No-Kill Finance

I came across a post on Budgets Are Sexy about some guy in Vegas who, as a challenge to himself, voluntarily tried being homeless for 24 hours.  This reminded me of something from my past that merits discussing here.  (No, I was never homeless.  Sorry, but my hard-luck stories aren’t nearly that interesting.)

In the Spring of 2007, or thereabouts, I was very used to the idea of “too much month left at the end of the money,” as Dave Ramsey (and others before him, I’m sure) puts it.  As a fairly reckless 23-year-old, I’d regularly run out of cash long before my next paycheck was due, at which point I didn’t worry too much because I had a credit card to cover my costs.  (Let me say, too, that my “costs” included a fair amount of video games, tons of concerts, books, CDs, and far more alcohol than I should’ve been consuming on a daily basis.)

Eventually, I discovered that banks place a limit on how much credit they’ll extend to you.  Apparently it’s called a “credit limit.”  (Who knew?)  After this point, one must find real money to exchange for goods and services, as the fake plastic kind of money doesn’t work past, in my case, the $5,000 milestone.

I’ve since grown used to the idea that eating cheaply and limiting discretionary spending can stretch a paycheck far past a single pay period, but I recall one occasion in particular when, after an enjoyable week of drinking at bars, attending concerts, and buying books, music, and movies, I still had a full week to go before my next paycheck.

At the time, I was fortunate enough to have a fair selection of not-quite-expired nonperishable foods, which lasted several days…after which I had nothing.  I think there were about three bleak days left when my kitchen cabinets were finally empty.

I decided with a significant amount of shame that I could probably manage to “borrow” a meal a day from a charitable friend.  So I made some calls, penciled some lunch plans, and spent three days eating what probably amounted to about 500 calories a day.  I was shy about money and embarrassed about my irresponsibility, so I told a few minor lies and treated the money situation as though I just didn’t have any cash on me at the time…”Crap, I forgot to go to an ATM, would you mind covering me for a sandwich?”…not an uncommon back-and-forth exchange in most of my friendships, so I didn’t raise any suspicion and didn’t have to admit to my circumstances.  Dishonest, I know, but the thought of confronting my issues terrified me.

I will say that going [mostly] hungry wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.  If I recall correctly, I had all three days off from work, so I had the option to be sedentary (watched a lot of those movies I’d wasted my $5000 of credit on), and was able to keep my stomach filled with water…not to mention taking home leftovers and stretching a single Jimmy John’s sandwich into three tiny meals.  Certainly, I’d like to avoid ever being put in the situation again, but it wasn’t so intolerable that I broke down and begged a friend to loan me fifty bucks to get through the week.  Not that they wouldn’t have happily come through for me.

Anyway, that “not-quite-a-conclusion” to the fairly-long-winded story about my not very traumatizing financial trauma brings me to my point:  I have money now.  Money to spare.  I’m working the same low-wage job as I was then for what probably amounts to less pay (comparing my raises against inflation), but I have a positive net worth and plenty of cash reserves for rainy days.  And it’s great, not just because I know that I’m in a position to take care of myself, but also because I’m now in a position where, if one of my friends ever ran out of money, I could repay my karmic debt with actual cash.

That last broke day three years ago, when I was taking the last few bites from the sandwich with which my friend Rob had unknowingly made my day, I was too wrapped up in self-pity to really realize how great a thing friendship is, and how much more valuable that sandwich was than the $5 bill used to buy it.  I’d love to repay that sort of debt, and it’s an amazing feeling to know that, finally, three years later, I can.

(approximately 0.8% of the library)

First, a brief note:  sorry for the hiatus.  Not much free time as Istruggle to stay caught up with school and work.  But enough about that!

As returning readers may know (do I still have returning readers?), I recently tried to sell a lot of crap via the internet.  eBay proved difficult on account of my schedule generally conflicting with the hours of the post office, so I turned to facebook.  After I listed all of the books I hoped to sell, a friend told me she’d take whatever five that I most strongly recommended.  This should prove difficult…

See, I own a lot of books.  Too many books.  I took a tally a few years ago, and at that point (I’ve since acquired many more), I owned something like 1300 books, and had only read about 20% of them.  I of course intend to read them all, but as I go through a maximum of two books a month (or, lately, more like zero), that’s not a realistic goal.  Hence, I tried selling some of them.  But the ones I want to sell are not the ones I’ve read (hence, difficult to offer recommendations).  Nor are they the ones that I much want to read.  And this made me wonder, why would I expect money for them if I don’t think of them as being worth keeping?

