Money Money Money

It is Friday night as I write this out by longhand. Warren is an hour away in a rehearsal with the other orchestra in which he plays. He won't be home until after 11:00 p.m. Tonight is the peak of the Orionid meteor showers; with Warren coming home so late we are planning on going out into the country in the hopes of seeing a few.

Money has been on my mind more than usual as of late. We have family members facing some hardships: a serious medical crisis that will not resolve soon in one branch, the loss of the primary job in the other. There is and will be financial fallout in both. My phone hums all day long with news from the medical front and news from the unemployment front.

These times remind me of my own life over a decade ago, when I was in the middle of a protracted separation (and eventual divorce) that killed me financially, followed immediately by the diagnosis of cancer, which finished destroying any financial stability I hoped to regain post-divorce. Those were  long, hard times, and ended up with my credit destroyed and a bankruptcy under my belt.

I survived it all, with a lot of help from friends and family. Joining my life with Warren was another boost (we do not share accounts; we do share expenses). Acquiring a stable job (I had been an independent contractor) with benefits was also a huge step forward.  Bit by bit, penny by penny, I got back to solid ground.

Looking back from the stability of now, I am grateful for all the help, be it dollars or encouragement. I also learned a valuable lesson: live below my means, however minimal those means may be.

Even today, I look for ways to cut our household spending. Warren and I are not big time consumers as it is, but I can still find adjustments. We have cut our use of the dryer to about one hour every other week. Most of our laundry hangs for 24+ hours on inside clotheslines strung across the basement. We are resisting turning on the furnace until the weather gets markedly colder. Extra blankets at night, an afghan over my lap while I write, corn bags for our toes in bed, passive heat on warmer afternoons: I hope to make it well into November before that furnace goes on.

I've been tracking our grocery spending all year. Through September, we are averaging about $208.00 a month on food and common household items (toilet paper, detergent, that kind of thing). I'm hoping to get it under $200.00/month for the year, but with only three months to go, we'd have to cut a little bit deeper to make that happen. That figure does not include eating out, but we in most months spend less than $20.00 total on eating out.

I did splurge today when shopping at Aldi. [For the uninitiated, Aldi is a German grocery chain that offers limited selections and great prices.] In the meat section were fresh salmon fillets, all set to expire the next day, and all $12.00 off the sticker price (which ran from $18.00 to $22.00). I bought two large ones, each originally $18.00 and change, about 4.7 pounds of fish. My final cost was a little over $13.00 for both, coming in at about $2.60 a pound, a price I have not paid for salmon since I lived in Portland, Oregon almost 40 years ago. The fillets are already cut, wrapped, and in the freezer, except for the slab I am cooking for dinner tomorrow.

Don't think we live a parsimonious lifestyle. I think we live frugally, but with our hands open. (Thank you, Amanda Rigo, for introducing me to the wit and words (and music!) of Amanda Palmer.) I just watch where the dollars go, and make sure they flow to the resources most important to me (Sunday night yoga, Halloween candy to ship to Ramona, a used copy of Carl Sandburg's complete poems).

Back in April, I wrote a post (about money, of course) in which I quoted Thoreau: "keep your accounts on your thumb nail." I still do.

Postscript: We went out last night after Warren came home and sat for some 25 minutes on an empty country road, watching the sky. No meteors (the commentary said they would be best seen "just before dawn"—thanks, but no thanks). But we did see a glorious night sky, we watched Orion rise, and although we are in a populated area and not out west in a remote location, we even saw the Milky Way, a sight that never fails to fill my heart.