Learn to control money but do not allow it to control you

sjm89

Hello Firewalker. Just read your diary from start to finish and it is brilliant! A pleasure to read! Keep it up SJM

mrs_robinson_3

I read and really enjoyed your last post. My OH ran a marathon in Paris last month and watching it, I too felt v emotional. In fact I was trying hard not to be in tears as I don't think many people would understand that it was just the joy of seeing so many people test themselves, and triumph, that made me feel that way.


Mrs R

Firewalker

Thanks sjm89 and welcome. Mrs Robinson I would love to run the Paris marathon – heard that it is great fun and lovely to run but it is timed (under 4h 30min). Well, when I am lighter and faster – Paris, here we come.

Today was a NSD – good. Wend to the gym and did a session with my trainer – mainly things that five years ago I would have said are impossible to do: press-ups, squats with 50kg weight, and loads of V-sits. But I am writing this not to brag – the emphasis is on ‘impossible to do’. Let face it: two months ago I would have said that it is impossible to go days without spending a penny. No coffees, no chocolates no new and not needed stationary.

One of my concerns lately is that, just like many people on this forum, I am becoming obsessed with money. How to earn it, whether I’ll be able to continue earning it, how much things cost, how can I save a bit... Little boy has started picking up on that a bit and he keeps talking about how much things cost. And although some awareness of economic principles and links - like money does not come from the machine in the wall but mummy works and her work pays her for her labour, and mummy does not have capital, so she can only lose her chains (Karl Marx is turning in his grave by now) – is no doubt useful, I would not wish him to become materialistic. On a second thought, is his parents’ idealism preferable?

But still, it seems to me that money is a bit like high blood pressure – it is better when one stops thinking about it, and worrying about it. And to become impervious to money one either should have loads of it – ‘Oh, money is the thing you buy other things with!’ – or one should lead a simple life. Can I stop wanting? And I rarely want for myself – but I do want for my family.

Now odd to bed – tomorrow will be a very difficult day.

‘Impossible is nothing!’ - Adidas

Firewalker

Firewalker

Have just come back from work and grabbing a minute before starting to cook. It was a busy day – started at 9.00 a.m. with a lecture to a group of people from around Europe, than a meeting on teaching and immediately after that another meeting with people from the ESRC (the research council I fall under, or over, or whatever...). If somebody asked me today ‘where did you have lunch?’ I would have had to answer ‘between building X and building Y’. Very uncivilised, I think.

Apart from being hectically busy the day has turned out quite alright. The presentation went rather well – but then I love teaching. In fact I don’t think I have shared my ‘Mexican ring’ story.

Last year I was invited to give couple of lectures in Mexico, in one of the universities in Mexico City. These were to be to a group of PhD students from all countries of Latin America. So, I prepared lectures for students – they were academic, polemic and entertaining but mostly conceptual. A day after I arrived my hostess invited me to lunch. So there we were – sitting in this lovely restaurant, drinking reputedly the best margaritas in all Mexico, eating nice food and discussing local destinies.

My hostess was telling me a bit about her background – unbelievable woman, by all accounts. Had to immigrate when she was young because of the political regime in her native country, than found Mexico – as she put it, she ‘found paradise’ and built a life for herself.

‘Are you planning to go back to...’ – I asked.

She was quite for a moment and then she said:

‘I was planning to, and had saved enough to make it possible. But in the crash I lost everything.’
‘I am so sorry’ – I said.
‘Well, that is life’ – was the reply.

She was 63 years old. And there was a resignation and acceptance, and not a trace of defeat. But then she looked at me, smiled as said:

‘Before I forget to mention this, to tell you that I have invited all directors of regional research council to your lecture on Wednesday. Hope you don’t mind.’

Mind – well no, I just will have to do a lot more work on the lecture. And trying to please two such different groups – someone is bound to be very unhappy. But I did the lecture, and after that my hostess was so happy that she took a ring off her finger and gave it to me. It did feel uncomfortable – it was strange to accept and very rude to refuse. But ever since, whenever I know that I might be in a situation where I feel insecure I always wear this ring.

