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.

Let me first say that I’m resisting all urges to post an April Fool’s Day blog:  An excited report on how a Nigerian prince is going to give me part of his fortune, perhaps?  Or maybe something about the benefits of playing the lotto?  (Speaking of which, congratulations to my friend, whose scratch-off success this week could be an object of inspiration and envy to all get-rich-quick schemers.)

Anyway, I didn’t set any goals for March because I seem to have forgotten I even had a blog to record them in.  Had I, though, I would’ve passed them and then some, thanks to the month’s third paycheck.  As I discussed last night, I’ve now passed my initial $1000 goal for emergency savings, and have paid off my largest outstanding debt, which leaves:

April New Month’s Resolutions

1. Pay off sole remaining debt:  I still owe about $180 to a veterinary care credit, due in large part to the mighty Thor’s advancing age.  In addition to paying it off, I’d like to avoid acquiring any new debts as well.  I’ve spent so much energy paying off my credit card every month that I run up a weekly bill with my girlfriend, who does grocery shopping and the like while I’m at work.  I need to re-evaluate my expenses and work harder at keeping costs low so I’m not owing her more money than I have to give.  After all, my next 3-paycheck month won’t be ’til September…
2. Continue to save 25% of income after Resolution #1 is accomplished:  now that I’ve hit $1000 in my emergency fund, to which I’d been contributing 25%, I plan on diversifying my savings…10% to emergency savings, 10% to the retirement fund I hope to put toward a new IRA by the end of the year, and bits and pieces here and there into various other savings sub-accounts intended for vacation, a car (a theoretical car, to be purchased in the distant future…I love my public transit), and maybe some sort of absurd present to myself, like a new TV (yeah, right).
3. Continue to focus more on school than on blogging:  yes, it’s sad to embrace it so openly, but my spotty upkeep here at No-Kill Finance over the last month has been the product of my increased focus on schoolwork, which, no offense to my readers, is a lot more important in the long run.  I’ll try to set more realistic goals for myself (see Resolution #4) so I tune in more often, but I was getting a bit too obsessed with drafting new posts, reading peer blogs, and combing through Google Analytics data…a pointless pursuit when you only have 30 or 40 hits a day.  Simply by ignoring my blog, I have hugely increased my capacity to understand the big, confusing words my chemistry professor is rambling through during each lecture.
4. Blog twice a week:  most important in succeeding at this goal will be my acceptance of the fact that blogs don’t NEED to be 1000 words long.  In studying fiction writing, I was trained to write, re-write, re-write again, then walk away for a few hours and re-write again.  This method does not work well for someone with a limited amount of time to spend on writing.  Decreasing my weekly quota, and maybe lowering my standards a bit in terms of…not quality, just fine-tuning…I think I’ll be able to keep up.
5. Work out at least twice a week:  nothing to do with finance, I know, but I’ve gained about 15 pounds since starting this blog, and I feel like being healthier will motivate me in every other aspect of my life (more alert, more energetic, more willing to blog and maybe do a few crunches instead of eating chocolate and watching television).

So, I’ve had mixed success with my resolutions in the past months (March being a noted exception:  I succeeded at living up to all zero of my resolutions that month!), but I have a good feeling about April.  This morning, the sun is out, I’m well-caffeinated, and I officially only have one month of school left until summer vacation.  Spring is great!

Wanted to check in quickly before bedtime and describe the beauty of a 3-paycheck month.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with this phenomenon, but:  following a bi-weekly pay schedule, 2 months a year there are  3 paydays within a single month.  March is one of 2010’s 3-paycheck months for my pay schedule.

Admittedly, I haven’t investigated the long-term mathematical consequences of spending this money hastily, but nonetheless, I accomplished a lot this evening:

• I posted the final $159.40 into my emergency fund to reach the $1000 mark.
• I paid April’s rent and still have over $500 in my “rent” account (separate from my other various savings sub-accounts).
• I repaid the rather sizable (as in, say, half a grand) debt I owed my darling girlfriend.
• I managed, after all of this, to retain plenty of money to comfortably get me through to my next pay period.

All in all, a great success, and worth bragging about in my opinion…if I’m to brag, I wanted to remember to do it now.  (Ideally, I’ll be writing again tomorrow to celebrate “Happy New Month!”, but given my recent track record for blogging, I may forget totally.)

So, please forgive me for patting myself on the back so publicly, and try to have as good a night as I’ve had…I’m off to bed.

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!

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?

Katie and I had a lesson in bargain-hunting last week.  We had talked about how to furnish the new apartment, and decided we were going to get a couch.  Well, loveseat, actually, on account of space restrictions, but the shopping destinations were the same:  no thrift stores (sadly) on account of the worsening bedbug problem in Chicago.  We were stuck getting a new couch, in spite of our green sensibilities begging us not to.  And, as we have both noticed and many of our friends have agreed in recent conversations, Ikea just isn’t the bargain it used to be, given the shoddy and uncomfortable nature of their products.

