Author Archives: Denise

Rainy day accounting

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Rain. Slow, steady, glorious rain. Florida desperately needs it. I didn’t realize how much I needed it. The sound helps focus and calm me. The pervading damp gives me permission to postpone my many outdoor tasks. Rain removes the excuses that keep me from planting my rear in the chair and writing about budgeting. I’m not resistant to writing itself, just to the hard work of examining our expenditures that I must do first.

Number crunching is not my strong point. So why am I taking on the 30 Large Project? Because I want to continue to grow and learn, because what one focuses on becomes stronger, because of the platitude “ignore it and it will go away” also applies to money.

My DH may, or may not, agree, but it seems to me we spend on whatever we want, whenever we want it. Denial is not in our vocabulary.  Although our income is fairly secure, it is certainly not exorbitant. Hence, I am in the early chapters of All Your Worth, preparing for the worst.

Step One of the budgeting process in Warren’s book is to figure out how much we are spending on needs, wants and savings. I have decided to focus on the needs category first, and the rest should follow from there. To do this I first had to get a handle on where all the money is going, which for us, was difficult.

After a teeth-gritting, round-one look at the household income and expenses, with a look to how much we spend on needs (shouldn’t be over 50 percent of after tax income), I have been forced to realize there is no gain (in the form of a “lifetime money plan”) without a whole bunch of pain.

“Needs” includes certain types of expenditures that I decided to group two ways. First, I listed things we have a legal obligation to pay: student loans, mortgages, basic utilities, auto and home insurance, gym membership, cell phone contract, and preschool.

And, second, I included things we need to survive: medical prescriptions, health insurance, food, transportation, life insurance and retirement plan.

Even as I type this list of what I included, I see some things shouldn’t be in there – obviously the retirement plan should be in “savings”. Clara’s school should be in “wants,” since I am not working and we could remove her if we had to for a small fee. I need to refer to the book to see where life insurance should go. Also, I have found that our gym membership contract is up and we now pay monthly — so we can move that to wants. See — I was not expressing false modesty when I wrote I wasn’t good a number crunching. I found errors before hard math was required.

After shifting these items, I totaled the cost of our needs and divided it by our after-tax income multiplied by 100. I found we spend about 63 percent of our after-tax income in the needs category. Ugh.

A quick glance at what is left over and my worst fears are realized – it seems that the remainder goes primarily toward wants. Cable television is a want, after all.

So, what to do to bring our “needs” number down? Warren is no nonsense in her advice: basically, she says, get real.  She directs readers to assess the big-ticket items first, since those have the greatest impact on the bottom line. Leading me to my next assignment – slash, slash, slash. I’ll report back soon.

Clean sweep

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The 12 days of Christmas ended a week ago today. I figure that means it is certainly time to pack ornaments and decorations and get the tree out of the living room. Holiday cheer was beginning to feel like a house guest who had overstayed his welcome.

While my daughter was at my parents’ house, I filled six bins with stockings, table runners, lights and much more. Packing, cleaning and rearranging furniture took most of the day.

I thought I would be sad to see Christmas and its tree go. Nothing like that cozy glow of holiday lights to warm both room and heart. Yet I was reminded of all the space I would gain when I put the tree out.

So I sent it packing. Goodbye, visiting tree, until next year when I will welcome your return.

Road trip: Smart option or crazy undertaking?

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I am a traveler. I’ve even dabbled in travel writing. I’ve backpacked, couch-surfed, lived overseas (on two different continents), stayed in some rather expensive accommodations and slept on the dirt at the edge of a fading fire. Without question, my most meaningful travel experiences have happened when I’ve travelled as many locals do – cheaply.

I think when I’m traveling with limited resources I’m freed to be open to all experiences. Whether that experience is of stormy seas on a four-hour ferry ride or a simple plate of food straight from a market stall. Money can provide better bathrooms, but it can also homogenize a place to the point where relying on it can get in the way of an authentic travel experience.