Today also made me think that I am a very lucky woman - I am paid to do exactly what I like. This is reading, writing, talking to large groups of people and being the centre of attention and arguing. Where else can I get that?

Firewalker

Firewalker

Yes, yes – I know I have to work, I know that I have to finish this paper and move forward. But academic writing is so boring and restrictive, I find. When I was younger I used to spice it up by making bets with friends about including certain phrases or words in the text. About fifteen years ago, for instance, I had a bet that I am going to include something about love in all my papers and reports – because back than love seemed important. Guess who won? Meeeee! It was hard though – remember I do sociology of science and emotion is usually not allowed, love and passion especially.

Nowadays I don’t seem to have this kind of friends and colleagues anymore – the whole thing has become so serious. That is why I take breaks and write on here (and one other thing about which I’ll probably tell when ready to talk).

I just had to tell – we are slowly discovering that our garage is actually a treasure chest. As OH pointed out jokingly last night, if we continue like that we might be able to feed ourselves from the garage for a long time. Last night sold things for £30 – little boy’s baby toys. But I am impressed – as people for whom ‘this capitalist lark’ is not working at all we are not doing too badly these last two weeks. As with everything there is a downside – because I don’t use my bank card so often had to go through the humiliation of going into the bank and asking for cash and for my PIN to be sent again. Yep, keep forgetting my PIN. Prefer to think it is misuse and preoccupation – not early dementia of some kind.

I also had a tantrum about 30 min ago – yes little boy never had one but I still regularly have them. Got so angry with OH (about something that seemed very important at the time) that I just had to scream and jump around. You know, the kind of anger where you know that if you don’t scream, or run or kick something the centre of your being will burst into million pieces and the shards will pierce your heart.

Feels better now – so back to work. I wonder what shall I aim to put in my paper – something about addiction maybe? This might be interesting – science as an addiction.

Firewalker

Firewalker

Sitting at my desk and having breakfast. In about an hour I am off, on my bike, to the third day of the NLP – neuro linguistic programming - course I have been doing. Hence, this seems to me like a good opportunity to get back to the ‘small’ matter of identifying one’s hierarchy of wants.

Several days ago, I was thinking that the image of hierarchy is probably now very helpful if we are to try and figure our wants out. Hierarchies are pyramidal and create the impression of persistence – both are probably not exactly correct assumptions regarding our wants. So, I have started thinking more in terms of nested circles.


In the little circle in the middle, each of us has few core wants which are very important to us and are also fairly stable (although they can change as well). In the other circles, values that are not that important can be placed. Where different wants fit can be worked out in a variety of ways but here I would like to mention two.

On would involve writing down everything you were buying/are buying/ are tempted to buy. This can be either done fast, trying not to reflect much on the list initially, or one can elaborate categories and fit items under these. After that, the wants from the list can be placed in one or other of the circles (one can draw as many circles as one wishes to express the gradation from highly important core wants to entirely irrelevant to your being want. The process of placing the wants in different circles is reflective and during this asking the following questions might help: why do I want this? What is the best thing that would happen is I possess it? Which is the worst thing that will happen if I do not possess any? When making the list, it is important to be very specific – ‘buying clothes’ won’t do; ‘buying jeans’ will.

The second way I have been thinking about to help figure out wants is an exercise that unfolds at stages. Imagine that you have to leave your house and the place where you have settled. You will be taken elsewhere and will not be allowed to get anything new for a year. You are told that you are allowed to take only 15 items with you. What would you take with you? (Make a list of the 15 things you will take with you and again be as specific as possible. For example, are you going to take an evening dress? Wellingtons? Which piece of jewellery are you going to take? Etc.) After you have selected 15 items they tell you that actually you are allowed only 10? Which ones would they be? How about 5? Which is the one thing that you will take with you?

Off now but will try to do these exercises myself tonight.

