I love Jack’s post. We so often lament and spend energy dwelling in what doesn’t work, or what we wish were working better, and neglect to really ’settle into’ and fully enjoy the times when things are swell (the only word I could think of that connotes the feel of Jack’s blog). Enjoy, Jack! and thanks.

Rather than spending my little blog space working out financial plans or lamenting a lack of assets, I thought, in honour of the season, it would be nice to talk briefly about what is going right.

It was payday last Friday. Every payday I do a quick check to make sure the previous pay period is tied off. Mundane things like ensuring bills are paid, donations donated, savings saved, etc.

This time around, I was able to put a check mark beside each item during my semi-monthly assessment. Not only that, there was still money left over.
Not a lot, but enough to pay for a month of music lessons in the fall.

I reflected on the pay period. Luxury spending was up slightly. After all, my son needed a couple of Beatle’s CDs and for me there’s the new Bruce Cockburn and Paul Simon (get this album). I also bought a couple of new shirts and enjoyed a couple of meals out.

The difference has to be the season. Thanks to a beautiful summer, my natural gas bill is down substantially. There are no music lessons and most of my entertainment is hiking, walking or attending the numerous free concerts around the city.

Summertime, and for at least a couple of weeks, the living is easy.

Kat - I so relate to your story. I am a “J” according to Myers Briggs. I like to plan things, and I like things to go according to plan! When faced with a last minute adjustment, especially big, I freeze.

As a money coach, I’ve really noticed that one’s natural temperaments dramatically affect their finances.

People who are natural planners have an easier go of organizing and sticking to a financial plan, although perhaps get more stressed about it.

Go-with-the-flow types have to exert extra effort to keep their financial house in order. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if they enjoy life more because they simply don’t dwell as much on what ’should’ be, in favour of simply experiencing the ups and downs as they come.

It might be useful to ask yourself if you are a ‘natural planner’ who dislikes disruptions to the plan, or a go-with-the-flow-type. Then, ask what the strengths are that you could develop even further, to your financial advantage.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday … and I’ve included an image to inspire you

Ah…”the best laid plans of mice & [wo]men” so the story goes…

Well, at the 11th hour, my vacation plans for Tofino have morphed into a trip to Savary Island instead. Fortunately the anticipated “budget” (mental calculations on what I expect to spend and I have a pool of savings but haven’t actually set aside “dedicated” money for) works out to be roughly what I anticipated spending on the Tofino vacation. It might even come in a little under but I’m not counting my chickens until the trip is over!

One of the things I dislike the most about planning is the inevitable deviations that happen along the way that, no matter how much you plan, you can’t completely account for. After I learned about how things would change, it just so happened that I had a friend who could host me at her cabin for my vacation week so that all I need to spend is travel to and from the island and my food & beverages while there. It shouldn’t be a far cry from what I would have spent to travel to/from and camp at Tofino. I’m so thankful for this option because my concern with cancelling so close to the departure date was that arranging another holiday of similar enjoyment for the same price would have been close to impossible. It’s all moot now, but I immediately felt panicky when I realized that my vacation would have to change last minute. “How will I ever afford this?!” I thought.

I stepped back and thought out my options and got creative with solutions and made a backup plan in case my first choice didn’t work. I recogize that I am very capable of generating new solutions but often I really dislike the mental gymnastics required for the task. At the time I just feel frustrated that all the careful planning has gone to waste and I think this is one of the cornerstones of my resistance to planning - whether financial or otherwise.

So now I’m in the process of planning a whole new vacation with less than a week till I leave. So far it’s gone smoother than I anticipated. Keep your fingers crossed for me… Let’s hope the vacation goes equally well!

Kat

Congrats to Kat for recently turning 40. Her comment about wishing to have it together at this age struck home.

I’m 43 (with another birthday immediately around the corner) and recently had to think my way through this issue. After all, graduating from high school, I figured I would have done much better than my parents did by middle age. As I enter that phase of my life, nothing could be further than the truth.

