Busy Week, Late Updates in Relationships, Weight, and Money

Yikes! It's been a whole week since I posted that huge, long post on money. I meant to write on Monday, and didn't because somehow I got busy. The same is true of Wednesday. I typically like to write my blog posts in the morning because at night I'm fairly brain-dead and tired. So, we're gonna knock this one out in a weekly update style.

Miscellany Monday Updates

Last weekend was the official 6-month marker for me and Captain. I didn't think we'd be doing anything special to celebrate it since we've always typically acknowledged each passing month with a simple, "Happy X-months!"text message and few scattered comments about, Does it feel like X-months to you? No? Me neither. Feels longer? Well, I hope that's a good thing! So I didn't think much of it, except to privately think about how this is the best relationship I've been in, well, ever. No fights yet (I still dread the day that will come. Somehow I feel as if a fight reveals so much about someone's character, and not that I don't have an idea of what Captain's character is like [obviously I do], but just that some people morph into someone else you don't recognize in a fight. I wouldn't want that to happen. Not that I'm thinking of picking a fight just to find out. Don't fix what's not broken, right?), and still nothing that makes me think twice about being with him. We used to have this "check-in" phrase, a kind of relationship thermometer, as I like to think of it. Usually it'd be me who'd say something like, "See any red flags?" (which later turned into simply, "Red flags?"). The last time I said that (a month or so ago), he replied, "I think we're past that now." I remember feeling so gooey inside, like a chocolate chip cookie feels when it's just baked. Like, oh, we're there, in the safe zone. It was such a nice feeling to somehow capture a moment of feeling secure and being assured of that security.

Anyway, all that said, last weekend rolls around and I end up having to go to the dentist for a cleaning. (Yay. Feel the excitement?) We go there, coincidentally meet up with my parents who were also in the area, and return to my place where I start dinner. Right before I started cooking, he comes up and surprises me with a little black jewelry box that has this gold trim outlining the Elven inscription of the One Ring. (I mean, he did this with the whole Close your eyes? What, why? Just do it. Now, stick out your hand. bit, but you know. Brevity in storytelling is not my strong suit.) So, of course, I think I squealed "LORD OF THE RINGS?!" and then gingerly tore (can you gingerly tear into something?) into it. I distinctly recall trying not to let my hand shake, but I don't know why I was feeling like that. It turned out to be a pair of lovely, sparkly pair of Arwen's Evenstar necklace (from the film) in earring form! They're stunning. If you recall, they represented Arwen's love and willingness to give up her immortality to spend her life with Aragorn. I'm not saying that's what it represented when Captain gave it to me, but I like to think it was a beautiful symbol of love and commitment. (I may be over-romanticizing it, because he probably got it since he knows I'm a LotR lover and he enjoys giving gifts that have personal significance to the recipient). "Happy six months," he said after all that. Happy six months indeed.

Wednesday Weigh-In Updates

I had to do my weigh-in this week, and it turns out:

I did really well last week, going to the gym/getting some kind of exercise in, eating in rather than out. I know I didn't make the best choices when eating (based on WW PointsPlus values), but being conscious of what you're eating is still a step in the right direction. I tried to keep a bit of a food diary, but the weekend is a bit fuzzy.

Umm, ignore the fact that I accidentally reported my Friday night meal as a dessert...?

This crazy spreadsheet is of my own making. It's got WW points for each section, and WW totals at the end. There's also an activity tracker on the end of each day as well, and the color coded meals indicate if I ate in or ate out and whether or not I paid for it. Detailed, no?

Last week (3/4-3/10), I did really well as far as not eating out too much. The shaded boxes indicate eating out, and the purple means someone else paid for it (Captain, usually), and the red box means I paid for it and had to record it in my budgeting process. I was motivated, and I felt good last week. My menu planning was strong last week. I was prepared to take it all on.

This week, I am struggling a little more, so I will explore the reasons for that when I report my progress next week. I also was not as prepared, menu planning wise, and I can see how that has some repercussions in my eating out/spending habits.