The books I’ve decided to keep (and it should be noted that I was only trying to sell 100 or so) can be classified into two broad categories:  books I’ve read, and books I want to read but haven’t.  The books I haven’t yet read are the ones that I think of as being worth something, monetarily.  They are goods that I have purchased and not yet enjoyed.  So, I own them, but still hold material desire for them.  The books I have read, though (that is, the books I could reasonably recommend to my interested friend), are beyond monetary value.  If I wanted to part ways with a book I’ve read and enjoyed enough to keep in the first place, I would never, ever ask for money in exchange.  It would be handed over to – no, bestowed upon – a friend as a cherished gift.  There are few things I take as seriously as a good book.

So why, then, do I sell the crap that I don’t care about?  Or, rather, why do I expect anyone to want to buy it?  I mean, yes, there are some award-winning books in there, and books that I would probably have loved if I’d ever gotten around to them, but if my aim is to make money, shouldn’t I try to sell the things that are subjectively worth the most to me?  Would anyone buy my repeatedly read, beat-up 1980’s mass market copy of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle for what I think it’s worth?  (If so, please contact me privately, and I’ll give you the address to which you can mail the $500 check.)

I still intend to sell a lot more stuff.  I’m working my way up from the crap I don’t care about to the crap I shouldn’t care about but do.  But where do I draw the line?  How do you (if indeed there are any of you out there) ascribe value to personal belongings?

A few days ago, there was a discussion about money at work in which one of my coworkers uttered the claim, “I just can’t save money.”

I didn’t go into full budget-geek mode at work, but I have no qualms doing so here.  So, to that claim, that misguided idea that any person is incapable of saving money, I offer a simple retort:  Nuh-uh.

I can prove it.  I’ll even phrase it like a self-help guru (imagine me speaking in a Dr. Phil voice):

In one easy step, I can teach you how to save money.  I guarantee that this simple, solitary action will start you on your way to saving potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Do you want to know what it is?  The secret to practically limitless savings?  Well, I’ll tell you:

Just save your money.

I know, it’s anticlimactic.  But it’s so terribly easy that the word “can’t” simply doesn’t apply.

There are plans you can follow, books you can read, and seminars you can take on how to save, how to spend more effectively, and how to be thrifty.  You can get a second job, sell everything you own, or win the lottery.  Or you can follow my one-step plan:  just save your money.

Okay, enough of the self-help guru.  And enough of the smart-ass one-step plan.  But saving is important.  You need money in an easily accessible account for when (not if) emergencies come.  And, if I were to play the part of a self-help guru and propose a plan to a new saver, it could indeed be broken down into very few simple steps:

Step One:  Save your money. (No, I’m not joking this time.)

On your next payday, take some tiny amount of money (it could be $50, it could be $5) and put it into a savings account.  If you don’t have one, there are many online banks that offer higher interest rates than your neighborhood bank is likely to, and many of them have no account minimums (so you could indeed start an account with just $5).  I use ING Direct, and have nothing but good things to say about them.  In fact, if you opened an account with them, you could cite me as a reference and we’d both get some free money out of it.  But I won’t turn this into a ploy to make money for myself…the point is, this is how you prove to yourself that you can save.  You just do it.  Put the money away and don’t allow yourself to touch it (having it in an online bank makes this easier, since it takes a bit more effort to get to and won’t be used for an impulse buy or anything).  It will be out of your hands and, even if the $5 was a significant percentage of your monthly income, you’ll be forced to find a way to do without it.  You’ll get by, and you’ll have saved in the process.

Step Two:  Watch your spending.

Do this however you think you’ll be most likely to follow through:  each time you spend money, record it somewhere (text it to yourself or write it in a notebook or record it in some fancy-schmancy budgeting app on your high-falutin’ smart phone).  Keep track of what you spend in a given period:  in a given day, week, pay period, or month.

Step Three:  Adjust your spending.

At the end of whatever period you settled on (in my opinion, the end of the month makes the most sense because so many common expenses are only charged once a month), look at where your money went, and ask yourself if it all needed to go there.  How much did you spend on coffee to-go when you could’ve brewed some at home?  How many times did you eat out because you didn’t feel like packing yourself a sandwich before heading to work in the morning?  Which of your expenses are based on your needs, and which are based on your wants?  What of the things you spent money on would you have been better served by saving it?

