We are wrapping up our two-month shopping hiatus.
Unlike the first one or the second one, this time not shopping hasn’t been painful at all. Off hand, I can only think of two purchases that could be considered cheating: a new purse ($28 canvas to replace the H&M manbag I stole from Mr. A back in Aug 2004 which was holey, and the third Twilight book because it was my birthday and I wanted to read it, dammit. I did not not want to wait until the library reached my request 465 people from now). I think we did go out to one sushi dinner which was a bit over our $50 weekly restaurant budget too.
I have totally gotten out of the groove of shopping. When I read this article in the NY times, I started to worry that my thriftyness was singlehandedly going to lead the US down the road to economic misery. I have to wonder though, if more people had only bought what they could afford, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Thoughts of money are never really far away for me. Last week, ThatPatti and I were talking about our finances. Without sharing too much of her personal information, we live in the same neighborhood, stay home with our kids, are in similar financial circumstances and share a lot of the same financial goals. We spent an entire playdate talking about Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman.
Patti and I talked about trying to live within our means. While we both like where we live, we don’t have big fancy houses. We don’t have lots of new furniture, new cars or closets full of designer clothes. We don’t have that stuff and for the most part, I am happy with the things I do have. I will be just has happy driving a used minivan that will cost $8,500 as I would be driving a new one that cost $30,ooo. (If we ever manage to buy a minivan that is. Still no progress on that front.)
It just becomes frustrating when I compare our stuff to stuff other people seem to have. I am working on learning to ignore other people’s stuff, but it isn’t easy. Maybe they have tons of credit card debt and car loans. Maybe they don’t have $78,000 of student loans (only 1/2 of what we originally owed!) and a stupid HELOC (from the dumb, dumb, dumb 80/10/10 mortgage) like we do. Maybe it is none of my business and I should just keep my eyes on my own plate.
Right now, I need to put my eyes on keeping our own financial house in order.
Our short term goal is to pay off the HELOC in one year. We are designating all our tax return* and all the money we save by sticking to our monthly budget to it. When we pay it off, we are going to reward ourselves by taking the next two month’s payments and visiting our friends in San Francisco. Then we will roll all that monthly payment money over and start doubling down on the school loans. I am hopeful we can be debt-free (except for a mortgage) in 5 years**.
I know I keep coming back to the topic of money, but writing it down is like a meditation on staying the course. I am shouting my goals to the universe:
- We will be debt free.
- We will live within our means.
- We will have financial security.
- We do not need more stuff.
- We have what we need.
- What we have is enough.***
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*Except for $500 for an overnight weekend away from the kids because we haven’t been anywhere alone in over 2 years. While I hate to spend the money, it is an investment in our relationship.
**Please don’t send me email about not paying off our school loans early. I know the interest rates are low, but living with debt makes me crazy. It isn’t worth a couple thousand dollars in accrued interest to live like that for the next 20 years. Mr. A and I have studied it and agree on getting rid of the debt asap.
***And while we are at it, let’s all humor me the next time I start fantasizing about a new house for the 10,000th time. A girl is allowed to have a fantasy, right? Yeah, I know. I still have work to do to really live those goals.
