One Dime, One Day

I have been struggling with money issues as of late: some of them in my wallet, more of them in my head. Monday, I contacted our local hospital where I do all my oncology work (lab work and consultations) to find out why I was no longer receiving hospital bills. Our local hospital is part of a larger conglomerate and it turns out that somehow, somewhere, between April 2010 and October 2010, the system's computer resurrected my old mailing address (last used in October 2008) and was shipping everything to that address. That explains the recently received collection letter on a bill from October that I never received and never saw, and that explains why I only just learned the April totals.

The April total was higher than I anticipated. Had I known, I would have been paying on it but I didn't and I haven't been, so now I have a whopping bill to pare down. (Before you say "but April, surely you knew you had a bill, why weren't you more proactive?," let me add that I also have a pending application for financial assistance and I initially thought the bill was being held up while the assistance application was being reviewed.)

So by 5:00 Monday night, I was thoroughly demoralized. But then I rallied: I will pay it off bit by bit; yes, that means stretching some other things out a little further, but I can do it; it will be okay.

That was before I looked more closely at the account sheets and saw something on the master account called "bad debt balance," with a large sum after it. A large sum as in four figures. Where did that come from? When I applied for financial assistance last time, the counselor referred to some unpaid (and unmentioned ever) 2004 charges that should have been picked up by Medicaid or bundled into my bankruptcy in 2005. Could that be them? What charges are they? And why that amount?

I don't know about the figure; it apparently is written off but still pops up in internal documents (which is what I was looking at as we tried to figure out where my bills had gone). Regardless, it is so discouraging. As I told Warren when I related the day's discoveries, I pay and pay and pay, get close to finishing off a major bill of some sort and plan on adding that payment to another bill's payment (the snowball effect), and then learn I have new bills. Or older bills newly discovered. By the time I pay my share of the household costs and make payments on the bills (now including the new ones), there is little left to my paycheck. 

It's hard. It's hard to be perpetually tight on funds. It's hard to realize that some necessities I have delayed spending money on are just that much more out of reach, even with being hyper frugal with my dollars. It's hard to not feel that even a small item once in a great while is an extravagance I should not indulge in.

But like so many times when I am feeling stressed or struggling to cope, all I really needed after Monday was a different perspective.

A change in attitude.

A reminder of just how much I am blessed.

What a difference a day can make.

The first reminder, small and sweet, happened when I dropped Warren off at work yesterday. After he got out of the car, he bent over and reached down to the curb. Had he dropped something?

Warren straightened back up and held up a slim dime. One thin, silvery dime. "It can go in the vacation fund!"

We both laughed. We are ten cents (ten cents!) closer to whatever we are doing next summer. And the dime knocked my perspective a little closer to center. It doesn't have to be all about the money. It so rarely is all about the money. So many times it is about other things: emotions, anxieties, stresses. But it is so much easier and convenient to blame it on money rather than deal with those messy, squishy topics. 

The second reminder was neither short nor sweet. Last night at 10:20 the phone rang. In our household, phones ringing after 10:00 are usually not pleasant calls. This one held true to type.

Our "almost daughter" Amy was on the phone. She is at risk to lose her already insecure housing situation (she lives with her dad) due to family conflicts, she is at risk to lose her already insecure means of transportation due to family conflicts, she is underemployed and has not found additional work that would give her the financial ability to meet the risks, she is going hungry more times than she will admit, and she is so emotionally battered and worn down due to family conflicts that she is almost too numb to respond to the immediate crises. I tried making suggestions, until I finally realized I needed to shut up and listen because she was in no shape to hear the offers of help. Amy talked and cried, cried and talked.

Then she blurted out, crying even harder, "and we only have a half roll of toilet paper left and I don't get paid until Friday."

That I could respond to concretely and immediately. "Amy, come over here right now. We have toilet paper."

I went upstairs and gathered some rolls of toilet paper. I also raided the vacation fund box, which held a few dollar bills (along with Tuesday's dime and some other loose change), and Warren contributed a few more. The toilet paper went into a grocery bag, the dollar bills went into an envelope.

When Amy pulled up five minutes later, I met her on the lawn. I handed her the grocery bag and the envelope.

"This is a gift from us. It'll help you get closer to payday. And here's the toilet paper."