Step Four:  Adjust your saving.

Now that you’ve seen where you can trim the fat, determine how much more you can afford to save from your next paycheck.  Set goals for yourself.  See if you can save even more than you budget for.  I make $1100 a month and save over $250 of it:  it’s not nearly as tough as I thought it would be.

Then it’s just a matter of repeating the same cycle:  save, track your spending, and save some more.  Perhaps it’s a grotesquely simplified version of a financial plan, but it’s a start.  And the simple act of doing step one alone is proof:  anyone can save money.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my friend Danielle regarding my blog.  (She neglected to take me up on the free beer offered in the last post.  Big relief, since I can’t afford it.)  Since I neglected to save the message she left, I’ll paraphrase:

Justin.  I’ve been reading your blog.  How the @%&# do you save that much money when you make so little?  My fixed expenses are too high to save at all, and I make more than you.  What does your budget look like?

Well, Danielle, if I may respond in a public forum (though I didn’t ask before posting this), my main trick is that I just don’t spend much money at all outside of my fixed expenses.

I budget a monthly income of $1100, though I usually make a little more than that.  My fixed expenses are:

• $450 Rent
• $70 Transportation (approximate:  bus and train)
• $80 Utilities (approximate:  gas, electric, internet)

I’m fortunate enough not to have to pay for my cell phone, as it’s a recurring Christmas gift from my mother.  I also don’t currently have any monthly credit card payments apart from the not-quite-weekly $20 charges from the Chicago Transit Authority, which I pay as they appear on my statement (see “$70 Transportation”).  I don’t have any student loans (yet), because I was able to make it through my undergraduate schooling debt-free as a result of the responsible financial planning of my parents and grandparents.  (Side note:  this is one of the main things that makes me want to be financially responsible:  I want to provide for my children and grandchildren as well as my parents and grandparents did for me.)

But anyway, after those fixed expenses, I’m left with $500 a month to spend on food, pets, clothes, household expenses, and (if I’m very, very lucky) a bit left over for entertainment.  It’s a sparse existence, but I make it work.

For my non-fixed expenses, I eat a lot of cheap meals (made at home from cheap groceries…I price compare like crazy:  if something is 26 cents an ounce at Trader Joe’s and 27 cents an ounce at Jewel, I buy it at Trader Joe’s).  I keep and am sure to consume leftovers rather than letting them go bad in my refrigerator like I used to, and I scarf down any freebies offered to the staff at work (one of the perks of working for an animal organization:  lots of people want to thank us for our efforts by feeding us…even if it is mostly junk food).

I dine out very rarely, and try to do so cheaply whenever I do.  Again, I save leftovers and try to stretch them over a few meals.  (A trick:  I offer to brave the cold weather and pick up food for co-workers in exchange for getting to keep their change.  If I get six people to order Thai food along with me and they all round up to the nearest dollar – as a delivery tip – I end up getting an order of pad thai that lasts me two or three meals for just a couple of bucks.)

For entertainment, I rely on my “cheapest-plan-possible” Netflix subscription (complete with online viewing) and Hulu, plus the plethora of CDs, DVDs, books and magazines that I purchased and never fully enjoyed back in my days of unrepentant spending.  Mostly, though, I don’t leave myself time for entertainment.  Between school, work, and mindless internet browsing (I mean…constructive blogging), I don’t find much time to yearn for concerts or movies.

Household expenses are easy because we buy most household goods at thrift stores.  We clean with cheap cleaner (or sometimes just diluted white vinegar).  I re-wear shirts and pants until they’re simply too dirty to pass as clean in good company.  I buy clothes at thrift stores, too, and rarely at that since my job doesn’t really require any sort of dress code.  (All of my stained, too-small, white t-shirts are my “work shirts”…which I wear six days a week to match my work schedule.)

Mostly, I just cut back on the things that used to be my weaknesses: if I want a drink, I have $3 Trader Joe’s wine rather than $25 Jameson whiskey; if I want to see a movie, I stay in and see what’s new on Netflix rather than buying a ticket to see a new release; if I want a sandwich, I make one rather than running to the Quizno’s across the street; if I want to buy a book or CD or DVD or video game, I just…well, I just don’t.  And the best thing about it is that my extreme thrift hasn’t really detracted from my quality of life whatsoever.  I’m just as happy being cheap as I was being reckless.  And this way, I have $250 bucks or so every month to squirrel away for a rainy day, which just makes me more secure, therefore happier.

