Quote of the Day

"There are thousands and thousands of people out there living lives of quiet, screaming desperation who work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like." - Nigel Marsh

CELEBRATION

We've met our goal! Woo Hoo! Back in September I set a goal for us to have $5k in our "Whatever Club" account (aka house fund) by the first of the year and we have accomplished it! As long as our circumstances remain the same, I feel like we can absolutely continue with this momentum. After the first of the year we plan to put the majority of my paycheck into this account every month. If that works out, this number will be growing by a thousand or more every month. Our new goal is double-digits by June 2012.

Black Friday

My sister-in-law and I teamed up to brave the Black Friday crowds with much success. Old Navy advertised that they were giving away Kodak Sport digital cameras to the first 40 people in line. We sat up our chairs at 7:30 Thanksgiving night and got our free (after a $40.00 purchase, but that amount knocked out two gifts) cameras at 12:00 a.m. Its probably not the best camera but it is waterproof so I'm super excited about taking it to Dry Tortugas in May! We also went to two different WalMarts, Sears, Belk, Lowe's and Academy. I also went ahead and purchased all of the gift cards I was planning on buying for presents this year. So, as of today, I have the following left on my Christmas list: both my maternal grandparents, a picture frame for my paternal grandmother, a tote bag for my mother-in-law, a gift certificate for Cody's cousin, and possibly something small to add to my mother's gift. Then I'm done! And it isn't even December yet! To top it all off, I still have money in my Christmas envelope!

We're always going somewhere!

I booked our anniversary trip to the beautiful Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville a few days ago. Since our anniversary falls on a Tuesday, we're going on New Year's Eve instead! Since that's a holiday, the prices were a little higher than usual but I went ahead and booked anyway. The next morning I received an email from Opryland (always sign up for emails!) offering specially discounted holiday rates which were roughly $40.00 cheaper than what I had paid the previous night. So, I called back and, after speaking to several individuals, was able to get our rate adjusted. I'm so excited for this mini-vacation with my wonderful husband!

I'm back!

So, it has been almost a month and a half since my last post. Things have been crazy around here. And by crazy I mean major life changing decisions, impossible school assignment deadlines, overtime at work, etc. First, I feel I need to give an update on our progress. We are on track for our goal of having $5k in savings by the end of the year. I have an envelope with $700 allotted for Christmas shopping whenever I get around to starting that. We've purchased $200 worth of Shell giftcards in preparation for our road trip to Dry Tortugas in May. Our emergency/secondary savings account has fluctuated between $1350 and $1500 (this is about to become a higher priority after Christmas). I've also saved around $300 for our anniversary trip to the Opryland Hotel in Nashville on New Year's Eve. HOWEVER, there have been two major bumps:

1. This past weekend, Cody talked me into getting an iPad 2. Of course, we paid cash and it is all ours and so, so much fun. BUT I am feeling really guilty about this and probably will continue to feel guilty for several weeks. Especially since my mother-in-law told us she had already bought one for our Christmas present. Darn.

2. This is a doosey. This is the real reason I haven't posted in a month... I've decided to go to law school.

Bump #2 has both positives and negatives. So, here is a list:

Pros

• no four months of unemployment for me while I student teach
• potential of higher pay in the future and to essentially work for myself
• my current boss has offered me a full-time position, so more income immediately
• I get to go to school for at least three more years!!!
• Cody and I will easily be able to pay for my tuition with cash (which is half of what I'm currently paying for graduate school at UAB)
• if I change my mind, I can pick up with my master's and being teaching

Cons

• no possibility of my TEACH grant being repaid = $6500 of student loan debt for a master's degree I did not complete
• Three payments of approximately $1800 per year for tuition
• Driving 60 miles one way to Birmingham once a week for the next several years. Poor Civic.

So, we will see how this works out. I'm really excited and feel like this is a huge opportunity for me. Cody was immediately supportive when I discussed this idea with him and his opinion was my main concern. I am finishing out my class at UAB this semester. In January, I plan to reevaluate our budget so that my entire check goes into our house savings. Within three or four years, we could still be paying CASH for our first home! There will be many posts on this big change in the future!

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."