm going to be a driver, I want to be fully competent. I want to open the hood and know what I'm looking at, I want to fix problems before they manifest. If I'm going to own this truck, I want it to live as long as I do. I want to take it to a mechanic without the fear of being ripped off. Which might be a kind of tall order for someone who, until yesterday, thought that V6 was a vegetable drink. I decided to start with changing my own oil.

I didn't feel comfortable learning this from Youtube, and I didn't want to ask a friend who might end up doing the entire process for me. I have a real challenge retaining information. I pretty much literally have to do something to learn it. I have to twist the dials, work the tools, whatever, or it will not stay in my head.

Austin is the greatest city in the world. I found exactly what I needed a half-hour drive from my home. DIY Texas is a fully functional garage with any and all tools available to layman or professional alike. It's stupidly affordable to rent the space and fully-stocked toolbox, a small up charge for verbal assistance, and for a little more you can have a mechanic's undivided attention and instruction in your project.

I am in love. My new BFF, J, showed me how to raise my truck on that awesome platform thing and walk under it to empty the oil tank, then inspect my wheels, brakes, suspension, and transmission. He showed me the dry rot that will eventually lead to a blow out on the tires, the wearing on my brake pads, and gave me such a detailed explanation of how I'll deal with my transmission that I almost feel like I could go in and do it without help in a few weeks. J told me where to get the best price on new tires and said I can have them delivered directly to the garage, where they'll change them out for a standard flat rate or talk me through the process for an hourly fee.

I can't exaggerate how competent and empowered this all made me feel. I now understand why a $20, 10-minute oil change is not frugal. I understand why changing my own oil will actually cost me more money from now on, as I will no longer be opting for the cheapest possible products to be used in the truck. I went ahead and bought the oil and filter for the next change because they were on sale at Autozone. The excitement of going back and learning more almost balances out the fact that I need new tires ASAP. Almost.

I'll think about that $1,000 bomb later. In the meantime, I'm going to work out how other purchases on my priority list invite new learning opportunities.

Revolving Resolutions

Darling and I took a couple of days off during the middle of the week to celebrate our 9th anniversary. We rented a cabin on the river just north of our house and spent our time...well, anyway, we enjoyed ourselves :)

I worked Thursday evening and turned that money directly into groceries on Friday evening. Darling and I talked priorities and came up with a rather unexciting list. I made a payment that knocked our debt to less than a thousand dollars, and will probably make at least one more payment before 2014, but we won't be totally decimating it by the new year. There's just too much going on, particularly with the apartment-hunting and our diminished income due to holidays and bad weather. I don't even think that savings are going to happen this month. Not because I don't think saving is important, but because I'm trying to be more realistic honest with myself about what Darling and I can do with what we have. As matters stand, we have enough money to cover rent and our basics and the deposit on an apartment. And not a lot else, which will be an issue when it comes to paying rent next month. We probably can't afford any deposit including first and/or last month's rent, which is pretty common hereabouts.

To be honest, we could (and might) wait until February to move. I don't want to, and Darling doesn't want to. But we're not going to be kicked out into the street if we don't have a place on January first. So we're operating on the assumption that we'll move as early as possible without letting our net worth slip back into the red. Seems like a fair enough goal, right?

Speaking of goals, I'm brainstorming New Years Resolutions. For inspiration I'm asking myself "What would make 2014 absolutely rock more than any other year before?" Here are some ideas:

- College Classes. I can't decide on an area of study in particular, but my current fantasy is to take the ACC 36-hour woodworking curriculum. How cool would it be to really know my way around a cabinetry shop?

- Give up waiting tables to support myself crafting

- A Monthly DIY project. One building project completed a month, maybe? Or knitting, or anything handmade? Hmmm...

- A service project. Of some sort, any sort.

- Something to get me moving again. Yoga classes, maybe? I miss capoeira.

- Meet my Six-months savings goal.

The End of Fear-Based Finances

As I was writing yesterday's post, I repeatedly considered the possibility that Darling and I might have a negative net worth next month because we need to move in January. In order to move in January we need to have a deposit saved and first month's rent available on or near the first. Pair that with paying December rent, and all of our employment issues around the holidays, and there's the small chance that not only will we not pay all (or any) of my remaining debt before 2014, but we might have to access the savings we've put away that resulted in our positive net worth in the first place!

Cue finding The Perfect house on craigslist last night, responding to it quickly, and having an immediate e-mail conversation with the landlord. Most of it all hinging on the theory that I could give him the $800 deposit today at 4:00. Bah. The only possible way to meet that goal would be to cash out my savings, as feared, and be prepared to pay this month's rent (very) late (again). Even accepting late rent, the rest of the month - and holiday season - would be under strict austerity rule so as to have January rent on the first. And there would still be a good chance of facing an overdraft on our account if we weren't super careful with all the timing.

In the past, I'd just roll right ahead with that, knowing that everything would work out one way or another. I'd roll from crisis to crisis that way, always jamming too many big goals together, working long hours to make everything work, and never being able to really enjoy the fruits of my labor. "Someday..." I'd lie to myself, "someday everything will settle down."

Well, someday comes today. The fact is, we don't have $800 in the checking account, so we'll just have to pass on that particular dream house. The money in savings was put there for a more meaningful goal, and most of all as a promise of security, a promise I don't mean to continuously deny myself. When Darling gets paid, we'll be writing that rent check and then following through with the priority list as my husband and I agree. We'll follow through with our moderate savings and debt payment goals.

As with the choice to buy my share certificate rather than pay the last of my debt, this decision is equally comforting and scary. So much of our progress these past several years was driven by my impulsive and obstinate nature. Will a calmer, more steadfast approach to money management dull my luck and hinder my ability to take advantage of good opportunities before they slip away?

It doesn't take a genius to acknowledge that big goals take long-term thinking...but this is just going to require new behavior from me. I've always operated on the theory that if I leap, a net will appear. And that's been true. But it's a scary way to live, and Darling and I are getting older, and time to complete The Challenge is ever dwindling.

So. No more Craigslist for me. Not until I've got an adequate sum in the checking account, at least.

December 2013: The Positive Net Worth

Today my net worth is $205.71.

I've publicly tracked my net worth, penny by penny, for over six years now. In that time I have clawed my way out of a $16,000+ hole. I have earned good and easy money, I have gone unemployed for months at a time, I have taken college courses, embarked on new careers, worked countless small gigs, learned dozens of little skills, shared my home, lived in a tent, depended on the kindness of friends and strangers and even the Catholic Church. I've met people whose radically sustainable lifestyles make my own humble goals look like a joke. I've studied permaculture and totally failed to apply it to my own life. I've waited tables in the country and worked on farms in the country. I've eaten well out of dumpsters, sustained my vices, visited Paris and and England and Wales, and purchased exactly one tattoo.

Sharing my negative net worth, using real numbers, was a matter of honor and honesty. Tracking a positive net worth strikes me as churlish. So I'm not gonna do it. Unless for some reason my net worth dips below $0 in the next month, I'll be removing the Net Worth Weigh in from my sidebar. And replacing it with something else, most likely a measurement in percentages of how far I am from my next goal, the Six Months Savings.

I've got a lot going on for the rest of 2014, so it's pretty hard for me to make an honest estimation of where Darling and I might find ourselves, financially speaking, on January 1st. Darling's missed enough work due to bad weather and holidays that we might face a pretty substantial dip in his income. At the same time, I should bring home a reasonable chunk of change from my side business soon after Christmas. We've agreed time and time again to pay off the last of our debt with one of his next two checks, but we need to catch up on our savings, purchase gifts, and save money to move in January. We'll be starting the New Year with a three paycheck month, followed up shortly with some sort of tax refund, and I'll probably be able to double my own income as a waitress once the holiday craft mania has passed, so I'm not too worried about making fast progress then, we just have to get through one last hiccupy sort of month.

