I posted this link in my sidebar the other day on a Money Diary feature of a 25-year-old single mom of a special needs toddler. It got a ton of comments — most of them constructive, compassionate, and sincerely helpful advice. In comment 8, Ramit changes the course of the comments and encourages commenters to think strategy instead of tactics — that is, rather than saying, “She needs to quit smoking to eliminate the expense of cigarettes,” we need to look at the bigger picture.
I don’t mean to get hokey over a personal finance post, but I had a lot of mixed feelings in reading this woman’s money diary. Our situations are vastly different, and reading how she has to handle things makes me so much more appreciative of what privileges I do have. I’m not dealing with the uncertainty of having a special needs child with no official diagnosis, I don’t have expensive vices (well, besides Tokidoki bags), I have a job that pays well, and I’m sharing the load and responsibilities with my husband. But the comments brought to light a lot of the ways I’m like this woman, namely in impulse spending, depending on her mom for help, not being able to think and plan ahead, and just being stuck in a damn rut and not knowing what to do. So I take to heart a lot of the advice that people have given her in that post.
In terms of self-improvement, I don’t think I’ve ever had a more stagnant year in my adult life than 2009. I’m actually embarrassed and discouraged to even be bringing up personal finance in December, when in May I was so gung ho about getting all of my debt paid by now. I actually haven’t made good on a single goal I’ve set for myself this year: I still carry a significant balance on my credit cards, the house is still bare-walled and messy, I don’t remember having learned more than two new recipes all year, I haven’t completed a single writing project, I didn’t even get a damn raise at work (since nobody did).
I mean, the good news is that nothing particularly horrible happened — I still have a job, a house, and my health for the most part. We can pay the bills on time and there’s always enough food to feed us until the next payday. But on paper it’s like I couldn’t even try to be a better person this year. The only thing I made a conscious effort to improve on and saw minimal success in was being a more patient mom, but even then I have days where the guilt is laid on thick.
As a family, we have big plans in 2010. In particular, we want to sell our house and move back to LA, and we’ll probably try to have another baby. Thinking about this stresses me out for a lot of obvious reasons — both are big, expensive, emotionally charged and non-reversible decisions that require at least some planning, which Huz hates to do, probably because I can’t help overthinking things and letting the what-ifs spiral out of control. This place is our Revolutionary Road.
The whole idea of moving back to LA has been a paradox. I can list off a thousand and one reasons why we believe this move will be better for us (believe me, I’ve thought them out in my own head), but point blank, we’ve already lived out there, we don’t have lofty expectations about the glamour of Hollywood, and we’ve just become bored and miserable here. I moved back when I was pregnant because I needed the help from my family, but at this point, even I can admit that my family has become a crutch. Every time I decide to step outside my comfort zone, there’s always a family member handy to talk me out of it. It’s like quicksand. There seem to be a million and one obstacles to making our own decisions and living the way we want to live, that by the end of the day, neither Huz nor I have the energy to do any growing.
On the other hand, since we started talking about it in the middle of this year, our eventual move to LA sometime in the near or distant future has been our Number One Excuse for not investing any effort or money in anything that will make us more comfortable or happier where we are now. The idea that we’ll be leaving at some point has probably been a bigger contributor to being stuck in my (our?) rut than our environment itself. It’s weird, I think I might have been slightly happier when I was trying to get used to the idea of living here for another 18 years. Now I feel paralyzed — I can’t do or change or even see anything for what it’s worth until we finally leave.
I’m past the crazy expectations of this move magically fixing all of our woes. In a lot of ways, I know I might just be trading problems, and I’m trying to prepare myself for that. I’m basically giving up the convenience of my family’s help so that I’ll have no choice but to learn to depend on myself and Huz, but that’s the kind of people we are. That’s the kind of weird shit that would make us happy, or at least put our lives in perspective. I’m just miffed that we lost half a year to thinking about this move in the abstract, and I worry that we won’t really push ourselves to make this happen.
So we’re laying down the foundation, finally coming up with a financial plan. Hoping to really do it big in 2010.
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