Diagnosis: Affluenza January 18th-24th

This week wasn't a total disaster. I spent $158, and slightly over 1/3 of that was for medical expenses. There was definitely room for improvement this week but at the same time I didn't buy a single object this week.

Green is purchases that were either necessities or purchases that I will only give up if I end up in serious financial trouble. Orange purchases were probably okay but should've been considered for longer. Red purchases shouldn't have happened. Asterisks indicate physical objects.

• Two prescription refills: $20
• Physical therapy: $35
• Tithe: $5
• Guitar lesson: $45
• Museum membership and lecture: $35
• Another Star Trek kindle book: $8

Total: $148 

($55 of that was medical)

• "No peeking" bonus (guitar fund): $10 = $158 total 
• Clutter tally: 0 objects purchased 

Bank account balance: $0.00. 

$44.75 still owed to the Chief Engineer for my ski boots.

I also started something new for myself this week. I have a very bad anxiety-driven habit of obsessively checking my bank account multiple times a day. Unfortunately my bank account's online system displays not just my checking account balance but also the numbers for my tiny little stock portfolio. So yes, every time I look at it, the numbers are different. Even when I check it eight times a day. Which I have.

It's easier to break habits when there's an incentive. My incentive is to "pay myself" $5 for every day that I don't look at my bank accounts or look up any stock values online. The money then goes into my guitar fund. The idea occurred to me on Tuesday, so you'll see two "no peeking!" bonuses for Wednesday and Thursday. Hopefully a few months of this should help me break my habit and help me save for a guitar (or knowing me, the guitar money will end up paying medical bills instead.)

The museum lecture and membership I shouldn't have purchased, nor the kindle book. Not right now, anyways. But given that the lecture is about space disasters and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 13's original co-pilot) is speaking I went mildly crazy at the opportunity to hear him talk. Between that and a Star Trek book and the amount that I spent, I think I'm living in a world of science fiction right now.

Reality better set in soon because I looked at my upcoming expenses for the first week in February: Two physical therapy appointments and one psychiatrist visit will total $210. Yes, I know I need a cheaper psychiatrist and I did just make an appointment with the only psychiatrist I can get to without a car who takes my insurance. I nabbed his first open appointment, in April. Until then this expensive psychiatrist visit is an important appointment that I have to keep.

I've been blabbing on a lot lately about money, when this is a hoarding blog. Are you enjoying the Diagnosis: Affluenza posts? I'll have more hoarding horror stories to tell this week. We're headed back to Pennsylvania to spend a day skiing, and that means (tada!) we have to stay with my parents. 

See you soon!

Diagnosis: Affluenza January 11-17th

I think I've finally figured out a format for this. As usual, I started the week with $250, $30 of which went into a brokerage account for me to invest. That left $220. I then got paid for some contract work ($100) and sold an old gift card I didn't plan to use to a friend for $80 which brought my total income to $400. I also had $184.25 left in my checking account from the four weeks since I started to use this money plan.

Here's what happened to that $584.25 this week. Our ski trip plus the computer repair took an incredible bite out of my budget and what I'd saved so far.

Purchases in green are purchases that I consider reasonable. Purchases in orange are purchases that I should've thought more about or prepared for but didn't. It would be good to avoid these purchases until I have more money saved. The purchases in red are purchases that I should be skipping until I have $600 in savings. I've picked $600 as a result of looking at previous months' spending. I noticed that I have a habit of making about a $300-$400 purchase on something unnecessary or unexpected every month. This month was probably the most unexpected and totaled $600, so that seems a good amount to aim for.

Anything with an asterisk is an object. So this week I acquired two things, well, I suppose four things. I plan on working to keep that number low. Four objects a week is 200 objects a year! And since we've got 1200 square feet to work with, that could be a problem! So let's go look at a "bad" week:

I can't legitimately expect anyone to read this chicken scratch, can I?

