Money

Now that Rocket Boy is earning a good salary, we should be doing great financially. And maybe we are, I can't tell. There are several new expenses in our lives because of his job, of course: his rent, food, gas, the cost of flying him back to visit us every month or so, and next month we'll have to start paying $500/month on his student loans again. But even so, we still have more money than we did before, especially since we still have my part-time salary and the money from the rental house. So then the question arises: what do we do with that money?

The first thing I decided to do was start saving. We get $1440/month from the rental house and I have started putting $1000 of that in a regular savings account where I can get at it easily. It's not really savings, it's to pay our insurance and property tax bills, and whatever needs doing on the house. It's thus also meant as a sort of emergency fund, something we haven't had for a while. Last month I decided to start putting another $500/month in another savings account. I'm not sure what this is for -- maybe it's my new car fund or some such (my car is fine, but it's almost 12 years old). Eventually I'll probably put that money somewhere where it might earn a little interest, but I want to keep it liquid for now.

I don't know whether I should be stashing more money away. Probably I should be. If I made a budget I might be able to figure that out. But I've never really been a budget person. I have two basic approaches to money: (1) If I have very little, try to spend as little as possible. (2) If I have more than I need, then spend a little more and save the rest. Those are actually fairly workable approaches, but they do lack detail.

The one thing I am trying not to do -- and I don't think I've done -- is change our style of living, increase our day to day expenses. For instance, I haven't signed up for cable/satellite TV, even though we currently get almost no channels over the air. And the boys and I are still going out to eat only once a week -- mostly. I don't know if getting deli items or sushi from the grocery store counts as eating out. It's certainly not cooking. But anyway, I was doing things like that before our income increased. One nice change is that I paid off my credit card (I'd carried a balance for a year, starting with some expensive car repairs), and I will pay it off every month from now on.

A few things I am spending more on, and one of those is books. When I was younger I used to spend a lot of money on books, new books, not just used bookstore/library book sale books. Our house is so full of stuff that it doesn't make sense for me to buy a lot of ANYTHING -- there's no room on any bookshelf for more books. But I do still buy books -- carefully, now, because of our space issues -- and of course I use the library a lot too -- but I do still buy books. And now with more income I have bought a few in the last month that I wouldn't have bought before.

Additionally, I have bought some new clothes. My wardrobe is horrible, pathetic, partly because I keep growing out of everything, but also because I feel like I can't justify the expense of buying clothes for me. The twins, yes, they have to have clothes that fit and look decent. But who cares what I look like? My raincoat has a big rip right in the front and my winter coat doesn't meet around my belly. Though he doesn't outgrow his clothes, Rocket Boy is in a similar situation: most of his shirts and pants have been patched and mended. For Father's Day I bought him three new pairs of pants so he won't look like a homeless person at work. For my part, I had (until my recent shopping trips) just a few summer tops that fit, so I had to do my laundry every few days during hot spells. Now I am the proud owner of seven sleeveless tops and two sleeveless dresses (that fit), and I only have to do my laundry once a week. I also have a new summer nightgown, and I'm planning to work on the coat problem in the fall. Oh, and I ordered a new swimsuit. When I wanted to take the twins swimming I discovered that last year's suit doesn't fit (to be honest, it didn't really fit last year either), so I took a deep breath and ordered the next size up.

But there's another spending issue, actually somewhat related to the clothes thing, and that is that we haven't spent the money we should have been spending all along on our house and the rental, and thus there are so many things that need fixing. It would take all our money and more to do everything, so I've been trying to figure out a priority list. The first thing on the list was new gutters for our house -- but, as so often happens, that has had to be set aside. Our neighbor on the other side of the rental is very upset about the overgrown bushes at the rental, which he believes harbor the rats that he's seen on his property. So I hired the guy who both this neighbor and the neighbor on the other side of us recommended, and he's started doing a massive, almost unbelievable pruning job. Unfortunately I don't have a "before" picture, but just imagine this yard completely drowning in bushes and volunteer trees. They took all of that out this week, and now you can see the roses again! And the decorative rocks. And a lot of other smaller plants that have been in hiding for many years.

The guy is only coming by every two or three days (he worked two days this past week, about three hours each time), and we agreed that he'll bill me every couple of weeks, so that I keep close track of what I'm spending. He didn't try to quote the job because it's so massive -- the side yard and backyard are worse than the front. He'll just work along, and when he's done here I'll probably ask him to work on our backyard, because it's just as bad (our front yard is mostly OK). So after a month or two maybe it'll be time to think about gutters. Or maybe there will be some other squeaky wheel demanding grease, such as a failing major appliance, or maybe our rotting kitchen floor will collapse.

So I guess that's why a budget seems impossible -- we really need to just spend and spend and spend until we get the houses under control. I'm still going to set aside $1500/month, but other than that, I probably need to spend the rest of our earnings as soon as they hit our joint account. Whenever I miss Rocket Boy and wish I didn't have to be a single parent, I think about all the things we're able to pay for now, and that helps. A little.