By: Revanche

Navigating my finances through national and global crises

June 29, 2020

If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?

Current total: Lakota, $1,634.50; Rural libraries, $321.62.

I Haven’t Bought a Latte in 2 Months. Why Am I Not Rich Yet?

Originally I was just going to add @KWright0702‘s post to my link love with a comment but it brought up a lot of memories. This is just my recollection and reminiscing, this isn’t a “How you should…” anything.

I most certainly tracked every penny back in the day when every cent mattered and adhered to the general principle of the latte factor (roughly between 2000-2015).

I didn’t let a nickel leave my wallet if I didn’t absolutely have to. But that’s only what kept the bills paid at a bare minimum. It’s not what made me financially stable. That required many uncomfortable conversations advocating for raises, pushing my way up the hierarchy, negotiating hard for myself every single chance I got, and banking as much of those big dollar increases I could get my hands on. Then too, coupling up with a partner who wanted to learn better financial habits from me, and did so, and trusted me implicitly to manage our money for both our benefits was invaluable. I could have made it on my own eventually. But doubling the income with an actual partner to share the high COL SF area bills and only moderate conscious lifestyle improvements? That was a huge advantage.

The thing is, my building blocks happened to be those latte factor type ideas in the beginning. I can’t discount the fact that being a total tightwad made a difference because it did. It trained me to value every cent I made.

The next step was to look for all ways to maximize income so I could have enough of those cents to keep at least one for every one I spent. And then two for every one. Then three.

As they say in improv: Yes AND.

Yes I obsessed over every penny. And I pushed myself to make more dollars. Yes I paid off debt. And I stretched to save as frequently, if not as much, as I paid off.

By the time the credit card bills and the other family incurred debt that I knew of had been zeroed out, I also had a nest egg of my own: $5,000 cash.

I always had two goals going at the same time: fill that pit over there (debt) and build that fortress over here (reserves, savings, investments).

@KWright0702 got me thinking. How would I get through the pandemic today if we weren’t financially stable?

I worked retail for a lot of years, I worked admin for years, worked for a ton of toxic people, worked my way through college, through the recession when I had a job and freelanced when I didn’t. Through it all, I always worked like there was a scythe swinging just behind me and if I paused, it’d take me down. I remember some carefree friends calling their stint off work during the recession “funemployment” but I could never muster a laissez-faire attitude. I always felt like I was running out of time.

Today, if I were in a less financially stable position, I’d probably be doing the same things I did back then (with all the health precautions of COVID to consider) and holding my breath a whole lot:

1. Seek the most stable employment I could for a long term stint that gave me the most flexibility to protect my health. This was never a given, but it was the standard I’d try to reach first, and then I’d run down the list of compromises as opportunity did or didn’t present.
2. Depress my expenses as much as possible today so I could build a reserve for essentials. Artificially, even, the way no spend days do, to help build that buffer. I recall in my college years, I ate one meal a day, I shopped at Ross if I needed clothes, I carpooled to split parking fees and gas money as much as I could I allowed myself $75 a month for food, clothes and gas. Memories are hazy now, I probably could have afforded twice that, but it was more important to me to temporarily not spend that amount and have it in case of emergency or loss of income. This was my own latte factor mentality at play with a very specific goal: building a cash buffer with every penny without losing hope. This would be much harder with a family but we’d find a way to scrape and shed pennies and dollars off the bills.
3. Keep building my skills, and keep building a flawless work reputation for performance, to the point where I could advocate for increased salary.

This does ignore entrepreneurship entirely. That’s intentional, that fits my personality. Many people are great at finding non traditional gigs and flourishing that way. I admire them but that’s not a muscle I’ve ever flexed well. I’ve worked plenty of side gigs but it turns out my particular strong suit is picking one employer and doing a HELL of a great job executing their vision. Less so my own.

A lot rides on finding a half decent employer in these actions. That’s not an easy thing to find, I know that firsthand. I mostly worked for terrible people, for years! But in those dire years, I was mostly lucky to find employers who I could stick with for a long while, miserable though it was, and even make some overtime.

It was miserable to work for them but because they came up with the cash, I focused primarily on the money to shut out my dissatisfaction with the employer or the toxic culture or their non-existent values. I needed to get paid and I had bigger fish to fry. My motto was: I’m here to work and make money (not make friends). And I did (and didn’t).

I wasn’t deliberately unfriendly, I stayed professional and collegial, but mostly I was laser focused on making and saving money. I saved as much as I could, and when the getting was good, got out. It was exactly zero fun but it was practical and worked.

I still practice all of those principles today and am working on shedding the more obsessive parts. I am at work to make money, so I do an awesome job, so they will pay me good money. That’s the same. But I am no longer solely focused on the money. Now I also consider it my job to lift up others so they can kick ass in their own ways. I am slowly lifting the prohibition on discussing anything from my personal life ever. I am even lifting the prohibition on ever eating out just because I want to. I do that sometimes! Because there must be balance in life, eventually.

My therapist would point out right about here that nothing in my action plan includes asking for support. And today, like then, I would still say: duh. I’m on my own. Who would I ask for support from? My deadbeat father? My deadbeat sibling? My elder relatives living on fixed incomes? My few cousins I still keep in touch with and would so love to make things awkward between us by borrowing money I can’t afford to pay back? Nu uh. Never.

And that refusal to ask for support is a whole other can of worms but, you know, I suspect I’m not alone in this being-alone financially thing. And it’s not been an entirely bad thing. It taught me very early to grit it out, not to look for someone to prop me or any bad habits up, and to make it on my own. That’s not the worst habit, if I can remind myself not to take it to extremes.

:: How did you cope with the Great Recession? Do you feel any parallels between then and now?

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