Starting bank balance: $584.25 Weekly budget: $220 Extra income: $100 from contract work Extra income: $80 from selling an old gift card EXPENSES: Mac repair: $290 Physical therapy: $ 35 Guitar lesson: $45 *Ski boots: $230 *Ski poles: $50 Lunch with friend: $30 Star Trek Kindle book (stop laughing!):  $8 Two iTunes songs: $3 Total expenses: $691.00 $291 over budget Bank balance: $-106.75

I should probably avoid iTunes and amazon for a while.  That's going to be a hard habit to break, but at least it's not expensive. Okay, just one book and one song next week. I'll try to get down to zero after that. For just a little while. Lunch with my friend Bret is does make me wince, but at least it's only once a month and friends are more important than money. We "treat" each other to lunch every other Friday, meaning we each only end up paying once a month. I may want to suggest a less expensive locale in the future. 

For the next couple weeks I'll have three regular expenses: $70 of physical therapy a week and weekly $45 guitar lessons. That leaves $100 each week. I'll need to be careful so I can pay back the Chief Engineer for my ski boots in the next two weeks. I was doing well for a while, especially the first two weeks. Time to hunker down a little more. 

In terms of our family spending, we've made another change: This month I don't get to look at our household finances except on the last day of the month.  The Chief Engineer and I temporarily changed passwords on our accounts to ones that only he knows. Why? Because I have a nasty, OCD-habit of checking our bank accounts and our credit card sometimes several times a day. It's a little (or a lot!) ridiculous. If I can't stress about my eating disorder, I stress about money instead. With food, when I angst over it I end up eating more. Maybe if I angst over the bigger picture of our family finances I end up spending more than if I just leave them alone.

In spite of the ski trip it feels like we've spent less money this month. I've spent more evenings consciously trying to do things that don't involve shopping, spending money, or planning to spend money in any way. I don't spend a lot of time spending money but I do spend a lot of time planning to spend money. I'm trying to distract myself and see if it makes a difference. Instead of planning to buy stuff, I've done some quilting, caught up on much of the Law and Order and Start Trek episodes that I missed while I was in college, read lots of free online fiction, and for the first time in over a decade I finally sat down and started writing some fiction of my own. It felt really, really silly good.

I'm quite a bit happier than I was when I was angsting about our money. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to wean myself of recording everything I spend out of my own bank account.

See you all for Dx: Affluenza next Saturday!

Back in business

But it's a good thing I'm not a business, because I'd be broke and out of business if I were.

Stop laughing! It's a ridiculous 
background screen and I LOVE it! 

My laptop made it back to me this week after a vacation at the Apple store. It completely died on me and ended up needed pretty much everything but the screen and casing replaced, which came to a whopping $290. I gotta admit I feel like I got a real deal though. Apple's flat rate service and labor for laptops covered a new motherboard, new trackpad, new keyboard, and new solid state drive for under $300. If I'd bought the pieces separately I would've come closer to $1500. Makes me wonder how I managed to break all four of those things given that only the keyboard has moving parts...anyways, I'm back to blogging again. 

Financially the week has been a disaster. Last week I managed to twist my ankle and ended up at the doctor's with a $35 copay and a $55 brace. Add physical therapy for another old injury, and then the laptop....and would you believe the real stupidity hasn't even shown up yet?

The slopes around here finally opened and we went skiing for the Chief Engineer's 30th birthday this week. For what it was, it actually wasn't all that expensive. Middle-of-the-week lift tickets are $25 a day, or about 1/3 of weekend prices on the east coast. He's an avid skiier so he's had on his own gear for a while so there's no need to rent his equipment. We pack in our food so it just ends up being the cost of lift tickets, gas out to the mountain (which isn't much since we own a car with great fuel economy), and one night in a hotel. 

Except I can manage to make anything more expensive and I can always manage to acquire more stuff. On this trip I already had my own skis but didn't have boots or poles, which was fine, figuring I could rent boots and I've skied well without poles in the past. Apparently I was wrong. You can rent skis alone, you can rent helmets alone, you can rent poles alone. But apparently you can't use your own skis and rent boots anywhere. Ask the lawyers, because I don't understand it. 

I will *make* these worth it.

My choice ended up being, buy boots or don't ski at all. I ended up dropping $230 on these. They're quality boots and should last me over a decade. But to make matters worse, after the first day I ended up also spending $50 on poles.  I sat and beat myself up about doing something else that took us financially one step further away from going to Australia in January next year. I realized that these not-so-little sudden financial expenditures are coming at more than a financial cost because each thing I spend money on means there's something else that can't happen instead.