To further rub salt in the wounds, I flip open almost any magazine to see advertising featuring images of attrative younger people in their well-appointed, perfectly designed homes or having fun in the sun at some exotic locale that up to know only ranked a mention and photo in an old copy of National Geographic or in a Jimmy Buffett song.

Then I look around my neighbourhood, which once was blue collar. Now it is refurbished or rebuilt homes selling for just shy of seven digits, each with two luxury SUVs or better in the driveway.
Neighbours talking about their recent trip to the very same tropical locals mentioned earlier. It’s enough to make you want spill your margarita.

Sitting in my rented basement suite with my aging 15 year old car outside, it can all seem a little depressing. But, I have to remember, I still have slightly more than half of my work years ahead of me and they should be my best earning years. And, on occasion, life throws different opportunities our way. So where I sit right now is not indicative of where I may be sitting five, ten or twenty years from now, which is lot of time to get it together.

And it doesn’t mean my neighbours have it together either, just because those around me have the toys and trips. We don’t have the ability to look under the hood to see what sort of debt load they are carrying or how they are financing their lifestyle.

Finally, I spent an hour at the beach this afternoon. Hawaii without palm trees, but otherwise tropical and it only cost me two or three litres of gas to get there. For a brief time, nothing else including a light wallet mattered.

Hello again all! You cannot imagine what comfort I found in the words of Nancy and fellow blogger Jack. This 3-way dialogue is proving very helpful to me and helping me to feel decidedly less alone in my financial journey…rationally I know this is the case, but practically speaking is often another matter. It’s just nice to be able to relate to someone else.

Two further thoughts from me: (1) I have heard “You’re being too hard on yourself” all my life and have made much progress with that yet clearly I must continue to be gentle with myself; and (2) I just turned 40 three weeks ago and feel that if I haven’t got my money issues together by now, then WHEN?!? (mmm-hmmm, I know…gentle with myself…)

A couple of weeks ago Nancy suggested a topic for my blog might include some musings on Turning 40 & Managing My Money. I’m feeling reluctant that I have anything valuable to contribute on the topic because I think I “should be” more financially organized than I feel currently. Now I know what you’re thinking, “I’m being too hard on myself”!! But I’ll bet for everyone of you thinking that, there’s another one of you out there feeling just the way I do - that you should also be more financially organized than you are too. Which is why I (and possibly you) took Nancy’s course in the first place, because I wanted to become a person who has a grip on her finances, who lives within her means, who doesn’t have out of control credit, who can have/do the things in her life she wants to.

Progress not perfection the old saying goes. It was really helpful for me to hear Nancy’s timeline on her financial turnaround - particularly the part about it taking another 2 to 3 years after getting “stabilized” to get to “thriving”. It made me see that things are not terribly off track for me if her experience can be used as one instance of “average” experience for me to measure my own strides. I know it doesn’t happen overnite, I guess I’m a little frightened about running out of time before it all gets “there”…wherever exactly “there” is. I know I don’t want to have no money when it comes time to retire or to be forced to continue to work well past time I’d like to because I was the grasshopper basking in the sun of the summer while ants all around me got well-stocked for the winter!

That was where it was helpful to hear Jack say, if you can’t do 100%, shoot for 25%, it still helps. Of course it does, and as I’m learning to let go of “all or nothing” perfectionistic thinking, I realize he’s right, baby steps are the way to reach my goals. Eventually I will get there, I guess it just feels like I’ve been making lots of baby steps and any time now they SHOULD be getting larger! Patience is NOT one of my strong suits. I also realized in Jack’s breakdown of his large expense management that we are working with entirely different levels of income which makes his path very different from mine and my strategies need to suit my own circumstances.

So, I will continue to observe what others who are experiencing success are doing and learn how I can apply some of that knowledge to my own circumstances, making necessary adjustments along the way. I’m really starting to understand my parents’ lament of looking in the mirror and feeling like a kid but seeing an aging image staring back at me. Sometimes I feel so grown up…and at other times - especially around money - I feel like I have a lot of learning yet to do. Thankfully, if the Universe agrees, I’ve got a few more decades on the planet to figure it all out!

Until next time, Kat