A Mother’s Take on #OccupyWallstreet

I will admit; I am probably not as educated on this as I should be. Yes, I have read a smattering of Time, Newsweek and other newspapers articles on this if I see them tweeted or someone sends it to me. Yes, I have perused picture galleries filled with hundreds of protestors aligned together with clever signs and purpose. Some of my closest friends spend days participating and organizing #OccupyChicago. I should know more. I should. But I don’t.

What I do know is what I see in my own life. What I do know is that I grew up in one of the most affluent suburbs of Chicago, although my parent’s debt always outweighed the perception of wealth that we had. I grew up seeing what the 1% had, and wanting it. I moved to Minnesota for college and the difference in class was striking to me. My parent’s two bedroom condo could buy me acres in Minnesota.

As I graduated college, having paid out of state tuition, I was left with insurmountable student loan debt. And I had grants; I had a full year paid. Yet still I was carrying $44,923.17 to be paid off over the course of my life.

I got pregnant straight out of college. It wasn’t intentional and while I did debate my right to choose what to do I decided to keep the little baby that was to become Bear. Perhaps, if I hadn’t made that choice I would have been in a better position financially. While my friends got out of college, traveled the world, lived in their parent’s houses, found jobs and saved money I had to immediately start paying for and caring for a child.

My hospital bills for Bear were more than we could bear. It took us a full year to pay them off. While I was pregnant with Bella two years ago I got a second job that I worked in addition to my full time job in order to be able to pay for the impending debt. A few weeks into my pregnancy I started bleeding. In the midst of crying in the bathroom, I told the H I didn’t want to go to the hospital because I was afraid of the cost. And it did cost. It cost me to wait in an ER for hours with a three year old boy while I was examined and poked and prodded and had an internal sonogram to tell me that no one I was in fact not miscarrying my second child.

We bought our house before the market crashed. My house is now worth $40,000 less than I paid for it. My mortgage payment while fixed is higher than it was three years ago because the property taxes have gone up and I didn’t have enough in escrow to cover it so it was added to my payment.

When the H took a new job in his company this past September it allowed him to actually like his job, and placed him on a path for much more career growth than if he had stayed in his previous position. But it costs me $400 a month for him to go to his new job. His schedule change and we had to send the kids to an extra day in daycare. My daycare bill is more than my mortgage.

Yes, I could send my children to an in home facility. I could pay less. But I want them to have the best that they can, and they do. I never feel amount of hesitation dropping them off at school because I know they are probably getting more from there than they even would at home with me.

I could give you numbers. Of the balance on my credit cards, the amount in my checking account, the red number that appears when you subtract our income from our expenses. But you don’t need them. You can probably look at your own account.

There are people, not many, that have more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime. That have things they will never use or never needed. That have a wealth that rivals the kings. There are people that will leave all their assets to their dogs before a dime sees the hands of a well deserving charity.  There are many people, that have much much less than I do.

Fundamentally, there shouldn’t be this immense discrepancy. My kids should be able to go to the doctor when they are sick and not stay home because I don’t want to pay the co-pay. I deserve to go to the hospital to be reassured that I’m not having a miscarriage. I deserve the education that I got. My kids deserve to go to a place every day where they are cared for and taught by loving people.  My family deserves to eat, to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Every family does.

Which is why this mom stands with the 99%.

And…. Fail.

For the last two (three, four?) weeks I’ve just dropped the ball. On a lot. Mostly I’ve been frantically busy at work thus not giving me the time to balance my checkbook anally like a normally do. And there was Easter which interrupted my recording of what I eat, and exercising. Or did I stop the latter before that?

Either way what happened is simple. It’s what always happens. I’ve eaten too much, exercised none and spent lots. New news? Hardly. Theme that’s lost it charm? Definitely.

Ugh, even I don’t care anymore. I’m sick of writing the same old news, the same old failures. I’m bored with it. I’m over it. I can’t imagine how you feel about it.

I’m trying to be on the whole, “today is a new day” bandwagon, but I”m not feeling it. Fundamentally, I sort of don’t care.

I don’t care if I can’t afford to buy it.

I don’t care if I shouldn’t eat it.

I don’t care if I should exercise, my clothes don’t fit, I’m going to be a contestant on the Biggest Loser instead of watching it.

It’s not a priority for me.

I realize that I should really rearrange that sentence to say, I’m not a priority.

A part of me wonders if the reason I was so successful the last time I tried to lose weight and was so successful saving money and paying off debt before is that both occurred while I was in therapy. And both stopped occurring when I stopped therapy (well and also had a baby). I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of therapy. I could talk to a friend for a $25 co-pay a month. There was nothing wrong, everything was fine, it was just talking about my day. But maybe on some level something else was happening? Something else was working on my sub conscious?

