Living Broke – Prioritizing

What is a luxury?  That guy who rants on the radio and TV – Dave Ramsey – gets all worked up about cutting expenses and living within your means.  I don’t feel the need to call in and confess anything to him, I have lived below my means for many years now.  But I will admit that the expense cutting he likes to yell about is practical advice when one is trying to go from being comfortably employed to Living Broke.

My husband I have made our weekly budget and in that budget, there is no room for  luxuries we have enjoyed over the years.  There are many things we must cut out.  Let’s get started.

100% Pure Kona Coffee.  Oh, have you tried this?  Heaven in small brown, perfectly roasted coffee beans!  I didn’t know about Kona Coffee until we went to Hawaii 3 years ago and had Kona coffee in Kona.  It was like no coffee I’ve ever tasted, and I fell in love right away. 

I found this coffee at my most favorite place to buy yummy foods – Fresh Market (which has also been cut from the budget).  I order our delicious Kona Coffee on line most of the time.  It runs about $26 for a slighty-less-than-one-pound bag.  Even being comfortably employed this was a bit much for coffee.  We only drank Kona coffee on Satudays, Sundays and Christmas.  If you don’t know about Kona Coffee, read about it here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kona_coffee.   Kona coffee was cut.

Eating Out.  I am uncertain about completely cutting this out right now.  One of the differences I have at home is eating out.  Because I travel most weeks on business, I eat out more than I eat in.  While I’m  galavanting around exotic locales such as Sioux Falls, Topeka and Sandusky, my husband is home scrounging for food he doesn’t have to cook.  It is pitiful to call home while I’m on the road and tell him about the fabulous restaurant I enjoyed with a client only to hear him talk about the potted meat sandwich he just ate. When I get home and we have a weekend – he is ready to go out!  I am ready to eat in. 

Eating out is something he enjoys more than I do.  Is it really fair to cut it out for him when I’m still doing it?  This one may have to be compromised, espeically when I am out of town.

Nice Wine.  Up until I met my husband in 2000, I did not drink.  I couldn’t, I was Baptist and it was just not allowed.  I didn’t know what wine tasted like.  During my wild and rebellious teen years, we were all about the contraband Coors sold only in a few states.  I understood the deep motivation of Smokey and the Bandit. 

My first taste of wine was the incredibly sweet pink stuff.  From there I refined my taste in wine and graduated to less sweet reisling, then on to the light reds.  I am now a cabernet lover, I have gone deep into the wine cellars over the past few years.  My most favorite wine of all time is Cambria Pinot Grigio.  It is a mere $25 per bottle.  We’ve had more expensive wine than $25, however that happens to be my favorite. My husband refuses to drink it, stating it should be against the law to charge that much for a bottle of wine.  Especially when Berringer is just a few dollars a jug. 

Like the expensive Kona coffee, my favorite wine is reserved only for the most special occassions.  Births, graduations, signing big deals at work and acquittalsw.  But no more.  Cambria was cut.

 

Frivolities: 

The cleaning ladies that come every other Thursday.  They’ve been coming for 7 years.  I can easily justify the meager $50 per cleaning when I’m busy jetting about the fly over states, but if I am at home with no job, I can get off my ass and mop my own kitchen. 

The yard mowing kid.  He was a tiny little 11 year old nerd when he and his daddy knocked on our door 7 years ago. He stuttered and asked if he could please mow our yard.  His daddy would help him, and he promised to always do a good job.  We watched him grow from the scrawny little kid to a fine young athelete than is now in his second year of college.  He not only mows for us in the summers, but he mows up the leaves in the fall and helps my husband with larger, more manly yard chores.  If I am not working, I can get off my ass an mow my own grass.  I think it will take 4 hours.  We’ve only mowed it ourselves once and it seems it took that long.

