http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/23/pf/holiday_buynothing/index.htm
I have no intention of taking up the cry and following Rev. Billy, but I find that I agree with him somewhat about the effects of consumerism on community and family. You may or may not agree, but it is worth thinking about.
Time is far more valuable than things. Time can not be bought, and yet so many of us spend all our time acquiring things.
We recieved a toy catalog in the mail today. There have been lots of them lately as the retailers are trying to capture my christmas spending money. Fortunately since I’m the one who brings in the mail I can pitch the catalogs before the kids get a chance to see them and covet things. We used to be able to afford that stuff. Today in a moment of nostalgia/boredom rather than pitching the catalog right away I looked through it first. I saw toys that were designed to appeal to parents, but which the kids probably would not play with. I saw toys that look exciting in a catalog, but probably wouldn’t get played with once they were opened. I saw toys that kids would love, but that were dressed up with unecessary bells & whistles. I saw some good basic toys, but not very many. I did not see a single thing that I actually wanted to spend money on. This is good because everything in the catalog cost way too much.
Good quality toys last for a long time. This means that you are extremely likely to be able to find them used. Buying used toys saves money and saves you from dealing with the kitchy toy du jour. Instead you get to deal with last year’s kitchy toy du jour, but at least you spent a lot less money on it. Buying used toys also means that you don’t get to mentally pick a specific item and go get it the same day.
How do you acquire good toys for next to nothing? The best way is to be around when someone else is moving or just cleaning out closets. Then the toys are usually free. Next on the list is garage sales or thrift stores. On the more expensive end of “used” are resale shops for “gently used” items. I have an advantage. I’m not starting from scratch with this tiny budget. I already have a good stock of toys for my kids to play with. In fact I’m quite willing to be patient because my kids already have more toys than they want to have to pick up at the end of the day.
I feel so detached from the over hyped commercialism that is american society. Shopping is central to how americans arrange their time, homes, roads, and entertainment. They live to shop. I’ve somehow escaped that trap and I’m very glad of it. The catalog went into the trash.
I’ve conquored the quarterly tax filing for our business. Not only that, but I conquored it so handily that I don’t need to dread it next quarter. That’s very relieving.
While I was hitting my head against bookkeeping, I did a thorough analysis of our current financial state. That was both frightening and reassuring depending on which angle I looked at it.
I’ve come away from all this number crunching with a calm assurance that somehow or other we’re going to make this cartooning thing work for us. I can’t explain how it will work, but it will. It seems fitting that since we began this endeavor with faith we should continue in the same way. I’ve also regained a clear vision of our need to economize. Halloween needs to cost us $10 or less. Thanksgiving comes out of the food budget, but needs to be planned for. Christmas cannot come to more than $200 and I’d like to be able to do it for half of that.
Not so long ago those numbers would have looked impossible to meet, but now I’m pretty sure I can do it. We have been greatly blessed to be able to accomplish so much with so little. We have been even more greatly blessed to be able to have Howard working as a cartoonist full time.
Over the past week or more I’ve been feeling increasing frustration with the state of my home. I’ve been so busy making sure kids get to school and homework gets done and people get fed, that I have been losing the battle with entropy in my house. A huge part of the problem is that I haven’t been making the kids do housework. Making kids clean is always an uphill battle. I keep looking at that particular hill and deciding that where I’m sitting is alright. Except where I was sitting was starting to get knee deep in stuff.
So this week I’ve enforced the “Jail Box” more than once. Early this week I informed the kids that in 20 minutes anything left on the family room floor would be going to jail. They scrambled and picked everything up. Yay, I’d succeeded. But by the afternoon of the next day all the toys were back on the floor because they’d “picked up” by shoving everything onto the fireplace or into the toy box. The little toy shelf I bought when Link was a baby simply wasn’t an adequate storage solution for 4 kids worth of toys.
