Springing

SAVINGS BY THE JAR

Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions. ~A.A. Latimer  

That day I got married, I had  a car, a few pieces of furniture that had been given to me, a total of $6.37 in my checkbook, and possibly fifteen cents in my pocket.  I suspect this was an unpleasant surprise to my brand-new husband.  I had worked part time for years, and full time for 14 months.  So what could have happened?  Clothes, shoes, rent and utilities, car payment, my half of the telephone bill, round trip tickets from Spokane to Billings.  A home-sewn satin wedding dress and bridesmaid dress, shoes, invitations.  My mom taught me how to balance a checkbook as soon as I got my first paycheck, but the savings part had completely escaped me.

I was broke.  Very broke.  And I quickly learned how it was done.  My first post-wedding shopping trip to Billings elicited shocked semi-silence and raised eyebrows.  Forty dollars for a pair of shoes?  I entertained myself with a shopping trip in Powell while he worked one Saturday morning.  Fourteen dollars for "dried weeds" for arrangements for the wall?  Seriously....I'd spent nearly all of his earnings for the day.  Well, I must say, i was learning.  Painful lessons, though they were.

When his paychecks started bouncing, he didn't know what to do, but I did...start a business!  Nothing to it, right?  Within three months we bought our own home, started a business and we were expecting a baby.  There was a lot of building going on in Cody but do you think we could manage to get a bid?   From April to December, we made $5,000 to report to the IRS.  The accountant advised him to find a job.

I found out what my husband did when he was worried.  He paced. The floor. In circles.  And he came up with a plan.  We became the owners of a lime green sewer cleaning machine, by which our bread and butter is placed upon our table to this day, although it's several shiny, new, sewer machines later.

His mom worked for an accountant and she came one Saturday to help me set up a bookkeeping system.  Double entry, by hand, back in the day. An evening class at the high school gave me a better handle on debits and credits.  Jerry planned to save 15% or more of our income.  Whew.  I really dragged my feet about the idea of a budget, and thought saving 15% was pushing it, but there was no winning that battle, so down to the penny we added income, subtracted expenses, budgeted our groceries and saved our dollars, month after month, until I got it, this saving business.  Four hundred to five hundred dollars per month on groceries, forty dollars for insurance, one hundred for utilities, and found great deals at yard sales on Saturday mornings.  Did without things we needed, so we could have a few things we wanted, and made our car last 10 years.

There was very little money to afford any extras, so we bought new work socks one month and a gallon of varnish the next.  We couldn't afford the mortgage payment, so we sold the house, made $10,000.00, sent 20% to Uncle Sam and invested the rest in a house in town with a rental unit next door, to help make the payment.  Along the way, we learned that some shiny brown tiles on a good sale, a new pendulum light,  and a couple sets of fluffy, yellow towels make a beautiful difference in a bathroom, but the perfect shade of blue paint is very hard to find.

 We started a remodeling project, and finished it to move into another house, and start again.Jerry said, I'll do whatever you want, if you are patient.  That was the fine print.  

Bought another house, lived in it, rented the old one, fixing up as we went.  Jerry learned electrical wiring, sheet rocking, and concrete work.  I learned how to rescue carpets, sometimes, paint without making a huge mess, usually, and clean a toilet to a shine every time.   So we bought another, cleaned up the smoke coated walls and ceiling, and turned it into a duplex.  Too busy for more houses, said I.  So we saved....$50,000 became $150,000.  I thought we should take some of the cash out for a family vacation but finally coaxed him into letting me spend $6,000 for a new kitchen.   The rest disappeared along with a recession or some such thing, big stock market adjustment.  But mainly we were happy, counting our blessings and having fun.

Then along comes a free offer...Millionaire Mind Intensive.  We went to Billings, or was it Denver, and learned.  How to budget more happily.  Yes, says Harv.  You must have a budget, a plan.  But to my great delight, that budget included some fine tuning:  10% to a play account, 10% give, 10% investment/financial freedom to build wealth, 10% Education, 10% Long Term Savings, and 50% necessities.  Love it.  Finally, some fun.  

Life is a dance...you learn as you go.

  

Ever notice how it’s a penny for your thoughts, 

yet you put in your two cents? Someone 

is making a penny on the deal! 

Stephen Wright

Money can’t buy happiness; 

it can, however, rent it.

Business is the art of extracting money from another man's pocket without resorting to violence. 

~Max Amsterdam~ 

At the Pump

                                                                                 

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves." 

- Albert Einstein

There are people who have money
 and people who are rich.
 ~Coco Chanel~