Money Thoughts

Per the lyric from "Cabaret," money makes the world go around.

Maybe yes. Maybe no. 

For several months, and not as a result of my lengthy medical matter (thank you, Medicare and my AARP/UHC Supplemental Plan G for paying every penny of the costs, including the Supplemental paying the $1600 hospitalization deductible that Medicare does not pay; that alone more than reimbursed me for the annual costs of the Supplemental Plan), I have been having what I can only call financial PTSD moments. [Please note: as someone with diagnosed PTSD, I am not using that phrase lightly. I have written openly about my financial/money trauma before—not a pretty story. But I don't live in that world anymore, thankfully.]

I made the decision last fall (perhaps as a result of the medical experience) to start drawing Social Security in 2024. Just before I disappeared down the medical maw, we had made an appointment to meet with a local financial planner and look at where we were financially now and in the future.  Warren and I, as a later-in-life relationship, keep separate and separated accounts. We share household expenses but we have no joint assets other than our love for one another. The financial planner had that information, as well as a thumbnail sketch of my medical history and its impact on my life expectancy. She had numbers for our expenses, our account balances, everything. I had a small bequest from a former client that was marking time in a low-interest account; could I put that to better use? My monthly income of $736 (last year; it is now up to $753) was a small pension. Because I had no debt and am not a spender, I never finished any month in the red even at that income level. I was past Full Retirement Age for Social Security purposes. So when we finally sat down with the planner (there was a long delay due to my being in the hospital and my subsequent recovery), she showed us projections based upon our both reaching our late 80s (highly unlikely for me, entirely possible for Warren) and upon my dying somewhere in the next decade (highly likely) and Warren continuing to live into his 90s. And that is without my going back to work, among other things. She gave us both praise: neither of us carry any debt. Nothing. Rien. Nada. 

And, no surprise in large part because of having no debt and neither of being Big Spenders, there was plenty of money to carry us into those faraway years. 

Before meeting with her, I ran the numbers between drawing Social Security starting this year or waiting until I was 70 in 2026. While waiting until I was 70 would give me—well, Warren, because 70 is a stretch for me—a larger monthly amount, the difference did not offset the benefit of having more money coming in monthly starting now and being able to direct it into savings and small investments. I applied for Social Security to start January of this year; easy peasy. Approval followed quickly. And that's when the PTSD kicked in.

What the heck? 

I was struggling. Not with the decision to start taking Social Security. Not with the concern that having more money would change my lifestyle. No, I was having flashbacks to the profligate spending spouse of yore who used to excoriate me for not making enough money to support him in a style in which he felt entitled, to the months of not being able to work at all after my initial diagnosis, to the financial constraints my health imposed that I could do nothing about, to all of that.

In past years, I have written about keeping stringent money controls over my finances. In 2017, I had to replace a car and I refused to go into debt to do so. I was treating my NW contingent to tickets home in the summer, another expenditure I refused to charge. And back in those days, I started every calendar year with an insurance deductible of $1500 (Medicare/Supplemental Plan annual deductible? $240 for 2024) that I needed to pay.  That was when I started printing out my pay stub every two weeks and assigning every dollar a job. (If any of you are Dave Ramsey fans, you will recognize that language; for the record, I did not get it from Dave Ramsey.) That system lasted until my very last pay stub in 2021. But even after that, I have continued to track my income, my outgo, and, yes, balance my checking account monthly, an activity that earned an incredulous gasp from a colleague who said he hadn't balanced his in years because he knew he always had plenty of money in it. Well, I didn't have that privilege for a long, long time. (I still balance it. And I still keep my "accounts on [my] thumb nail," as Thoreau admonished us.)

So back to the PTSD issue. What got me through it? 

Deep breaths. Seriously. Long walks (impacted and impeded by broken wrist, more surgery, and other issues, but, hey, I am building back up). Seriously. Watching financial videos (George Kamel, who is part of the Ramsey team, is a favorite) and hearing repeatedly both in videos and in articles: get-out-of-debt-now (a goal I met years ago). 

And, touching on these different sources, hearing some stats and numbers that calmed me down tremendously and finally allowed me to move forward without being triggered.

One came from Geoff Schmidt, a CPA who has a YouTube channel (Holy Schmidt!) that focuses mostly on retirees and retirement, either putting yourself in the best shape for retirement or, once in retirement, managing your finances so that you do not run out of money. His factoid? Per a 2022 Census Bureau analysis, 71% of all retirees in the United States carry an average of $19,888 in non-mortgage debt. Car loans, credit cards, who the heck know what, but 71%. (Yes, my jaw dropped.) He then said: Get. Out. Of. Debt. Now.

Not a problem here.

The other snippet came from George Kamel, who has a YouTube channel by the same name and whose sense of humor and blunt approach I enjoy. A Millennium, George is part of the Dave Ramsey empire and pushes the Ramsey Baby Steps formula to put yourself on the right path financially as early as possible. And yes, getting out of debt is a critical Ramsey Baby Step. (Again, not an issue here.) But the snippet he recently shared was that Americans annually spent $1800 per person on clothing. 

Annually. Per person.

Yes, I know. Averages are averages: many spend way more, many spend way less. But $1800? 

When I shared that with Warren over supper, I added, "I haven't spent $1800 on clothing, including shoes, over the last 30 years combined." (Katrina, if you are reading this, I know you are shaking your head.) We have had a lot of fun with that stat, including my sharing it with our neighbors, who tend to view clothing purchases the way we do. Mark was headed to pick up his elderly mother (she's 95) to take her to a funeral and pointed out that his suit jacket was easily 30 years old. "I had it relined once. And yeah, it's starting to fray. But you know what? It does fine for how rarely I wear it." I shared that I regularly wear a sweater that my son Ben wore in 6th grade—in 1997. That was when Mary spoke up and said in her early days (engineering/sciences), she bought a lot of professional clothes so the men would understand she was a professional. She then admitted that at some point, preparing to move, she had 28 or more wardrobe boxes in the attic, filled to the gills with suits, blouses, shoes, purses, and so on. All of us started laughing. I said when I graduated from law school in 1981, I bought one suit. One. And owned one pair of dress shoes. One. Lots of laughter. Mark looked at her and said, "I don't know if I would have married you if I had known you had all those clothes!" More laughter. 

It is mid-April and the PTSD episodes have faded. I still have a lot going on in my life, we still have a lot going on in our life together, and Warren has a WHOLE lot going on in his life. Those things carry their own weight and baggage and some of them I will be sharing in posts to come. But PTSD isn't one of them.

And neither is going out to buy $1800 worth of clothes!