Thanksgiving Dinner: Lessons Gleaned

Thanksgiving was truly fantastic. It's my third or fourth time serving a vegetarian dinner the day before, and I think it was my smoothest gathering yet. I'm learning from early mistakes, and this is what I've worked out so far:

1. Do any baking earlier in the day, if possible, before the kitchen warms up. I know it makes sense to want a warm dessert (and it could be baking while we eat!) but pie crust rolls out so much easier on cool surfaces with cool hands, and needs the clean counter space before the cooking dishes begin to overflow, and many desserts need time to set. You don't really want to eat a pecan pie straight from the oven, and pumpkin pie is best the next day, and cake needs to cool before it can be iced.

2. Turkey should be first on your list of to-dos, but a vegetarian can wait on the tofurkey. Just don't ever freeze it beforehand, it does fine in the fridge. This shouldn't have taken me six years to work out.

3. Cranberry sauce is the easiest way to impress people ever. Throw a container of fresh or frozen berries in a saucepan with a cup of sugar and some orange zest, put it on low, and leave it until the berries burst (stirring when you feel like it). The end. Easier than opening a can, and a billion times more delicious.

4. This is not the time, believe it or not, for variety. Especially for vegetarians. The first several years I thought I needed a million options for my meat-and-potato loving family to be satisfied with my offering. In the end, people can only put so much food on their plate, and a lot of that is going to be mashed potatoes no matter what. So I haven't done egg rolls since that first year. And this year, even though both the bread and rolls were a hit, I'd probably only do bread next year.

5. Beverages make a gathering feel more luxurious or festive. For the longest time, it didn't occur to me to offer more than water. These days I have sodas, coffees, hot teas, coconut egg nog, and iced tea on offer, and a guest brought wine. Drinks can be expensive, in their way, but I justify it by making darn near everything else from scratch.

6. There's no shame in convenience. In the workshop, R and I have agreed that a tool of almost any price is worthwhile when it makes the job go faster and makes a better product. When it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, I dream every year of skipping the boxed tofurkey and making the central entree myself. But there is something comforting about that one boxed comfort: no matter what, it's going to come out just fine, and even the meat eaters seem comforted by that central offering.

VeggieDinner Countdown

Five and a half hours before my vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner is due to be on the table. So far:

1. One Scratch Pumpkin Pie is cooling on the counter
2. A Dozen Marmalade Tarts next to the pumpkin
3. A Loaf of Bread still in the oven
4. Cranberry Sauce setting on the stove top
5. Sweet Potatoes boiling alongside the sauce

I might have reached a good time to scrub the toilet, sweep the floor, and set up the tables before chopping veggies to roast with the tofurkey, putting together the ingredients for macaroni and cheese, and mixing the biscuit dough...

...or maybe I'll put the pasta on to boil, have a cup of coffee, and chill for a couple of minutes :)

Breaking The Blues

When I'm feeling down, the best cure is to do that particular item that's been languishing on my to-do list. Sometimes it doesn't seem too big or scary, there just doesn't seem to be time for it, though day after day it makes it in the top three items on the must-get-to-its.

I shouldn't put off my tabulations at all, as they're pretty much a central part of who I am, so when that falls behind it's sort of like a normal person not combing her hair (No, I have not combed my hair today, as a matter of fact). A bad sign. I end up writing grumpy, if not outright weepy posts, and sometimes go so far as to post them. Then I try and get to business. Hopefully.

And, once that task is done with, I feel so much better. Even though I had no idea that was the reason I felt so crappy.

So I caught up with my tabulations today, and was so pleased with the numbers. Due to my savings structure, it shouldn't be a surprise that I've spent about 25% of this month's earnings and caught up entirely with rent. The bonus is that I ALSO paid over $500 to debt. I might not have spent 50% less than we earned, but along with the fact that we covered seven out of eight items on our priority list, spent a couple of hundred dollars on eye exams, glasses, and contacts that weren't on the priority list, bought a big ole pile of Thanksgiving dinner groceries, and celebrated one friend's birthday and another friend's Phd. Qualification with expensive drinks and dinner out...that's pretty damn satisfying.

Goal of 2014: Six Months In Six Months

Next month I fully intend to pay off the last of my debt, achieving freedom from that particular burden and forcing me to take the next step, the dreaded step, the tedious step: Saving the Six-Months Emergency Fund.

I have a lot to say about this fund. I don't think it should actually be for emergencies, for instance. And determining how to qualify six months of expenses requires a post unto itself. But, for me, it's always about the Challenge. And, having spent way too long paying off my student loans and other residual debts, the time has come to for a fast, hard, and exhilarating goal.

My plan is extreme enough, however, that I want to take a moment to say that the emergency fund is going to take a normal person a long time to accumulate. Most of you out there are trying to save while making mortgage and car payments. I don't have that strength, resiliency, or patience. Kudos to you. The other day I heard a radio interview in which a woman worried that it would take years for her to save up six months of expenses. That should be normal. In the world of instant gratification, it doesn't seem right. But it is. Very few people out there are saving anything at all, most are spending more than they earn. Never mind that the average financial advice book squeezes the six-month savings into a chapter between "give up the lattes" and "track spending for a couple of months." This is a serious thing, as serious as paying off any large debt, and don't let anyone tell you it should just take less than a year under less than extreme conditions.

So...extreme conditions...

I want to save six months of expenses in six months.

It took me way too long to pay off debt, and I'm ready to move forward. Who knows how long Darling and I will both be working or what sort of obstacles will crop up the moment I drop my guard. I'm ready to start investing, but the six months savings has to come first. So let's get done with it!

I see the Six-Months Savings Goal as something that can be reached both by saving and reducing monthly expenses. So my plan is to replace my net worth weigh in with some sort of graph tracking my progress in terms of percentage saved, rather than dollar amounts. See, if I go the first three months spending, say, $3,000 a month, then manage to cut my spending down to $1,000 a month, I want that to be reflected by my total goal. That means in January I will be aiming for $18,000 saved by the end of June, whereas by June that total will be reduced to $12,000. Which means that if I save $2000 every month, I will have saved only 40% halfway through, but will achieve my goal in perfect time regardless.

This works well for me because I love interactive finances, and will obsess over these numbers even if I simply set up an automatic deduction from my checking account to savings account as a normal person should. It also works because, as I've mentioned recently, my income and expenses are incredibly, incredibly sporadic and, even with three years of data at my fingertips, I couldn't honestly suggest a Six-month savings goal with total certainty. While it might seem absurd to suggest I'd spend $3,000 three months, then $1,000 the next three, it's actually a fairly reasonable estimation of possibility. The fact is, I historically spend every penny, and even if half of those pennies were applied to debt, I plan on investing an equal amount on health issues in the upcoming years. I can't assume my finances will stabilize any time soon, if ever.

I'll calculate the total savings goal by averaging out the previous six months of expenses. For the sake of clarity, I'll offer up some real numbers. As of right now, my Six-Month Goal would be $14,203.23 saved, and I have 8% of that. I would need to save $2,167.21 a month to meet that goal, which right now simply doesn't seem at all possible. To make matters worse, paying $1,000 off my debt next month means that number will probably increase just before the challenge starts. As I can't even imagine looking Darling in the eye and telling him I want to put nearly all of his January pay in a savings account, I expect that my first priority will be to re-introduce some serious frugality into my life to get that total to a manageable level.

Hmmm...maybe I'll launch this challenge with another challenge: a No-Spend January! I bet Darling would be into that! We haven't had an official one in ages :)

My First Positive Net Worth

Today it happened. Today I have a positive net worth.

Actually, it must have happened last week, but I was too busy agonizing over whether or not I should pay off the last of my debt to notice. November 8, 2013 was my personal black Friday, the day my savings and cash on hands outweighed the debt I owed. That fact just didn't click until today, after making a decent student loan payment and realizing my debt now very nearly matches my savings...Holy Compound Interest, Batman!

I'm not going to call it official, not yet. In part because I must be in total shock, because I can't even wrap my mind around that reality yet. In part because I've always done my calculations on the first of every month, and always will, because who knows what will come up in the next three weeks? So long as I have that debt, the positive net worth won't necessarily stick, you know?