So given this history, imagine my shock when my DH (Dear Husband) made a proposal that made me challenge my self-image . . .

DH and I had planned on visiting family in South Texas for New Year’s Eve. When we went to book airline tickets, we discovered prices were more than double what they had been a few years ago when we last made the same trip. This time around we also had to book three tickets rather than two, since Clara no longer flies for free.

We used all our online booking tricks and sites. Nothing. We waited. Prices didn’t budge. We could find nothing in the reasonable range. And that is when it happened. DH suggested we drive to Texas. Trade wings for wheels. See more. Pay less. Take a three-year-old girl more than 1,000 miles within 16 hours to reach Austin, and another four or so to a South Texas ranch?

Now, I hate to admit this, that I, the great adventurer, balked at the idea. My first thoughts focused on the possible negatives: three-year-old, more time to be spent in car then on the ground. Three-year-old. We could be saddle sore before we even reached our destination. It seemed motherhood had nearly knocked the spirit of exploration out of me.

To complete such a Gainesville – South Texas round trip in eight days sounded like madness to me. But to pay all that money for airfare and a short three days at our final destination didn’t seem so wise either.

Road trip: Smart option or crazy undertaking?

Turns out – smart. The price of our eight days on the road was cheaper than the cost of three days, three plane tickets and a rental car would have been. And, as I realized while the miles rolled away beneath me, more days of traveling fun were actually priceless. We really experienced the trip. Okay, not at the wagon train level, but still we were in contact with the ground we were passing through. Clara learned about geography, at least the existence of a few states. She had a blast, and the family had uninterrupted bonding time with no fights or tantrums.

But what really sold me, reignited my zest for the open road, and sideswiped my fears was New Orleans. The Big Easy is right smack in the middle of the 16-hour stretch to Austin, making it a perfect spot for the first day’s layover.

Beignets!!

Okay, so as it turned out, no beignets. The line was too long for Café du Monde’s famous fried dough. Instead, we indulged in both raw and fried oysters, fried shrimp and some good beer at the Bourbon House; and late breakfast massive omelets at Camellia Grill’s bar counter in the French Quarter the next morning. All the while we were actually saving money verses flying.

When not eating we spent our time wandering the streets around Jackson Square. Always festive, the French Quarter’s residents had draped over-the-top Christmas decorations from their balconies and dangled them under eves.

The rest of the trip, our day and night in Austin, and even the time spent playing games and singing in the car, all affirmed we’d made the right call. Did I mention that packing a car (station wagon in this case) is a lot easier than packing for air travel? When in doubt, throw it in!

As with any successful road trip, ours was fun because we enjoyed the travel. Being at the ranch for our New Year’s celebration was the exclamation point to a special journey, rather than our only experience. Most travel these days is focused on getting there. Being there. On this 2,400-mile drive, we were there from the minute we left our driveway. 

 

Power to the People

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As we begin 2012, the Occupy Wall Street protests continue across the country, Greece and the rest of the EU teeter on the brink of something precipitous, and news outlets broadcast every sigh and gasp of various global stock exchanges, I, Denise, will attempt do something nearly as life changing for our family – begin to tame the household finances. Because, while the world around me seems to be, well, (depending on whether I’m in a half-full or half-empty mood), reforming or collapsing, our household budget is one bucking bronco I can control. With will, focus, a firm grip on the rope and, above all, balance, I can and will direct this family toward debt-free prosperity.

I should say that I have not always been in this relatively privileged position. In my previous life as a single person and owner of a small business start-up, I was once so broke that I was moonlighting as a waitress and even had to borrow money from my sister to cover my mortgage one dire month. Credit card debt piled up faster than discarded wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

As a single person I could scrimp and cut costs to nothing. Eat air and water. Now, married with a family the responsibilities are different. My husband and I agree we need to plan ahead. We have the power to do this. With the Warren book, we have a sensible guide that is designed to help “the little guy” like us make our way through a frenzied financial field that is not necessarily level.