I stared at the family room and the jumble of toys for several days. I went and priced shelving at Home Depot and realized it was $200+ that I simply didn’t have lying around. I came back home and stared at the mess some more. I talked to Howard to evaluate whether maybe spending $200 might be worth it after all. He wasn’t sure it was the right solution. I stared at the mess a little more and was starting to feel like it was time to just get rid of all the toys. Fortunately that rash move was averted when Howard went out on an errand. He called me from our cell phone to let me know that a neighbor was having a garage sale and she had a dresser that might work for toy storage. I imediately tossed Gleek and Patches into the stroller and went to check it out. She had a dresser and a matching corner cabinet. They were not beautiful, but they were sturdy, they would fit, and they would store toys. My wonderful neighbor sold them to me for $50 and then helped me move them into my house.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon sorting through the jumble of toys. I threw away broken bits, put legos back in the lego bucket, put knex back in the knex boxes, threw all the balls into a bag in a drawer, found that the huge bottom drawer was perfect for all of Patches big trucks, located all the little people and their accessories, put 30 or more hair bands back in the bathroom, took a pile of pencils to the kitchen, took a pile of books to the bookshelf, threw bread crusts away, threw away bits of games that we got rid of ages ago because we couldn’t find all the bits, and various other sorting tasks. (In case anyone was wondering a big toybox is about the worst possible toy storage solution because when kids are cleaning they throw EVERYTHING into the toybox in a frantic effort to get it all out of sight as quickly as possible. Small toyboxes with specific labelled purposes are much better, though not childproof. Small boxes tend to get carried off and used as boats or houses, then the box is missing at clean up time. But small boxes are definitely better than the Giant Toybox of DOOM.) When I was done with the sorting and relocating, my family room was clean. I can actually see my fireplace for the first time in years. Not only that, but things are sorted so that when I say “Clean the family room” I can also say “If I can still see toys you’re not done yet.” Best of all, the dresser and cupboard are not even full. I no longer fear Christmas because I now have places to put the coming influx of stuff.
I still intend to sort through the rest of my house and thin out the surplus. I’d like all of my house to have the same spacious feeling that my family room just acquired. Mostly I’m just grateful that the solution arrived just when I really needed it.
I spent most of this morning at the bank. My primary mission was to take my variable rate Home Equity loan and create a fixed-rate sub loan for it so I don’t continue to get dinged as rates go up. My secondary mission was to register for the free safe deposit box that is supposed to come with our Gold savings account. The secondary mission was accomplished with dispatch. I got to see the cool vault room and play with a hand scanning device.
The primary mission was a little more complicated. I sat down at the loan consultant’s desk and explained what I wanted. He responded by laying out an array of money-borrowing options for me to consider. The one that looked the best was to roll the debt into a new 10 year mortgage. I called Howard and he agreed that it looked best. So I sat down to get the paperwork rolling. Then the loan consultant said “Alright we’ll need to do a credit check, and your property tax statement, and get some income verification.” The credit check isn’t a problem. I have the property tax statement filed. But any lender who looks at our apparent monthly income is going to laugh and refuse to loan us money. I explained this to the loan consultant who hemmed and hmmmed and tried to convince me that I should go through the rigamarole anyway because they MIGHT lend me money.
Let me see, annoying paperwork and credit check with accompanying hassle followed by a refusal to lend money, OR fill out and sign a single page form to get the sub loan I came in for in the first place… I walked out of there with the sub loan.
I much prefer juggling money to juggling debt. But at least I’m being able to see this debt get smaller with each juggling pass. In less than 10 years there won’t be any debt left to juggle.
Today is special. One year ago today Howard came home from Novell never to return. He has been a full-time cartoonist for a year now. One year ago we had a business that was on the edge of breaking even, after years of costing us money. We had enough in savings to pay for about 3 months of living expenses. Logic would not have told us that it was the right time for Howard to quit. But it was. Now, a year later, Howard’s cartooning can be relied on to pay a third to a half of each month’s expenses and because of some timely windfalls we now have enough in savings to carry us for another six months. Our position today is much better than it was a year ago, but we’re still not out of the woods.
I confess there are days when I walk through a grocery store and look longingly at treat foods like avocados and chicken nuggets and chocolate cheescake. There are games I’d like to own. There are household projects which are on indefinite hold. If I wanted to I could create a huge list of things I’d love to have enough money to do. But I’ve BEEN there. A year ago I had money enough for all of those things. We are so much happier now. It is good for us to have to prioritize and decide what is really important to us. Yes I’d like more money, but I want to have more money because the cartooning is bringing it to us, not because we had to give the cartooning up.
