Jana Says

Living life from cover to cover

My husband and I don’t fight about money. Here’s why.

by Jana 24 Comments

My husband and I rarely fight about money. I swear that’s entirely true.

It used to not be this way. We used to have pretty severe battles over it. You know those fights? The ones where you start trying to rationally talk about money until one of you says something that makes the other angry and the conversation spirals out of control until you’re not fighting about money anymore but something completely unrelated and you can’t stop screaming? Yeah, we’ve had one or two of those. They occurred primarily because we just were not on the same page about a) how we balanced our checkbook; b) what our goals were; and c) we had absolutely no wiggle room at all. The last one was mainly due to poor planning. The rest were simply due to the fact that we operate in completely different ways (and I must point out, my way is logical. His is not. I swear that’s entirely true).

avoid money fights

Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of fighting. Tired of being confused, frustrated and broke. We had to get in same book, never mind the same page. So, one day, using my rules for a peaceful budget meeting, we sat down and figured things out. Here’s what we did:

  • I showed him how much money we were wasting on small $3 and $4 purchases. One month, it added up to over $300 or so. It was disturbing, actually. He finally got the point that small purchases make big differences and agreed to stop making them if…
  • …I agreed to figure out how to give us each an “allowance” every payday. Part of why he was spending that money was because he didn’t feel like he had any freedom in our money. He also felt that since we work our asses off, we deserve a little bit of it. I told him I understood and conceded that perhaps an allowance of some sorts every payday wouldn’t hurt.
  • We set goals and target dates (or rough estimates of target dates) for paying off our debt. We also agreed on a plan for paying off our debt. One that we formulated together, not one of us dictating to the other how it would get done. Having mutually agreed upon goals and dates prevented both of us from feeling that we had no control.
  • We agreed that I would be completely responsible for handling our day to day expenses and he was responsible for more long-term stuff like investing (since I don’t understand it at all). Neither one would make unilateral decisions but the bulk of the heavy lifting in each area was designated to one person.
  • We developed a budget. It wasn’t perfect but it was a start. And it was better than the abstract nonsense we had been using prior.
  • We decided that having a his, hers and ours system was going to be best for us. We had a joint account that was used for everything but my husband felt like he was being lorded over and I was tired of asking him for receipts (remember how I said we had totally different styles? Well, mine involves balancing my account whenever I make a purchase or withdrawal and his involves doing what he wants and hoping for the best). Neither one of us had ever let our individual accounts close but we decided that our allowances would be deposited into our personal accounts and that would be our no questions asked money. Whatever we wanted to do with the money in our individual accounts was just fine.

 
I think the last point is what really prevents the arguments. We know that our joint bills and expenses are met and the fact that we each have some cash to use how we want gives us that feeling of freedom and independence. It’s nice to buy nail polish or books or lunch with friends without having to be accountable or feel like I’m wasting our money. I know he feels the same way.

Working together is a huge relief. There are no surprises in our budget or our expenses; everything is open and up for discussion. We’re meeting our goals. We don’t hide money or purchases from each other, and there’s never any lying about paychecks (I know people who lie to their spouses about how much money they make. I find this disturbing on so many levels). It nice to know that when it comes to financial matters, the arguments we do have are few and far between. And never involve tangential craziness.

Most of the time…

My childhood DID affect my finances

by Jana 30 Comments

There is one topic I hate talking about more than any other. This topic, although extremely influential in shaping my attitudes and beliefs towards money, is one that makes me squeamish and uncomfortable. I’m not necessarily embarrassed by it, because it’s not something that I could have prevented (or caused) but it’s not something I wave a banner about. What the heck am I talking about?

I’m talking about my childhood.

After almost 10 months of blogging about personal finance, I’ve successfully managed to avoid talking in depth about my childhood. I’ve offered glimpses of it (see here and here for examples) but I haven’t gone into too much detail. On purpose. Because unlike a lot of personal finance bloggers, I did not grow up lower middle class or poor. My upbringing was quite the opposite. It was decidedly upper middle class, with all the trappings that go with it.  I’m not saying this to brag or show off; I’m merely stating this because, as Ashley from Money Talks Coaching points out, your childhood affects your money habits. And she’s absolutely right.

A little background

I grew up in a predominately upper middle class suburb on Long Island.  I had friends that lived in million dollar homes and my parents’ house, although no mansion, wasn’t small. My siblings and I had our own bedrooms and we had a pool in our backyard, which was pretty damn big for the suburbs. I had one of those lavish bat mitzvahs you read about (because that’s what everyone else did).  Family vacations to Aruba happened every year, as did sending my siblings and me to camp. [Read more…]

Unsupportive friends? Let ’em go.

by Jana 22 Comments

Addie from Life and My Debts recently posted that her friends are completely unsupportive of her desire to become debt free. Their lack of support had her questioning her intentions and left her wondering if she’s bizarre for wanting to eliminate her debt. She started to think that she should just accept her debt and not worry about it for the next 14 years. The whole post made me quite sad. Why? Because, 10 years ago, Addie could have been me.

When I was 25, like Addie is, I didn’t understand the first thing about finances. I didn’t care that I had debt because everyone had debt! I didn’t think twice about using a credit card for things I couldn’t afford in cash and I certainly didn’t care about getting my then-fiancé’s (now husband) student loans paid off (after all, they were his. Not mine). I figured my credit card debt would take care of itself one day and living paycheck to paycheck with no real budget was the way to go. I had a full-time job with benefits, a car, a nice apartment…the works. My friends were all the same way and none of us at anytime ever discussed what it would be like to not have debt.