We hugged for a long moment. Amy is thin and shaking and sad. It breaks my heart to see her that way. She is so young to have so many sorrows and difficulties. I walked her back to the car, thanked her friend who brought her over, hugged her again.

"We love you. We are here for you. You can stay here while you figure things out."

After Amy left, I walked back into the house and plopped down beside Warren on the couch, drained. We talked a little about what had just happened, about what we can do for Amy. It was still on my mind as I fell asleep. This morning, Warren said "I think Amy was in my dreams last night."

Yeah, mine too.

Amy was the big jolt to my perspective, a real live reminder of just how much I have. I have what she is lacking presently, starting with toilet paper, food, and a secure place to live. Most important, I have a loving home to shelter me when times are tough.

I have a different attitude today. I still have a large pile of medical bills that I will need to pay down bit by bit. I still have some important purchases that I will need to defer yet a little longer. I still have an anemic checking account balance which will rally only briefly on payday for some time to come. We even have a little tiny vacation fund that might just maybe allow us to get away for a few days next summer.

And I still have a wonderfully loving household where Warren and I work together to make the most of what we have, dime by dime, day by day.

Pennies Under The Rug

Last night I had a short, intense exchange with Sam on the issue of finances. Mine, not his. The dialogue was prompted by my asking him his financial status, as Sam's dad had just asked me to contribute more to Sam's monthly expenses. Sam immediately asked why we were even having that discussion without his involvement.

Good point, Sam. And thank you for making it.

Emails about money from my ex-spouse, no matter how well meant, always cause my stress level to jump way into the red. Because of the long and often difficult history between us, including major struggles on financial issues, I cannot read any inquiry from him as neutral. This one was no exception.

To reply to his email required much agonizing over words. As I labored through a draft, I cried out "I can hear Doug [my brilliant therapist of yore] talking to me!" Warren, who was providing moral support and a listening ear, asked me what Doug was saying.

"Stop thinking that telling your story means it is heard."

Doug was right. My long, labored explanation added nothing to the discussion and only made me feel worse. I trimmed my reply considerably, reined in my feelings, wrote that I was already doing all I could do, and would stretch more when I could. Then I hit "send."

But not before Sam and I had our quick exchange. And not before I assured Sam that he was not the source of financial stress in my life.

I grew up in a hardworking, blue collar family where my parents made it clear from grade school on that they would support and provide for my brothers and me until we graduated from high school. After that, we were on our own and either had to join the military, get a job, or go to college. If you chose college, good for you, but it was on your own dime. After my parents drove me to Chicago in the fall of 1974 and unloaded my suitcases, their obligation ended. It was my scholarships, my loans, and my meager savings that got me through that first year and the years to follow.

Having gone to college on the sink or swim financial plan, I have always felt strongly about helping my children through college. What I hadn't planned on was Life, in the form of a major illness and an extreme and permanent reduction in income, messing up my plans.

I struggled my way through the responses and the guilt last night. I did not want to turn my back on Sam, and while I "knew" I wasn't doing that, I didn't accept that I was not. I "know" I am doing what I can to help him achieve his education. Is it all I want or hoped it would be? No. But I have to accept that my means are far more limited than in "the old days" and I am doing what I can. I can only shave pennies so thin, no matter what my desires for my children. And at this point, all my pennies are pretty thinly shaved. (Confession: I did just start a "getting away" account, but with my opening deposit being a whopping $96.33 and a third of that being spare change and another half being rebates and coupon savings, I don't think I am being selfish at the expense of a college education.)

For me, the big issue is changing my mindset that spending money equals love and that the only way I can prove myself as a good and loving parent is to overextend myself financially. As I told Warren, I could move this amount from here to there (because I also pay some other bills for Sam), but I was really just playing a shell game. Spread the dollars as I might over my budget, there are still only a given number of dollars.  Like resolving to buy the gift I can afford versus the splashier, pricier gift I can't, I have to work through my feelings and accept that it is okay to say "I can't do that amount, but I can do this amount."

I have to accept that about myself: that I am doing all I can. I have to give myself permission that "all I can" is a loving response.  

My friend Arlene recently shared her memory of her mother helping her with her college education: How well I remember my mother's jar of dimes. I still have tears when I think of the morning she rolled back the worn rug and removed enough nickels, dimes, and pennies to pay my first quarter tuition at OSU.