Finance Friday: Keeping a Budget Update

Keeping a budget is tough. I mean, tough. For this month, being within my grace period for the learning curve, I don't think I've been doing too badly but I still could have done better. It's only been a week and I feel so pinched. I mean, on one hand, I know I have the money. I just can't touch it. On the other hand, I'm trying really hard to stick to my outlined budget. I have to allow myself some grace because the truth is that this will be a learning period. The first three months will require some adjustments after I look back and see how I've done -- maybe I need more in some areas or less in others. I just won't know for a little while.

So, I didn't capture the data from before I tried to keep this budget (it was depressingly in the red in many areas). But here's the data from 2/28-3/7:

See all that green?! Means I've still got money!

The phone app version (which auto-syncs with the web version, which is screen capped up there) lets you know if you're on pace for the month, as far as spreading out your allotted funds for the whole month. Obviously that works for some areas (like food/etc), but it doesn't work for things like rent which gets paid in full, up front. The pace doesn't seem to show on the web version, but that's okay. I think sometimes it stresses me out to see how far I'm already gone on it.

That said, I'm in the green in all areas except for one: home supplies. I had initially budgeted for $25/month of expenses for home supplies, but I didn't really specify what that might mean. I just figured it was any expenses related to the house, like cleaners. Except I didn't build a laundry budget for myself, so I decided to report that in home supplies. Then I bought bath stuff and some house stuff that I was running low on, and BAM! Negative money. What?! It was the first week of the month already! So, I'm guessing that might be an area I need to adjust later.

Also difficult: my personal allowance (noted as BLOW! money). Ideally, this is money I can do whatever I want with. Get a pedicure, get a massage, buy my personal care items and whatever. Well, last month I had a friend (second mom) buy me two pairs of jeans (I was getting holes in mine) and I usually just pay her back. Well, at $52 a pop (total is like $104), with an allowance of $150/month, that's 2/3 of my entire monthly allowance. God, I wanted to cry; it just felt like I was already starting from a disadvantage/behind the 8-ball. Thankfully, my second mom realized my dilemma and offered me the opportunity to pay for one pair of jeans a month at a time, this means I took a 1/3 hit to my personal allowance right off the top (I didn't build a clothing allowance because I don't shop for clothes often and I actually really, really abhor clothing shopping. I may need to revisit this decision in 3 months as well.) I also chose to support a charity via a t-shirt campaign, which I consider a donation/giving. This came out of my personal allowance and amounted to $36. I'm currently down to just under $63 for the rest of the month in this section, and that makes me a little sad.

The categories I'm doing really well in: entertainment. My utility bills sometimes don't hit til the end of the month so I just don't count that section at all because that's a "need to be paid" area. I've spent $5 in entertainment (to pay for parking at the hockey game; typically parking is $15 at the arena itself, but I park a little ways away and pay less). This amount is unusual and surprising, because I feel like I usually spend quite a bit in entertainment. Maybe having a budget has had this effect on me. Who knows?

Categories I'm concerned about: food, gas/petrol, personal allowance/BLOW! money. Food is just expensive. Eating in still feels kind of pricey, but I still think I'm doing okay. I think I'll know about how I'm progressing at the half-point of the month (next week), just because I'll see then how much I've spent and how much I have left for the rest of the month.

Unexpected expenses did occur this week, as I was invited to join and honor society. I don't join every one I'm invited to, but this one seems to be quite prestigious and worthwhile, so I paid the $80 out of my savings account to go toward that expense.

All in all, I still think I'm doing better than I was. How do you think I'm doing? Do you see any ways for me to improve? I'm always open to suggestions.

Finance Friday: Announcing the March Money Challenge

There are English people and Math people. Guess which one I am? (There are, I understand, a few oddities who can do both, but I have not been one of those people.) In the continuing evolution of Charity, I've decided that it's time to become one of those strange crossbreeds of English/Math peeps.

After all, I've never been good with money. This is not a life sentence, understand? I can be good with money. In fact, scratch that. I will be good with money. Starting now.

But before I get into all the nitty gritty of my dollars, I need to be clear about my goals. This is about ME and about what I want to accomplish in my life. I feel like I need to know why I didn't do well with money before, and when I thought about that, I realized that I didn't care before because, well, I was young and stupid. I don't have that excuse anymore. I also didn't ever really believe that things would be different in my life. I thought that I wasn't truly worthy of love, that perhaps I would grow old and die alone (how depressing? What was wrong with me in my earlier years? Jeez). No amount of convincing on my friends' part helped. I assumed that there wasn't much of a point in saving for retirement because hell, what if I didn't make it to 65 anyway?