Returning visitors may recall that, in opposition to the unrealistic idea of holding myself to a New Years Resolution, I instead made several New Months Resolutions toward the beginning of January.  The time has come for a quick review:

Out With the Old

1.  Save 20% of my income to an ING Direct emergency fund. I’m happy to report that I overshot this one…by a very long shot, actually.  If you include all of the belated Christmas money I received (thank you, loved ones), I saved just over 53% of the money that came into my life!  And even if you don’t count the unexpected income from gifts, I still managed 30%.  I’ve been annoyed with how slowly my savings are growing, but I see in writing this blog that I’m performing so much better than I had budgeted myself to perform.

2.  Post at least 50% of my “crap” to Ebay or Amazon Marketplace. I found in starting this process that eBay and I do not get along.  And while Amazon Marketplace is lovely for buyers (it’s the source of hundreds of the books I’m now itching to get rid of), it doesn’t offer the best deal for sellers.  So, I found an alternative:  I wrote a facebook note with a list of all the DVDs and CDs I’m selling (at least 50% of my “crap”) and tagged all of my [geographically] closest friends.  So far I’ve sold about $130 worth of music and movies, and the requests are still coming in!

3.  Add at least 3 entries to this blog each week. For the first 60% of my blogging career thus far (that is, for two of the last three weeks), I was doing too good a job at this; I was obsessing over writing.  While this isn’t typically a bad thing for a creative writing graduate who has relapsed into writer’s block for the last five years, it is a bad thing for a returning student who should be devoting at least some of his brain power to chemistry.  So, after writing 4 or 5 a week for two (and a half?) weeks, I took a week off for studying.  More on that in #4.  But, strict numbers show that I made 11 entries in 3 weeks and 3 days, for a total of…3.08 entries a week.  Success again!

4.  Set aside seven hours a week (average one a day) for studying and homework. At my best, I have devoted five hours a week to studying.  This week.  But that’s following almost three weeks of not opening a single damned page of my chemistry book.  Even as I write, I realize I should be studying instead.  But I can’t abandon this, my primary source of self-accountability, totally.  I found that, in taking a week off of blogging in order to focus on my school work, I was far less capable of resisting the urge to be unproductive than I am when I’m writing here…perhaps I should just give up on school and do this full time.  (Just kidding; stay in school, kids.)

5.  Keep up with my chore list. This has been both a moderate failure and a moderate success.  In issuing myself a “procrastination challenge” last week, (though I failed colossally at focusing more on my school work) I was able to not spend so much time playing various computer games and reading random items of interest online, and therefore a lot of my important and occasionally neglected chores (animal care, general cleanliness, remembering to eat three meals a day) have become part of my daily routine.  But, in becoming part of the daily routine, I have forgotten to check them off of my chore list, thus I have forgotten to look at my chore list, thus some of the less crucial – but still important – chores (e.g. “Brush cat hair off of furniture”) have been overlooked for a whole month now.  I’ll have to modify that in this glorious New Month:

In With the New

1.  Save 25% of my income to an ING Direct emergency fund. In spite of the fact that I surpassed 50% last month, that may be a bit high to set as a given expectation.  But 20% isn’t cutting it!  I’m working full time during school, which I wasn’t planning on doing when I set down the 20% goal.  The result of this is that I’m making a lot more money than I planned on, and I have a lot less free time in which to spend it!  25% should be easy to meet and surpass (perhaps I can hit the $1000 mark in the emergency fund!), but by refraining from putting down a 45% goal, I’m not setting myself up for inherent disappointment.  After all, Christmas checks only come once a year…

2.  Add at least 3 entries to this blog EVERY week. Next month I won’t skew the numbers by taking an average…I’m new to blogging (perhaps you could tell that by my 2000-word entries), but I understand it well enough to know that taking a week off can hurt, in terms of readership.  Things have been going well here at No-Kill Finance (better than I expected they would after only 4 weeks!), and I should keep up the momentum.  Even if that means having to work harder to keep up with my next goal…

3.  Set aside seven hours a week (average one a day) for studying and homework. Yes, I still want (and need) to make this work.  This is a personal finance blog, and what’s more important to my financial future than my ability to pursue the career I want?  I need to get an A in this class, and frankly, I didn’t find it too difficult to be first in the class last semester.  So, now that I’m working 7 extra hours a week and trying to maintain a blog in my free time, I’m struggling.  But that doesn’t mean I need to drop one of those distractions so it can be easy.  It shouldn’t be easy.  It should be a challenge, and I should rise to accept it.