Firewalker

Firewalker

It is a wonderful day here – bright, sunny and very, very hot. OH and little boy have gone to the local park to fly airplanes and I am sitting in the garden, roasting and writing. I am having myself a relaxing cooking day and also used some time to do the exercise from my previous post.

Cooking pork and orange in the slow cooker – wonderful, delicious stew but it is not going to be ready for today: too hot for stew today anyway. So, for tonight I am going to make chicken liver – it is really tasty fried in butter with a bit of onion. Mmmmm...Later will look at my mum’s old recipe notebook again – probably will try to make a jam roll.

Now about the exercise I described in my previous post – did the one where one needs to decide which items to take with them (reducing number). There are mild surprises but nothing really striking. My fifteen items are (in no particular order):

Socks
Underwear
Comfortable trousers
Walking shoes
Soap
Shampoo
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Pens/pencils
Paper
ipod
Computer
Running shoes
Gold rings from mother

My five items are:

Shampoo
Book 1
ipod
Computer
Running shoes

And my one item is:

Computer

Would like to think about this one further and link these to my values (by reflecting on my selection). There are two surprises: the ipod and that the top item was my computer rather than a book. Interesting....

Has anyone else tried this one? If yes, are you prepared to share the result?

This morning I was also very brave and stepped on the dreaded scales. As expected weight is bad, but now there is only one way – down.
Firewalker

savingwannabe

Underwear must come first for me.

Firewalker

I just realised that my two main goals at the moment are to bring things down – my weight and my debt. How appropriate – when people are in a positive situation they usually aim to bring things up. Oh well...

Otherwise, I had an enjoyable cooking day today although with varying success. Made pork orange (great), loaf of bread (tasty but touched the top of the bread-maker so looked ridiculous), honey biscuits (success with all my men) and a jam roll (eatable but not entirely right) and chicken liver with onion fried in butter (so nice that probably have to stop cooking it if weight is to go down).

Cooking gave me the time and space to reflect on the exercise to figure out my wants. I am rather surprised that my main core want is the one for gadgets – I seriously believed that it is for books. My feeling is though that the protected ‘wants’ in my case are: gadgets, books, cleanliness and running, in this order. Translated in controlling spending, this means that although I need to reduce expenditure on those I should continue getting them from time to time. Different strategies are possible for the different items. Gadgets, for example, should not be duplicated and where possible good deals should be used (including substitution without loss of quality). Example is my new mobile – I really wanted an iPhone but we found Nokia 900 which is really good (probably as good as the iPhone) but worked out much cheaper. Books can be either borrowed from library or if possession becomes irresistible novels can be bought at charity shops (work books are expensive but they go against tax).

What else this exercise made me realise is that although clothes and shoes are marginally important to me I am a practical dresser. So buying more clothes or shoes can be done very occasionally. There will be no more buying jewellery until financial health is restored – what matters to me is not the jewellery but the memories and stories attached to it. I can write the stories instead – this way they will be embodied in something that does not get me broke.

And the saying for today is:

“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” - Voltaire

Firewalker

Firewalker

Done the weekly accounts – amazingly last week we have spent only £59.25 of which £37.05 was spent on food and £22.20 on other stuff (including going to the cinema and a bottle of really nice wine). No bad, not bad at all. I think that our expenditure has gone down because of three things. First, every Saturday we take cash for the week out and know that that is it: cash is more obvious to spend than using cards. Second, I have started not only shop with a shopping list but putting the prize of items in my phone’s calculator as I go through the shop. This probably looks rather idiotic but is quite effective in terms of keeping to list and budget. And third, we have started giving ourselves £10 per week for stuff other than food and other necessities. This has worked well with me – I think carefully what I do with this money rather than spend it and put on weekly expenditure.

Planning to do some gardening today – or shall I say some cleaning in the garden. We have a large magnolia tree which normally blossoms for a long time and is lovely. But this year blossom was short and now loads of beauty is rotting under the tree – this is what I’ll try and clean.

But first things first – off for a run although it is already 22 C here.

Firewalker