Money and Me: 2014 Edition

At the beginning of 2014, I started a project that would turn out to be far more ambitious than I’d expected, and ultimately change my life in big ways and small. I made a budget. For most people, that’s a small thing itself. For me –

I grew up poor, and that never really got better. I can’t remember a time I felt as though I had enough money to pay my bills, month after month, for more than a couple of months in a row. Over the years I got into bad habits with money, the kind of habits that come from knowing, for a sure and certain fact, that you will never be able to afford everything you need to get by, and you’re going to have to choose which thing to pay, and which to incur late fees on, or lose completely. Tiny, insignificant, choices, become monumental. Deciding whether to take my son to McDonalds for an order of chicken nuggets becomes a choice between giving my child a treat he’s been begging for all week, when he is cold and not feeling well and we haven’t been able to afford toys or movies or treats of any other kind and I already feel terrible that I can never do for him what other parents do for their kids — or washing a load of laundry we’ll need to get him into clean clothes for the school week. After a while, any money that comes in is paying off what’s already behind, and there’s never any hope that you’ll be able to build up savings, and the things you need to be even remotely comfortable and fed and safe are added to a growing list of things you mean to buy, someday, when you can…

The last couple of years have been the hardest for me that I’ve been through in a long time, but while all of that was happening, I figured out that I had everything I’d need for a good life right in front of me. In pieces, anyway. I had my writing, my son, the ability to do well at an administrative day job, and someone who made me want to be a better/more successful person. I had drive and skills, but those bad habits and some obstacles that felt impossible to overcome (debt, a lack of stable childcare, a horrible living situation) fed into the lack of hope that kept me from thinking any plan I put into place would actually work. Eventually I decided the future I could have was worth trying for, even though I was certain that everything I reached for would eventually be taken away.

So. I looked at my life and picked the biggest obstacle: a lack of money. And like any habit one wants to change, the first step is to identify the problem. I was already working on getting the child care that I’d need to be able to make sure that when I landed a good job I’d be able to keep it, and I was freelancing as much as I could to make up for not being able to hold onto a dayjob for more than a year at a time — bringing money in would eventually be easier, I knew. That meant I had to figure out what I was really doing with the money I already had.

I took some advice from people who knew more than me, and combined it with skills I already had. I kept every receipt, for everything I bought, every bill I paid, every bank fee. I put them all into a spreadsheet, and over the first few months I tweaked it to include categories (to sort my spending), a page for all of my income, a page for debts, and formulas to show how it all added up.

For most of 2014, I wasn’t able to do much to improve my financial situation. You can’t save money, or even pay all of your bills, when you don’t make enough to even get through a month at bare minimum spending. But I did identify those bad habits. I figured out just how much I was spending on bank fees, interest charges, late fees… I realized that (because the terrible old apartment didn’t have a reliable refrigerator) I was spending too much money on food, going shopping every few days for only a couple of items at a time. Buying everything — clothes, furniture, everything — as cheaply as possible meant that it broke or wore out quickly, and needed to be replaced again. And with no savings, anything that happened (like losing my car in an accident that wasn’t my fault, or losing my job, or my apartment falling into disrepair) was massively inconvenient or even dangerous, instead of a problem I could throw money at and solve. Even problems that would have been small to anyone else lead to me having to beg, borrow, and sell off whatever valuables I had to get through it.

Every penny that was loaned to or gifted to me, I tracked, too. I know how much worse my situation would have been if I’d been unable to ask for help, and I am honestly not sure that we’d have survived without it. I feel simultaneously guilty (for failing to get by without help) and grateful, every day.

As the year drew to a close, I (spent a huge amount of borrowed money on getting us) moved into a great new place, and got child care sorted, and got a wonderful job. My future income is going to be stable and sure, even though it isn’t a whole lot right now. I’m in a place with a decent kitchen and a ‘fridge that so far has worked consistently, so I’ve gone back to buying groceries once a week, cooking everything at home, and even taking my lunch to work to save money. I paid all of my December bills on time, as they came in. I haven’t been able to pay my January rent yet, but once that obstacle is overcome, I’m on track to be able to pay it every month going forward. Because I know how much it costs to buy/replace cheap clothes and other things, I’m going to try to get through a few months without buying any at all (let’s hope my growing child can keep from growing for that long!) so that I can start buying better quality items less often. And the debt that I have, that sits on my shoulders and whispers into my ear that I got here by failing, by needing to be saved because I couldn’t save myself or my child when I needed to — that’s going to be paid off.

It was a phenomenal amount of work to get here, but I think the hardest part was convincing myself it was okay to have hope that I could make my life better. That saving and working and budgeting and tracking wasn’t a waste of time. That I could let go of the voice that always told me to enjoy the moment because tomorrow was going to drop on my head anyway, no matter whether I took my son to McDonald’s or not.

Today, I made a new spreadsheet to track my finances in 2015. For the first time, I know my efforts to change will actually make a difference.