2009 Non-Financial Financial Goals

Last year I developed several goals that we're exactly about saving or spending money but that had a financial-ish dimension, like getting in the habit of flossing, or reading books I owned but had never read. There's no time like the present to make a change, so even though we're well past the season of New Years resolutions I've come up with a new list of non-financial financial goals for 2009.

1) Go to the gym 10 times per month. My health insurance has an arrangement with several gyms in town that they will pick up $20 of the $55/month gym fee if I hit the gym at least ten times per month. I have gotten this cheaper rate exactly twice since I joined my gym in November 2005. That's ridiculous. Either I should be going to the gym 10/month or I'm not using my membership enough to justify the cost. Tonight will be time number 2 for February--now that I've published that I can't decide I'm too lazy or cold to go.

2) By the end of 2009, I want to own only those clothes that fit me and that are in decent shape. I am sick of taking up space in my closet with jeans I haven't fit in since I was walking 2 miles every day as a matter of getting to and from classes, on the slim chance that maybe one day I will be that size again. So what if I am? You bet your ass I'll want a wardrobe update if that happens. Likewise, the clothes that are too big have got to go--either to Goodwill (tax deduction!) or to the tailor (realization of investment!). I am one hot, confident lady, and life is too short to feel bad about what I'm not.

3) I am going to get an IUD. Because of job stuff and the unimpressive family leave legislation this country is stuck with, the time horizon for any minis is at least three years out. The cost of one IUD is less than 36 months of hormonal birth control. There are other reasons for this, too (like wondering if my body even remembers how to ovulate--I've forgotten lots of other things I learned how to do at thirteen, like how to fold notes and how to perform certain finer points of algebra) but being cheap is an added incentive.

4) I am going to at least attempt to make filled pasta, like ravioli or tortolini. This could go very, very wrong, but I read Heat while on our honeymoon and it made me want to dive elbow deep into a pile of dough. What an awesome cheap date--some flour, some water, an egg, butter, cheese, maybe some mushrooms... and me doing my sexiest Julia Child impression.

On Young Moms

For the first time in almost four decades, the age of first-time mothers has fallen, to 25.0 years. It's too early to know whether that's a trend reversal or a blip, but unless there's a qualitative component to these numbers in addition to the quantitative component, I am going to go ahead and call this out as wild speculation:

But some experts also see a shift in attitudes. More young women today just assume they'll have both a career and a family, and on their own timetable, says Stephanie Coontz, director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families. Young women feel less compelled to spend a decade proving themselves on the job before kids, she says.

Are women really opting to have children at a younger age because they think their childbearing choices won't have any effect on their careers? Or because they expect that their reproductive choices might affect their career, but think having kids younger will have less of an effect than doing so later? Or because if you're damned if you do and damned if you don't you might as well do what you want when you want it? Or is there some other reason?

There are at least two reasons Coontz's theory smells like bullshit. First, it ignores that sizable chunk of womandom for whom their job is not a "career" as she seems to be thinking of it--service employees, retail worker, skilled and unskilled laborers of various sorts. Decisions about whether and when to have kids has an economic aspect for anyone, but not every woman does the kind of work where proving yourself on the job over the course of a decade is really a concern. These numbers don't just include professional women with a college degree, and it's not only kind of insulting to imply that they do (just because the Wall Street Journal doesn't tend to concern itself with Those Sorts Of People doesn't mean they don't exist), but it introduces a bias into how these numbers are talked about.

Second, even if we were talking only about college-educated professional women it could very well be that, instead of going all fiddledeedee, I'll think about the impact on my career tomorrow! as the article implies, the choice to have kids earlier rather than later may actually be a deliberate attempt to minimize the extent of the professional fallout. The greatest downward shift in ages was in the 20-25 year old cohort. These are women who are more likely to still be in undergrad or graduate/professional school or to be in the first couple years of their careers, when a resume gap is less likely to even be noticed, much less seen by a potential employer as a cause for concern. When I interview law students, I look at their grades and extracurricular or summertime activities. I don't think it's ever occurred to me to notice whether there's a semester or year gap where a student took time off. If they were enrolled in school part time as taking a 1x/week class or working on a thesis I don't think such a gap would even show up. Taking that sort of ad hoc maternity leave wouldn't even be a blip on the radar. Hell, I realized at the time that if I'd had a stable long-term relationship at that time of my life, those years would have been much more conducive to having kids than now. I had more flexibility in my schedule, heavily subsidized health care through the plan I was required to carry as a student, and it could have been all but invisible to future employers when they were scrutinizing my resume. Now maybe that theory is bunk as well, but the point is we just don't know, and I don't think it's useful to suggest that a one-year statistical reversal is due to the fact that women are becoming more sanguine about their work lives, or that their work lives themselves have become oh-so accommodating.

Finally, I think it's worth noting that this whole conversation assumes women actively choose to time their reproductive lives. Not much to say about that, just that it's nice when anyone in the media acknolwedges, even tacitly, that birth control is both normal and useful.

First Married Fight

Three weeks into marriage and of course our first post-wedding fight is about money.

