makin a wave where i can
temporary layoffs! good times… easy credit rip offs! good times… scratching and survivin! good times… hangin in a chow line! good tiiiii-himes! ain’t we lucky we got ‘em…
Ain’t I lucky I got good times! Why is every pay day an event! That’s just hilarious, cause I don’t know why. Every payday I’m broke before I get my check, just like my mom. We both know where the money is going before we get it. Electric company, credit card companies, housing, food, etc. The end, right?
Wrong.
One of those places that my paycheck is committed to before I get my hands on it is my own piece of daydream - my savings account. There isn’t much in there, right now. I’ve had more before. But it’s growing. It is a symbol of what I can do - be wise enough to put some away. It is a symbol of my parents’ accomplishment. If every generation is supposed to do better than the next, then I am on my way.
I didn’t grow up in the projects hand-to-mouth or anything. With the exception of time my mom spent full time with me before I started school and occasional layoffs, both my parents have always worked during my lifetime. They’re in their second home as owners. I never needed for any essential thing, be it clothes, food, education, or recreation. They sent me to private schools from sixth grade on, and college was not an option for me, it was an expectation. This differed a little from their upbringing - they both have GEDs. But education was paramount in my home. They knew how important it would be to my future. They’re awesome people, and I thank God for them. But Lord help ‘em, they don’t have a savings. No thousands tucked away here or there. No retirement funds. No stock portfolios. Just insurance, a few pensions vested to come from various old jobs, paychecks every two weeks, the occasional lottery tickets, and hopes that Social Security won’t implode during their lifetimes.
My dad is so adamant about my retirement planning that he wears on me every chance he gets to start something, ANYthing, NOW, before I get older. He and my mom are in their fifties now, and even though that’s the new forties, it’s still a decade away from retirement. They figure that they’ll just keep working, from now until they just can’t anymore, to pay the mortgage, the electric bill, a secondary insurer to Medicare, food, etc. It’s distressing to think of them getting out the door to work hobbling on canes. But when I try to encourage them to save and invest while they still can, they say they can’t make any room in their budget for it. Then I go home to visit and I see new appliances, new curtains, new landscaping, and the latest flea market bargains.
Know why it’s taken me so long to make a retirement account a priority, even though I’ve known as much as a decade ago that starting young is best? Poverty, and the wrong attitude. In undergrad I didn’t have enough to put to the side (which is how started to I get into all that debt). In grad school, I didn’t make any money to put to the side. And now, I’m in so much debt, I want all of what little money I have to be highly liquid in case of emergency, so that I don’t get into more debt. It’s hard to imagine plunking down hundreds or thousands of dollars on a future that’s decades away when my debt is weighing on my choices RIGHT NOW.
Know when I woke up? When I found out that you could start a Roth with as little as $250 - or even $25 increments which get invested once the balance is up to $250. Know why that got to me? Because not even two months earlier, I purchased a digital media player for $249 plus 7% tax. Nuff said. From that point on, savings and retirement became affordable and do-able. Every paycheck I get says so. My older self will thank me.
