live as if you're broke and one day you won't be

Read This Article!

* Disclaimer: I am trained as a critical writer. This might not be entertaining. Go read the article!*

A flip through almost any current magazine issue, from Glamour to National Geographic, reveals at least one article that is somehow related to the recent economic slump. In this week's issue of Time, Rana Foroohar's article "The Truth About the Poverty Crisis" presents startling statistics about a large portion of Americans' financial situations. This article resonated with me because it referenced the current problems and mindsets that have caused me to flee from the contemporary American notions wealth and money.

Foroohar's assertion that the myth of the American dream has been replaced with a reality of "downward mobility," the idea that it is now difficult for Americans to to work their way up to an economic class higher than the one in which they were born, is just one of the many harsh realities of the era in which we live. Several of the statistics she references are shocking, even for a disheartened skeptic such as myself: "more than fifteen percent of Americans live below the poverty line," "the average real weekly earnings of a typical blue collar worker are lower today than in 1964," there are more poor people in America now than any time in the last fifty-two years. I find it difficult to believe that with such statistics abounding in the media, I can count on one hand the number of individuals or families I know personally who have made decisions similar to mine and Cody's to not participate in the conventions of today's popular economic lifestyle. Why do so few others harbor the same feelings of disgust? Foroohar quotes Isabell Sawhill: "We have a belief system and an idea about ourselves that don't always align well with the facts." I feel Sawhill's statement is perhaps the most poignant of our time.

Yet another ominous warning in this article is Foroohar's statement that the Baby Boomers and the Boomerang Generation (mine) will ultimately battle for "dwindling government benefits" which cannot support Social Security for the elderly and training and education for the younger. I feel that we are becoming  increasingly reliant on a system that is increasingly less equipped to support even itself.

I share this article not as doomsday evidence, but as yet another signal that things must change. Even though we are bombarded with claims such as Foroohar's, individuals generally do little to to revise their own concepts of money, wealth, poverty, and to some extent, benefits and retirement. All of our current ideas about these essential components of our existence equate to a "fiction," as Foroohar calls it, that is "becoming even more difficult to sustain."

Celebration!

Today, I payed off our only loan (other than my student loans)! Whooo Hoooo!

Homemade Christmas?

I've found a new vice. Pinterest.com, a website designed to function like a virtual pinboard, is a cornucopia of great ideas for crafts, travel, style, home improvement, etc. I've never felt more creative! Looking through their DIY section, I've collected tons of great ideas for Christmas gifts. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I might like to attempt a homemade Christmas. It would take a fair amount of time and extensive planning. I might come out saving a little money but buying supplies will still be costly. Another option is to pair a small purchsed gift with another that I have created myself. In the next few weeks I'm going to see if I can collect one idea for a do-it-yourself present for each of my family members. If I can, this might be a possibility.

Regardless, Pinterest is a great place to find ideas for repurposing items you already own, decorating on the cheap, and using clothing items you already own to create new styles (something I need to work on severly). Also, there are a zillion creative recipes (think buttercream birthday cake truffles)!

Vacation Savings Tip

John Tesh gets on my nerves. Horribly. As much as I hate to admit it, he occasionally has a good idea. Cody heard this at work yesterday while listening to the Tesh's radio show and I actually think its a great way to save for vacations.

Every time you have an extra $25 or $50 dollars, buy a prepaid gas card from Shell, BP, or another nationally recognized gas station. Place these in an envelope. When vacation time comes around, your gas expenses are already paid for. Plus, you don't wind up splurging all the cash you've saved on restaurants and souvenirs then suddenly realize you don't have money set aside for the gas to get home. Cody and I are actually going to add this expense to our budget for our next trip to Dry Tortugas in the spring. His parents have decided they want to go with us and will be paying to rent a van to drive the sixteen hours to Key West. Since we will have the majority of the gas expenses already paid for, the trip is going to be super cheap! We're already excited!

Dangerous Territory

Yesterday, I successfully managed to veer away from an opportunity that I honestly feel had the potential to derail all our plans. As I have mentioned before, my mother works in a bank. While we don't share the same opinions about finances, we usually have a pretty open dialogue about money matters because of her occupation and my sometimes obnoxious attitude about such things. Yesterday, she asked for a favor. Her boss was needing referrals and invited Cody and me to come in for a mortgage advising session. The era of low rates is nigh! They can double your down payment! There is no telling how much you could get! Think of the opportunities! Stop right there.

While I appreciated being considered "adult" enough to apply for a mortgage, I honestly perceived this as a trap. And a very dangerous one at that. I am constantly working to reassure myself and my husband that we are content in our home, that we don't need new stuff, that our hard work will reap great rewards in the years to come. If we sat there and listened as they offered us the possibility of a three bedroom home for a modest $500 monthly payment (for thirty years, nonetheless), could we resist the temptation? Such opportunities are the ones that it seems everyone is taking, and aren't our intentions blatantly opposite of everyone else's? Needless to say, I politely refused.

On a humorous note, this afternoon my car wouldn't crank. I immediately had flashbacks of the day I burnt up by engine. However, it was only a dead battery caused by extreme Alabama heat and a collection of battery acid around the cable. Whew! Now something like that would have most definitely derailed our plans!

Back to Reality

I returned from my epic adventure Sunday night and am just now getting things back in order. Glacier National Park was absolutely breathtaking, along with all the other places I saw on the way. That was an excellent way to spend $390! I went super cheap on souvenirs (postcards and magnets for my fridge collection) and did my best to order off the value menu or eat food that I had carried with me. Grand total for my spending money on the trip was right over $200. I feel like roughly $600 for an eleven day vacation including ten states, two national monuments, two national parks, and several new friends was a heck of a deal! Cody did a great job taking care of things while I was away. However, that was probably my first and last long trip without him. I missed my husband terribly, especially on the three day van ride back home.

So far, we are keeping well within our new budget. We will be paying cash for a new set of tires next week and will have our only loan paid off by the end of August. The financial aid fiasco is still playing out. Sadly, I wound up having to take out another small student loan. On the bright side, my recent advisng appointment revealed that, yes, I will in fact be graduating in the Spring. The class I am taking this semester is the last one ever! Well...for this degree anyways.

I've started working at a lawyer's office part-time-ish. I am going to attempt to substitute a little this semester also, as well as work at my job in retail occasionally (plus complete fifty observation hours for my class, yeah right). These nice paychecks are going to be difficult to give up after Christmas when I am student teaching for four months! But by then we will have plenty put back to provide gas and grocery money while I am virtually unemployed.