Then I went and skied the best two days of skiing I've ever had. So I stopped beating myself up. I just have to decide what's most important to me. In the YNAB book, the author said something along the lines of, "If you find yourself consistently blowing $100 on shoes every month, the solution isn't to make yourself stop buying shoes, it's to admit that you're going to buy shoes and plan/budget for them." That means doing the splurge/impulse/unplanned purchases in place of something else.  

Oh. I get it now. 

My goal of completing the kitchen and going to Australia within a year? I've let go of it. We'll do the bare minimum on the kitchen and then will turn our focus towards saving for the Australia trip. I am willing to let go of the desire to have a new cabinet, sink, countertop, and backsplash in exchange for being able to ski and to go to Australia. I've lost my desire for the earrings I wanted. A new guitar? I'll get it eventually. And kids? Kids can wait.

A kitchen or this? Easy choice. 
Happy 30th birthday, darlin'!     

I don't think it quite hit me until I took one of the exactly two falls I had during the last two days (yes, pun intended!) but skiing and being pregnant don't mix, toddlers and skiing definitely don't mix, and I've MISSED skiing. The Chief Engineer and I had our first real date skiing together. We had several not-a-dates on the slopes before that. In high school on wintery Fridays my uncle would pick me up at school and he'd take me night skiing in the Pocono Mountains. I ski enough to make the purchase financially worth it and I love every minute I'm on the slopes. 

I knew rental gear was poor quality, but I don't think I realized just quite how poor. I performed well and had a FANTASTIC time! My gear will pay for itself in about 23 more days of skiing, compared with renting. That's about two years of skiing for me or less if the weather is good this year. But I'm enjoying skiing so much more now with the new gear and I'm now willing to give up other things I want so that I can keep skiing. And going skiing and suddenly hardly falling anymore because my gear actually works? Priceless.

Unfortunately there are two more immediate problems: 1.) I suddenly own two very large objects (well, four) that I didn't own before. Ski boots and poles are not small! I'll need to declutter a few things to make room. Not sure what yet.  2.) I spent about $106.75 more than I had in my bank account by buying the ski boots. I had enough to pay for the laptop repair and the ski poles but not the boots. So the Chief Engineer gave me a one time "payment plan." He put my ski boots on his credit card and I have exactly two weeks to pay him back to keep me out of overdraft. This was not the way I was hoping things would go financially. Details and a plan to get out of "debt" and not get back into it will come in tomorrow's Diagnosis: Affluenza post. 

It's not permission for me to go crazy. I've just learned that my personal financial buffer needs to be about $600, or what I ended up blowing on unplanned expenses this week. It will take time to build that up and I'm sure at some point I'll decimate those savings again in a matter of days. Clutter-wise, I need to clear out more clutter because objects I truly want and use like ski boots sometimes show up and need permanent homes. It's all about getting my priorities straight. I'm incredibly lucky to be where I am financially and I was killing myself trying to do everything. 

Next up: spending less next week to be able to pay the $106.75 back to the Chief Engineer. After that: paying for any skiing until the end of the season. After that? The kitchen wall comes down. After that? Saving for Australia.  That's the order in which things matter to us. Maybe something will have to wait. I'm okay with that. One thing at a time. And in time, too. 

A different kind of disaster zone

That would be my finances. Click the image to enlarge.

Just a warning, this post is filled with a ton of angst. I am a spoiled, wealthy brat who realizes how much she has but is foolish with it. And I feel very ashamed, and really don't know how to change my ways. 

I let go this month. Our take-home pay decreased substantially because I contributed twice my usual to my pension thingy at work this month. In total, we only added $216 to our checking account and $415 to our emergency fund. Still -- only adding $600 in liquid savings feels really bad. 

Causes:
1. ED treatment got more expensive this month. My therapist just moved to California so I've been going to a bunch of trial appointments with what feels like every therapist in town. Eventually I'll find someone I like who takes my insurance but until then I have to pay for the full cost of the visits.
2.We ate out at a pricey place. First mistake: going to the hottest restaurant in the DC area for our wedding anniversary. Second mistake: trusting that they wouldn't try to kill us at dinner. If you have food allergies, Volt in Frederick is not a great place to go!
3. I didn't restrain myself when it came to entertainment. It's that simple.
4. I bought more Christmas presents. I felt it was better to split the present purchasing over three months. I only have about $60 worth of planned gifts to get yet, for a total of approximately $400 for the whole family, for $50 apiece. The remaining gifts complete the "baskets of local goodies" I've been planning to make. But next year I need to focus on more homemade gifts and also to set a budget.

