Changing The Financial Mindset

I've been working on this series of frugal/financial posts this month in spare moments.  I don't know why I've been inspired to do it but it seems to me it's important to share.  Someone out there doesn't know my whole story, or needs encouragement.  So here I am, sharing with you all this little series.  I hope it helps someone to read.

 It is never too late to start repairing our mess ups. We have done a lot of mess ups in our lifetime but we learned from them.  We got in debt like many people do and we had to figure out a way to get out. It took time but we finally did it and for us getting out of debt has made us even more frugal.  Frugal is a good thing, it is not being cheap or anything like that.  It is being careful and understanding the cost and consequences of everything.  G-donna

I came across this statement this weekend in my blog reading and it hit me hard.  G-donna is so right on two counts. 

#1:   "It is never too late to start repairing our mess ups."    Gracious, I'm living proof of that!

I've shared my financially insecure childhood.  What I often fail to share is that not only did I come from that sort of murky financial background, but I knew nothing about handling money.   All my growing years I had a $2.50 allowance once a month, until I went to work.  When I'd worked just a few months I bought a car.  Between paying $20 rent each week to Mama, insurance on the car, the car payment, and buying gasoline my $2.35/hour salary was over and done each month.  

So  I had never learned how to handle money because truly I never really had any!  I didn't know what it was to carry cash.  I felt I was one up on Mama and Daddy because my bills were paid every month, never mind that I had nothing left over.   Lest you think I was foolish to buy a car when I had so little income, it was a family necessity.   One weekend my brother took the family car up to a little store just 1/4 mile from the house, while my parents were out of town.  While out he managed to flip the car and total it.  Granny was with us and because I was so upset that the family car  was wrecked and Mama nor I had a way to work on Monday (I rode in and out of town with her each day), Granny and I went off to the local car dealership where I took my meager savings and made a down payment on a car that she co-signed with me on.   "My" car became the family car for the next six months and I was allowed to drive it about once a month when I had to work on the first weekend to wrap up the books and send out invoices to customers.

For some reason, I felt that despite this I had income to marry on...Please let's just stop a moment and stand in amazement at  the utter innocence and absolute stupidity of that idea.   My soon to be husband and I co-signed a loan on a doublewide.  He had a truck payment and who knows what other bills.  I don't believe he had a clue what my expenses were.  The only smart one in the bunch was the guy who took down the loan information and felt we were a good credit risk.  It was guaranteed each month that the finance company got their payment.   All bets were off on who else got paid and as I said a grocery budget was pretty much non-existent not because I spent all I wanted but because there was nothing to spend on food!   We survived off a 35 pound lot of mullet, 10 pounds of black eyed peas and a monthly purchase of 5 pounds of peanut butter.   To this day, I can barely tolerate peanut butter and I do NOT eat mullet!

Within six months of being married I'd changed jobs and then went through a long period of unemployment due to a layoff.  We were sinking hard.

I won't even pretend we ever even did better.  We earned more money but we had credit card debt, were constantly losing money due to older cars (that replaced the newer ones) needing lengthy and expensive repairs, eventually sold our home, then bought another that needed a load of work.  We accumulated lots and lots of debts.  

It was not until my husband was called up for duty in the Gulf War and I was left at home with three months owing on every bill to our name and a few that I discovered were in his name, and nearly $2000 in Insufficient Funds fees at the bank that I found a backbone of steel and determined I would absolutely change my life or die trying.   

By the time my husband returned home 8 weeks later, I had taken his last paycheck from his job and with my sole income (he never did send home pay for his family to live off and I wasn't savvy enough to know that I might have gone to a base officer and gotten it),  I'd paid off all insufficient fees,  paid all but one car payment and had all insurance and utilities up to date.  All but the house payment was caught up.  I couldn't pay that up because the agency that owned our mortgage required certain information from him (paperwork from the USArmy) to refigure the interest rate and said it would only mess up their paperwork if I paid the house payments.     