Anyway, shopping day arrived, and I was busy with frantically packing boxes at the time (hadn’t completed my move yet…still haven’t, in fact), so Katie went out for the initial round of shopping solo.  She came back with a few couches in mind, but they were all from the sort of discount warehouse store that I’ve always assumed were for the direly impoverished (of course, I guess I’m not much better than direly impoverished myself at the moment)…better than buying furniture from Wal-Mart, but only by a little.

A friend, hearing where we had found our couch, suggested that we check out some of the nicer furniture stores in Chicago to see if they had any floor models for sale.  It was, after all, just days after the New Year…furniture-discount-shopping season.  (Apparently this is when new models have just shipped and old ones are being heavily discounted.)  Taking her advice, we checked out a couple of nicer stores, and got a lesson in…well, several things.

The first place we went, neither of us had ever heard of.  Pretty much the moment we walked in, we knew it was out of our price range, but we looked around for a few minutes anyway, and eventually one of the saleswomen (who I’d been trying to avoid) approached us.

“Hello, how can we help you?,” she asked in a thick Eastern European accent.

I’d practiced:  ”Hi.  We’re in the market for a new couch, and we were sort of doing some budget shopping, wondering if you had any floor model discounts or anything.”

She looked mildly disappointed.  ”Great,” she probably thought, “I got stuck with cheapskates.”  She showed us to her most steeply discounted floor model available, a gorgeous sofa (read:  future cat scratching post) marked down from $1600 to $1200.

“Okay,” I said, uncertain of how to phrase it, “Twelve hundred is a bit out of our price range.  We have another couch in mind, and we were just looking to see if we could find something better for the same price.”

“And how much is the other couch?”

I paused, took a quick look around at the quality of furniture around me, and said, probably not without a trace of shame, “A little under five hundred.”

She proceeded to lecture us about the shoddy production methods that go into furniture so cheap and showed us to a $1000 couch that was absolutely beautiful.  We let her give us her spiel about how $1000 doesn’t need to be put down immediately:  ”This is actually the last month that you can enroll in our six-month, no-money-down financing program, because the government is taking it away.”

I thought to myself, “Perhaps that’s because it’s a total rip-off to consumers who don’t know any better and the government is trying to protect them from you,” but I of course said nothing.  Instead, I let her take down some of my information and give us a business card, as though we were actually considering spending twice what we’d budgeted on a couch that would, as mentioned previously, be a glorified cat toy.

Walking into the next furniture store, I promised Katie that it wouldn’t take so long this time.  I told the first saleswoman we saw what we were looking for and she showed me her cheapest floor model.  It was too much; I told her so.

“How much were you looking to spend?” she asked.

“We have a couch in mind for five hundred.  We’d maybe be able to go slightly over that, but not by much.  Just bargain hunting.”

She gave us a similar (if less extensive/scolding) lecture to that of the woman in the previous store, and told us she could show us her custom models starting at $800.  ”But,” she assured us, “our couches come with lifetime warranties, which you probably won’t find on a $500 couch.”

She had us there.  But it was beside the point:  we didn’t have an extra $300 to blow on furniture, and I wasn’t about to put $800 on a credit card that I’d finally gotten down to a zero balance.  So I told her we didn’t want to waste her time, that we couldn’t swing the extra money, and thanked her for her time.  She thanked me, too…I think she appreciated the honesty.  Even though I think we may have been the only customers there, I think she was more excited by the prospect of looking around for another customer who might actually earn her a decent commission.  (Katie thanked me, too, as it was terribly uncomfortable and unnecessarily humbling to repeatedly be shown luxurious items that we couldn’t afford.)

We decided that there seemed to be a gap between the two types of furniture:  there was the nice type that came with lifetime warranties because it was meant to last forever; and there was the cheap kind that fell apart after a few years, the sort you might buy if, say, you were planning on attending vet school out of state, moving repeatedly in the next decade, and not settling down with nice or permanent things until your mid-thirties.  We qualified pretty perfectly for the second sort of furniture, so:

Thor believes we bought the couch for him.

$544, all told:  loveseat, tax, delivery, and stain-resistance treatment.  The last fee seemed like it was both a ripoff and a great idea at the same time…has anyone had any experience with this sort of thing?  Is the treatment worth the $60 (or however much) for a microfiber couch?  Does it really matter if one of my cats is going to tear the arms of the thing to shreds within a short amount of time?  Too late now, I suppose.  But, regardless of how the couch holds up over the course of the next few years (months?  I hope not…), trying to find the best deal was an important lesson in humility, in sacrificing our good taste, and in settling for less when necessary.  And even after visiting the furniture stores for the wealthy and sitting on the spring-cushioned lap of luxury, we’re happy with the fruits of our limited budget.

