The Hustle of Sistah Ant

All my bills are paid through the next two weeks, and I get paid weekly.  I’m fresh off of meeting a big savings goal.  And as usual, I hate most of what’s in my closet.  All my shoes are hurting my feet.  I need some more unmentionables.  And I’m craving a certain scent from that certain store.  Today’s paycheck is burning a hole in my pocket.  I want to try out the new(ish) outlet mall, and to be honest, I want to blow the whole wad.

Never mind that all week long, I’ve been thinking about how I have been slacking on IRA contributions.  And that there are some more stocks I want to buy for my ShareBuilder account.  And that there is still the not-so-minor matter of beefing up my Emergency Fund, you know, in preparation for that house I want to buy so badly.  I should really just hit up the laundromat and the dry cleaners before going out to augment my wardrobe, something like the ubiquitous "don’t shop when you’re hungry" advice.  Then, after I struggle to put all my clean clothes away, I can reevaluate whether or not I need to let this paycheck burn through my closet.  (Did I mention that I love to pack up clothes I don’t like anymore and give them away to give myself more space?)

Having money is hard.  It was easier when I was broke and couldn’t spend.  Now I can spend but I’m supposed to force myself not to for the sake of other goals.  Shoot.  Can I, just this once in the last 9 years, be irresponsible?

After my battle with my mp3 software the other night, my mp3 player is better, but not quite OK.  It syncs music now, but it still cuts off for no reason.  I’ll keep it around for a while but only it’s a matter of time before I’ll either have to buy another or just go without (right, like that’s going to happen.)

My laptop is being worked on by Mister Ant as we speak.  Bless his heart.  I’m so glad to have a techie around.

The funny thing?  We still haven’t replaced the remote control batteries.  I thought that would be first to get fixed.

My feet hurt.  They’ve hurt off and on for years.  Due to bad genes and a stint during college where I wore 4 inch boots, the bone that joins my big toe to the rest of my foot is badly aligned and it often aches.  As I see it, there are only two things I can do to keep my feet cute, pain-free and healthy: one thing is to wear shoes that aren’t bad for me and the other is to get surgery to fix the alignment of that bone.  The first one, which I’ve been relying on for at least the last seven years, is hard enough as it is.  I find it hard to find affordable shoes that are both sensible and appropriate for work.  But the second one is getting harder and harder to ignore as an option.

I still try to pay less for shoes, but I’m very attentive to the quality of the shoes and how comfortable they are.  At this point I only own two pairs of shoes that I can wear without hurting my feet - a pair of sandals and my tennis shoes - and I can’t wear either to work.  I wear a pair of pumps around the office, because the good shoes aren’t appropriate.  This little game won’t last forever.  I think I need to get a doctor’s care, and I fear that the longer I wait, the worse the problem will get.

But I’m a contract employee.  My health insurance is horrible and it’s pretty much for emergencies only.  Even if I had health insurance that would cover the costs of this surgery for a reasonable co-pay, I work hourly, and can’t afford to take time out of work.  You see, Sistah Beginner, my best friend, had this surgery and she was out of work for weeks, because the doctor’s orders were to stay off of her feet until she was healed.  Weeks off of my feet would mean weeks of no income for me.

The scariest thought is knowing that even when I do find a full-time permanent position with benefits, I will have to earn time to take paid time off to get the surgery.   I’m gambling - my feet are on borrowed time.  I am determined to stick it out for as long as I can.

The virus is mostly cleansed from my laptop - but not completely, and I’m using Mister Ant’s desktop, which means we have to share, which I didn’t know would be so hard.  I have to curtail my computer time to when he’s not on his computer (and he’s on his computer a lot).  Every time I mention taking my computer to be fixed, Mister Ant talks me out of it, saying he’ll work on it… in the midst of all the other things he has to do.  Meanwhile, I want things to go back the way they were.  I could just pay for it to be fixed, but I want to give Mister Ant a chance, and I want to save some money.

My MP3 player is not working correctly, either.  It won’t let me add new music, even though there is still room in its memory.  Lately, it cuts off, mid-song, without warning, even though it’s fully power charged.

And we need some AAA batteries for the television’s remote.  But this can and will easily be fixed for cheap.

I never realized how much of my time is captured by gadgets until the most important gadgets in my life starting going haywire.  I want the quick solution - a new MP3 player, a fixed laptop (buying another is the last resort, I just got this one two years ago and it still meets my needs).  Mister Ant keeps encouraging me to relax.  The laptop will be fixed, in time.  And the MP3 player?  I’m not sure what his solution is for that one… I’ll have to ask.

The frugalist in me is not going to march off in a hurry to the nearest electronics store.  But there’s a ticking time bomb inside me, and if I don’t get my toys back before that time runs out, I could wind up spending a lot of money that should otherwise be going into our emergency fund.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that what we call coincidences are merely due to chance.

I find it interesting that on the same day that I was able to reach my goal for saving for the house, I saw the ad in Black Enterprise encouraging people to apply for their annual homeownership contest.  I also find it interesting that on this same day, as I was contemplating the challenge of saving another $4,000 for my emergency fund by October, my employer notified me that unless I find a permanent position beforehand, there will be a place for me at my current contracting position at least through October.  That’s exactly the amount of time I need to save that amount of money.