...but I never stopped to ask what would happen if I did.

Until now.

I hate to say that having Captain in my life is the reason for some change, but it's hard to deny the correlation. The truth is that when I met Captain, I had very limited expectations. He surprised me. He impressed me, but not because he was trying. It's just who he is, the person I've discovered in him somehow inspires me to be better than I am. Not that he inspires me to change who I am, just without him even trying, I feel more able to make changes in my life to become Charity 2.0--the version of me who's still awesome, but now to the next power, so to speak. After all, having Captain in my life has allowed me to ask some big, tough questions about the nebulous future. And, now--even as I said then when we first met--I have always, always told myself that no matter what happens, I will forever be grateful for Captain because of what he brought into my life. At a time when I was close to losing hope, Captain taught me that there is always a reason to have hope. In nerd terms, Captain became my light of Eärendil... "May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out." (Galadriel, Lord of the Rings). [That totally makes him sound so vital to my life, and I don't want it to seem that way; I just mean that he's taught me a lot about myself and about life without doing anything in particular, and I'm uber-grateful for it.]

That said, the things that enter my brain as a result of having Captain in my life go something like this: I would like to get married someday. Gee, getting married means that we're going to have to talk very frankly and honestly about money. I don't have any money, not really. In fact, I have student loan debt, which means I'm in the negative if we're looking at the big picture. And I'm bad at managing my money. Hmm, I should remedy this. IMMEDIATELY.

I want to be able to do things with my money, absolutely. But living for the moment can't be sustained for a long period of time because I have to consider my future and whether or not I'll be able to take care of myself later in life. Also, I want to be able to demonstrate that getting married to me does not represent a massive financial risk and that I can be a good steward of my finances. What's the solution here? Oh, I know! SAVING MONEY (for a number of reasons: an emergency, a wedding, vacations, retirement, a house, unborn children's college fund, whatever), GETTING OUT OF DEBT, and BEING MORE INFORMED (read: smart) ABOUT FINANCES.

All of this to say: I've challenged myself to design and stick to a budget for the month of March. This is not to say I will only stick to a budget for March, but that I will begin to do this now and attempt to continue it, making adjustments every 3 months as needed.

At this point, this is roughly what my finances look like (and trust, I've cut out pretty much everything I'm willing/able to cut):

• Income: $2,700
• Expenses: $2,100
• Left over for savings: $600

Just before the March Money Challenge started, this is what I have:

• a small life insurance policy provided for by my work
• $18k in a pension
• $1,600 in a Roth IRA
• $680 liquid savings

This is what I currently owe:

• $900 credit card debt* (this gets paid off every month, so really this is $0)
• $7,500 car loan
• $60k+ student loan debt

If I can stick to my budget, I can have $7k in savings in one year's time. It's a decent start, but a chunk of that savings is allocated to irregular expenses such as my dog, my haircuts, my car insurance and car registration, an emergency fund, a travel/vacation fund, a Christmas gift fund, and a regular savings account. When I take all those things into account, my regular savings + emergency fund should be about $4k of that at the end of the year. ($3k is allocated for travel/vacations + irregular expenses).

So, the goal list:

• Immediate goals: create and stick to a workable budget for 1 month, then stick to it for 3 months and make adjustments quarterly.
• In 6 months, build a regular savings + emergency fund of $2k+. After 1 year, build a regular savings + emergency fund of $4k+ 
• By summer 2014: pay off my car* (this may require that I adjust my budget and redirect a portion of my savings towards paying off the car, which I will revisit in 2-3 months time)
• After summer 2014: redirect my car payments towards paying off my student loan debt
• After I have my emergency fund set up: consider making more (perhaps regular?) contributions to my Roth IRA
• This year: Research and consider retirement plans beyond my pension (i.e. Roth IRA, 403(b), 401(k), etc.)

This money makeover is probably one of the most difficult things I've ever challenged myself to do. It's a lot like dieting & exercising. I have to be disciplined, vigilant, and aware. I need to question myself about each expense just like I have to question myself about every item of food I decide to eat/prepare. And perhaps most difficult of all, I have to stay motivated and never lose hope.