It is a beautiful story and one I thought about last night as I struggled with my desire and my inability to provide everything I would like for my children.

Sam will be home in four weeks for a visit and a brief respite from school. He'll have a chance to talk; I'll have a chance to listen. We are both looking forward to cooking together and recently talked about some of the dishes we want to try. And perhaps we'll have a chance to roll back the rug and find treasures underneath.

Loose Change

Back in April, while I was posting poetry, my friend Sharon over at Musings From a Midlife Mom was posting about her continued odyssey through her year of spending less and living more. Pounded by several Life events - a broken water heater, a family emergency - she noted ruefully how the month so far had been a lot about "spending more" because she had to, and added that she needed to also plan on and budget some "living more" items into her life. Sharon then noted that her personal "living more" list required some major funding to come true.

Sharon hit on something critical: it is important to take into account your wants as well as your needs as you thread your way through life. We sometimes forget that, either thinking we may only consider our needs or else only taking into account our wants. Either path will ultimately prove discouraging at best and disastrous at worst.

I liked how Sharon identified items that represented "living more" for her and recognized they all have a price tag. I suggested in a comment that she think about opening (with a very modest deposit) a "living more" bank account that the odd change and odd savings go into so she could see progress, even a little, toward her dreams. I wrote "if you can save one auto trip a week maybe there is $5 saved in gas and you throw $5 or close to it in a jar."

I have always found it impossible to read Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and not be moved by the story of the Nolan family saving pennies in a homemade bank nailed to the floor of the closet. The goal was five cents a day. "It seems a little. But where is it to come from? We haven't enough now and with another mouth to feed…" It is the grandmother who gives advice on how to scrimp even harder to come up with the precious pennies. I had the Nolans in mind when I suggested throwing the extra savings into the jar that would eventually be deposited into the "living more" account.

Sharon is still working on solving her money issues by taking a long, hard look at her family budget and aligning the needs and wants into the budget. Like all of us, she struggles with the needs versus the wants, the goals (saving, budgeting) versus the reality (what stopped working now?).

This was a very stressful spring for us due to external factors over which we had had very little control. Our peaceful home life was very hard hit and is still recovering, some major issues in our larger families have cropped up that we have to deal with, our finances were thrown into total chaos by outside events, and at many points both Warren and I felt beleaguered, to put it mildly. It is a blessing our relationship is so strong, because I am not sure a shaky one could have survived. At one low point, when I got done ranting to the point of tears about some of those external factors, I announced loudly "And you know what? Next year we are going on vacation for a week and GETTING AWAY from all of this!"

Saying those words was like letting the genie out of the bottle. The moment I spoke them aloud, they started taking on form and shape.

I want to go to the ocean. I love the ocean. I miss the ocean. I want to go east and eat blue crab and other seafood wonderfulness. I want to sit on an almost empty beach (we're not talking Virginia Beach here) somewhere and stare out to sea. I want to walk along the shoreline holding hands with Warren. And I want to watch and listen to the waves rolling in until I feel whole again.

(Note: I wrote a draft of this post in late April. Since then I have added an alternative destination: north to a lakefront cottage with a screen door and maybe, maybe the Northern lights. We'll see what next year brings.)

Sharon has blogged before about putting spare five-dollar bills in a special drawer, jar, or box, and watching how fast they build up. I do the same thing with loose change and one dollar bills, spare five-dollar bills being a rare commodity around here. Don't laugh: loose change is what helped us get to Montana last summer. Well, the only way to accomplish GETTING AWAY on our modest incomes is to follow my advice to Sharon: open a "living more" bank account and throw all the loose change and extra dollars into it. Which is exactly what I did earlier today. True to my advice, I opened it with a very modest deposit, but open it I did. Into it will go all the loose change, coupon savings (I don't use coupons very much but when I do, I will write a check to the "living more" account for that amount), rebates, and other odd amounts that come my way for the next year. If I write a check for $43.57 for the electric, I will enter it as $44.00 in the checkbook and count the extra 43¢ towards the account, moving it over each month as I balance my account. Loose change, it all adds up.

Thank you, Sharon, for inspiring me! I can hear the surf (or the slap of the screen door) already.