Really, #2 and #3 are the biggest problems. I just have to restrain myself. I've got no choice if I don't want to find myself having to pay bills out of our savings.

It really gets worse.

The spoiled brat continues her spending, because this week she's taking another vacation to another ritzy destination. My MIL goes to the Caribbean and begged us to go with her. She offered to pay for food and for the hotel. We thought, 'what a deal!' Yeah, right. Airfare alone was $750/pp.

What's really going on here is that my FIL died a number of years ago and my inlaws used to go there every year. So there will be lots of things that will be done just for the endorphins. She already has plans to take me jewelry shopping (real jewelry shopping..."it's half what it is in the states!" she exclaimed). If I say I'd rather not spend money she will then offer to buy me something or will bring me back something I can't stand. And that is very dangerous. She tried to buy her say in our wedding, and I HATE it when she pays for things, because I feel like she's using money to gain some kind of invisible control over me. I feel like I'm in her debt. I feel that way about the whole vacation.

My husband is talking about snorkeling and renting boats and eating out...I just paid the pet sitter...my parents are coming over when I get back and they'll want to eat out a lot...and I'm overwhelmed.

My husband doesn't have a spending problem, I do. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle any of this. I used to never eat out and that was how I afforded all of the stupid things I would buy. But now I don't want to cut into his fun because he prefers to eat out and enjoy vacations and I can't control my spending on the little stuff.

Like the eating disorder, angsting over it makes it worse. Perhaps it's best to just talk with the guy I married and set a reasonable limit on how much to spend at the jewelry store, and to be okay with it. I have $250 in contract work coming to me this month. Perhaps that's a reasonable amount to spend.

And on top of it all, I know so many people who make so much less than I do, and yet I'm so careless with it.

Decluttering tip #9: reduce your financial account clutter, and I don't mean the paper kind

When most people think about financial clutter they think about the piles of paperwork that come with financial accounts. So we read blogs and books and websites about how many years of statements to keep, whether we should digitize or laminate our tax returns, whether we should go out and buy fireproof safes to keep all of it secure. We don't think about the source of the clutter.

Have you considered reducing the number of accounts you have? I really mean 'accounts' -- not just credit cards.

Add up the number of financial accounts you have: savings accounts, checking accounts, money market accounts, IRAs, TSPs, 401ks, 529 plans, CDs, mutual funds, stock purchases, bonds, etc., and of course loans and credit cards. How many are there?

Why reduce the number of accounts you have?

Reducing the accounts automatically reduces the amount of statements you receive. It  makes it easier to keep your statements straight and you're less likely to make mistakes that will land you with fees when you know where your money is.

It's also easier to quickly add up your assets when you need to. And boy, does it make the taxes easier come April 15th.

Large purchases are another reason to cut down financial clutter. My husband and I just bought a condo. If you're going to be in the market to purchase a home anytime soon, you should know that you will need to provide two months' documentation for every single financial account you plan to use for the purchase. That can be an awful lot of statements. We had nearly 20 accounts (and only four of them were credit cards). That's 40  statements. Forty.

Additionally, when you can see more of your money in one place you avoid the 'silo' effect. Keeping your money in 'silos' (eg. one savings account for the house, one money market account for the kids' college, one for the Disney trip next year, one for the Europe trip, etc.) means that you may not have much in any one account. Banks often give better interest and return offers when you can invest a larger amount of money at one time.

Don't suddenly get rid of all of your accounts, though.

Talk with a trusted friend, family member, or financial advisor before closing a number of accounts. Closing certain kinds of accounts can affect your credit rating. Not to mention, it's a lot to deal with all at once.

If you're making a large purchase where you will need to prove the sources of your cash, you don't want to close accounts just yet. You might be asked to provide not just statements for those accounts, but documentation that you closed them.

My 'virtual' decluttered item for today is three financial accounts (all with the same bank): two CDs and a savings account. We need them to pay for the condo and we won't be reopening them. But alas, they're not tangible, so I won't be adding them to my 365-item tally.

Have you decluttered your financial world? What's worked? What's been a mistake?