I wasn't expecting to reach a positive net worth this way, so I didn't see it coming at all. Today, my net worth is just over $50. For the first time in my entire adult life, I own $50, more or less free and clear.

Can I hold onto that until December 1st? Can I double it by December 1st? How will this tie into the New Years resolutions I've been brainstorming? How can I celebrate, keeping in mind that a romantic dinner will knock my net worth back into the red again?

Work + Art Show + Baby Shower = This Post

I can't believe my last post was only three days ago! The weekend was such a blur...

Friday: running errands with Darling until heading off to the workshop to pack up art show essentials, then working overnight.

Saturday: coming home from work, napping an hour, and then staring out the window for an hour at the gentle drizzle. We shouldn't even pack the truck up in the rain; our instruments are relatively rugged but most cigar boxes are covered in paper. But we go to the show anyway, the clouds never cleared but definitely stopped leaking, and we have the best sells so far. A total of five instruments sold! Another couple of weekends like that and we won't have any stock for serious Christmas vending! We'll have to simply pay ourselves something (we're not sure how much, but the time has come for some sort of remuneration) and start building for spring. Another hour nap and I was off to work..

Sunday: It was a very busy night at work. Even manning the patio I still took a table at five a.m. Barely functional, I could hardly finish my side work and then had to nap in the truck before being able to drive home. But when I did arrive home, Darling and our roommate/landlord Mordi were scrubbing the house clean as though there lives depended on it. My heart broke, I fell in love with both of them all over again, and I turned around and went shopping for the baby shower.

I spent...a lot. A lot of money. Basically everything I earned this weekend went to food and decorations for the shower. I had a list, thank goodness, and was armed only with cash (and managed to stick, at least, to that limitation with minimal embarrassment). I was just...guys, you have no idea how tired I was. How driven, how desperate I am to show Lenore that she's loved and her family will do our best to be good for her and her baby.

I arrived home too tired to anything. Darling unloaded the truck and put away the groceries and I went to bed, passed out, and woke up half an hour later to hear the sound of my sister's voice. She took one look at me and said, "I'm tired and early, let's take a nap before starting." At this stage, my hands were shaking too much to put in my contacts, so I agreed and we both took an hour nap.

Then to cooking and baking. My sister-in-law came and I set her to work cutting up fruit. I baked cookies, then muffins, icing and decorating both. They turned out surprisingly beautiful. I made cucumber and sprout sandwiches. My sister brought the supplies for mimosas. Other guests arrived, and...I guess it was a success. I hope it was a success. I never succumbed to total fatigue, at least. I never had a mimosa, either.

The greatest obstacle wasn't even sleep deprivation. My Mom called at 2:00 pm on the dot and told me a story that would make a normal person's ears bleed. It was bad. Things are bad. So bad. So bad that, when the doorbell rang, I promised to call her bag, hung up the phone, turned to my sister, and said, "we will not tell our brother that phone call just happened. We are not going to discuss this right now, not on your special day." Talk about domestic terrorism. That night I called my Mom back, and although things certainly aren't good on her side of life, it wasn't necessary to ruin the party over it.

Today I didn't even wake up to wish Darling luck on his third job as a lead. I did wake up at nine a.m., amazingly. My mantra today is, "relax, relax, relax." Of course I'm cleaning up after the party today, and catching up on laundry, but my hands are still a little shaky, so mostly it's a total chill day. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll think about money again in a serious way. Tomorrow I'll head back into the workshop. Tomorrow...but today, I'm going to catch up on my mimosa drinking.

I Was Almost Debt Free

I just made what was, if not the hardest, the least characteristic decision of my life.

I chose not to pay debt.

On the heels of my last post, which still doesn't feel quite right to me, this declaration is especially unsavory. Why do I need to post in the negative? What I should actually post is:

I just bought my first credit union share certificate!!!

Because that's a good thing. Because that sets a savings precedent Darling and I have desperately needed for a goodly long time.

Our inspiration is taxes. Darling is a contract employee for the time being, so, come April, we could theoretically be facing a big bill. That's not necessarily likely, because I've been working all year and always have the maximum taken amount of taxes taken from my paycheck so I get a refund and to guard against this sort of situation. Pair that with our up-to-now poverty, and I doubt that his earning good money for three months of 2013 is going to do much more than reduce our refund check early next year. Since he'll be an official employee by spring of next year, and having the maximum taken out of his taxes (yeah, I'm all about the bad financial habits these past few posts, huh?), I highly doubt we'll risk owing the government any money. Yet it's a fear I choose not to shake, having seen too many people screw up when it comes to federal income taxes.

My final consideration is that unless his employers give him a fairly decent raise upon making him permanent, Darling could possibly face a cut in income once taxes and benefits are being taken out. Hopefully they give him that raise, but I'd rather not get used to spending all my tax-free dollars before that transition.

So for the past six weeks I've been taking 25% out of every paycheck, putting it into a checking account, and...spending it by the next pay period. Because I'm awesome like that. Obviously the savings needed to be somewhere less accessible, and before replenishing them became impossible. Cue a share certificate, the feel-good version of a certificate of deposit.

Besides knowing the majority of this week's check would not be accessible to me, I was fairly happy with this plan until it clicked that Darling's most recent check would be enough to cover the entirety of my remaining debt. Not so with the past two, but this one, the one that would replenish and set our savings out of reach...this one would be just enough to pay off our debt.

Things would have been tight, very tight, for the rest of the month. It's possible rent would have been late, that I'd struggle with my sister's baby shower, that it would be at least another two weeks of coasting into the gas station and emptying my change into the pump. There would be overdrafts, small debts would accumulate that would deny my actual official debt freedom, but nothing that couldn't be met with the first paycheck of next month, nothing that would deny the actual joy of being done with my student loans. Everything Darling and I had agreed to with regards to this month's finances would be null and void. Paying that debt would have been a mistake.

But it would be the last time I'd ever make that mistake again.

For all that, I'd never catch up on savings. I know my nature too well to assume I'll simply catch up by taking 30% of our checks and applying them to savings for the rest of the year. The same extremism that inspires me to apply entire paychecks to debt makes small, regular payments feel nearly agonizing. I have to walk the line. Always 25%, always a certain chunk that amounts to an actual investment ever six months or so, is about as good as it's going to get. A large enough sum that it makes me feel good about myself, but not so large that I can't catch up when my dedication inevitably falters.

I've had savings in the past and felt burned by the experience. My net worth climbed oh-so-high only to plunge when the emergency cropped up that would drain the accounts, leaving me with the number that truly ruled my life: my accumulated debt. Paying debt irrevocably increased my net worth, whereas savings only ever came and went. That's why I stopped almost entirely, even knowing what a bad idea that is. I imagined saving only after I was debt free, and the idea of bringing my net worth into the black with savings rather than actual debt freedom doesn't feel right.

Right now, however, it's savings we need. More so than the debt freedom, perhaps, and certainly more so than another month of total struggle. We'll be able to pay the debt in whole soon - so soon - and then it will be easy, an act of integrity rather than compulsion. The triumph will be complete and total, not sideways and shifty. Maybe my finances are evolving. Maybe they won't be so reactionary and fear-based in the future, but actually controlled, calculated and careful. 

Or maybe I just let the last chance of debt freedom before the end of 2013 slip right through my fingers, net worth not withstanding.

How To Live Without A Budget

Lizzie asked why Darling and I don't simply make and stick with a budget. I've touched on the subject often enough to make it feel redundant, but this feels like a good opportunity to share why I choose not to budget, and offer you the methods of a budget-free, financially-successful life.

There is a single lifestyle element that makes a budget both necessary and successful: Consistency. If you have a consistent income and consistent spending patterns, you pretty much require a budget. That's because you will inevitably develop certain spending habits (lattes, eating lunch out on Fridays, not saving enough) that a budget will keep in check. A budget is a schedule of spending that reminds you where your money should be going, month after month, year after year.

The trick to living without a budget, then, is break any and all patterns and habits and resist forming new ones. Unless you do this naturally, it's not a route I highly recommend. My husband and I shy so assiduously away from routine ourselves that we've had to learn to make this a good thing, though, and you can do the same.

