Jana Says

Living life from cover to cover

Letting go of guilt

by Jana 19 Comments

One emotion I am excellent at showing is guilt. I feel guilty all the time. If I’m watching TV, I feel guilty that I’m not cleaning my house. If I’m cleaning my house, I feel guilty that I’m not working on my book. If I’m working on my book, I feel guilty that I’m not working on the blog. If I’m spending time with my daughter, I feel guilty that I’m ignoring the dogs. If I suggest doing something that I want to do, I feel guilty that I’m not taking anyone else’s feelings into consideration.  And on and on and on. It’s kind of disgusting, actually.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize guilt is kind of a wasted emotion. It’s paralyzing, it’s not productive, it’s not helpful and quite frankly, it causes a lot of my anxiety. There is nothing about guilt that makes me feel good (except maybe the guilt caused by eating a cupcake that makes me go to the gym. Then again, should I really feel guilty that I ate a cupcake?). As such, I’m working on eliminating this extreme guilt from my life. The first thing to go? Financial guilt.

For way too many years, I’ve felt guilty about so many aspects of my financial life. I don’t give myself permission to be proud of what I’ve done; instead, I feel guilty and berate myself for things I didn’t do. I don’t allow myself to feel okay with spending money on myself; instead, I tell myself that I’m taking money away from my family for frivolous things. But no more! From now on, I absolve myself from feeling guilt for the following things:

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Exercise your finances (or something like that)

by Jana 35 Comments

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Not my legs. Or my feet. And for the record, those shoes are creepy.

As part of my non-medicated therapy, I’ve been required to start exercising. Apparently there’s some link between depression and exercise (and sleep, which is essential and I definitely don’t get enough of that either) and my therapist ordered me to start exercising. Fortunately, we have a membership to the YMCA that I can use to fulfill this order.

When I first started exercising, I was using the cardio equipment exclusively. It was easy and a great way to get back into the routine of sweating on purpose.  There were no combinations to remember, no other people around (well, except the other people on the equipment), no instructor. Just me, the elliptical machine, my iPod and my sweat. It was blissful. Until I got bored.

There are only so many days in a row you can use the elliptical machine without wanting to tear your hair out. It was making me remember why I gave up exercising in the first place (oh, right. And I’m kind of lazy, too). Then it dawned on me that the Y also has group exercise classes, which, up until 3 weeks ago, I’d actively avoided for a number of reasons. The main reason? I was completely and utterly embarrassed.

I was embarrassed because I have absolutely no coordination. At all. I routinely walk into walls and fall down stairs and drop things for no good reason. I spill food on my clothes every day and if a day goes by that I don’t trip over my own giant feet, it’s a good day. I can’t dance, am not flexible and sometimes, right and left confuse me. I am absolutely the last person you want to stand next to in an exercise class (or near on a flight of stairs or in a hallway, but I digress). Then I had another revelation.

I didn’t care.

Although I experienced a tremendous amount of trepidation the day I stepped foot in my first class, I reminded myself that I was not going to attend those classes to impress anyone. I was going to those classes because I wanted to exercise in a manner that was fun and didn’t make me feel like I was on a hamster wheel. Attending those classes was intended to make me feel good about myself, and if other people were better than me, so what? Most of them have been doing it a lot longer and, at one point, they were just like me. A complete noob. A bumbling, uncoordinated buffoon just trying to make it to the end of class without passing out. But as time went on and they went to more and more classes, they became better.

And I’m 98% sure that they don’t care what I look like doing the routines.  Because they’re focused on themselves, making sure they get the most out of the class and they don’t have the time or energy to worry about me.

I think we need to apply this attitude to our finances. No matter where we are in our financial journey, there will always be someone who’s ahead of us. There’s always going to be someone we’re looking at and thinking “Wow, if I only had her income (or his savings account or their house or whatever), I’d be set”.  But most times, what we fail to look at is the hard work it took to get there. Almost no one becomes financially successful without starting at zero and putting in the hard work. They all had to start somewhere, and for most of them, the decision to be in control of their finance is that somewhere. There’s no reason you can’t make that decision, too.

To those who are paying off debt, please know this.  Anyone who begins a debt repayment journey walks into the metaphorical room feeling like a lumbering oaf. We all think that everyone is staring at us, judging us, making fun of us.  I can assure you that they’re not. They’re most likely looking at you with admiration for trying to gain control of your situation. And for a lot of them, they’re remembering how it felt to be in your sneakers.  But don’t let your fear of what others may think prevent you from doing it.