I recently moved in with my girlfriend.  I’ll set a personal tone here by actually telling you her name, so I don’t have to bother with anonymity:  Katie and I (I’m Justin, by the way…nice to meet you, too) have been dating for about a year now.  She’s a vet assistant, too, but at a private practice animal hospital.  Translation:  she makes an actual vet assistant wage, whereas I earn roughly half as much.  She and I, if I may say so, are a pretty great couple, but the gap between our separate financial situations has always made each of us a bit uneasy, whether openly or not.

The question I privately posed to myself in the month leading up to the move (it was a quick decision…very short notice before we combined residences) was, of course, “How is this going to work out, financially?”  Now, Katie is the chief reason for my financial renaissance, if you could call it that.  She’s very careful (yes, conservative) with her money, and mostly kept her mouth shut about my less restrained financial behavior in the first nine months or so of our relationship.  But when I put my first $25 “investment” into Kiva.org, a charitable microlending site, she finally spoke up.

No, she’s not a heartless bitch (can I say bitch here? Is that acceptable?); she understands the value in giving to charity.  But – she was quick to remind me – didn’t I have a few thousand dollars in credit card debt?  I insisted that it was important for me to stay in touch with my caring, charitable side, and not to be bogged down by the stress of my near-poverty status.  Money, I told myself, is only the concern of the cold and joyless.

In my last serious relationship, I dated a girl who also works for my non-profit employer (that is a very long and complicated story that will not be explored at this time), so I had had my financial outlook somewhat shaped by her combination of low income and carefree attitude.  One particularly appealing idea she had turned me onto was a tradition in her family:  “Sometimes you’ve got to celebrate being poor.”  This is what she would say when she put her credit card on the table to pay for a $20 meal at a restaurant when she knew there was no money left from her paycheck to pay for it.  This became a regular occurrence.  And I thought:  “Yes.  This is the right attitude to have.  Happiness is more important than money.”

But the two are anything but mutually exclusive, which is something Katie has taught me, whether intentionally or not.  She and I have practically founded our relationship on a mutual love of “old people pastimes”–cribbage on her back porch, watching The Golden Girls and drinking tea in her living room, game nights with friends, houseplant care and gardening.  (Man, that’s a lame list.  We may as well just live in a retirement home.)  I’ve had more free fun with her than I’ve ever had expensive fun with anyone I’ve ever dated.

So when she called me out for essentially giving money I didn’t have to a total stranger in Kenya, I was forced to admit that she had a point.  That compelled me to listen to a podcast or two (I’m a podcast junky) that dealt with the lack of financial literacy in America, and ever since then, improving my own financial literacy has become one of my top priorities.  But, even as I’m entering the third month of my – what did I call it before?  ah, yes – “financial renaissance,” the idea of financial accountability to a live-in girlfriend intimidates me.

Now, let me clarify that in spite of my low income, I’ve never failed to pay a single rent check, utility bill, or credit payment on time.  This is not the accountability I’m referring to.  I’m referring to the fact that, if I feel lazy and buy a frozen dinner instead of cooking for myself, I have to either smuggle it into the apartment and eat it still-frozen in some corner where she can’t see me, or I have to confess to her that I’m wasting money out of shear laziness.

I should clarify that I know that THIS IS A GOOD THING.  That’s the value of accountability, to keep me from behaving poorly.  But I can’t buy into the idea that never getting to indulge the hedonist in me is a good thing.  Every man, responsible or not, healthy or not, sensible or not, should be allowed at least one item of gross, overpriced, artificial, processed food per month.

But, with my new accountability partner, even if we reached such an arrangement (yes, what relationship could ever make it without the “Occasional Hot Pocket Allowance Clause”?), I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my indulgence without feeling dumb about it.  Food wouldn’t be the only thing:  what about CDs?  Books?  Video games?  Any impulse buy I could imagine making would be essentially ruined by my own sense of guilt.

…and every time I end a paragraph with a sentence like that, I come closer to realizing that no, there’s really no down side to this situation.  Accountability is a good thing.  It’s just a good thing that deprives me of being an irresponsible ass (not to mention, one with poor taste…I really do love Hot Pockets).  And that intimidates me, because I have a rich history of irresponsible, assy behavior.  But this whole thing, this whole renaissance, is all about leaving that behind.  So I guess I’ll just squeeze my eyes shut and brace myself for the arrival of a new, responsible me, no relapses allowed, lest I be judged – or, God forbid, maybe even made fun of – by the lovely girl who jump-started my transformation to begin with.