Episode 31: Where The Funds Go...

I'm looking into budget software. Exciting no? Sis has recommended YNAB or Snowmint in conjunction with GNU Cash. A coworker has been cheering the Dave Ramsey way. And since it certainly seems that there's no hope for Social Security, one does have to start thinking towards retirement.

I'm skeptical though, as I read through the budget stories online. Most of them start out with "we cut out eating out every night and look how much money we saved" and other such broad sweeping statements. Well, what a surprise! I tried reading a budget book last spring and was kind of sickened by the suggestions that one "cut out weekly trips to the mall" or "get a new job that pays much more than you were previously making." Umm, yeah no. I was last in the mall in June to get my rings cleaned and changing jobs in my field in this economy and making more money has "pipe dream" written all over it.

I'm not bad with money-- but I want to get more in savings and plan a little better for all those trips home, rather than putting all the plane tickets on the credit card and then chunking away at them each paycheck. And now that the braces are clear--the student loan debt really needs to go.

What I know?

I spend too much money on yarn and coffee. Yes, I said it. I'm doing a lot better than last year with the wool account but I've up'd the number of trips to the local coffee shop. Good for their bottom line but not so much for me.

I've stopped bringing lunch. There's a quiet desperation of wanting to get out of the building. Part of that will fade as the nice weather does, but I need to get back to going out to lunch being an occasional treat rather than a constant.

I spend too much when I'm traveling, because I turn off most internal limits. Generally speaking this hasn't caused any huge problems (I'm not going for Prada or Gucci, as we both know) but I know that an average trip home will set me back the better part of a thousand dollars. And while $500 of that is plane ticket and paying for parking and taxis, the other half isn't. I keep telling myself this is cheaper than therapy though ;) (And since I've discovered that for my own peace of mind/well-being, I need to leave the state once a month-six weeks....it adds up).

So...I'm tackling the finances. Maybe even venturing further into investments.

Call me out on it occasionally, would you?

Episode 30: Accepting the Not-Happy State

The more people I talk to, and there are a ridiculous amount of ways I communicate with people these days, the more I find that we all seem to be in a state of coping. There's a strained sense of hope/fear: hope that we'll rebound, re-energize, and bounce into a positive future and a fear that the floor is going to fall out from underneath us, landing us all on our faces. I sort of wish I knew what it would be, as I'm sure many of us to, in order to plan, but instead we all seem to just be clinging on by our fingernails.

I'm hesitant to admit to being sad, lethargic, apathetic, or just not feeling myself or at a hundred percent. Not to my immediately family and a couple of closest friends: they've had to hear the bitter details as I try and convince myself that's there is meaning and worth to me, to what I'm doing at work, to my freelance work, to the thousands (literally) of stitches that come off of my knitting needles. I'm hesitant to embrace it publicly, even as I know I could use a bigger support network.

Why? Mostly because I don't want to be told I a) need therapy or b) need to start living through drugs. There are very excellent therapists out there and there are certainly good medications that help people who are suffering from clinical depression. A mild case of the fall blues compounded by inadvertently absorbing stress at work from worried patrons and the not-so-abnormal concerns about budget concerns in the coming year is not, in my personal opinion, worthy of assigning me another pill I'll forget to take. (I'm bad with the vitamins.)

As we are all constantly sharing ourselves with others, the tendency comes to only share the good. And if sharing "bad" to make it amusing, funny, something that doesn't display a human weakness. By saying I'm in a bad mood or don't feel good or think the subject of an interview displays a little too much holier than thou, condescending out of touch with reality, then I'm at fault, I'm bad, I'm weak. In this time of economic fraility, job hunting/keeping uncertainty, etc etc...we can't be weak. Only the strong survive, right? When we're all scrambling to prove ourselves superhuman all the time, it's hard to allow for some human frailties.

I grabbed a book from library: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Underminded America" by Barbara Ehrenrich (BN link, no financial affiliation). It might just reaffirm my own latest bout of cynicism, but I'm looking forward to reading it.

I tend to crawl into books and yarn as escape techniques, though those aren't helping much of late as when I come out it is to deadlines that are looming ever nearer. This has changed somewhat from former coping techniques, which primarily included voice lessons and the phrase "get a cup of coffee?" Introverted vs. Extroverted techniques and yes, I know I need to start exercising more.

Still, I'm swinging back out of the funk; I've actually felt pretty civilized this week. Now I'm hoping, as I think may of us are, that the "holiday spirit" kicks in and tensions ease. As demands rise exponentially though for contribution of goods and service as we head towards the end of the year, when I have personal and family concerns that, to me, often seem more pressing, I continue to wonder when the tightwire is going to snap.