I miss Jason riding the bus. He was always home at 10 after or 40 after, no way around it. It was simple and predictable.
I miss getting a tax refund that was big enough to fund Christmas and float us through the rest of the year.
I miss that place that sold funnel cake French fries.
I miss the incredibly well defined goal that we were all working toward- graduate!!! Life is more complex now.
I miss the perks of being 'poor'. A hot dog dinner provided by the school of agriculture was the highlight of the week. A pack of coupons appeared in our mailbox one day for free milk, eggs, juice and more. It fed our family for what felt like a long time.
I miss having no choice but to turn a blind eye to the fires that we're raging around us- the ripped up furniture, the holey shoes, the car maintenance. Now we have the means to take care of those fires, just not all at once. There is no more blind eye.
When we were in graduate school I wrote this note to my future self. And I think about it often. I thought about it the other day when Emma, Noah and I made our way over to the bakery to pick up our traditional shopping-with-Mommy donut. When we were in graduate school we never, and I mean never picked up a donut because donuts cost money. We picked up the free cookie that usually tasted like pressed sawdust and then we moved on.
I thought about the note when I reached for a treat from my stash of chocolate. I racked my brain for the location of my stash in graduate school and I realized- I didn't have a stash in Indiana. I couldn't afford it. I didn't want to afford it as much as I wanted to afford healthy food, which we can purchase easily now, just occasionally choose not to.
I thought about it when Jason told me he'd be working from 7 AM to 9 PM today. An 8 to 5 job has never really been in our plan, but these long days of planting remind me of the years we spent putting every spare minute into research.
I thought about the note as I have continued to spring clean my way through our house. Somehow, now that we have more, I want less. It also comes from the fact that we are done having babies, so we don't have to store baby gear anymore, but in general I look around our bigger house and wonder how we accumulated so much stuff along the way. It's hard to manage so much stuff, so I'm always looking to get rid of the things that we don't love and use.
We gave our trampoline away this week. What's left of it after last summer's adventure, anyway. I told my future self that we would get a trampoline, and we did. And it wasn't a huge deal to give it away. I hope we get another one some day, but for now we're happy with the swingset that we purchased this year.
I miss graduate school life. I don't know if it was less money, less uncertainty, less choices or less complications, but somehow life was simpler back then. Just graduate.
I love reading money blogs, frugal living blogs, and debt-free living blogs. They are inspiring and kind of depressing. There is always so much more to a story than what you read online. I often wonder what people see when they look at our life- the house, the vacations, the children. There is no way to see the whole story. So here are a few glimpses.
We pay 10% of our income to our church. We believe in the blessings of Malachi, and we have surely seen those blessings in our life. We made the decision to pay an honest 10% tithing in the first month of our marriage, and we have never missed a month. It was a decision that we made once, and we have been blessed over and over again because of it.
Having said that, our meager student income 10% was a lot smaller than our 10% is now. We still pay it with a glad heart, but it has become a number that is quite a noticeable line in our budget. And that right there is one of the blessings of tithing.
We don't get financial help from our parents. We get moral support, strong testimonies, genuine concern, love unbounded, spoiled at Christmas and birthdays, baby-sitters for trips to Puerto Rico, a fantastic place to visit in the summer or the winter, once-in-a-lifetime trips aboard the Disney Dream, and more, but we don't get financial help from our parents. We are still paying our own way through college, paying on our own mortgage, paying on our own car, and paying for our own vacations. There is a great amount of pride that comes with doing those things for yourself. I've discovered that many people get a "leg up" in the financial department from their parents. We do not come from wealthy families, (and that is not to say that we ever went without) but the blessings of growing up in our families outweigh any financial blessings that might have come.
I often think about what goals and hopes we have for our children. I think one of the greatest ways we can ensure that our children have a better life than we have (the true American dream, right?) is to help them not be shackled down with the chains of student debt. Leah will start college in ten short years. That doesn't seem like that much time for us to prepare for a way to help her through college.
I am a stay-at-home mom. We live on one income. We lived on one (very small) income when we were graduate students. Even when I was working full time and Jason was finishing his undergraduate degree, we lived on one income and put the other (student employee-sized) one in the bank. Then we started our family, I began to stay at home, and Jason continued to go to school. We have been official "wage earning, tax paying" citizens for less than two years. That isn't much time to create a financial legacy for ourselves, but I still tend to forget that when I wonder why we've only come as far as we have in the last 11 years. (Which is actually pretty darn far, but imagine if we had already been college graduates when we met instead of the marginally directionless 22- and 23- year old that we were.)
A dear friend once asked me tongue-in-cheek if surely life wasn't so much more perfect once you graduated. And the answer is yes! Life is better, money is better, and the choices are greater. Gone are the days when we had no choice but to turn a blind eye to the check engine light or the bare cupboards. Now there are choices aplenty, and we have worked hard to to get to this point of choices in our life. There is something equally exciting and depressing about trying to decide if we'd rather landscape the yard or finish the basement, pay down student debt or increase our emergency savings fund. We get to dream about what once-in-a-lifetime trip we'll take our children on, and what our life will look like in 30 years when Jason's career is winding down. We're grown up, making our own grown up choices with our own grown up money, and mostly, we're loving it. It's not all sunshine and roses, but there sure is a lot of fun that can come with the privileges that we've earned. And we did it all ourselves.
I just hope we can help our kids do it, too. Because when we sacrifice and make hard choices now, the payoff for later can be so great!
Apparently Jason and I are weird because we don't have cable TV. We never have, but maybe someday we will. Neither of us feel like it's a missing staple in our lives.