We at NerdHaven Farms South have a few positives on our side: My husband, the breadwinner, is a tenured professor. Until the government does away with the tenure system (which could be soon), he has job security. (Buddha knows security is an illusion, but I want to help bolster any here-and-now “security” we appear to have with the application of moderation.)

Also in our favor is our location. North Florida has a relatively low cost of living as compared to say, Los Angeles. Our farmer’s market veggies are cheaper, our restaurants much less expensive (if also less varied and less bleeping* amazing). Entertainment costs are pennies on the dollar to LA’s.

Working against us is our age at the onset of this true experiment. My husband and I are in our 40s, leaving us precious little time to save for retirement, pay off mortgages and student loans, let alone save for our daughter’s education. Late bloomers are we, which is one reason why we have a (fabulous) three-year-old daughter, Clara, otherwise known as She-Who-Will-Have-Increasingly More-Expensive-Needs. I thought the cost of those biodegradable diapers was high – bring on the swim, ballet and gymnastic classes, etc. Phew. I can feel college looming on the horizon.

To survive it, my husband and I agree we must get our house in order now. I’m nearly finished reading All Your Worth. From it I have gleaned Warren’s plan to balance our budget. While I can’t go into specifics yet, from the book I have learned creating a budget is, contrary to what many of us have heard our entire lives, not about penny-pinching, rather it is about balance. Innocuous, powerful, central — balance. So for the next few days I’m going to crunch numbers until I can uncover how much we spend on each of Warren’s three categories: needs, wants and savings. Then I’m going to make a plan to make sure we spend no more than 50 percent of our after tax income on needs, 30 percent or less on wants, and 20 percent (which includes paying down debt) on savings. Wish me luck analyzing our budget. I will report back soon.

True Life Experiment

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Welcome to our blog!

Two sisters, both stay-at home moms on opposite sides of the country, try to do the (seemingly) impossible: maintain a blog – one with good writing, quality photos, yummy recipes and stories about the little things that loom large in our lives. When we both became stay-at-home moms (dare we say housewives?), we started out trying to write a blog about saving money (if you look at the first several posts you’ll see), but it turns out we just want to write about things that make us happy, and especially happy to be home. And while we find saving money to be something necessary, it just doesn’t always tickle our writing fancies. And we have some fancies that demand tickling.

Diane (Nerdhaven West): I am married and have two children, a daughter in college (already?) and a son in middle school. I live in Los Angeles, California. I am an attorney, but I left my legal-aid job to spend more time at home, while my husband, a filmmaker, is away working. After spending too much time over the years at jobs I mostly loved, I wanted to spend more time attending to the quality of my family’s domestic life. I also teach yoga. I like funky music, gardening with natives and edibles, cooking and eating and other creative pursuits. I raise chickens. I have a whole shelf in my bedroom closet devoted to storing homemade preserved foods such as pickled carrots, mandarin mostarda, grapefruit jam and two kinds of booze (when the zombie apocalypse comes, the party will be at my house). I like to save money and be responsible – but I also like to spend money and do kooky things sometimes, too. I hope that writing this blog makes me more responsible in my writing practice. Do you think blogging could also help me lose an inch or two of belly fat? That would be sweet.

Denise (Nerdhaven South): My husband, a professor, and I married in our forties in Gainesville, Florida. Work didn’t hold the same allure for me after I gave birth to our daughter a year later. So I left my full-time public relations job, and a second full-time pursuit of magazine publishing, for a life of free-lance writing and child wrangling. Among other activities, I love reading, travel, history, music, building local community, and plotting to turn my lot-and-a-half into an edible landscape one plant at a time. I love writing about the little things that combine to create a magical life. Those things surround me, and I recognize them when I remember to keep open a traveler’s eye — maintain a fresh perspective on the everyday. I travel as much as possible, often with my daughter or the whole family, to remind myself of what I have at home and of the miracles that exist in the world.