Newspapers.  I had 2 subscriptions.  One to the Wall Street Journal and one for the big city daily.  Gone.  both of them.  I can read the city daily on line and even print the coupons on Sundays.  WSJ?  Ha!  Too darned expensive for those Living Broke.

Phone lines.  We have 3 out of necessity.  Home phone, office phone, office fax.  I must have the office lines, but the day I get the call, I am cancelling them. 

Cell phone extras.  We will keep our cell phones, they have become a necessity in today’s world.  The data package will have to go and so will the broadband card.  The minutes will also be cut.  If someone needs to talk to me so long that I’ll run over my minutes, they probably need to be telling me stuff to my face.

Tupperware, Premier Jewelry, Pampered Chef and other stuff I buy to be nice  and don’t need. 

Our satellite TV is not on the cut list just yet.  We don’t live close enough to a major city to pick up channels without cable or satellite.  We have only the basic channels as neither of us are avid TV watchers/couch potatoes.  I enjoy the news every morning and an occassional episode of Green Acres. We watch a pay per view movie for date night about once a month.  So for now, the satellite hook up stays.

I have given up manicures, pedicures, massages, buying stuff for my grandkids, Starbucks, mindless shopping,  name brand cosmetics, and I  stopped our recent home improvement project before it was finished.  But I am not giving up the aloe vera toilet paper.  Nope.  No way.  Forget it.  That will be the last thing to go, just before we are moving our few possessions under the bridge. 

When you are Living Broke, you have to have your priorities in order.

Living Broke

With the cold hard news of my impending  job loss, my husband and I had the money talk. We agreed to begin that day living as if we were broke.  We decided to put half my paycheck into the Oh Shit Fund down at the bank and that our tax refund would not go to pay for the trip we’ve planned for almost 2 years: A week long adventure hiking the Grand Canyon.

Living Broke to us means a strict budget and absolutely no unnecessary purchases, trips or other expenses.  We both get allowances each week.  If we don’t spend our food budget at the grocery store, we might have enough left for a bottle of wine.

Living Broke is not a new concept to me.  Years ago, I was the 24 year old single mom with little kids and not enough money to buy groceries on Friday.  There are memories that stick with me of that time.  When I start feeling sorry for myself or thinking about how “bad” I have it, I can recall having a package of 6 chicken legs and a can of peas.  Period.  That had to be supper for me and two kids.  And it was. There are calculators somewhere out there on the internet that will tell you how much $30 from 1985 is worth in today’s dollars.  I don’t know where those calculators are, but if you find one and figure out how much that 1985 $30 is worth today, the next thing is to consider how you can take that $30 in 1985 and put gas in your piece of shit car to get you back and forth to your factory job for a week AND buy enough food for yourself and your two kids to last for that same week.  I know how to be poor.  I’ve been there and I’m not afraid.

My financial situation improved just a bit each year.  I only had my power cut off a few times and no one ever went hungry thanks to my mom who came through with a few dollars to help at the grocery store when things were really bad.

The scariest part for me was having no medical insurance on myself and my kids.  That was for a brief period of time, when I worked for a non profit and there were no benefits.  I lived in fear that something would happen and I would not be able to get medical care for my kids.  And what about me?  I had to work to get paid.  What if I got sick?  I had the fear of God put in me just a few years before I had no health insurance.  My baby was just 2 and he was very sick.  High fever, a coughing that came from deep in his chest.  I took him to the doctor, signed in and had a seat cradling him in my lap, scared to death.  The clerk called me to the front and said that unless I paid my unpaid balance, the doctor would not see my baby.  WHAT?  What balance?

The issue was that in the divorce, the babydaddy was responsible for the medical expenses not covered by insurance.  The doctor’s office sent the co pay bills to him and he was not paying them.  There was a balance of around $100.  I wasn’t sure if I had enough gas money to drive home, much less $100 to fork over for an unpaid bill that legally wasn’t mine.  I made a call to my mother, who took off work, came to the office, paid the bill and stayed with me until the baby was seen.  Because mommas do that.