Shiner paid off his American Express in late 2008. That credit card carried his largest balance, so paying it off was a big deal. It seems like after that success, though, he got a little cocky. He started paying for things when we went out. Normally, I pay the bill if we go out to eat or out to a movie, but around Christmas when we were traveling a lot to see our various families he picked up the tab a few times. He paid for a few other things, too, like when he took my car for a needed oil change so I could see a friend during our 12-hour overlap in our hometown, or using his car when we paid for gas during all that driving around. Anyway, because he was feeling really confident about his finances he spent more money than he ordinarily does. I definitely noticed that he was doing it, and I admit I was tickled. When you are used to picking up the tab it feels good when that is finally reciprocated. I thought he was paying attention and wasn't spending anything he couldn't afford.

And all other things being equal, he could have afforded it. But his car has been making some annoying noises for a couple of months, and he took it in to get it checked out. It wasn't anything that was an immediate safety issue (and even if it had been, we have two cars between us so he could have afforded to not fix it right away), but it needed some work. It was going to cost $800 and they were a little slow, did he want them to fit him in right away? Yes he did, just put it on the card. Even though he couldn't afford to pay the bill. To be fair, he didn't think to run the numbers at the time and so didn't know that. He thought he had it covered. He'd forgotten that he'd picked up the tab a few too many times last month.

Fast forward to last night. I have been tracking my net worth since September 2005, and thought we should track our joint net worth. Not for any particular reason, it's not an especially useful number, but it does capture both assets and liabilities and something about having that information in one place makes me feel more secure. Networth numbers are basically my woobie. I needed him to fill in some numbers for me. He went off to track them down and came back very shame-faced. He explained how he'd screwed up. He was going to be $200 short paying for the work on his car because he'd forgotten how much he'd spent in late December and early January.

On its own, this is not the hugest deal. Everyone comes up short from time to time, which is why it's nice to have savings to cover things like rear brake jobs. I mean, it's not like he's got an expensive addiction or is maliciously trying to bleed me dry or something. It could be a lot worse than $200. And we do have savings that can cover the difference, thanks to some generous people who gave us money for wedding gifts. But he will admit he has not always the world's most responsible user of credit cards. His debt and money issues have created big problems for us in the past (see: almost calling off the engagement). So even relatively small missteps make me really scared and self-doubty. And of course from there the discussion only degenerates.

More than the $200 shortfall, my issues are mainly these:

First, why did he not do the math before committing to the car expenses? I think he is scared of losing face and looking broke or like he lacks status, even in front of people he doesn't know and whose opinions of him aren't important, like the receptionist at the auto shop. He doesn't want to look like he can't afford things. And if that doesn't get dealt with, this is going to be the first of many times in our marriage that this happens. I don't want that, and I am confident that he doesn't either.

Second, when he screws up now, it legally affects me, too. I don't think he appreciates the magnitude of this, at least in my eyes. (I'm a lawyer! As completely not-romantic as my ideas of legal marriage are--someone to cover my ass and to take my stuff when I die--they are still a Really Big Deal to me!) In most areas of our relationship, I think we do a very good job of taking care of one another and prioritizing the other person's needs as high as or sometimes higher than our own. But he hasn't made this changeover in thinking about money--he seems to think about his money decisions as being almost exclusively about him, not equal parts about each of us.

And third, I feel like when it comes to money that I am in Mommy mode, and that I have to keep checking up on him to make sure he stays on track. Like, I should have talked to him when he started picking up the tab and suggesting that it wasn't a good idea because wasn't he going to have to do something about that squealing noise his car has been making? Which I didn't do because I was wanted to trust that he was being responsible in his own choices. But then I feel like when I trust him and don't monitor his decisions he makes bad ones, but if I do monitor his decisions he makes good ones, so playing Mommy works. Even though I hate doing it. It's a circle, and it sucks. We need to move toward a system that is transparent enough that it allows each of us to trust, but verify. Sweet Christ, now that I've quote Ronald Reagan, you know I'm feeling topsy turvey.

For now, here's how we've decided to deal with this:

1) We'll take the money out of savings to cover the shortfall. We had earmarked this money to buy a chest freezer, but we'll have to put off doing that. He's going to pay it back in time, hopefully by this summer. He could probably do it much faster than that, but I don't want him to feel punished by not being able to buy anything for himself. I mean, at some point I'm going to screw up too and I hope he won't pull the Bad Dog routine on me, either.

2) To deal with the spending=status thing, he's going to address it in counseling. He's been seeing someone to deal with some family-related drama, and we've also seen that counselor a couple times as a pre-wedding tune up (highly recommended, even if you're not having capitol-I Issues) and I am not really equipped to help someone re-write their money scripts on my own.

3) I asked, and he agreed, that he stop using credit cards for the time being. I'm not one of those "Credit Is Evil!" people obviously, but until he's started to figure out why he keeps slipping into bad decision making again, it will limit the amount of trouble (read: debt) he can get into. That benefits both him and me. This is a good move, I think, for the short-term but will probably be a total pain in the ass given #4 on this list which is...

4) Create a joint budget. I hate this part. I've never had a budget before. I've never needed one. The closest I've ever come is to tell myself, "You have $X in your checking account, so don't spend more than $X this month." Works for me. Works less well for two people. This is where the trust but verify comes in--if we both reconcile our spending against a budget, at least for those things that are joint-ish, like meals out and car expenses, we will both be responsible to one another and won't inadvertently overspend. The left hand will be able to see what the right hand is doing, as it were. Ideally, I'm looking for a budgeting program that will automatically upload credit card and checking account activity data without a lot of hassle, and will easily allow manual entries for cash transactions. I have a slight preference for web-based, but PC-based is fine, too. Suggestions?

I am feeling pretty drained today.