I think that the act of taking agency in your life to become more responsible is a spiritual one.  There is a certain amount of faith that a person has to have to get from Point A to Point B.  Particularly, becoming financially fit and building wealth require a few things of a person.  You have to believe that if you try, you will succeed.  You have to recognize that your role in the process is to use the blessing of your talents and abilities to bring about change to the extent that you can, and depend on what you believe in to do the rest.  Personally, I find these things to be spiritual actions.  I find that I am enabled, strengthened, and encouraged by my faith as I attempt to build a foundation of financial wellness for myself and my family.  It is a humbling and empowering experience all at once.  And yesterday, I found affirmation in the coincidences.  Perhaps I was looking for it.  Does it matter?  The message was there all the same.

I’m on the right track.  Perseverance will get me to Point B.  And all will be well.

Feels good.

Tomorrow I smile. 

Last August, I set aside $25 from the interest earned by my Emergency Fund so that I could start a home down payment fund in its own account.  The growth of this new account was slow going, but I figured that if I was disciplined, just maybe I would be able to put together about ten thousand dollars by October 2008.  I decided to be ambitious.  I tacked another three thousand onto that goal, because I didn’t want to set the bar too low.  Besides, after looking at the market, I figured that ten thousand wouldn’t be enough.  I set up automatic deposits through payroll and looked forward to paying off credit card debt so that I could save more aggressively.  Then I was laid off.  Then I got a job.  Long story short, blah blah blah, tomorrow I meet my thirteen thousand dollar savings goal.  I will smile.

After tomorrow, I will fuss. 

I will knit my brow and purse my lips as I make another estimate of how much money I’ll need for the house.  As I’ve already discussed before, things have changed since I made my initial estimate.  I already know I want to increase my emergency fund by about four thousand dollars.  But I think, based on more intense scrutiny of home prices, local taxes and other various fees, that it would be an excellent idea to increase the amount of the down payment/closing costs fund.  I am willing to use some of the emergency fund to help with the house, within reason and depending on the circumstances, but using the overwhelming majority of the emergency fund is completely out of consideration.  I must save more.  Thousands more.  It is not fun to rain on your own parade, but that is the responsible thing to do.  However, I am not going to ruin tomorrow.  It is my day to celebrate meeting a lofty goal early.

I can fuss later.

I was talking with my other best friend over the weekend, and she wanted to know how much we were putting down on the house.  Now I love this girl dearly, but she is not one of the folks who can keep private information private, and she tells her entire family and many of her friends whatever you tell her.  I know this because I know too much about her family and friends. LOL!  I’m not sure I want everyone who’s known me since my preteen years to talk and debate about how much our house cost or how we went about purchasing it.  It’s none of their business, and it’s bound to end in someone saying something stupid. 

In response to her question, I told her, "About 10% at the closing table."  It was my attempt to answer her question while subtly expressing that the matter is too private for me to give her those types of details.

She didn’t get the hint.  (Either that, or she didn’t heed the hint.)

She pressed further.  "Well how much are the houses you’re looking at.?  Here, I was faced with a choice.  I could either tell her what she wanted to know, or I could find a way to express to her that something in my life is none of her business for the first time ever in 16 years, which is something neither of us in our open-book relationship has ever done before.

I gave her a range of home prices.  

I was promptly rewarded for choosing the wrong option with this question, asked in entirely the wrong tone:  "What kind of house can you get for that amount?"

Thinking as quickly as I wish I had before I gave her the numbers, I decided to take the high road instead of giving her what for.  (I’d always wanted to use "giving what for" in context!  I am such a geek…)  I told her I could actually get a three bedroom home in a safe area of my city for that amount.  She let it go, but I didn’t.

There was the pep talk I had to give myself on not worrying about what other people, including all her friends and family will think, not if, but when this information makes the rounds.   There was the need to chastise myself for punking out and disclosing information that I wasn’t comfortable disclosing, even if it was my best friend.  There was also a lesson to be learned from all this: I need to beware talking about the house, despite my enthusiasm, until I resolve how I’m going to shut down questions about my actual numbers.  I forgive her for her nosiness and her last question - in the past, we’ve always been able to be that frank.  But I see that now as we forge farther into adulthood that the dynamic of our relationship may need to change.

As a matter of fact, I’ve got a new category all about this topic, "Money and Relationships."  People need to talk about the occasional taboos and faux pas and boundaries associated with how money affects us.  So why not me?

The last time Mister Ant and I went to the grocery store, it was June.

June.

We ran out of the stuff we usually depend on about two weeks ago.  In the meantime, we haven’t been able to brown-bag for lunch.  We’ve been improvising for beverages and snacks for two weeks.  We’ve been eating stuff like ramen, hot dogs, pop tarts… Oh, it’s been awful.  And I have no idea how much the convenience store runs and lunch runs have cost us.  But we haven’t gone because we’ve been running around doing stuff, and because we have to go TOGETHER.  (Don’t ask me, ask Mister Ant.)

So of course, when we went yesterday, we had to buy more than we usually do, because we tend to go bi-weekly. 

About $80 more.  Of course, about $20 of that was for non-grocery contact lens solution, but still.  I had sticker shock at the register.  We need to shop more often.

I’ve been dealing with a computer virus since Thursday.  Mister Ant knows some stuff about computers so he is working on the problem for me.  I miss using my laptop, though.  It is Sistah Ant Command Central.  I kept meaning to put some more protection software on it.  I kept meaning to get some backup for my files.  Funny thing about stuff like that: they don’t work if you put them off.  My next major research project and expenditure will be investing in the very things I wish I’d had before my computer got sick. 

Have a  great weekend!  The road trip I had planned was cancelled both due to lack of interest from friends and the heat wave.  Fuhgittabout it.  I will stay local and airconditioned - I might even go to the mall and do a little shopping.