Those were hard HARD times, but guess what?  I  survived.  I learned hard life lessons and I understood just how strong I am.

As my kids turned into teens, the money was tight, but I was doing well enough to afford things like gas in the car, a weekend trip to a baseball game and other niceties.  I still kept a tight reign on my income, as I did not want any emergencies to wipe me out.

When I bought groceries on Friday, I bought very little junk food.  I bought one bag of chips for each kid and one box of snack cakes/cookies, whichever they chose.  Those luxuries were only bought on Friday and when they were all consumed, they were not restocked.  I made sure to buy enough food to last a week, but if we ran out of something, we were out until Friday.

Eating out to us was fast food and it was not often.  My kids were both teenagers before we went to a restaurant that required forks to eat the meal.  They were quite impressed.

As I moved up in my career and my income increased beyond what I ever imagined, I remained a tight wad.  I had 2 kids to get through college and I had no savings to do it with.  I lived frugally on my income and paid as I went to put one child through a 4-year university and the other through a very expensive 13 month technical college.  My greatest accomplishment in life is getting both of them through college with NO DEBT for anyone.

Once those days were behind me, I began to relax and realize that I could enjoy life a little.  I made certain to live below my means, but I made certain to do things I enjoyed.  I felt I earned it.

I bought a nicer house.  My former house was old, outdated, needed work and once my kids were gone, so were my ties to that town.   My new house has amenities like closets.  I earned it.

I let a professional color my hair, I purchased underwear from Victoria’s Secret and I discovered manicures.

I got married.  We had a nice private ceremony in the mountains, a honeymoon and a great reception once we returned.  I took my kids on a cruise, I paid for my kids’ weddings and receptions.  I have spent more money that I want to admit on my grandchildren.  I am still careful about what I spend, but if want something big, like new furniture, I can buy it.

I don’t think I’ve been extravagant.  I save a chunk of my income, I give the proper amount to church, I support my best friend from high school who is living in the jungle in Ecuador as a non paid medical missionary. And if I want a cup of coffee at Starbucks, I get it.

So now we are Living Broke.

In the past week, I have had to think about Living Broke to actually do it.  I got my $20 allowance on Friday.   I came in well below our weekly food budget by making a detailed menu for the week and a list of what I needed.  Our Friday night date was a $4.99 pay per view movie that my husband paid for out of his allowance.  On Saturday we went for a sunset ride with our best friends and when it was time to choose a restaurant, I choose the cheap mexican place.  I paid the $15 bill and my husband left the tip.

On Sunday I drove to my daughter’s to spend the night.  Monday morning, I had $5.  I stopped at Starbucks and considered using my debit card to get the coffee I wanted to go along with my oatmeal, but decided I would not cheat, this is serious.  I bought my oatmeal and a small cup of regular coffee for $3.85.  Yikes!

I stopped by Walmart today because we needed a loaf of bread.  What I spend during the week on groceries is deducted from the weekly budget.  I knew I was successfully Living Broke when I walked into Walmart for a loaf of bread and walked out with just a loaf of bread.  I am usually one to shop around, there is always something I need at Walmart.

Today I had to drive 40 miles to the big city to take our tax stuff to the accountant and stop by the bank.  It was 5 pm when I left the bank to start home.  I saw it.  Right there.  Starbucks.  I know what is inside Starbucks!  Tall Caffee Mocha for about $5.  I didn’t have $5.  I touched my debit card.  I took a deep breath.  I looked in the bottom of my purse, just to see if any errant money had found its way to the bottom in weeks past that I might discover. Nope.  Nothing.  Just $1.15. I might as well head home.  No treats for me.

Then I saw the sign.  Large fountain drinks for $1 until 7 pm.  I turned into the McDonald’s parking lot.  I was a happy girl!  I was going to get a treat after all!  With tax, my large Diet Dr. Pepper was $1.10.  I don’t remember a Diet Dr. Pepper ever tasting as good as that one did.