I continue to feel fortunate and blessed to be where I am. This past year has been a gift, I’m just greedy enough to want second one even better than the first.
Local schools start in just 4 weeks. This means that local stores have begun their big Back To School season. For me it means I get to stock up on things like pencils & paper while they’re dirt cheap. Store marketers are smart. They know that they can get people into the stores by selling markers and backpacks dirt cheap. The marketers know that moms will drag their kids through the stores and the kids will latch onto something shiny and expensive that they must have. I’m smarter. I know how to walk into a store and walk out after only buying the super-ultra-cheap items. I used to not be so smart when convenience was more important than money.
Back To School is also the season for clothes buying. Parents everywhere try to shop the sales and buy enough clothes so they won’t have to shop again all winter. Last year I finally figured out that buying cute sweaters for the new school year is a little foolish, the weather in August is such that sweaters are much too warm. If I want my kids to have a new outfit for the first day of school, the outfit will have to be summer clothes. So instead of shopping the Back To School sales I used to wait for the post Back To School sales when the prices were truly clearanced. Of course now I don’t even do that. Now I shop garage sales and thrift stores. There is no school clothes shopping season because I’m always watching for good clothes that my kids will grow into. Funny thing is that I’ve spent lots less money and my kids are going to have more and better quality clothes than they’ve ever had before.
This year I get to watch the Back To School frenzy and just laugh.
Today Kiki was sitting nearby when Howard and I were discussing how our life has changed the last 8 months with some neighbors.
I said:
“We’re a lot happier. Much poorer, but lots happier.”
Kiki perked up and said:
“I haven’t even noticed that we’re poorer.”
Yay. I’ve done my job in providing for the kids well enough that they can’t even tell the difference.
Kiki has a birthday coming up. I’ve been planning for it since Christmas. With money as tight as it is, I’m constantly watching for things which would make good gifts for my kids. I’ve already stashed away a fair amount of things for Christmas 2006. (I want to provide a really good Christmas for $200 or less.) Link’s birthday is in the fall and I’ve got most of what I need for that as well. One of the keys to making do on very little money is to plan WAY ahead. And because this might be useful for someone else out there, let me outline Kiki’s birthday. She is getting:
One stuffed dragon made by me from materials and a pattern I already had. Cost $0
One fantasy themed jigsaw puzzle which I acquired for free from someone who didn’t want it. Cost $0
Small bag of Polly Pocket dolls and accessories bought used from a neighbor child $5
Polly Pocket folding castle bought from a thrift store $1
Three pairs of earrings from a thrift store $1
A cake made from a box and decorated by me and herself $2
Balloons left over from some other celebration $0
Then in June we’ll have a birthday celebration with her cousins with all the screaming and laughing that usually attends children’s parties.
Total monetary cost is going to be less than $10. The cost in time is much higher, especially when you count that stuffed dragon, but the time sewing and combing thrift stores is well spent. I say that because I am confident that Kiki is going to absolutely love her birthday and her presents. Every thing on that list is something that she has been wanting for awhile. Naturally there are other much more expensive things that she would also love to have. I can’t provide those right now, but I’ve managed to provide enough. And as Mary Poppins says “Enough is as good as a feast.”
I finally sat down and did bookkeeping today. In the papers, bills, and reciepts I found the money stress that was curiously lacking when I faced the bill for water heaters on Tuesday.
I also found that on Tuesday two people made largish paypal donations. I have no idea if the donations are connected to my journal post about water heaters, but I do know that those donations made a huge difference in the level of money-related stress I was feeling. The monetary amount wasn’t enough to cover the unexpected expense, but the gesture of support was immeasurably helpful.
We continue to live like Link crossing lava using ice arrows. The path simply isn’t there more than a month or two down the road, but we keep on walking and scrambling to build as we go so that we never come to the end of the path. We’ve already crossed more months of expenses that I would have believed possible when Howard left Novell. It is only thanks to an inflow of goodwill, cartooning work, donations, and gifts that we manage to keep building a path to walk on. In just the past week I’ve had literally boxes of clothing given to me for kids to grow into. I’m continually amazed and grateful for the kindness of people around me. I needed to be reminded of this today.