My senior year of college I took a one-month intensive personal finance course. Historically I would count it as one of the most useful classes I have ever taken, and would say that it taught me some of the most useful life skills out of any of my college courses.
Two and a half years later, I am learning some really practical and true lessons about personal finance, now less theoretical and more on-the-ground. It's like in our first week of college, when the upper class academic peer advisors performed skits for us to warn us that we would learn time management skills and self-discipline, and maybe we took notes or maybe we rolled our eyes... I know what I really needed to learn was how I handle things, and what kinds of expectations are realistic and what kinds are unrealistic, and when it comes down to it what my priorities are.
To be fair, these are things I'm still learning about myself, and they will probably continue to change many, many times throughout my life.
Money
So, back to Personal Finance 101. I still have not bought any stocks or started putting money into a retirement fund; so much for long-term financial planning! But I do have a growing savings account, and I try (more or less successfully) to keep my home expenses under 30% of my monthly budget. I am learning that 30% still makes things tight. Because then there is gas, groceries, student loans, my cell phone bill, insurance.
This is all very basic. How many of these things can I live without? How happy am I at this bare bones level?
That's an uncomfortable question for me to ask, because I don't like to admit my consumerist tendencies. I don't often go shopping for fun, so that's good. I am pretty much a pro at not buying things I don't need, and I'm getting a lot better at eating my produce before it goes bad. My vice, if you can really call it that, is going out to eat and drink. I also am a sucker for supporting the local arts and culture scene in general; so I give $5 a month to public radio, and I'll hit up museums and small-time concerts and festivals from time to time.
And that stuff adds up.
Then there are the infrequent expenses, like car repairs and oil changes, medical expenses, personal hygiene. And the more frivolous ones like trips and birthday presents. Frivolous. What does that even mean? How can I classify that?
Because these are things that are important to me. They make up who I am and to a certain extent these are the financial costs of maintaining healthy, positive, important relationships. How can I sacrifice that in good faith?
Time
And yes, I've been writing a lot lately about how full my schedule is and how it exhausts me. I don't have enough time to do all the things I'm doing, and that doesn't even include things I really want to do but absolutely must say "no" to. There is no class for this in college, and although time management is supposedly what they told us we would have to learn in those four years I found that unrealistic. It turns out to be a lot more complicated than just making a priority list and figuring out where you can cut corners to make things faster; because here it's our sanity that's on the line.
And when your list includes a 40-hour work week, sleep, food, showers and travel time, there's not a lot of room left to be human. I'm not really OK with that. But what's my alternative?
Space
I'm really not good at this one. When we moved into our house in Little Italy last September, I volunteered to draw the short straw and take the small room because I loved the house and the 'hood so much.
For most of this year I have had about 3 square feet of space to stand in my room, around the bed and the closet and the trunk I keep my clothes in; and my bookshelves and files and laundry hamper. And since I have so little time left to do laundry and stay up to date with my filing and personal business, I also have stacks of half-clean clothes and paper items and unsent packages shoved under the bed and perched precariously on top of each other in Babel towers crammed between the walls and the bare necessities.
And now it's hot as balls outside and stuffy inside, and I have one little window with a window fan in it and I am getting frustrated at the Cirque du Soleil routines I have to perform to move stuff in and out of the room and to get from the door to the closet. I thought it would be fine, but the cushions I budgeted in other realms to make up for my lack of space have now burned up, and they don't pick up the slack anymore.
Energy
Maybe this is what it all comes down to. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but energy is recycled. I have always been fascinated by energy -- how it turns from potential to kinetic energy and somehow continually shape-shifts into something else.
This is my biggest cushion: a positive attitude, which may not seem so positive to you, dear readers, but is really what keeps me going throughout the long, dark Januaries and Februaries and the super-stressful weeks that turn into working weekends. That's what keeps me going through the endless flow of sad and scary headlines and the money troubles and the time crunch: I have hope, and I believe that I am always coming up with a better solution. Also, I have an unbelievably supportive community of family, friends, coworkers, and random other people that pop in and out of my life like rainbows.
But there is the constant danger of getting burned out. Sometimes I start to feel dangerously tired, or irritable, or fuzzy in the head. I'm getting a lot better at recognizing these symptoms and taking an out if I need it; but when that means disappointing someone I love or asking for an unpaid day off it gets pretty hard. Next in line is pinning down how to budget my energy ahead of time so I can see it coming and avoid burnout before it happens.
I've got to figure out how to stop before I get to the $2-in-my-bank-account-and-three-days-'til-payday level. And by "$2," I mean whatever the exchange rate is for money, time, space, AND energy. I'm looking for balance. Culturally we are not very good at this, but I am determined to rise above and build some kind of a system that works. Before my life changes drastically again and I have to start all over.
