So, I didn’t post Sunday, because that’s my day of rest.

I didn’t post Monday, because it was Memorial Day.

BUT I had no excuse for not posting Tuesday and Wednesday, other than I really was up against a wall–totally out of cash, and totally discouraged.  So my creative juices were stopped in their tracks.

I had a job in NY yesterday and was able to get  there and back cashless by parking in the afternoon, when they stop checking the cash boxes, and by walking across town to my work site.  

And when I got home still no check.

So, let’s talk about this, because my steady, daily posts have been so motivating to me, and I don’t like the stumbling.  Let’s see if I can learn from it.

1. It’s foolish to be so close to the edge that one late payment pushes me over.  My Dave Ramsey Baby Step #1 ($1000 in an emergency fund) actually went to cover expenses.  
2. I need to build up a much bigger “hills and valleys” fund.  This is a little money set aside to cover the uncertainties of the freelancers paycheck.  I really should have at LEAST $10,000 in that fund to make me feel even slightly secure.
3. There may be a point at which I need to get a more regular paycheck–i.e., go back to a regular job.  I’d hate to do that, but I have to really do some hard thinking about what’s going to serve me best in the long run.  I’m doing well as a freelancer, but when I started I had far less debt–like about $3200 less debt per month.  If I had that extra money every month, it would make all the difference.  If I had had the debt I have NOW before I quit, I never would have quit.   In fact, I didn’t quit until all my credit cards were at 0 balance, but then life happened.   So I really have to search my heart and decide if the stress, the damage to my credit score and the uncertainty about reaching my financial goals is worth the beauty and freedom of self-employment.   Bummer.

In any case, I hope the check comes today.  Oooh, how I hate having to say that!  That very phrase is “poverty mentality talk.”   

But I’m going to take a deep breath and resume my daily debt reduction program tomorrow.  I’ll cash in a few coins or something.  I’m sure there’s extra money lying around that I don’t know about.

Quote for the day:

To succeed you must first improve, to improve you must first practice, to practice you must first learn, and to learn you must first fail. –Wesley Woo

Anyway, it’s a cheap payment for today, but I’ll take what I can get.  This weekend will be a frugal one.  In the old days, it didn’t matter how much cash I had–I’d just charge everything.    Now it’s different.  I don’t have, I don’t spend. Simple.

Quote for the day is actually from the classic Christian work, Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis:

Do not have that which may entangle thee, and deprive thee of inward liberty.

I adore my current work status as a freelance consultant.  It fits me to a tee, but the one bummer is not knowing for sure when money that you have worked for and billed will get to you.   I’m working on putting a system in place that will cover me for more than one month.   But it’s not easy when you have a bill to pay every day of the month.  Oh, for the simplicity of just a couple of bills!  Someday, maybe I’ll have just a property tax bill, insurance bill, telephone bill, electric bill, and water & sewer bill.   

There’s always something to be thankful for.  If you can’t pay your bills, you can be thankful you’re not one of your creditors. 

I have to laugh.  I used my Home Depot card to charge stuff for the house that the family purchased next door for my MIL.  It was a foreclosure and the kitchen was in pretty bad shape, so we redid it.  When I think about the time I spent hunting down the deals and being so proud of myself for getting 10% off appliances, and spending time redeeming delivery rebates what I realize now is that all that effort was negated by a 22% interest rate on $7000 worth of debt that will take me two years to pay off.    Penny wise, pound foolish.

Quote of the day:

“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.”  –Gloria Steinem

In looking over my food budget for this month, I admit that I exceeded it by 62.44.  Now, here comes the rationalization:

1. This includes the food for my four kids when they came down to spend a weekend with my mother-in-law for her 85th birthday.
2. My budget is 367.00, which I meant to raise for May to $400.  If I had actually done that, I’d have overspent by only 29.44.  
3. My last shopping trip included food that will last me into June.

OK, but still.  If we are to operate on cash, being 62.44 over could mess us up for our other expenditures.  

In general, I think we do pretty well on our food budget.  I think the things that contribute to our being able to stick pretty well to under $50 a week, per person, are:

1. I’m mostly vegetarian, and I love bean dishes and other non-animal protein sources.  
2. Over the past couple of years, I have been greatly influenced by the work of Michael Pollan, so I tend to shop the perimeter of the supermarket and I TRY to stay away from processed foods.   I’ve ACTUALLY LEARNED HOW TO COOK!!!  (I have always been a rotten cook).
3. DH and I are not super-duper fussy.  We buy stuff on sale and don’t insist on the more expensive alternatives.
4. Actually, I shop by shopping the sales and then plan my menu accordingly.  It makes meal-planning kind of an adventure.
5. I don’t drink sodas or any other prepared beverages.  I stick with water run through my Brita filter, or homemade iced tea.  
6. We’ve cut down on junk food.  
7. One way I plan meals is to see what’s left in the fridge, especially perishables that should be eaten soon, and google those ingredients.  I always find some neat recipe that utilizes just that.   

Quote of the day:

Eat food
Not too much
Mostly plants
                         –Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food 

Most of the personal finance gurus, like Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman rightfully advise people to follow their heads and not their hearts when it comes to deciding on schools–and this goes for the parents as well as the children.  All kinds of emotions are at play.   Kids want to go where they can have a memorable college life.  Parents want their kids to have the absolute best.

