learn to manage money

So I didn’t resolve all my financial issues by taking this class. Basically, we need to both increase income and decrease spending and budgeting helps me see where the heck the money went, but it still feels like a lot of talk and not yet like much action.

Got a letter yesterday that confusedly told me that I didn’t get the job I applied for last September. (It actually told me that they’d ‘started the interview process’ and ‘expect to make their decision soon’ with no mention of the fact that they’d interviewed me. Just weird.)

Through the library, I’ve requested the book that the teacher gushed about. (Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover.) I’m a little unhappy about it since taking a look at his website and feeling like he’s religious in a way that may obstruct my ability to read him seriously and perhaps will stereotype gender roles in a way that will irritate me.

Got to get to bed. Hope to run tomorrow.

most important thought: Budgeting is a Behavioral Science.

Dieting too.

Working on homework (Goal worksheet – to be followed by money worksheet).

The dryer is dead. As in, costs more to fix than buy new, dead.

Lesson: call the &^%$#@! repair guy when the dryer *starts to make the screechy sound, not after the ball bearings break causing it to blow hot air but not spin, including a potential fire hazard situation.

I did manage a good thing today. I went to my job site and checked it out. It’s kind of further than I hoped – more like 45 minutes. But the place has a good vibe, there will be a new library finished this semester, with nice large windows, and most of the drive is on major roads. Q went with me, and he was absolutely perfectly good. Which is nice when you’re trying to figure out where to park and all the lots read ‘permit parking only’.

The dryer just broke. The same dryer that has been screeching it’s death cry for the past 12? 18? months? It’s not like it didn’t warn us…

Last night J and I agreed to try to keep our expenditures to the bottom line possible (god knows what we’ll try to squeeze into that) so that we can keep our meager little savings and possibly even save a little more before our class starts in March. We’d really like to start with more or less a clean slate.

This may quickly get complicated since J’s retail job has severely cut back hours in the past two weeks (good news: we’ve seen lots of J in the evenings and weekends lately!).

I got a call yesterday morning asking if I wanted to interview for a job I applied for in August. I had long since decided that not only did they already hire for the position, but even considered a mildly worded letter to the effect of ‘when you say you will let us know as the hiring process proceeds, please actually do so.’

The job isn’t close by. My guess is that it’s a 30 to 40 minute drive. I’ve never been to this college. Which I should probably tromp around ahead of time to prepare myself.

That’s the primary deficiency of the job. It pays $10/hour more than I get right now (after a raise). It’s 17 hour/wk (I currently work 20, so that’s about right, in my opinion). It’s at a community college, which seems like a really great place to work. When the kids are in school I assume I’ll want to work more hours and a place like that has opportunities. Where I currently work is unlikely to have many opportunities.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be as flexible as my current position. I wouldn’t be able to pop out to transport a kid from one place to another. But seriously, it’s excellent pay, it’s actually a place that could use my training (or the other way around: I’d use my training there). I suspect it’s technically a state position, which would be a great thing long term (I think?).

I’m getting excited and terrified. I hate change, really. I like safe things. I like working so close to home. I like knowing who to be careful around at work and who I can ask favors of.

The interview isn’t till late January. Plenty of time to freak out.

For a class on household budgeting in March.

terrifies me. Even when we have money. I just paid off our visa, which was up to its limit. (We deliberately have kept this within our capacity to pay off. Eventually.) And I’m sitting here squirming because our balance is going to drop dramatically. Especially since I just pushed a chunk into savings. It’s a false savings because we have bills to pay off, but I’m afraid if it sits in our checking account it will give us a false sense of security.

I worry that we are the financial equivalents of alcoholics. I mean, I know we’re not out of control completely. But I also know that that sensible adults have a better grip on making money, paying bills, spending sensibly. This goal was a well intentioned idea that we could pull ourselves together, but seriously I just feel like any time I start looking at how one is supposed to do that in theory, I get overwhelmed and have to go calm myself down by watching HGTV or something less stressful. I think J and I enable each other. It’s so much against my responsible little nature that it makes me miserable.

We are intelligent people. We make a reasonable amount of money, we have reasonable bills, we have a reasonable mortgage. But because we are both idiots with money, we keep ending up in minor skirmishes that stress me out to the point of black depression and moments of pure rage.

This is a goal about mental health. Part of the goal is to learn to ask J to take responsibility for money management as well.

Progress toward this goal was made today.

Lying in bed I was fretting over bounced checks and charges – idiocy since they were due to a check not clearing in time, and had we realized it wouldn’t clear, we would have mailed the checks a day or two later. (See? How simple does it have to be?) But then I realized that our overdraft account wasn’t completely depleted. So why the heck did we bounce 4 checks? Some of them, if not all, should have fallen within the overdraft. Right? Right?

Right. It turns out that the overdraft account only kicks in when there is no money in our account – not when there is no available money. We aren’t the only idiots. So J got the fees reversed and I can use that money to clear out the overdraft account. A small weight off my shoulders.

Other quiet budgeting goals: spend only $100/week on groceries. This might get tricky, but I think we need to rein in expenses, and this is an area we often feel is justified since it means we aren’t eating out. This is part of a larger goal that will take a little while to implement. I’m hoping to open a ‘misc’ checking account for all optional expenses: clothes, restaurants, anything that isn’t a monthly/regular bill. The goal there would be that if the money isn’t in the account, we don’t get it. I’m hoping that will protect the household expenses.

What bothers me about this idea (mine, by the way, so it’s not necessarily one I think is brilliant) is that things like plumbers are not taken into account. Especially plumbers who replumb your bathroom. So that’s not a required expense, but it’s going to be pretty large for our ‘misc’ account.

Big picture I think we need to take a class on budgeting or I need to read a book and get J’s cooperation to follow a structure for our finances. Any suggestions on a simple book that doesn’t start by instructing me to figure out my financial worth would be great.

(sigh)