4.  Settle school finances before it’s too late! All this talk about school reminds me of a key point:  I haven’t paid for it yet!  I need to look into private loans (since, as a “non-degree-seeking graduate student,” I don’t qualify for federal loans) and sign up ASAP, because I’m sure the university doesn’t take kindly to delinquent payments.

5.  Find some time (somewhere) to see friends. One of the sadder aspects of being so busy is that I, a somewhat aloof fellow to begin with, haven’t seen some of my closest friends for months (over a year in one case).  This is absurd.  Some of these people live less than a mile from my apartment.  For all the rough patches that my friends have seen me through, no excuse (particularly not, “I hardly have any free time, and I’d like to devote what free time I do have to online gaming”) is good enough to neglect them for so long.  So, to any friends reading this, feel free to call me up and get on my ass about scheduling a rendez-vous some time in February.  (Mention this article and get a free beer at a neighborhood bar!  Why am I cutting prices like this?  Because I’m craaaazy!)

6.  Keep up with chore list. For real this time. All day, every day.  Starting now.  Bye!

Today’s post will serve two purposes:  to make a point, and to apologize ahead of time in case I don’t show up around these internets til the weekend…

See, in spite of my resolution to devote seven hours a week to school, I’ve been putting in…well, roughly zero.  I was sick pretty much all through last week, and didn’t attend a single class, discussion, or lab.  Upon my reappearance in class this morning, I found out I was two chapters behind the class.  Two chapters’ worth of complicated chemical energy transfers, enthalpy, entropy, and a bunch of other concepts that I only vaguely understand (not to mention words I can’t pronounce).  There’s homework due tomorrow night, and a quiz next week.  Obviously, I need to play catch-up.

This doesn’t intimidate me.  It should, I know, but I am sadly so very experienced with procrastination that it just occurs naturally to me at this point.  I am intimately familiar with the stress of the last-minute hustle, the crunch time, and the pre-test cram…so much that it sometimes doesn’t occur to me that these are not appropriate ways to manage tasks.  But expecting stress can’t possibly be as healthy as avoiding it.

I’ve found that the best way to overcome procrastination is just to, well, do things.  Get them over with.  It feels immensely rewarding and it’s usually not nearly as difficult as you build it up to be.  (Says the guy writing a blog instead of studying.)

BUT.  It takes a lot of motivation – and, in my case, a very good mood – to muster up that sort of proactive thinking.  It’s hard-wired in my behavior to procrastinate, and I so rarely try to change anything about my hard-wired behavior.  But that’s what this whole personal finance thing has been about, so why not give procrastination a shot, too?

For the rest of the week, I’ll try the procrastination challenge:  no, “I’ll do the dishes after this episode of Seinfeld,” no, “One more level before I start homework.”

Instead, just, “Damn it, Justin, get off your ass and do it now!”

It’s true, I’m not particularly stressed about how far I’ve fallen behind in school.  But I should be.  And I can catch up with a little effort, and a whole lot of, “Do it now.”

A few days ago, Katie had a day off while I had to work. She’s been spending most of her days off setting up the new apartment, so she was excited to have plans with a friend for a change.  When that friend suggested brunch, Katie said her initial reaction was to immediately regret not being able to afford a meal out.  But, of course, she can afford it…I’m the one who can’t.  So after she realized that I wasn’t coming along, she gladly accepted the invitation.

This lead me to wonder…at what point does my budgeting become a burden on, rather than a benefit to, my personal life?

Choosing Battles

I mentioned in a previous post that Katie and I recently had a minor disagreement over the cost of dining out.  After the disagreement had been resolved (i.e. we made sandwiches and ate them angrily), she pointed out that we probably could have compromised by splitting a meal from the restaurant and eating something small (like, say, sandwiches) beforehand.  It was a good point.