If I was not Living Broke, I would have purchased the $5 coffee and I would have enjoyed it without a second thought.  I probably would have stopped in the nail salon and forked over $20 for a manicure. Usually when I have free time and I’m in the city, I take a leisurely stroll through Target looking for home decor items and more stuff my grandkids don’t need.

Living Broke is an adjustment.  I know I can do it and I know it will have its rewards, just like that $1 Diet Dr Pepper today.  I don’t how long we’ll be Living Broke, but I think once we get accustomed to it, we may not go back to the carefree days of spending money just because we can.  It seems foolish now to think about the consumers we have been.

The unpleasant road

I’ve wondered about the passengers on the Titanic.  The boat is sinking.  You know it.  You know you are going down and there is nothing you can do.  Do you pray for a speedy end?  How about someone who knows their spouse is filing for divorce and there is nothing they can do to stop it, all hope is gone?  Do you just wish it would hurry up and be over?

OK, my current situation is not life threatening and I confess the comparison to the Titanic passengers is over the top.

I am on a road in life – my employment road – and I know the end is just up ahead.  I don’t know exactly when I’ll get to the end of the road, but I know it is there.  There is nothing I can do about it and I know that.  My name is on the list and the powers that be are working their way down the list, my name is getting closer to the top. I am on the list to be let go, the LetGo Road.

When I was hit with this information just last week, I had to take a bit of time to reconcile myself to the inevitable.  I went through my own deficiencies and acknowledged what I could have done differently, although most of those improvements would not have been a detour off LetGo Road.  But I need to know where I am lacking.  What skills do I need to improve?  What skills am I missing that I need to learn?

How is my personality working for and against me in my career?  What interpersonal skills do I need to develop?  How could I have been a more effective manager?  I had hurdles with this position, what were other possibilities for getting through those?

And I thought about my accomplishments, all the things I did right.  I listed those.  Those are my strengths.

I wanted to reconcile myself so that I would know I did my best, and if I didn’t, why not?

I made peace with myself and my 6 years with this company.  I believe that being on LetGo Road at this point is not due to me being deadweight or a bad employee.  It is the result of cutbacks and the economy and a corporate take over.  The new management wants to go in a new direction and they want the people they know and love from the past to have the chance to rebuild and change the course of the company.

It helps that I’ve been the manager in an exact scenario in a previous company.  I can recall with vivid clarity being promoted to manage a business unit and my first directive was to clean house.  Without having the opportunity to review and assess current employees and positions, I was told to let them all go, no exceptions.  We had to start over.

My first major project as the new VP of the business unit was to go around to our various locations and let people go.  That was hard and I lost sleep before, during and after.  I remember some of the staff looked at me as a savior of some sort.  They knew their unit was broken and needed to be fixed.  They thought I would fix it for all of us and they welcomed me into their world.  And then I fired them.

I know that once the decision is made to let someone go, that is the final decision.  The most heartbreaking thing for me were the people who had good reasons why they should not be let go.  “What about THIS I’m working on?”  “We have an audit coming up, I’m the only person who knows THIS.”  “But I’m right in the middle of THIS big deal.”  It didn’t matter.  Once the manager is sitting there with the pink slip in his hand, the decision is DONE.

I have the advantage of being on the other side and understanding that this shit just happens.  The best way to deal with it is to accept it and know that you can’t change it when it happens.

Along the LetGo Road, I see people who were completely blindsided by their termination.  I will not be blindsided, I know it is coming.  I feel that is advantage  I have time to be shocked and grieve a bit.  When I get that call, I will be able to say “thank you for this opportunity” and mean it.

I have time to do  emergency financial planning.  I don’t have long, but at least knowing I’m on this road helps me make decisions that I can implement now to help in the long run.  An example is the spending of the tax refund.  We had plans for that money, FUN plans.  Now that I’m on LetGo Road, we have different plans for that money.