On the most pragmatic level, what I'm talking about is avoiding regular monthly expenses. Darling and I have two: rent and the cell phone bill. And, because we paid the phone bill four months at once, we really only have rent. Rent covers all of our utilities, and in our last home it covered all utilities, phone, and groceries, and in the home before that rent covered everything but groceries. With only one bill a month, a budget isn't terribly necessary so long as you are tracking all expenses, review your monthly tabulations, and feel good about that spending.  What I mean is, Darling and I have agreed to spend $400 a month on groceries while he is working. That's because we know from careful tracking and experience that's enough and we can afford it. I don't have to put money in an envelope to meet this goal, it's very natural.

So, knowing from experience that we're going to spend a certain amount of money on groceries and gas - both of which could be reduced if necessary - and that rent is the only thing that has to be paid every four weeks, Darling and I are able to cope with an income that can be less than $300 one month and over $3,000 another month.

When things are going well (those $3,000 months), we make a list of all the purchases we'd like to make. This can include everything from a big debt payment or investment, cookware, vacation savings, gifts, medical check ups, and upcoming annual payments. All the stuff we couldn't do on the $300 months as well as season specific spending. One of us agrees to go first, and picks our top priority for the month. Often this might be rent, other times it might be a small purchase that has slipped through the cracks month after month and isn't going to hinder our ability to pay rent with the first check of the month. The the second priority is chosen, and so on. Even if rent is priority number 3, we'll pay it when it's due if at all possible. In the meantime, we buy groceries, pay debt, buy gas, and cover other non-negotiable items as need and opportunity dictate.

The benefit? By spending in "chunks" (four months of phone bills at once, an entirely new wardrobe, or even just that wok Darling's been pining for), we can weather the months when paying rent is effectively impossible in relative comfort. We get while the gettings good. Darling and I share our income completely, there is no sense of his or mine when it comes to cash, so this is a good way to keep us on equal footing. It also helps me resist the dangerous urge to pay $1,500 on debt just because we have it...though, truth be told, at least that's a sin I'll only be able to commit once more in my life, and I can't promise to resist it when the chance comes!

November 2013 Net Worth

I was so freaked out last month when I calculated my net worth and it came to less than -$2,000! Considering I'd broken about the negative $1,000 mark in May, it felt like I was falling helplessly down into this deep financial abyss. But there's magic to lacking easy access to credit: our debt can only grow so great, and we have to make up for it so quickly!

So this month my net worth has increased by nearly a thousand dollars. All is well between myself, my bank, and my credit union, I'm not behind on rent, and I was able to pay the annual insurance on the truck I drive and my Mom's car. Relief all around, I can assure you. It's still a bummer to be nearly $400 away from previous highest-net-worth ever, but I don't see any reason I shouldn't claw my way back up there by December.

Darling and I did another priority list for November. This time I suggested that our list only include eight items, four choices each. Last month we prioritized everything we could think of to spend money on, and we only marked six off the list. I wanted to limit our choices because we bounced around a little bit on that list, and I wanted to hold onto that flexibility without losing the sense of, you know, priority, if that makes any sense.

The priority list is important to me because it outlines our spending goals in an egalitarian manner, so I don't feel like a bad guy for saying "no" or being the one to point out our bank account is running on empty, and Darling doesn't feel like his wants and needs are being ignored for forgotten. This is more vital than it has been in a while because he's earning such good money that we're able to meet some needs that have been postponed for a really long time: prescription glasses for work, a bed...that sort of thing. But we can't meet them all at once, and I'm more dedicated than ever to have savings. As God as my witness, we will buy a share certificate this Friday!

A Longish Update: Compost, Baby Shower, and Dreams

Today is definitely a stay in bed and read sort of day. I've had a headache since waking up yesterday, one of those strangely defiant aches that doesn't seem affected by the normal pain medications. Yesterday it eventually developed into nausea and vertigo, and I had to drive in the terrible rainstorms to get home from work. Blinded every couple of minutes by massive flashes of lightning, otherwise incapable of seeing much more than the lights of the car ahead of me, and seriously wondering if the mass of water running over the highway might be enough to sweep away the truck...Yeah, it was not a nice drive.

Still, complaining about rain does not feel like the thing to do, with the lake at 38% capacity after years of hard drought. It's just that we no longer have any idea how to deal with rainfall, particularly not heavy rainfall, and there are news reports that maybe our dams aren't as up to snuff as they ought to be, and being next door to Louisiana that makes me nervous. I want my dams and levies functioning properly, you know?

Anyways...It's raining just in time to sweep away my new food-waste collection site. Darling and I decided to do a compost pile, but since we might not be at this house for more than a couple of months longer we want to a 38-Day Berkley method pile. This requires having a certain amount of food waste (and other "green matter) as well as brown matter and manure to start...basically, having all of your ingredients at once, rather than adding it as you get it as with traditional backyard piles. That "certain amount," is a rather large amount, so I built a small bin just for that, for the time being. I also cleaned up the massive amount of brush and yard debris that has been sitting in the back since the house was purchased. It took about five hours and, two days later, I'm still sore as I've ever been. But the backyard is looking very good.

That's how I spent one of my first days off this week. The second day off was spent with my little sister making baby shower invitations. That's going to be in a couple of weeks and I'll be hosting that. Very excited and nervous. I am typically not a girlie girl sort of girl, but I want this to be super-special for my Lenore.

Darling: still working his butt off, still doing well. And I still wait for some agent to jump out from behind a bush and shout, "the jig is up! put your hands up and step away from your dreams-come-true." Seriously, it's like a sickness with me, I'm still too nervous to believe that this job is real, that Darling has a good job and it's only going to get better, that everything we've worked for these past five years is actually happening. Do you understand that I had given up? Darling's been working over a month now, driving himself to-and-from work for weeks now, earning great pay, saving, ticking items off of our priority list, enjoying his boss and coworkers, and I am still waiting for everything to fall apart. I still haven't accepted this new, beautiful reality.

The saving is cool, too. We're anxious about taxes, because he'll be a contract employee for a while (maybe when he's made permanent I'll be able to relax). We've never had to pay taxes before, because I'm a big fan of letting them take a chunk out of every paycheck and then giving it back to me in February, but this year or 2014 might be different. So we're taking 25% out of each of his checks and sticking it in a savings account, and every six weeks we should be able to invest in a share certificate at our credit union. The interest rates are pitiful, but better than nothing and certainly better than not having any money to pay taxes with should it ever come to that. I'm over-estimating what we should expect to pay in the hopes, of course, that the money will turn into an emergency fund. And having it in share certificates will prevent me from treating Christmas like an emergency.

Partnership and Priorities

We're so very funny, my Darling and me together. For most of last week we were ships passing in the night - or rather, in the early morning, him gone about half an hour before I arrive, the scent of his breakfast still hanging in the air as I got ready for bed- and then we had a desperately coveted, too-short Saturday together. We enjoyed a sleepy date night, not going out to eat but not exactly making the pasta or sauce from scratch, either. Then Sunday morning I made breakfast and edged my way out of the house to the workshop, leaving him to do whatever it is he does with his time. I came home to a clean kitchen, promised to do my part the next day, and we fell into bed...

Then today weather and permitting issues have him working at home, and it's like having my territory invaded. I'm no longer in the mood for cuddles, pumpkins, or wine. I have to get back to the workshop today, then a shift tonight, and then my sister and I are having a special day tomorrow, the details I have not exactly worked out as of yet. Maybe today I will finally get to the back lawn. There have been so many days that I've felt happy and excited to do it, but not managed to get back there, that perhaps now is the time to make myself get it done.

We wrote a priority list together. It's been a goodly long time, too, and had forgotten some of the little rules and practices we used to have. Darling, as ever, was cute and picked out all of "my" priorities: my sister's baby shower gift, the special day trip I also want to give my sister, some new bits and pieces for my wardrobe. In the past I would have tried to balance that out or talked him into making more reasonable choices, but this time around I just let him make his call and in the end insisted only that we put getting a new brake light for the truck a little higher on this list. Calling his bluff, so to speak, and sure enough the past week he has sort of hinted we should skip ahead on the priority list...skip his first choices, basically :) That's one thing I've learned about sharing finances these past nine years: it sucks for one person to have to be the adult, to veto fun purchases, and determine what is and isn't reasonable.