I need to be careful of falling into a damagingly severe mindset of scrimping and saving at every turn.  It could not only have a negative effect on my ability to enjoy life (because, like anyone, I need to treat myself to a nice thing or two every once in a while, budget be damned), but also on my ability to function in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have the same need for extreme thrift as I do.

And, besides my relationship, what about my own peace of mind?  My own well-being?

Thrift vs. Deprivation

Last week, I wrote about saving money by walking to work rather than taking the bus.  I feel like I made a pretty reasonable argument.  This week, though, I had a pretty serious cold along with a sinus infection (and, I suspect based on details I won’t share here, a touch of pneumonia?), and still insisted on walking to work one day.  Stupid.

Sometimes, spending $2 just makes more sense than saving it.  I was lucky in that particular circumstance, in the sense that I seem to be recovering at a decent rate and won’t need to go see a doctor as a result of my trek through the great [frozen] outdoors while ill.  Sometimes, whether to save time (that could otherwise be spent earning more money…or sleeping) or simply to save whatever small amount of sanity I might still be clinging to, spending a few bucks here and there on amenities is an okay thing.

Are you guys budget Nazis, too?  Where do you make allowances in your budgets for spoiling yourselves?

Over the weekend, Katie and I went to a monthly game night with half a dozen friends.  This was our third month of actually doing it monthly (after several months of faltering), a trend I hope continues.  In attending – and, last month, hosting – game nights, I’ve learned a few lessons about frugality.

1.  Accept Ridicule With A Smile

When I told a friend at work about our evening’s plans on Saturday, he poked some fun at me.  He said, “You hipsters and your trendy get-togethers.  What’ll it be next month, Bingo?  What ever happened to going out and getting drunk?”  Granted, he was being friendly in his teasing, but it was worth a response.

I told him, “No bars; I’m trying to spend less than I earn for a change.”

“Well,” he said, “you’re working at the wrong job for that.”  A fine point…in fact, the whole point of this blog.  See my first post for the talking points of the rebuttal I could have offered.  Instead, though, I smiled along with him.

“Tell me about it.  But I may as well try, right?”

While his teasing was of a friendly nature, not all the teasing I’ve encountered has been.  People get uncomfortable and annoyed when you tell them you can’t join them for social events due to lack of money.  If a friend who makes $60,000 a year (or, worse, lives off of a high-limit credit card) wants to go out for an expensive meal or to a $30 concert, it’s very difficult to tell them no without some emotional repercussion, be it guilt, shame, or frustration on your part, and sometimes irritation on the part of the friend.

It’s important, though, not to let the emotional impact of having to say “no” weigh you down.  One single lapse in steadfastness born of guilt and peer pressure could end up costing you a $20 trip to a bar or a $30 meal.  When you’ve budgeted (as I have) $30 per paycheck for dining out, that’s nothing to take lightly.

So, learn to say “no” now, so that some day you’ll have enough money that you won’t have to say it any more.  And if you take any flak for it, fight back with a smile and acceptance.  ”Yes,” you should say, “I know I seem cheap.  But it’s better than being broke.”

2.  Accountability, While Sometimes Painful, Pays Off

The weekend prior to game night, we were invited over to a friend’s house for dinner.  I was excited for the get-together, but was dismayed to learn that we weren’t exactly being hosted for dinner, we were supposed to pick up carry-out from the [somewhat overpriced, though very good] Thai restaurant in our building and bring it over.

Now, one of my biggest complaints about our new apartment is that there’s a Thai restaurant directly below us, and our back porch constantly smells like great food that I can’t afford.  Thai is my very favorite cuisine, and I desperately wanted to give in, drop $12 on a meal, and ignore by budget for just one delicious night.  But I objected.  I asked if we couldn’t instead maybe just eat in and join them later for drinks…an idea that was not well-received by Katie.

Of course I don’t have anything bad to say about her…especially not here where she might read it (heehee), but although Katie is the inspiration for my newfound concern with money, she’s still having as much trouble adjusting as I am.  She dated the “careless me” for a whole year, and became accustomed to $12 Thai meals (which she could actually afford, where I’d always put my half on my credit card).  She understood my dilemma, but she’s just not used to not being able to do the things she wants to do.  We ended up eating at home in heavy silence and taking a cheap bottle of wine over later in the night…a nice evening, but tinged with the tension of the “discussion” we’d had earlier.