I have to think ahead.  My resume is up to date and I’ve already started my new job search.  The market in my profession is dismal.  I have the time right now to think about my skills and abilities and start planning, at least in my mind, what I will do next.  I have made a list of the “to do’s” I need to do immediately when I reach the end of LetGo Road.  I have considered the volunteer work I will start as soon as I get the call.  I have a list of people I will call.  I have time to get things together.

In planning ahead, I am excited about what I can do next!  I find myself wishing I’d hurry up and get to the end so I can get started on what’s next for me.  But then I realize that every day I work is one more day I get paid for and I know I need to wait.

In my work life, I had to make a decision and honestly, it wasn’t a hard one to make.  Knowing that everything I am working on right now is going to be gone soon, how much effort do I want to expend?  I know some people on the LetGo Road have a bad attitude and decide “to hell with ‘em” and do as little as possible.  They take home pens from the supply closet and snicker about what they are taking from the company.   I can’t do that.  I can’t blow off my responsibities or pull back my efforts.

I have an assigned client base.  I like my clients.  I want my clients to succeed.  Therefore I must continue to offer them my best and not let any errant disappointment seep into my work.  This is not their issue right now, it is mine.  It is just what I believe.  My work ethic and sense of what is right will not allow to screw up my clients, even with simple job neglect along the LetGo Road.

Part of me wants to get to the end of this road so that I can move on.  Part of me is happy to get another day to do what I love doing and get paid for it.   I could wish and hope that the end of the road does not come, but wishes and hopes are not life strategies.  That is not to say I don’t have hopes, I do.  I just understand that hope is just that.  It is not fact, it is not the end-all solution.  It’s yet another road of life to get you where you need to be.

Waiting

I am doing what thousands of people are doing right at this very minute.

I am pacing the floor.  I have the volume on the radio down so that I can hear any sound coming from outside, the telephone, my cell phone, the little ding sound on my computer when a new email comes in.  I have CNN on and I am googling shit and coming up with bullshit.  I skipped church tonight just in case.  As I sat down to my hastily prepared dinner, I thought a glass of red wine would help relieve the tension, but I passed on it in case I need to leave in a hurry and drive somewhere.

I have my friends on alert and I am almost embarrassed by that.  Surely I am not being a drama queen!  I am anxious because my husband is in class tonight so I know he doesn’t  have his cell phone with him.  Not sure anyone at the college answers the phone at night, how long would it take me to reach him if I had to?

So I pace.  I remind myself every 5 minutes to stop frowning as it causes wrinkles.  Sometimes I stop the busy activities long enough to stare out the window into the darkness looking for an answer that is not there. I want the phone to ring but I don’t.  When it rings, I put down whatever is in my hands just in case.

What is the problem tonight?

A soldier was killed in Mosul.  On the base where my nephew is stationed.  The unit is on lockdown so there is no information coming out of the area.  We don’t know.  We are waiting.  The waiting sucks.

I almost feel guilty thinking it is not him as hoping that it is not my soldier means I am wishing it is someone else’s.

A very dear friend called and reminded me that there are 150,000 troops in Iraq right now.  There are probably thousands in Mosul.  The odds of that one soldier being my nephew are pretty low.  I know that.  But that solider is someone’’s soldier.  There are probably thousands of aunts, uncles, grandparents, sisters, brothers, wives,  cousins, husbands, mommas, daddies and some little kids wondering and worrying tonight.

Maybe this worry lessens with time.  He has only been there since December, all this is new to our family. Maybe you get hardened to the news reports and maybe in 6 months we’ll hear stuff like this and not blink an eye.  Maybe.

But in the meantime, I bet there are thousands of us pacing, worrying, praying, cussing, drinking, holding on to Bibles like they are the lifeline pulling us out of hell.

And sadly, one of us will get that knock on the door.