Welcome to adulthood?
Two and a half years later, I am learning some really practical and true lessons about personal finance, now less theoretical and more on-the-ground. It's like in our first week of college, when the upper class academic peer advisors performed skits for us to warn us that we would learn time management skills and self-discipline, and maybe we took notes or maybe we rolled our eyes... I know what I really needed to learn was how I handle things, and what kinds of expectations are realistic and what kinds are unrealistic, and when it comes down to it what my priorities are.
To be fair, these are things I'm still learning about myself, and they will probably continue to change many, many times throughout my life.
Money
So, back to Personal Finance 101. I still have not bought any stocks or started putting money into a retirement fund; so much for long-term financial planning! But I do have a growing savings account, and I try (more or less successfully) to keep my home expenses under 30% of my monthly budget. I am learning that 30% still makes things tight. Because then there is gas, groceries, student loans, my cell phone bill, insurance.
This is all very basic. How many of these things can I live without? How happy am I at this bare bones level?
That's an uncomfortable question for me to ask, because I don't like to admit my consumerist tendencies. I don't often go shopping for fun, so that's good. I am pretty much a pro at not buying things I don't need, and I'm getting a lot better at eating my produce before it goes bad. My vice, if you can really call it that, is going out to eat and drink. I also am a sucker for supporting the local arts and culture scene in general; so I give $5 a month to public radio, and I'll hit up museums and small-time concerts and festivals from time to time.
And that stuff adds up.
Then there are the infrequent expenses, like car repairs and oil changes, medical expenses, personal hygiene. And the more frivolous ones like trips and birthday presents. Frivolous. What does that even mean? How can I classify that?
Because these are things that are important to me. They make up who I am and to a certain extent these are the financial costs of maintaining healthy, positive, important relationships. How can I sacrifice that in good faith?
Time
And yes, I've been writing a lot lately about how full my schedule is and how it exhausts me. I don't have enough time to do all the things I'm doing, and that doesn't even include things I really want to do but absolutely must say "no" to. There is no class for this in college, and although time management is supposedly what they told us we would have to learn in those four years I found that unrealistic. It turns out to be a lot more complicated than just making a priority list and figuring out where you can cut corners to make things faster; because here it's our sanity that's on the line.
And when your list includes a 40-hour work week, sleep, food, showers and travel time, there's not a lot of room left to be human. I'm not really OK with that. But what's my alternative?
Space
I'm really not good at this one. When we moved into our house in Little Italy last September, I volunteered to draw the short straw and take the small room because I loved the house and the 'hood so much.
For most of this year I have had about 3 square feet of space to stand in my room, around the bed and the closet and the trunk I keep my clothes in; and my bookshelves and files and laundry hamper. And since I have so little time left to do laundry and stay up to date with my filing and personal business, I also have stacks of half-clean clothes and paper items and unsent packages shoved under the bed and perched precariously on top of each other in Babel towers crammed between the walls and the bare necessities.
And now it's hot as balls outside and stuffy inside, and I have one little window with a window fan in it and I am getting frustrated at the Cirque du Soleil routines I have to perform to move stuff in and out of the room and to get from the door to the closet. I thought it would be fine, but the cushions I budgeted in other realms to make up for my lack of space have now burned up, and they don't pick up the slack anymore.
Energy
Maybe this is what it all comes down to. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but energy is recycled. I have always been fascinated by energy -- how it turns from potential to kinetic energy and somehow continually shape-shifts into something else.
This is my biggest cushion: a positive attitude, which may not seem so positive to you, dear readers, but is really what keeps me going throughout the long, dark Januaries and Februaries and the super-stressful weeks that turn into working weekends. That's what keeps me going through the endless flow of sad and scary headlines and the money troubles and the time crunch: I have hope, and I believe that I am always coming up with a better solution. Also, I have an unbelievably supportive community of family, friends, coworkers, and random other people that pop in and out of my life like rainbows.
But there is the constant danger of getting burned out. Sometimes I start to feel dangerously tired, or irritable, or fuzzy in the head. I'm getting a lot better at recognizing these symptoms and taking an out if I need it; but when that means disappointing someone I love or asking for an unpaid day off it gets pretty hard. Next in line is pinning down how to budget my energy ahead of time so I can see it coming and avoid burnout before it happens.
I've got to figure out how to stop before I get to the $2-in-my-bank-account-and-three-days-'til-payday level. And by "$2," I mean whatever the exchange rate is for money, time, space, AND energy. I'm looking for balance. Culturally we are not very good at this, but I am determined to rise above and build some kind of a system that works. Before my life changes drastically again and I have to start all over.
Welcome to adulthood?
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