Cut to Saturday afternoon a week later, and the entire episode is long-forgotten on account of the fact that I’m giddy with excitement for the night of socializing ahead.  It served as a good reminder for both of us that, though I may be forced to deprive myself (and, unfortunately, deprive her by proxy) from time to time, it doesn’t hinder our ability to have a good time…it just hinders our ability to have an expensive good time.

3.  Fun Can Be Inexpensive Without Being Cheap

There’s really nothing more finance-friendly than a game night.  You tackle three cornerstones of good personal finance in one fell swoop:

• Frugality – at $4 each for 6 hours of entertainment, what else could you call it?
• Friendship – spending time with others who appreciate cheap fun as much as you do is excellent reinforcement for your frugal efforts.
• Fun – and what makes for better reward for your efforts than a night of socializing, giggling, and playing games?

Admittedly, when we hosted, Katie and I spent a fair amount of money (maybe $30, after the frozen pizzas, beer, chips and dip).  But we are one of six “households” that attends, so we only have to host every sixth month.  Average our $30 month with the $8-$10 we spend every other time (this weekend we provided a bottle of cheap Trader Joe’s wine, cookies, and ice cream bars…each under $3), and that’s less than $14 – $7 for each of us – per game night.  And, even if no one in our social circle owned any board games (which practically makes me laugh out loud on account of how very many each of us owns), they’re pretty cheap considering the return on investment you get out of years of use.  (This month, we played Quelf, an incredibly fun if slightly frustrating game…more fun and less frustrating with each glass of wine consumed.)  Not to mention the used Monopolys and Scrabbles and Pictionarys one so often sees at thrift and antique stores.

So that’s “frugality.”  In terms of “fun” and “friendship”, it all comes down to operant conditioning.  Unlike the first two lessons in gritting your teeth, accepting the difficult challenges, and sticking to your miserly budget, this third lesson is a direct reward for your efforts.  The principles of operant conditioning tell us that, the more our good behavior is rewarded, the more likely we are to instinctively behave that way in the future.  I know I’m already excited for next month’s game night.  Perhaps this time, the ridicule and tensions that may precede it will be a bit easier to bear, now that I have the positive reward in sight.

I’ve been debating how I should get this started, and the natural (if a bit selfish) thing that keeps occurring to me is that I should share my personal story, all the things that have lead me to start a personal finance blog (since I suppose that’s more or less what this is going to be).  But, before I talk about why I started a blog, I should probably establish what the blog means to me, what it’s intended to be about.  So as my first entry, I present to you, my theoretical (and perhaps even existent) readers, a mission statement of sorts:

No-Kill Finance, at its most basic, will be a blog about my stubborn refusal to quit my job and find one with better pay.  I work in Chicago as a veterinary assistant at a no-kill cat shelter (get it?  No-Kill?) for only slightly more than half the pay of what an average vet assistant might make.  But I absolutely adore working there, and would hate to give it up for a wage increase.  Times are tough, yearly raises are being reduced, and upward mobility isn’t possible in the organization, but I have my heels dug in:  I.  Will.  Not.  Quit.

No-Kill Finance will be a discussion of how one makes a living on less than $1000 a month in a big city without wanting to kill himself in the process (get it?  No-Kill?  It works on several levels.  I’m clever.).  I lead a comfortable life, I enjoy nice things, and I spend time with people who do the same.  No-Kill Finance will explore the many ways I try to cope with the financial temptation of living beyond my means as I attempt to stop doing so.

And, maybe most importantly, No-Kill Finance will serve as a tool for me, to remind myself (as is occasionally easy to forget) that the work I do, and the emotional satisfaction I find in it, is worth the stress of having to be thriftier and more conservative than I might otherwise care to be.  Because my work is so important to me, and will be such an important part of this blog, I would advise any cat-haters to steer clear…I’m essentially a crazy old cat lady, except young and male.

So, I don’t hold any delusions about this blog never changing focus, or about keeping myself from going totally off-topic from time to time (I suffer from some moderate-to-severe attention deficit issues), but I am formally setting a goal – personal finance is all about goals, right? – to at least somewhat faithfully try to follow these guidelines in all entries to follow.

And now that I’ve gotten that business out of the way, allow me to welcome you to No-Kill Finance.  Please excuse our dust; we’re still under construction.  But I hope you’ll check back in soon.