The coolest thing about the list right now is the ease of covering big ticket items with Darling's paychecks while meeting daily needs with my income. Come next month I will be able to schedule eye exams and dental appointments again :)

Organization/Lowering Standards

My thoughts this week have been on housekeeping. This is an area in which I entirely lack anything approaching expertise. For the past three years, managing a home was a group effort in which my own contribution varied greatly but mostly centered around a support and maintenance role. At the cooperative, I would cook large dinner, bake hearty loaves of bread, and prepare granola from scratch, inspiring grateful roommates to wash the dishes, sweep the floors, and dust the cabinets (or whatever). When the washing machine broke, I replaced the motor. When adolescent chickens in the living room threatened household sanity as well as sanitation, I built the coop. I did my own dishes, and washed up when other people cooked, did my weekly rotating chore, and everything balanced out nicely.

My ultimate conclusion is that it is silly to live alone. But that's what Darling and I do right now. My back-up conclusion would be that, should two people have to run a household together, that either both ought to work part-time and manage the house together or one person should earn while the other cares for the home. That's how we were getting on before Darling got his job, but that's not longer a possibility. Not because we couldn't afford to live on one income, but because I love both my job and my side business and I'm not walking away from either for the time being.

This leaves me to the matter of organization, as Lizzie advised. I've also found it necessary to simply lower my standards to a manageable level, and avoid repetition. The daily to-do list has boiled down to its limited basics: wash dishes and do laundry. That list is maybe only seriously tackled three days a week, with Darling filling in the gaps when I'm too exhausted by my own job or errands to wipe down the kitchen sink.

Pumpkin Patch

 I love fall. Fall feels to me, and many Texans, like Fall must feel to many parts of the country. A cool breeze breaks the 3+ months of overwhelming heat, rains come, everything comes back to life. The second growing season brings broccoli, kale, spinach, and the numerous other veggies that couldn't survive even shaded Summer days. Our citrus begins to come in, avocados get cheaper, and the mosquitoes recede.

Riding my bike yesterday, I passed a big beautiful pumpkin patch at the Methodist church. After working a double shift, struggling to find a way home on Saturday morning (Darling came and picked me up, but I insisted on making my way to north Austin first, so as to save at least a little gas), and arriving home after working and travelling nearly twenty-four straight hours, all I could think is that I wanted to go back to that beautiful collection of gourds and take home one (or a dozen) of my very own.
I might have gone a little overboard. Silly with sleep deprivation and simple childish delight, I picked out a massive pumpkin and insisted Darling pick out one equally impressive, and then we got a couple of little guys to bake into pie (though I don't think they're technically pie pumpkins, they're a far sight better than the re-purposed jack-o-lanterns I used to rescue from people's trash on November 1st.

Look at that handsome man. You know, he's been working for a full month. He's out of the house before dawn, home after dusk, refuses to drink anything stronger than a single cider on weekdays, instigated a complete shift in the company's policy on safety equipment that resulted in a much safer environment for his crew...hell, the man has a crew. My pride is unbearable, my pride feels like Fall. My pride asks a question, "what's next?" My pride looks me in the face and wonders how I intend to step up and meet my husband in his metamorphosis, how to support him in his new role, and how to shed the layers of myself that are no longer necessary.

Paranoia, cynicism, doubt, anxiety...the four horsemen of my personal apocalypse. When I'm not careful, they gain ground and I'm half convinced the world is coming to an end, that this great happiness my husband experiencing is as fragile as blown glass and will shatter at any moment. "And then what?" the question takes a darker tone, a tone that feels like endings instead of beginnings, a tone that makes life seem to have a beginning, a middle, and an end instead of a steady flow of cycles that feeds itself for eternity.

Today I rest on that pride, and her sisters: hope, trust, and faith. Today I endeavor to see the full cycle. Today I fight to experience the moment. Today, I picked a long skinny pumpkin, and a big fat pumpkin, and two little pumpkins. Tonight I buy a bottle of wine, and toast to beginnings, most particularly the late ones.

Another Small Debt Paid

Was family dinner a success? It's hard to say, not so much because of anything I could control but because the human's involved...well, our clan struggles at everything mundane. For instance, my Mom got lost on the way to the house. When I asked what road she was, she absolutely insisted that she was, "you know, just on, like, a road." Finally convinced to take a step back from her zen outlook of being lost and promising to report the next street sign, so I could work out where she was and get her home, she proudly announced, "Oh, there's one, '45 mph.'"

So, yeah. There was family and there was dinner, and what more can you really ask for? I had a good time. Afterward I took Mom down to the workshop and she picked out her dulcimer. Oh! I also wrote her a giant check to pay for the truck insurance and her car insurance. All thanks to Darling's paycheck, which finally arrived.

I promised to write that check some point last year, and nursed a mounting anxiety about it until yesterday. Being able to write that check inspired, to a certain degree, continuing to work at the restaurant instead of tackling the instrument business full-time. It inspired a certain quiet resentment when it didn't seem Darling was as diligent as possible in seeking work. It inspired poor choices. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have the truck. I own that in myself now, and I'm not going to fight it anymore. The truck has made my way of life possible. But the cost has been severe, and it's such a relief to have finally written that check. I didn't realize the burden I was carrying until I woke up this morning, and my very first thoughts weren't of stress and anxiety.

It felt like writing the last check I owed my school, my lawyer, and my sister-in-law, the first three big debts I paid off before all of my energy went towards student loans. Paying the insurance represents, in a big way, paying a small debt owed to my Mom, though I didn't think of it that way until needing words to describe the relief.

It reminds me that financial freedom will feel good. It reminds me that not all obligations are perpetual.

Maybe I'm just sentimental because it's fall, my husband is working, and it's raining cats and dogs in Texas.

Erma Bombecked

Today I ran around the house like a parody of a housewife. There is so much I don't know quite how to do. Like the piles of laundry I tackle ever few days, inspired by Darling's one good work shirt to iron the lot of it. I stare and twist at the blue jeans like a two-dimensional rubics cube, trying to work out how to make the buggers lie flat. I race out the front door when upon hearing the garbage truck, dragging our over-sized bin to the curb as though we couldn't fit a month's worth of garbage into it easily. Back inside, I realize that I twisted my hair out of my face and pinned it to the top of my head, making me look something like a demented citizen of Whoville. Dishes and laundry are literally never finished, battles that can't possibly be won. I realize belatedly I don't have a container for the precious stock simmering on the stove. I realize daily that getting to cleaning the floors is going to take an act of God. Mowing the front lawn was a major coup. Today I finally mopped, and, amazingly, mopped myself into a corner. Am I really this inept?

I'm  a little more frantic today because I'm having family over for the first time since moving to suburbia. So the kitchen needed to be pristine, the pantry stocked, the floors clean. I drew the blinds against the atrocity of the backyard, from which even the snails seem desperate to escape, judging by the numbers I evicted from under my couch and around the door frame. I vacuumed, scrubbed the toilet, and...well, I closed my bedroom door.

Since my mom and her boyfriend arrived I've set dough to rise for a pizza crust and baked chocolate chip banana muffins. They slipped off to the shop just now, giving me the first time to sit down since I woke up. All told, I'm relatively pleased with myself. The house looks a little better than decent, and smells delicious. Now just to make the bed. Though at this stage I could curl up under the dinner table and sleep for a week :)

Lost and Found

I just found a hundred dollar bill that I lost some time over the weekend. It was a terrible experience, one of those cases in which I knew exactly where it was and it wasn't there. And, of course, the Darling light of my life insisted he had never seen it, even though I had told him to put it in his pocket at one point, and guess where it was???

Whew. It's a relief to have it in my possession again. Money is flowing away at a fast enough rate without literally disappearing into thin air.