Come to think of it, we never really discussed money at all. Not in any sort of productive way anyway. When we would talk about money, it was which beers were on tap and what the cover charge was at our favorite bars and how much that really cute shirt cost. In my 20s, I never sat around with my friends discussing the importance of saving for a down payment or investing in our retirement funds or just using cash. For me and my friends, finances weren’t important. As long as we were doing what we wanted, it didn’t matter how we funded it. [Read more…]

The day the kitchen floor melted

by Jana 27 Comments

My kitchen floor is tiled, DIY-style. Pretty impressive, right? It probably won’t be once you find out the reason why.

When we moved in, our kitchen floor was a lovely laminate. Not the nicest in the world, but certainly not the worst. For the amount of time we planned on being in the house (we’ll get into that another day), it was sufficient. Sturdy enough to handle our family’s traffic yet easy enough to clean.  It was also neutral enough that we could pretty much choose any color paint for the walls. A few other cosmetic changes and our kitchen would be exactly what we wanted in our starter house. Simple and easy.

Until the day I melted the floor.

It was totally an accident and it happened in a fit of sheer stupidity. I was cooking dinner (salmon) in a pan on the stove. I turned away for a minute or so (fine, I forgot what I was doing and started on something else) and the next thing I knew, the salmon started to burn. Like really burn. And it stunk. And it was smoking. And I wanted it out of the house before the smoke detector went off and my dog had a coronary.

At this point, I had two choices. Choice one: throw the pan in the sink, fight with the window above the sink and let the smoke and smell dissipate that way. Choice two: put the pan on the deck. Which do you think I chose? That’s right. Not the first choice, which made sense. Nope, my dumb ass went for option 2. Almost.

Our deck, like most decks, is made of wood. In my panicked state I started to think “Ohmygod. If I put the pan on the deck, the deck will catch fire! I can’t put the pan on the deck!” So I didn’t. Instead, I opened the door to the deck (which is off our kitchen) and put the pan on the floor inside so the smoke and smell would blow out the door. Problem solved!

Not really. [Read more…]

Self-confidence? What’s that?

by Jana 35 Comments

Sometimes I feel like a fraud.

When I write, a lot of times I try to encourage, inspire and educate my readers (as well as entertain). I like to provide motivation and cultivate the belief in yourself that you can do anything you want. Whether it’s pay off debt, lose weight, leave a bad marriage, start a new job—whatever challenge you’re facing, I hope that I can provide some encouragement.

Except there’s one problem. I can’t do it for myself.

That’s right. I have the least amount of confidence in myself of any person you will ever meet. I can’t think of one thing in my life—save for my daughter—that I’ve done and said “holy crap, that’s good!” I’ve been pleased enough with my work but I don’t believe anything I do is exceptional. Nor do I believe that I’ll ever succeed in a way that I deem sufficient.

This self-defeating attitude is why I didn’t start writing again until I was 31. When I was younger, I desperately wanted to be a writer. Of anything. Books, plays, movies. You name it, I wanted to write it.  I was told that I was good but I never felt like I was good enough. I constantly compared myself to those I deemed more talented and convinced myself that I would never be as good as them (I still do this, by the way). I took criticism very personally; rather than as a way to improve, I saw it as an insult to me and my abilities. I carried that around with me through high school and eventually, when I got to college, I opted for a safe major rather than one that would make me happy.  Being a criminal justice major made it easy to quit creative writing.

Well, almost. It didn’t make it easy rather than provide a convenient excuse. As a CJ major, I only had to write research papers. I’m good at that. And, on more than one occasion, my writing abilities made up for a sheer lack of understanding of the material (like my upper level Political Science class or, the reason I’m not a lawyer). I always loved writing papers. I could knock out a ten page paper in 2 hours and get an A. Writing just came that easy to me. But I always shook it off as no big deal. I certainly wasn’t the only one who could do that and my ability to do it was not that special. At least that’s what I told myself.

I kept up this way of thinking for a solid 10 years. I would lament over the fact that I never became a writer but told myself that I’d never be successful and it was best that I stuck with my safe government job. Writers, at least most of them, don’t make a lot of money and I had a house, child, bills and debt. There was no way I could give up my steady paycheck in favor of a pipe dream, especially without the talent to back it up.  But then…blogs happened.

I started blogging in 2008 (on sites that I will never share. They’re that bad) just as a way to entertain myself. It was a cheap, easy way to fill the void that was created when I stopped writing all those years ago. I let myself entertain the notion that even if I couldn’t make a living writing, there was no reason I had to stop altogether. It could just be a hobby. Something to keep my skills fresh, my creativity alive and my spirit happy. Which it did at first.

Then it evolved into what it is now.  Blogging has become more than just a hobby or a vehicle to achieve my dream of becoming a full-time writer. It’s become a way of life; it’s become part of my identity. I have grown so much from blogging. But putting my writing out there comes with a price. Every time I hit publish, I throw up a little. Because pushing publish means that my writing is out there. I second guess everything I’ve said, every punctuation mark, every opinion I’ve stated. And let’s not even go into the agony that is creating a title. Yet I still go through with it simply because I need to.

For someone with no self confidence, it’s terrifying to think about someone else’s opinion of my posts. I question all the time if a reader is thinking “this chick sucks. What business does she have writing in a public space? This drivel is nothing but eye pollution!” Believe me, I think that it happens way more often than it probably does (mainly because I typically say it in my own head first. I think it’s a defense mechanism; if I say it, then it hurts less if someone else says it, too).  I still think it though.

The most difficult part is convincing myself that it’s not true. I desperately want to agree with those who tell me it’s not but after 34 years of thinking that I pale in comparison to everyone else, it’s hard to change my thinking entirely. That’s why I’m telling you all of this. Because when I’m encouraging you to believe in yourself that you can get out of debt or stay on track with your finances, I’m also saying it to myself.

We’re in this together.

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