There are a ton of things we'd like to do to our house that are completely non-essential. Crown molding, finish the basement, pour a patio, furnish the music room, decorate the kids rooms.
And we want to travel. Trips to all parts of the country are bouncing around my head all the time.
And I'd always like to save more. And beef up our food storage. And pay off our student loans. There are so many ways to spend all of the money we've got, plus more. It's an annoying truth of adulthood, and I'm always grateful that we are able to live well within our means, especially on one income. Even if it does mean turning a blind eye to some of the awesome things our neighbors/friends/family have and do.
Once in awhile I dream about living another version of my life. In a loft downtown, or on property out in the country. Jason dreams about living in another country. Either way, we've lived here for over two years and I'm getting the itch to pack up and move. So I am rearranging the furniture and purging the closets instead.
And I actually do love it here in Iowa. We're not really in a rush to move, but we're not fully committing our hearts to life here either. I don't love that, but there is no change in sight. Between me moving every two to three years growing up and Jason living in the same house practically his whole life, we aren't great at settling in for just a few years. But we're trying!
*****
I thought about the note when I reached for a treat from my stash of chocolate. I racked my brain for the location of my stash in graduate school and I realized- I didn't have a stash in Indiana. I couldn't afford it. I didn't want to afford it as much as I wanted to afford healthy food, which we can purchase easily now, just occasionally choose not to.
I thought about it when Jason told me he'd be working from 7 AM to 9 PM today. An 8 to 5 job has never really been in our plan, but these long days of planting remind me of the years we spent putting every spare minute into research.
I thought about the note as I have continued to spring clean my way through our house. Somehow, now that we have more, I want less. It also comes from the fact that we are done having babies, so we don't have to store baby gear anymore, but in general I look around our bigger house and wonder how we accumulated so much stuff along the way. It's hard to manage so much stuff, so I'm always looking to get rid of the things that we don't love and use.
We gave our trampoline away this week. What's left of it after last summer's adventure, anyway. I told my future self that we would get a trampoline, and we did. And it wasn't a huge deal to give it away. I hope we get another one some day, but for now we're happy with the swingset that we purchased this year.
*****
I miss graduate school life. I don't know if it was less money, less uncertainty, less choices or less complications, but somehow life was simpler back then. Just graduate.
*****
We pay 10% of our income to our church. We believe in the blessings of Malachi, and we have surely seen those blessings in our life. We made the decision to pay an honest 10% tithing in the first month of our marriage, and we have never missed a month. It was a decision that we made once, and we have been blessed over and over again because of it.
Having said that, our meager student income 10% was a lot smaller than our 10% is now. We still pay it with a glad heart, but it has become a number that is quite a noticeable line in our budget. And that right there is one of the blessings of tithing.
We don't get financial help from our parents. We get moral support, strong testimonies, genuine concern, love unbounded, spoiled at Christmas and birthdays, baby-sitters for trips to Puerto Rico, a fantastic place to visit in the summer or the winter, once-in-a-lifetime trips aboard the Disney Dream, and more, but we don't get financial help from our parents. We are still paying our own way through college, paying on our own mortgage, paying on our own car, and paying for our own vacations. There is a great amount of pride that comes with doing those things for yourself. I've discovered that many people get a "leg up" in the financial department from their parents. We do not come from wealthy families, (and that is not to say that we ever went without) but the blessings of growing up in our families outweigh any financial blessings that might have come.
I often think about what goals and hopes we have for our children. I think one of the greatest ways we can ensure that our children have a better life than we have (the true American dream, right?) is to help them not be shackled down with the chains of student debt. Leah will start college in ten short years. That doesn't seem like that much time for us to prepare for a way to help her through college.
I am a stay-at-home mom. We live on one income. We lived on one (very small) income when we were graduate students. Even when I was working full time and Jason was finishing his undergraduate degree, we lived on one income and put the other (student employee-sized) one in the bank. Then we started our family, I began to stay at home, and Jason continued to go to school. We have been official "wage earning, tax paying" citizens for less than two years. That isn't much time to create a financial legacy for ourselves, but I still tend to forget that when I wonder why we've only come as far as we have in the last 11 years. (Which is actually pretty darn far, but imagine if we had already been college graduates when we met instead of the marginally directionless 22- and 23- year old that we were.)
A dear friend once asked me tongue-in-cheek if surely life wasn't so much more perfect once you graduated. And the answer is yes! Life is better, money is better, and the choices are greater. Gone are the days when we had no choice but to turn a blind eye to the check engine light or the bare cupboards. Now there are choices aplenty, and we have worked hard to to get to this point of choices in our life. There is something equally exciting and depressing about trying to decide if we'd rather landscape the yard or finish the basement, pay down student debt or increase our emergency savings fund. We get to dream about what once-in-a-lifetime trip we'll take our children on, and what our life will look like in 30 years when Jason's career is winding down. We're grown up, making our own grown up choices with our own grown up money, and mostly, we're loving it. It's not all sunshine and roses, but there sure is a lot of fun that can come with the privileges that we've earned. And we did it all ourselves.
I just hope we can help our kids do it, too. Because when we sacrifice and make hard choices now, the payoff for later can be so great!
*****
There are a ton of things we'd like to do to our house that are completely non-essential. Crown molding, finish the basement, pour a patio, furnish the music room, decorate the kids rooms.
And I'd always like to save more. And beef up our food storage. And pay off our student loans. There are so many ways to spend all of the money we've got, plus more. It's an annoying truth of adulthood, and I'm always grateful that we are able to live well within our means, especially on one income. Even if it does mean turning a blind eye to some of the awesome things our neighbors/friends/family have and do.