I've harped on enough about my $160 phone payment, and resulting freedom from phone bills for the rest of the year, but that and the missing $100 were making me feel as though my doubled workload last week had no positive effect whatsoever. Now it feels like the burden has been lifted twice over.

Train Freedom

Oh my, this past week.

There are times I look back on in my life as particularly defining. Bits and pieces, rarely entire days but certain practices that I recall and say, "yeah, I was doing well back then, even if I didn't know it." Any time or place I was picking fresh fruit, for whatever reason, was a good time. Whether plucking the blackberries of my childhood, the strawberries I picked to help pay for college, the apples I scrounged the first couple of years of my marriage, or the blueberries I plucked last year along Lake Michigan, I was most certainly at the right place at the right time. I feel the same way about gardening, knitting on cold winter mornings, preserving food, and riding my bike and public transportation.

Last Tuesday evening I mounted my trusty steed and made the fifteen-minute bike ride to the transit hub in Leander. From there I caught a bus, reading my Kindle and chatting with the driver to downtown Austin, whence I rode the fifteen minutes to the diner. Come dawn, I clocked out of work, rode my bike to the train station, leaned tiredly against the mount and started the next chapter of my book until arriving back in Leander, and rode the rest of the way home. The way home took significantly longer, being up hill and at the end of a long day.

When I woke up at five thirty that afternoon, I definitely experienced bitterness to have to roll out of bed and do the whole thing over again immediately. The lengthy commute extended my workday hideously. But I did it, and this time rode home much more easily come seven in the morning. That's the great thing about riding the bike: only 24 hours, a couple of meals, and seven hours of sleep was all it took to build enough muscle to make an impossible ride a fairly difficult ride. Not only did I do the ride this time without walking the bike at all, but I went shopping on the way home and rode home the groceries on the bike!

Not that all was well in paradise. In all the excitement of working, commuting, and sleeping, by Thursday evening I hadn't even seen Darling since Monday morning. So he arranged for me to have the truck to get to work that evening. That night I cooked dinner, washed laundry, swept the floors, and then went to work. By the time I started my shift it occurred to me that I might prefer the three hour commute with reading time over three hours extra space to do chores!

Much more to say about next week, but I think the commute was the coolest. Missed the bike riding home Saturday morning, but was grateful to have the truck getting home today during the crazy flash flooding. So good to be playing with car-freedom again!

Domesticky

Having my phone bill all paid up through February makes me feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy inside, even if it has me counting out change to toss into the gas tank. I picked up some extra shifts this week to help round things out a little, and Darling's company truck is needed in Dallas, so he'll be taking my Mom's truck to work and I'll be taking the bus into town for at least the next three days. Heck, I could even take the bus on Friday, and he could come into town to pick me up on Saturday morning.

Darling should get his first paycheck this Friday, which will make our financial life so significantly better I can scarcely think of it. Darling's job still feels way too good to be true. Another week after the check and he'll have been there a month, so maybe then I'll be able to relax into my role as secondary earner. And then...housewife?

Seeing to his needs does have me working a lot more around the house and opening my eyes to our domestic needs and possibilities. I'm cooking more than I have for months, and, having cycled through many of my tried-and-true recipes, have been trolling the Internet for new meal ideas. Yesterday was very garlicky cooked spinach over spaghetti noodles. I've been washing and line-drying the laundry, and ironing his long-sleeved cotton work shirts. I spent most of one day sorting out the kitchen, which makes it feel so much more ours. Yesterday I baked three large, billowy loaves of bread, and I have a home-made pie crust waiting to be filled with lemon meringue. So, yeah, that's where my time is going these days.

Today: too beautiful and cool to stay inside, it's time to mow the lawn. Then more sleep, since I'll be riding my bike to the bus stop and working overnight :)

Buying Phone In Bulk

This weekend I made a tough call and determined to spend all of my money in one place.

I've been wanting to take advantage of a deal Cricket offers since buying my phone last spring. When one pays three months upfront, one gets the fourth month free. This knocks my monthly bill to about $40 a month after taxes, which justifies, to my mind, the high price of a smart phone.

It was only a matter of saving $161, but for some reason I never managed to do so by the time the next bill was due. That's life, but it's an atrocious thing to know that I could have saved $100 by now with a little thought and effort. That's why I finally took the plunge on Saturday, even though it means having to scrape along for the rest of this week. I still needed gas in the truck, the week's groceries, and some bits and pieces for Darling's tool bag.

The Truck Talk

This morning I came home from work and made Darling and omelette, green smoothie, and cup of coffee. By the time he was up, showered, and dressed, I was tucked into bed myself. He kissed me goodbye and drove himself to work.

I woke up just after noon after too little sleep, filled with nervous energy. I washed laundry and hung it to dry, put my collection of veggie ends and onion peels to simmer into stock, and cleaned and organized the kitchen. I took the truck to have the oil changed and considered running more errands but lost my nerve and hurried home. By 5:00 pm I was rushing to the window at every slight noise heard outside, and, eventually, my husband pulled into the driveway.

Do you have any idea how weird that statement sounds to me? My husband pulled into the driveway. This change has had an inexplicably massive impact on my life. My husband, fully independent, and how I feel about that has given me enormous insight on my own modes of behavior. I wasn't ready for it. My husband, in a leadership position at work, doing well, and me...just not really knowing how to cope. This doesn't feel possible. And yet, it is such a simple thing that I can't communicate this depth of emotion to anyone I know.

In my attempt, I hear something unexpected in my story. Another radical shift in my perspective, and it's this: I live in suburbia, and we have a two-truck household. Holy crap. Also, I buy groceries at a regular old grocery store. And I've been washing my hair with mass-produced bottled shampoo.

Huh.

So I laughed when I read Anne's last comment. Why yes, yes I am bothered by having two trucks, despite my dedication to owning NO vehicle, even though technically I don't own them. Especially since I use these trucks like crazy.

I've written recently about permaculture, and the Prime Directive, and about rationalizations. So you and I both know that I can justify the driving. Darling's truck empowers him to install solar panels for a living. By earning a living, we can begin to invest in products and practices that will make our own lives more sustainable. No truck, no job...and we could live with that, but my husband is 48 years old. I can get away with riding a bike with my teddy bear and a cape for another few years, but Darling's lifestyle choices are taking an air of permanence to them. If his career demands driving a company truck (necessary for transporting heavy construction equipment, ladders, and safety devices), can I really argue that?

Yeah, rationalizations. As for my (Mom's) truck...

You want to hear a story? A few weeks ago I applied for a job nearby and was hired on the spot. There are a number of good things to be said for the bistro that hired me to wait tables, including the possibility of a car-free commute. I slept on the decision, and decided to turn the job down. Because I'm happy at the diner, and I can't say that about many of the jobs I quit. Also, because I sorely miss the union, think about it every day, and couldn't hold that sorrow for a second set of coworkers. So the truck, the commute, the diner...I'm doing it all for selfish reasons. I don't complain about traffic anymore. 

It was the very next day that Darling was offered his job. Had I kept the second job and quit the diner, and would therefore have not been working nights, he wouldn't have been able to get to work long enough to be offered the company truck. So there's that version of a happy ending. Then again, we could have been a zero truck household instead of a one-truck household. We would have had two more regrets and two fewer trucks. I'm not saying we made the right choice, but we made the choice.

My husband drove himself to work and back today, and that changed our relationship on a very deep level. After nearly nine years of marriage, we don't experience such developmental surges often. I hate to admit that I think this single change has had as much an impact on us as six months of bike-touring last year did.

Not that I'm planning on resting on my laurels now that we have become a two-truck household. See, this situation actually invites new and exciting advancements. According to my mission statement, if Darling and I are every to buy a vehicle, we are to buy the most environmentally friendly one on the market. Ever since making that decision, I have wondered how to make that call, or afford that vehicle without credit.

I've toyed with the idea of biodiesel for a long time. Biodiesel vehicles are imperfect, but have the following traits:

* Older diesel trucks are usually pretty heavy-duty and are affordable in this area second-hand because of sky-rocketing gas prices. Buying one second hand will help prevent it from heading towards the landfill. Buying a new car, on the other hand, even a purely super-awesome electric, would mean investing in the production of fresh industrial waste and pollution.