During that time, the children and I ate from the pantry, stayed home and saved gas except what was required to get me to work and back again (just two miles from home), didn't shop or spend any money anywhere else.  I was beginning to see something I'd never before realized.  We could manage to pay our bills.  I'd done all I could and I'd seen light at the end of what had always been a long and dark tunnel.

There were many problems in my first marriage and money was a big part of it.  I can see that now.  When my husband returned from active duty in that short lived war the war between us raged hot and fierce.  He accused me of squandering our funds by paying bills...and that my dears, given what I'd just gone through all on my own without any help at all, was the straw that broke the back of that marriage well and truly.  I packed my bags, put the children in the car and we left.    I'm not proud of my broken marriage but I can see now that  there was never any other way for me or my children  to learn a new way of living, one that fully and completely broke the horrible financial cycle I'd lived in my whole life long.

Two weeks later I was hit by a drunk driver at 8am in the morning, while on my way to work. My car was totaled.    It would be 8 weeks of hospital and physical rehab hospital before I was able to go home.  In those 8 weeks, my husband sold our home and every thing in it.   Because he sold it for $1 any part that might be due me was laughable to think of acquiring.  We weren't legally separated.  The house was in his name only.  

I went to live with my parents.  Courtesy a lawyer whom a friend urged to help me, I settled with the insurance company and had enough to buy a used car, rent a house and start over with a nice little nest egg burning a hole in my mother's pocket.    She visited me every weekend to go shopping and encouraged me hard to buy various things because I 'needed it' or 'deserved it'.   And fool that I was, I didn't say no to a single thing.  The car I'd bought was a complete lemon but without credit and no lemon laws at that point in time, I was pretty much stuck with making every repair and there were many. Within a year I was broke and had to return to work earlier than planned from maternity leave (unexpected but blessed pregnancy!).   

#2 "Frugal is a good thing...it is being careful and understanding the cost and consequences of every thing." 

I was right back where I'd started, albeit with a nicer rented home and furniture than I'd had at any point in my adult life.   But in looking at the whole picture, much as I could see the foolishness of it, all my bills were paid.  I never went into any month with a bill unpaid.  We had food in the house and I just knew that I could manage if I would stop and think about it a little harder than I'd been doing.

So I brushed off all those highly frugal things I'd done all the years of my struggling marriage, put them into practice once more and we survived.   I learned to enjoy the processes required in being frugal.  I learned to consider what I was about to spend and what impact it would have on our lives.  

Of course, during that season of life, I met John.   When we realized that it would be more cost effective for us and our children to combine households (pay one rent and one set of utilities instead of two),  we moved in together.   I sat down with him beforehand  and shakily shared every penny I owed each month and then I listed what portion  I expected him to pay of the common expenses. We haggled a little and came to an agreement.   I wept with relief and he looked at me in complete surprise.  We talked over what I had been feeling in bringing up finances. 

I was scared to pieces that this move on my part would quickly end our newish relationship but it did just the opposite.  He admired me!  He was impressed that I'd looked at the long view and that I was more than willing to assume my own responsibilities rather than rely upon himself to provide for us all, He was pleased I'd made sure he knew what my expectations of him were financially.  He thought I was wise and assured me I'd strengthened our relationship with my honest discussion. 

That I could be considered admirable or wise was a revelation.  It increased my confidence in my ability to have a financially stable relationship.  I'd assumed that every relationship would always be fraught with money issues.  I learned that at times they are, but if you're both on the same page, it's a whole lot easier to overcome the differences.

That discussion also built trust between us.   When I had to leave one job and it took a year for another to open up, John  paid all our bills.  It would be another 6 months before he proposed and we married.  I told him I'd pay him back for all he was doing for us.  I kept track of exactly what he was paying of my share each month and that year when I got my income tax return I wrote him a check to repay him every.single.penny.  He didn't demand it, he even offered me the opportunity to take the check back,  but I did insist on it.   I have that cancelled check to this day because it serves as a very powerful reminder to me that I can stand on my own two feet with integrity.  My history is not the history of bankruptcy and poverty that I knew for  most of my first 34 years of life.   I had learned and I'd seen that change can be wrought even if there are mistakes made along the way.