Where to start with money? It has been a constant reminder of "lack."
Even though I have a nice job working with wonderful people which I'm grateful for, I only work 1-2 days per week. That's not so much of a fibro thing as it is a time constraint thing. I'll have about 8 classes this term so I don't work much to maintain my sanity. . . meaning I don't make much. But as I mentioned previously, my husband has a good job so we get by. As with the low level of "surviving" I do with fibro at times, "getting by" financially is no longer acceptable.
In the last couple of months, I have started to recognize the pattern of being too scattered and depleted - money, energy, everything. If a little bit shows up, I find a way to disperse it - yes, time, energy, money, whatever it is. It all follows the path of least resistance and slips away. No matter how much money we have coming in, just enough goes out each month so we have nothing left and feel broke. No matter how much open time I have on my calendar, I find a way to fill it. The energy of "not quite enough" runs deep into my patterns of thinking and being. It's all I've ever really known. I have had no sense of creating reserves - most notably for money and my own energy.
Time for a plan of action in this area! Because I'm a textbook Virgo when it comes to being organized to the extreme, I know exactly where our money goes - that's not the problem. The problem is that I just track it as it goes away and do nothing to hold some back. So. . . I've been working on a budget that will allow us to pay off all credit cards, revolving debt, etc by the end of 2012. On top of that, my goal is to have $5000 in savings by the end of the year. By the time I graduate in 2013, the only debt we'll tentatively have is our house payment and my student loans. Because my poor, old car has 190K miles on it (and I'm hoping I can finish school without needing a new one), we'll probably need another car about that time too but that's not bad considering our present situation (lots of credit card debt and so many payments that just nickel and time us to death each month).
It's amazing how much this is correlating with the new Weight Watchers plan. In essence with that, I'm budgeting food which even in this first week has created a wonderful sense of structure, discipline and accountability. Again, it's about CHOICES! I'm not the victim to anything. If I choose to eat something with a high points value, I know I have to adjust for it in other ways by eating less the rest of the day or exercising more. Hmm, its seems there is an obvious pattern here - being overweight and being in debt are exactly the same things energetically speaking! When I don't have money for something and use a credit card, I'm pulling from reserves I don't really have so I'm creating a chunk of debt that gets added to bit by bit over the years until you look at your finances (or body in the case of those few pounds that turn into 20) and say "How on earth did this happen?" It happened by eating too much restaurant food and too many potato chips here and there and by financing that refrigerator, dentist visit, mattress, etc. . . little by little so it can sneak up on you.
So this is the plan for now. First, I added "savings" to our list of budget items just like a bill that needs to be accounted for each month. I know that seems like a no-brainer, but when you feel like you don't have enough coming in, you're not very inclined to try to save. Then, I upped the monthly debt payments as much as our income will allow for. That way in theory, the "savings bill" will get larger as the debt bills get smaller. The other two things I recently did were (1) open a savings account that puts a dollar into it each time either of us use our debit card from our checking account and (2) arranged for a daily draft of $3 to be deposited from our checking into our savings account. I call it, "The cost of 1 Starbucks drink" savings. Done. Now if we have "extra" money, it has a designated place to go. It's listed on the budget sheet so it's not looking around frantically, unsure of itself and needing to hide in someone else's pocket!
Time to STOP MAKING EXCUSES about money! Again, bucking the pattern of following the path of least resistance. . . It's not easy to change habits but it's doable if I become conscious of what I'm doing! What's silly, is that with our finances, my plan isn't anything extreme. We are lucky enough to almost always have enough coming in to cover what needs to go out. By cutting out some unnecessary things and actually budgeting (like the verb you know - actually doing it - planning where money will go and following through) we can even have a little extra here and there. I know variables will happen and there will be times when extra things come up like car or house repairs. It's all part of the plan. The biggest things right now are (1) don't create any more debt (aside from financial aid which I have a plan for later) and (2) even if I only have a small amount of money to work with, manage it well, don't discount it and throw it away! (That $3 that goes into savings everyday instead of to Starbucks adds up)!
I know some others are not so lucky to have "enough" and we haven't always been in this boat either. We were so broke for a while when Devon was a baby that on top of not being able to even think about paying bills and not eating much as it was, Deric and I went 3 full days without eating anything at all so we could save what food we had for him - what we got from WIC. When we'd get hungry, we'd just go to sleep to ignore it. At the moment of desperation, we both found jobs. For the entire time, we were waiting for our first paychecks, we would SPLIT one taco from Taco Bell for our lunch because it was the cheapest thing we could find to eat. Man, we were broke. I actually remember the conversation about what to do with the dollar in change we scraped together - toilet paper or bread (bread, duh, you can get TP from a gas station bathroom). On the bright side, weight wasn't an issue then. That situation only lasted for a couple of months, thank goodness, but again, that energy of lack stays with you on some level. . .
Debt and fibro - twins it seems. I can't move past one without addressing the other. There's that holistic mind at work.
Step 2 - Time to pay off these debts and start creating healthy reserves, both financially and those I've created physically in overtaxing and abusing my body's energy stores.
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