* Diesel is expensive and causes pollution, and so is biodiesel. Biodiesel, however, can be processed at home. Biodiesel is also a biological resource, however you may feel about King Corn. I don't feel good about King Corn, by the way, but I'm not too hot on Big Oil or mountain-top removal, either. Biodiesel provides the opportunity to recycle and favor biological resources.

* Biodiesel engines are, I believe, a transitional technology. Ethan Hughes taught me about this at the Possibility Alliance. Transitional technologies are those that withstand the test of time in terms of changes in resource abundance or scarcity. E-mail may or may not exist in a future that depends on non-renewable rare earth metals to operate (photovoltaic cells have the same exact flaw, by the way). Mail, however, has existed for a very long time and will probably continue to exist, regardless of government funding. Biodiesel engines are fairly simple, particularly compared to an electric engine, and could be repaired and worked on in my driveway.

The only thing that's prevented me from jumping on the biodiesel bandwagon was my hesitation in buying a vehicle that Darling would refuse to drive. Now that he's driving a diesel truck whether he likes it or not, we're much more likely to head in this direction so as to rely on a single single affordable mode of transportation. 

Happy News

The excitement regarding Open Enrollment has been suddenly and totally overshadowed by a new development in the Softly Household: Darling has a truck.

As previously mentioned, a few months ago Darling got a call out of the blue by a company wanting him for a supervisory position. Based on Darling's age and experience, this was a reasonable thing to expect. As is our practice with any other job, Darling answered "yes" to all questions regarding transportation. We had this habit even when we personally defined "reliable transportation" as having two feet and a bus pass, even for jobs taking place twelve-hour drives away from home. We always made this work.

Well, Darling didn't apply for the supervisor position, but he was hired. Eventually they even put him to work. I didn't enjoy waking up at seven a.m. to drive him to work, nor did I enjoy coming home at six a.m. from work to drive him to work. But it never even occurred to me that there could be another way. See, Darling doesn't drive very much or often, and there's no way that I'm going to be without transportation while he's off with the truck. That's just how it is, and don't worry, I'm very ashamed of myself for it. There's obviously some very deep psychological issues at play, and I don't care to face them...ever.

Except today there was a company truck on the worksite, and Darling went to great lengths working out how to deal with the vehicle and store it safely overnight before realizing that the truck was for him. To drive. To and from work. Gas covered by the company. A big old truck.

Hello, Issues. I'll tackle you later. Soon, but later.

In the meantime: Yay! Darling has transportation to and from work! I can work late and sleep in! He has independence, an independence that neither of us even thought to hope for! And this company must love him and want to keep him forever, give him raises, great health insurance, and eventually a pension!

No Healthcare, and The Thin Man

As a child I had a recurring nightmare, every Christmas Eve, that Santa did not come that night. Nuerotic, much? Anyway, that's not exactly how my Open Enrollment Day felt, but it's pretty darn close.

I was online most of the day, experiencing much the same issues reported by the general public. The security question fields were blank, and the "live chat" was non-responsive. Later in the evening I finally created an account, or at least got the confirmation e-mail, but still couldn't log on. In the meantime, I consumed as much media as possible regarding the Healthcare exchanges and the glitches, but was amazed at how little publicity seems focused on OE Day. Far, far more articles have been written in the past 24 hours about Texas sports, according to Google News, than Texas health care.

I've indulged in way too much media in my search for answers. I think a lot of us just want to know if anyone else is having the same experience. Then I want to know if anyone isn't. Has anyone out there actually managed to make this website work?


I keep wanting to trash talk the Republican sort of folk who fought the Health care Act so fiercely, but it just doesn't seem worth the space. It doesn't take much thought to point at the jumbled mass of idiotic contradictions that they're STILL touting on talk radio and say, "hey, you're stupid." So, I won't.

Instead...

Why Our Grocery Budget Doubles When Darling Works

Once upon a time, Darling and I had a $20 weekly grocery budget. Back then I scrumped apples from a tree on the way to a laundromat and worked on a farm for our vegetables. The day after Halloween I would nab the best looking pumpkins dragged to the curb and make pumpkin pie with the salvage. We dumpster dove in the most crude sense of the word, not knowing how to do so properly. We were broke. 

Later, in Austin, our grocery budget balanced. I've talked about all that, and I've also mentioned that most recently Darling and I economize by purchasing conventional groceries from the nearest store. We spend about $50 a week to maintain a relatively sedentary lifestyle. From what I can tell, this is not a lot of money for two people. It's a lot of dried beans, pasta, and veggies such us carrots, cabbage, and broccoli.

Darling is one of those very tall, lean, hungry men. When he works, he builds muscle very quickly and grows much hungrier. The more he works, the more muscle he puts on, and he gets sick very easily if he does not consume a great deal more calories to keep up. His last job he put on twenty pounds of muscle. Not an ounce of fat, which is actually quite dangerous and impairs his immune system.

In order stay hydrated in the Texas heat, he also needs about five times more salt than the average person. So, when he's working construction, we buy the convenience foods we typically eschew, purposely seeking out foods high in salt, fat, and protein. We purchase vegan meat products for sandwiches and buy him big bags of salted nuts. We buy more fruit, more cheese, tortilla chips, and I stop skimping on the eggs. Because my goal is to put as many calories in him as possible, I also buy orange juice and almond milk when he works.

You can imagine this does nothing good for my own waistline, but that's another post...

...Oh yes, one last thing: Debbie e-mailed me and mentions I might have an issue with my comments. They do seem to take at least a day to show up on my blog, so I think I'm going to relax some of the restrictions I put up when spam was an issue to see if that helps. Thanks for the heads up!

October 2013 Net Worth

So. Shall we talk about the downside? The downside of, er, everything?

-$2,325.36. That is my net worth. I can't quite wrap my head around that number. I did the math, did it again, and then wondered at my math the past couple of months. How did this plummet so suddenly, so helplessly?

My spending actually decreased somewhat substantially in September, by over $400. And the money I did spend was done carefully. Darling and I didn't eat out, I gave up coffee shops, and went another month without beer. The first couple of weeks in the month were especially successful: I saved money, and I sent a little more money to debt and knocked the total I owe to student loans to less than $1,600. So what happened?

Things went a little mad when Darling was told to be at the work site. Maybe I didn't realize just how mad. Our grocery bill doubled this month, from $200 to $400. I bought a second phone, a cheap pay-as-you go, but still a chunk of change. We spent about a hundred dollars outfitting him with new tools and some new clothes...But even now, even looking at the numbers, it's hard to really believe the reality.

It's when I shift my focus from spending to earning that things make sense. In September, Darling and I "tightened our belts," so to speak, spending more on work clothes and whole foods but cutting out luxury and entertainment items. Again, despite our excess, we did cut spending by $400. The problem? Our income dropped $400 too! We earned exactly as much less as we spent!

September is supposed to be a slow month at the diner, so I should have seen it coming. But how could I have imagined spending $100 less a week? Earning less hurts us more than spending less helps us. Some expenses, particularly gas and rent, have stayed fairly constant over the past few months. Other expenses fluctuate but can't be ignored. In the end, a hit to our earnings resulted in a plummeting net worth, as I drained my savings to try and pay a rent I'm still behind on.

Bah. I can't let this get me down. Instead, I'm just going to have to be satisfied that October will be significantly better. In two weeks, Darling will bring home his first paycheck and turn this financial situation completely around once and for all.

Open Enrollment Day!

Oh man, how long have I been waiting for today? Years! Today the Affordable Health Care Act - well, the insurance exchange part - comes into affect! Open enrollment! Choices, possibility, affordability!

