May

17

Oh My Aching Stomach

May 17, 2006 |

I worked myself into a stomach ache last night. I don’t know if it’s because of missing and worrying about Nick so much (see yesterday’s post) or because I’m finally facing our money problems and trying to do something about it. Yeah, you’re right - it couldn’t possibly be about the money could it?

You see I know nothing whatsoever about managing money. Nothing, nada, zip, zero. Jeff knows less than me. I can at least keep a checkbook register - he can’t even do that. So we have gotten ourselves into a world of hurt. It started out when I moved in with Jeff 15 years ago. He was living in a house his Mom owned (she lived in a different state) in exchange for him paying for and doing all the upkeep on the property - 1500 sq foot house and 5 acres. So we only had to pay for our utilities and our groceries and the rest was disposable. BIG MISTAKE. We should have been socking the rest of that money into savings but instead we were spending like mad. We both worked full time at decent jobs so we had extra and felt like spoiling ourselves. So young. So naïve.

Then when I found out I was pregnant with Nicholas I decided that I didn’t want to live there anymore, I wanted to raise our family in our own house. You see the house we had been living in was not ideal in the least. Jeff’s Mom would show up whenever she wanted and stay for as long as she wanted (it was her house after all) and other members of his family would do the same. I wanted a place where we had full autonomy over everything. So we found a home and took on a 30 year mortgage using money I had inherited for the down payment. BIG MISTAKE #2.

So now we were in our own home, a baby on the way and living a little better than paycheck to paycheck but not much. Don’t forget I was going on maternity leave soon. And would later decide that I wouldn’t want to go back to work after he was born. And we fully discovered the power/evil of credit cards at that time. I stayed home with Nick for 15 months and used credit cards to pay expenses for the last 4 or 5 months of my SAHM stint. We were so far in debt that I had no choice but to find a job so I started working second shift at a luxury hotel in management. The hours were tough on our marriage so I went to first shift and then eventually changed jobs entirely. And then I had Olivia. And was paying full time daycare for 2 children. And still trying to pay bills and pay off credit card debt that seemed to be doubling daily.

That’s when I decided to open my own daycare. I knew I was good with children, I needed to earn money to help with the bills and I wanted to be home with my children. It seemed the perfect solution. But the pay isn’t so great. Or stable. We’ve never gotten out from under that humongous weight of debt. It has just continued to snowball year after year. We are still paying for things from 5 or more years ago. And we are living in poverty and fear. If anything major goes wrong we will not have the money to pay for it and we will not have the credit to borrow from anyone. We will have to take money from my parents - and I hate that!

So I am at my bottom, my worst and have decided to do something about it. The biggest problem is that I have no formal knowledge about money management. My parents are well off so I never wanted for anything. I asked - I received. End of story. No education on budgets, cash flow, savings - nothing. So when I received a gift certificate from Amazon at the beginning of the month I went book shopping. I did a little research and decided to go with these books

I bought them to learn, to be educated, not for a quick fix. That’s what I like about Dave Ramsey, he doesn’t say “Follow my program and you’ll be debt free in 30 days”. No, it may take years and he’s up front about that. But he also uses some simple analogies that make it easy to see and understand principles he explains without being condescending.

The best one is the “envelope system”. This is not a new concept in personal finance but it is to me. The idea is to put the cash needed for a certian category of your budget, say food, into an envelope and that’s all you get to spend. Period. When you work out of your checking account as a whole there is more money there so you dip into it. We do it ALL the time. But the envelope system made me see that every piece of our budget has a figurative envelope and in Jeff’s and my situation all of our income, every penny is divided up between all the envelopes with none to spare. So when we overspend on food, for example, we take money from say, the mortgage envelope to cover the food expenses and then we are behind on the mortgage. Just the idea has already made me think more when writing checks about where this money is coming from – what other area am I taking away from? Did it explain it right? Does that make sense?

So I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to get a handle on our finances using these books. My only concern is my husband. He wants nothing whatsoever to do with the finances. He just wants me to give him the money he feels he needs when he wants it and doesn’t want to hear the word no. He has no patience for saving money to get the things he wants - he’s an instant gratification kind of guy. It will be tough to change it around but he’s going to have to get on board if we ever want to make any progress.

Now to figure out how to make Jeff think all these changes are actually his idea……


Comments

5 Comments so far

  1. Bev on May 17, 2006 8:49 am

    I think you should go WITH hubby to a financial debt consultant. They usually have free services. Hubby needs to hear from a professional how bad things are. Someone else needs to get in his face and spell it all out for him. That’s all there’s to it!

  2. RHONDA on May 17, 2006 8:55 am

    Dave Ramsey is AMAZING. I have his books AND tapes. We do not have any credit cards, but we do still have loans to pay.

    He has the right idea. Email me privately, and if you want, I will lend you my audiotapes.

  3. mrs. diamond on May 17, 2006 9:19 am

    I totally understand. I know nothing about finances and my husband knows some more but we’ve made a lot of mistakes. Credit is a BIG mistake. Though I do NOT consider buying a house, a mistake. I see that as an investment.

    I like the envelope system. It works for me. But my husband figures he doesn’t need it. ( I do my own thing with my money and he does his because I got tired of having to ask for money and be accountable for every single dollar. )

  4. kel on May 17, 2006 9:30 am

    Money sucks…period.

    My Husband is changing shifts in 2 weeks making us have to put both boys in daycare full time. Talk about budget killer! We are willing to deal with it, as it helps us be a family again. (Husband worked 3rd shift, so you know what I mean.)

    Times are lean so I’ve learned to get creative.

    Kudos to you for buying books and learning about what to do. It’s a hard step.

  5. Aimz on May 17, 2006 4:14 pm

    We’ve been in the same place with money and now we are finally making headway with paying off our bills, it’d be interesting to read Mr Ramsay’s books and see if we’ve following advice that’s similar to his. btw is there any way you can get your hubby to counselling maybe he would listen to someone else telling him what you have been.

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