In my case, I had received a free, carte blanche college experience, thanks to my grandfather who funded all his grandchildren’s education.  My mother wouldn’t have been able to give me that.   I do not take for granted one bit the blessing my grandfather gave me. So I didn’t want to “demote” my own kids.  I wanted them to have that experience.   

In spite of my willingness to down the champagne on a beer budget, two of my DSs went the community college route and transfered to the State university, which is an excellent school.  They were moderate students, and they felt this was the best way to go for them.    They were so right.

But DD was the classic “good girl” in school–on all the committees, officer of all the clubs, National Honor Society, State golf champion, you name it.  So I gave her that tabula rosa.  She wound up going to a private liberal arts college.  

At first, I was able to cash flow it, because our Expected Family Contribution on the FAFSA was pretty low, thanks to the boys already being in college.  But when the second son graduated, my DD was in her junior year, and WHAM!  I was faced with paying for a good share of the 40 a year grand for her last two years in college.  

So I did what any red-blooded American would do–I took out a bunch of loans. Three under my name, and DD took out two under hers, which I pledged to pay back.  After all, I couldn’t welch on that tabula rosa, could I?

In hindsight, I would have struck a deal with DD BEFORE she started looking at colleges.  I would have rationally figured out the maximum I would be willing to pay and let her know that the rest would be on her.   AND I would encourage her not to fall back on student loans, which one of my colleagues calls “her second mortgage”–because with their typical longevity and impact on lifestyle, they really do carry the same weight as a home.

I saw a clip of Suze Orman’s “Can I Afford It?” show (see the podcast for the May 1 show in the link above) where a girl was in tears, because Suze sided with the dad, who had prepaid tuition at a state university. The girl had her sights set on an expensive private school.   Suze asked her what her career goals were, and she said “communications.”  As all of us liberal arts majors know, a communications major will most likely make it difficult for the girl to cover her student loan payments.   She’ll have to scrimp on housing, transportation, entertainment–all sorts of things while she pays off 75k worth of debt.   

As for me, I’ll be chip, chip, chipping away at $60k throughout these 2000 days.    I don’t begrudge my daughter the gift I gave her at all.   Thankfully, she’s offered to pick up her loan payments when her income rises.  And I’ll take her up that–if nothing else, just to help level the playing field between her and the boys whose education was just as good, but a heck of a lot cheaper.

Quote of the day–one of my favorites:

If a man empties his pocketbook into his head, no man can take it.–Benjamin Franklin

To which I must add:

But if a man’s head belongs to Wachovia, he has no brain.

I owe the IRS because the first year I became a consultant I did the thing that I said I would NEVER do, and that’s ignore quarterly payments.   I know how difficult it is to try to catchup with the IRS after the fact.  I’ve BTDT, which makes it so perplexing to me as to why I let it happen again.   So here I am with a 400 monthly payment.  Right now, I’ll be fine if I pay it off within 24 months, but I plan to kill it in a month or two.  

My new system to be better at this in the future is to build into my Excel rolling budget sheet a formula that calculates 30% off of all my income and puts it in the line item called, appropriately enough, “Taxes.”  Then I build my budget on what’s left. Theoretically that should make it very easy for me to keep up.  30% is a lot.  25% is what most people recommend if you own a small business.  But if figure, if I wind up with 5% extra for me, that’ll be great.  I can throw it in a savings account.  

Quote of the day:

It’s income tax time again, Americans:  time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta. — Dave Barry

$10 represents what I probably would have spent if I had been home today. $10 is a reasonable price for a day’s worth of meals.  But today, my DD asked me to help her our by bringing a bed to Brooklyn for her, along with other things she needs while she weathers a transition between roommates.

As a thank-you, she took me and her helping friend, to lunch at a very funky place in Williamsburg called Moto, where I had a wonderful brie, pear, and honey panini.

So, in honor of the fact that I kind of sang for my supper today, Household Bank gets $10 from me.

I’m proud of this DD because she makes end meet, living in Brooklyn, working in Manhattan as a graphic designer for a non-profit organization, earning $26,000 a year.  And she doesn’t whine or complain about what she WISHED she had.  What she does do is gather her resourcefulness, asking friends for help, finding ways to use what she has, creating an adorable personal style based on thrift store finds, and choosing to spend her money on what her life energy is worth.  I never see her frittering, or squandering, or aspiring towards meaningless material purchases.  Her latest greatest purchase was a second-hand bike, which she takes to the streets for food, fun, and healthy exercise.  Isn’t it great when you aspire to be like your children?

Quote of the day:

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not misery but the very foundation of refinement–William Morris

I have a busy day–not much time to blog, so we’ll jump right to the quote of the day:

If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments. — Flip Wilson

In looking at my progress for the last 30 days, is it true that I paid down $4,464? Doesn’t seem possible.  As I continue on this path, I’m really looking for ways to change my lifestyle to speed up this progress even more, maybe even drastically.  After all, life is an adventure, and I don’t want my debt to be the razor wire around me, keeping me from experiencing these adventures!

Quote of the day:

The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom.  It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace.  Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear.–E.F. Schumacher