Because even if you fall flat on your face, you’ve tried. And then you get back up and keep trying.  And rest assured, no matter how awkward you think you look, you look better than I do when I’m at Zumba.

Trust me on that one.

 

Book Review: Wealth Watchers

by Jana 5 Comments

I recently had the chance to read Alice Wood’s “Wealth Watchers”. I was a bit skeptical at first since the cover of the book says “A Simple Program to Help You Spend Less and Save More”; after all, I’ve gotten pretty good at managing my money and I have a pretty good handle on what we spend. But I’ll tell you what. I liked the book AND I learned something.

The concept of Wealth Watchers is based on the Weight Watchers program. Instead of points, you get a Daily Disposable Income target. In other words, you create a budget based on your fixed and variable expenses and, based on that, you can calculate how much income you have to spend per day without going into debt. It’s pretty simple.

Another component to Wealth Watchers is tracking. Ms. Wood advocates writing down each and every purchase you make (and provides complimentary journal pages at the end of the book. There’s also an app available for free. The app is easy to use and makes tracking your spending really, really easy) in order to stay on target. Writing down your purchases forces you to do two things: one, really think about whether or not the purchase is “tracking worthy” and two, really think about whether or not the purchase is even necessary.

Ms. Wood does not, at any point, suggest that you cut out any item from your budget. Rather, she advocates figuring out how to incorporate everything that’s important to you into your budget by calculating your DDI. Knowing that number means you can allow yourself that Starbucks or lunch with co-workers. As long as it’s in your budget and won’t put you into debt, you can have it.

Of importance: this is not a how-to manual for getting out of debt. This is a book that is geared towards managing your money and affording what’s important. Ms. Wood is clearly averse to debt but she does not give directions or instructions on how to eliminate what debt you do have. However, if you are trying to get out of debt, this program is a great tool because it gives you a clear picture of where your money is going and a way to ensure that you only use that money. Since I believe that having a budget is one of the key elements towards getting out of debt, Wealth Watchers fits that philosophy perfectly.

One of the elements of the book I enjoyed the most, besides the testimonials from people who’ve used the program, is Ms. Wood’s infusion of personal examples into her program components. She tells how she’s used the program to help her get her finances in order after a brain injury, and how it’s made her and her family more conscious of their spending. Since they are all accountable to each other, it makes them more successful at following the program. It also makes her relatable and real instead of some expert who’s never known what it’s like to be in debt or have to watch her spending.  Knowing this makes it easier to listen to what she has to say.

I believe that if I had this program available to me when I first started controlling my finances, I would have used it. In fact, I’m considering using it now that I’m in the midst of my no spend May and due to some big changes that are in store for my family (no, I’m not pregnant. We know that’s virtually impossible. But it is something pretty big. Well, big for me). It’s really an easy, simple to follow program and I do recommend at least checking out the book from the library or visiting the website.

Note: I was not compensated for this review and the opinions are entirely mine. However, I did receive a free copy of the book. 

Why we’ll never be a 1 car family

by Jana 19 Comments

I loathe cars. Everything about them annoys me. Repairs, getting gas, sitting in traffic, shopping for them, regular maintenance…all of it. I dream of living in a city with good public transportation and having a membership to ZipCar or something like that. But alas, that is not my life. No, my life is that of a 2 car family. And no matter how much I wish to change it, it is just not practical for my family to only have 1 car.

Even when we were in the throes of paying down our debt, we had to maintain 2 cars. It was expensive and annoying but we had to do it, mainly for these reasons:

  • Public transportation where I live is horrible. We have no rail system save for a few trains running to Philadelphia and a few stops before that. If you work in the northern part of the state and work in the middle or southern part of the state (like my husband) there is no way to take a train. And the buses? Are a joke. They’re never on time and traveling by bus takes forever. When I was in grad school, I had a professor who did a study of how long it took to go grocery shopping using just the buses. She found that it took 3 hours to travel to and from the store. Considering I live a 5 minute car ride from the nearest supermarket, it doesn’t make sense to take the bus. 
  • My husband and I work in complete opposite directions. Our house is in the middle of our offices. Although carpooling would be fantastic, and we did do it when we both worked in the same city, it just doesn’t work now. There is no conceivable way for me to get him to work and then myself to work on time (not to mention getting the kid to school) and without spending a freaking fortune in gas. Should I quit my job, it becomes a bit more feasible to give up one car but I highly doubt that it is practical. 
  • I live within walking distance of absolutely nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I live near a HUGE park but I have to play Frogger across 2 major roads to get there. I’ve never been good at arcade games, especially not in the real life version. Although I have what to do at my house and my very small neighborhood has a playground, it’s easy for my daughter and I to get a little stir crazy. Having a car means that we can go to the library or the park or wherever we need to go without having to drive all over the state to get the car from my husband (or drive him to and from work). It saves our sanity and gives us choices. 
  • I have major paranoia issues. This is also the reason I still have a landline. I am terrified that something bad is going to happen and I’m going to be trapped (and without a phone). If we are a 1 car family, that means my husband has our car (since I’m home right now) and I become helpless in the event of an emergency. That is not something I can handle. 
If my family were in a very dire financial situation, I would let one of our cars go. Maybe. At this point, we own both of our cars and the only savings we’d get is in gas and insurance which would make some difference but not enough to give up a car entirely. Unless we wind up in a situation like we did with my husband’s previous car (which was my car from high school); repairing that car cost more than the car was worth and we were spending that money about every 4 months. Then it would make sense to go down to 1 car.
Hopefully that day won’t come and we’ll never have to make that decision. So, for now, we’ll stick with our 2 cars. No matter how ridiculously annoying they are.

7 other things every kid should experience. And these are almost free!

by Jana 14 Comments

There have been an abundance of “every kid should” posts floating around the blogosphere lately (specifically this one. Which is what completely set me off. It’s been that kind of week). While I get that the intent of the posts is to…well, I’m not sure what the intent of the posts are. I read them and I find myself saying “Hmm. Yes. OK. That’s an interesting idea. But what about parents who don’t (fill in the blank)?” I want to say to these authors “Hey, your middle class is showing” and I really want to know how they arrived at the decision of what “every kid should do” (of course, I don’t).

Basically, I’ve been getting irritated at these posts. Mainly because they’re nothing but nonsense designed to make parents feel terrible if they don’t do those arbitrarily picked activities (you know, because parents aren’t already made to feel guilty about enough things). So I figured I’d come up with my own list of 7 things every kid should experience. The activities are just as arbitrarily picked but I can assure you that they are a bit more attainable for all parents than snow or farm life:

  • Being read to. I don’t care if it’s at the library for storytime, from a teacher, at daycare or from his own parent. Every kid needs to be read to. There is something that happens in a kid’s mind when he’s listening to a story that is just amazing to watch. Not only that, a book can inspire quality conversations. 
  • Playing in a park. When most people envision a park, they envision sprawling field, replete with fancy equipment, picnic tables and children, laughing and screaming in their own natural habitat. But it doesn’t have to be that fancy. Some of my favorite park memories are at the park next to my grandparents’ apartment building in Queens. That park was concrete and had about 4 pieces of equipment (most of which were covered in graffiti). But it was my favorite.  
  • Having a birthday party. I believe that birthdays are incredibly special and deserve to be celebrated. What’s nice is that a birthday party doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. A few dollars on cake mix and icing, some handmade signs and decorations, and family and friends. Even something that small will make a kid feel special and honored that her birthday is recognized and cause for celebration. 
  • Getting in trouble. Kids need to push boundaries, test limits and all that jazz. But they also need to get in trouble when they are wrong. Coddling and ignoring their behavior and poor choices does no good. Every child needs to experience getting into trouble. And suffering the consequences. 
  • Coloring (or any arts and crafts). Put crayons in a kid’s hand and see what she creates. It’s almost magical. In fact, if a kid in your life starts coloring, join her. See what you create. And see how relaxed you are when you’re done. Almost as relaxing as a spa, and substantially cheaper, too. 
  • Music. There is a reason VH1 is (or was) trying to save the music. It’s that important. 
  • Having a pet. I concede that pets are a huge responsibility and parents usually wind up assuming the majority of their care. But I fully believe that kids should have a pet. If you don’t want your kid to have a pet of the 4 legged variety, get him a fish. Having a fish still teaches responsibility and all that good stuff. And there’s no mess to clean up. 
Parents, what would you add to that list? Are there any must-haves for your kids?

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