Healthcare.gov must be absolutely swamped, because I've tried to access it a number of times using two different machines, and have had no luck. I'll get to a certain point in starting an account, and things just stop functioning properly, and I'm told to try again later. If I lived in a state that wasn't run by the Batshitcrazy, dog-shooting, Presidential Would-be Rick Perry (yes, the man shot someone's dog. On a jogging trail. While he was jogging. He KILLED SOMEONE'S DOG and then RAN FOR PRESIDENT!!! How did that not completely destroy his career - never mind his eleven million other completely insane characteristics?), ahem, if I lived in any other state, there might be some other way to access information regarding today's health care breakthrough, but Perry has done his absolute best to restrict information and those who could provide it...so, yeah, I'm stuck with healthcare.gov. Open enrollment largely affects citizens who don't receive health care through their employers, which accounts for 50% of Texans, so I'm sure it will just be a crazy few weeks while short-staffed, underfunded, over-regulated, and largely non-profit agencies try and handle the flood of applicants.

From playing with healthcare.gov weeks ago, however, I happen to know that Darling and I most likely qualify for Medicare. So maybe I'll just check them out, for now, and see if that site is functioning properly at this time...I'll keep you updated. Is anyone else having fun with today's changes?

***EDIT***

I wrestled with the website for hours and, thanks to the government shutdown, affiliated websites aren't much more help. Gave up at around three in the afternoon, came back to it this evening, and it's still wonky. At least it's wonky in a different way, so they must be working on it...Lots of scary fake websites out there, too. If you Google Affordable Healthcare Act, or even "Medicare" or "Medicaid," don't assume that the first handful of sites that pop up are anything besides scams. Make sure it has a .gov at the end. Lots and lots of misinformation out there today! At least I've had some time to meditate on copay options and read about deductions.

Week Two

So, my mister is now on Week Two working for a new company, and Week One of being in a somewhat supervisory position. I only say "somewhat" because, while he's technically the lead, a crew of two doesn't really have a hierarchy.

How messed up is it that even now, when I drop him off at the work site, I have to make the conscious decision to not worry. I'm mean, I'm obviously allowed to worry that he works on a radically slanted roof, in ninety degree temperatures, with power tools...that's acceptable. The worries I repress have more to do with the myriad concerns to do with his popularity, perceived competency, overall acceptance and image...the stuff, as a grown woman and trusting wife, really isn't any of my goddamn business. So I worry quietly, confess my anxiety, and we have conversations that begin like this:

Darling Am I undermining you by earning more money?
Me No, of course not. I mean, in my head, yes, totally. But in reality, no.

And the conversations end something like this:

Darling You are the ultimate enabler.

Basically, I really want my husband and this job to last happily ever after. And I feel terrible that, at some point in the past decade, I stopped imagining that possibility. It took Darling five years of study to get a job in the solar industry. Then he worked a full year, non-stop, for three separate companies. And each one left us a little more convinced that the perfect employer is the one you just handed your notice to. So, having found the company of our dreams, with bosses that look at Darling and see the worthwhile investment that he is, with CEOs who say things like, "It's so weird when people write us checks for this stuff, I thought we were just in this to save the world!"...I can't stop myself from waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's a terrible thing to be jaded.

Every day after work Darling tells me he's had a good day, and it gives me such a good feeling. Every day I try and do my best to support him. Grumpy in the morning, yes, because I'm waking up at the same time I'd grown accustomed to going to bed. But I run errands while he's at work and, every single evening, I make him a hot dinner. I've doubled the grocery budget to make this easier on both of us. I still go to work, still at night, and I cope with that as best I can. It's gas money, food money, beer-to-share-with-friends money. I'm hoping to God that not only does this job last, and not only does Darling continue to love it, but the income proves decent. Because me waiting tables just isn't cutting it, not the way we've been living, which is hardly high falutin'.

In the workshop it's slow going. We strung up the latest batch of four, sold one to a friend, and have since been working on straps made from re-purposed belts. Very cool and down-home looking, but I'm itching to get the next batch started and sold.

Darling suggests that maybe what I'm afraid of isn't his not being a success at his new company, but just the opposite. If he can support us, I can work full-time building guitars. If I don't have to sacrifice everything in my role of "ultimate enabler," then I should devote my energies to mastering my craft. And maybe that's scary.

I tell him to wait and see. I say we should give us a few months. In three months, we will be very certain of his place with the new company, we will have most probably moved into the cooperative apartment, and R and I will have survived our first Christmas in business together. In three months we should be totally (finally) debt free, and looking for a tax refund. A lot can happen in three months, you see.

Darling on the job

After so many months of phone calls, e-mails, start dates, and cancellations, I'm still hesitant to announce that Darling is officially on the job again. Even though today was his second day on a roof installing solar panels, even though today he is worn out, sun burned, and tucked in bed...It's kind of a struggle to say that he is a working man again. I think we're both a little wary.

It's expensive to work, and, despite our anxiety, I had to cash in all our chips on this bet. I filled the truck with gas, bought him a new tool belt and some other bits and pieces, bought his favorite foods to take to lunch, and otherwise broke the proverbial bank to help him make the best possible impression. We are now a two-cellphone household. Fortunately we'd already invested in a good work jeans and fantastic boots for him. But still, I'm a little freaked out by how much we've spent these past couple of days.

Waking Up

Really, has it been two weeks since I actually updated? Hard to believe, as I have written and deleted at least a half dozen posts during that time.

This past week I have been waking up from a sort of hibernation and finally pulling myself together. It's not that I've been completely scatter-brained and lost (though the state of the blog may suggest such a thing). No, I've been steady, meticulous, ultimately good. Cooking, baking, light yard work, reasonable shifts at work, time with friends, family...Keeping my life in some sort of working order, but ultimately feeling trapped in slow motion. My cycles and patterns so ingrained that breaking out seems nearly impossible, so that I sort of close in a little more every day, contract a little further, repress a little more deeply...

And then yesterday Darling and I went out for dinner, then bought brownies and ice cream and treated ourselves to funny movies. It was really fun, the first time I think we allowed ourselves such relaxation for the sake of relaxation in quite a while. This morning we woke up refreshed and revitalized, and at the same time felt the unspoken desire to re-connect with old friends. I wrote e-mails while he dialed old contacts on the phone. Oh, and in the middle of everything - Do you remember that job Darling was hired for a couple of months ago that never actually began? - he's been asked to come in Monday to fill out paperwork.

Today it feels like fall in Austin. Cool, rainy, gray...I can see 2013 drawing to a close, plunging us into the holiday season and then slipping away as I recover from the revelries of Halloween, the excess of Thanksgiving, the intimacy of my wedding anniversary, the embellishments of Christmas, and the drunken folly of New Years Eve. I see 2013 edging towards the door, or maybe it's me, glancing uncomfortably at my watch, shifting in my seat...Isn't it about time we move on, say goodnight? I fell into this year so gratefully, exhausted and overwhelmed from the preceding months of adventure. Now, the prodigal daughter can't help but notice she is still living out of a suitcase. Maybe I never really returned, never fully. I've been in between.

My niece is born this December, and then I bid 2014 farewell. Darling goes into the office next week and I plan to do everything possible to support his most recent advancement. But, come spring of next year, I feel that we will be ready to move on. To travel again, to adventure again, and to throw ourselves fully into every moment.

Until then (in other words, why not start tomorrow?):

* I want to continue with the guitars as full-heartedly as possible until the time comes to leave. Maybe we'll have a Christmas windfall for all our trouble in the end, probably not. I mostly want the skill.

* Darling and I are going to properly prepare this time. Last time we went to Michigan, we didn't know what to keep and what to hold onto, how to pack a bike, or what comes most in handy when living out of a tent. I made a detailed inventory of our possessions at the end of the trip, and I will create and share a packing list so that we're better prepared for the upcoming nomadism. This time, we're going to take more technology, including a smartphone and Kindle for skyping, more and better clothing, and a nicer bike for Darling. Oh, and a camp stove! We can live like kings for want of a camp stove!

* I want to achieve debt freedom, spend more time at the dentist, and have a couple of back-up pairs of glasses and contacts for the trip. This spending is more important to me than having a savings to fall back on.

* I want to re-connect. There are a lot of friends I missed this year. I want to rekindle those relationships before showing up at anyone's door!