I’m self-sufficient (right word?) enough to believe that I should be able to do this on my own. Which is why all those years that I should have been in therapy because there was something wrong I wasn’t. So why go when everything is honky dory? I think its the plague of all mothers that we always put ourselves last. There are so many other things, there are the kids, and the house and the husband, and the school forms, and the yard, and the dogs, and the dishwasher, and the garage door is broken, and we need diapers and we’re out of milk, the bike tires need air, have you called the plumber, when is there time for me amongst all that? (Also, all of the above sentences are true things I’ve got currently floating in my head.)

I can’t justify spending time exercising when there is so much that needs to be done around the house. I can’t justify not buying something for my kids because I know they would love it so much and/or need it. (Though while I needed a new stroller, I probably didn’t need to buy a Maclaren this weekend! But it provides me a very large amount of joy!) I can’t stop myself from going out to lunch because I love spending time with my co-workers and need out of this super hostile environment.

Sigh. I’m going to try again. Because like I’m always telling Bear, you have to at least try. So I will try and start small again. Not look back at the times I’ve failed or even when I succeeded, but focus instead on now and not then. (Also, remember Now & Then? What a great movie.) So as I drink my 240 calorie coke that I just bought for a dollar I will focus instead on good things I’ll do after I finish my coke.

The Lure of the Coupon/Groupon/Sale

I’ve started the first sentence of this post countless of times and wind up just pressing select all – delete countless of times.

I realize what it comes down to. embarrassment. And like in my previous post — a fear of judgement.  I’ve been thinking a lot what is this blog for. Is it for me or is it for the reader? When it first began it was 100% just for me. It was an online journal. A way to keep close friends in the loop about things going on, a way to vent, a way to document my pregnancy, to complain about work. Then somehow it slowly shifted. As I gained more readers (who continue to remain completely unknown to me because of the almost complete lack of comments) I’ve changed my perspective in what I write about and how I write about it. I stopped writing for me and started writing for you.

Which wouldn’t be so bad, except for moments like this where I don’t know if I want to publicly talk about something so inherently private. That and the part of me that thinks to myself, you have no idea who these people are, maybe they’re not even people but robots that randomly venture to your site get clocked as a visit and leave before reading a vowel.

I realized when I was doing online research about the topic I found the same links over and over again because it appears as though few people are really talking about this. Well except psychology today which actually had a great online resource of articles on behavioral economics. Perhaps that’s why I would be so good at marketing because marketing works so well on me. I had to unsubscribe from every living social and groupon deal I got. Which was a plethora of different cities and editions, because I just couldn’t resist the lure of the deal. I had to get it. It was such a great discount! I wound up getting lots of things that while were in fact a good deal, but I wouldn’t have bought otherwise. So did I really save money? Sure I have a deal on fandango, the hair salon, a 3 hour cleaning service, two restaurants, the playground. But would I have bought these things before?

I unsubscribed from all the stores who have me on their email list, except BabyGap (I just couldn’t do it!), and removed my credit card from being stored on amazon because its just too easy to do one click shopping and not even think about what you’re buying (which recently on Amazon has been 5 books). Then I took it a step further. I cut up every single credit card with my name on it and put all of my store credit cards in the basement with other cards we don’t use, like our Wells Fargo card that we don’t use but have to get free checking. I realized that like the emails taunting me with the sales, my credit cards were taunting me with the fact that I could buy something regardless of the fact that I shouldn’t.

I’m a sucker for marketing. For the sale. For the deal. For the coupon. What shocked me the most looking at my statements was that I hadn’t bought a single thing that wasn’t on sale or with a coupon. I didn’t pay full price for anything and yet when you get enough items under $10, well it adds up to be a lot.

Beyond my inability to process marketing as a manipulative tool to get consumers to buy products I apparently have no self control or impulse control. I will never in my life forget when I was in Florida ten years ago with my three best friends and I saw them pass a note to each other that read “M is a fiend for instant gratification.” That note (and the fact that my friends were talking about me behind my back yet in front of me) has always remained imbedded in my memory. Its true. I am a sucker for instant gratification. I don’t want to wait and chance that it won’t be there anymore. After all I can always return it. I like things now, I like to do things now, and have little to no patience. Which is fine in some aspects of my life (I can get shit done), but not when it comes to money.

Hi, I’m M and I’m a compulsive shopper. I know it and now you know it too.

Anxiety, Overeating and the Fear of Judgement

I know when it happens. When that moment that I want to just devour anything possible happens. It just happened now upon reading the H’s email that the MIL can’t watch the kids early enough for us to be able to see the movie (we already bought living social tickets and need to use soon) before my MN best friend’s birthday party on Friday. Within the same email he mentioned that the garage door is broken, and can’t be fixed but needs to be replaced. I got filled with the desire to eat – anything. And massive quantities of it. Then our IT Asset Manager came by asking me if I still had that loaner laptop. Yes, in fact I use it every single day, all the time, as the primary laptop in our house since my 2003 Apple is quite finicky and slow. They need it back tomorrow. I didn’t have the courage to ask if they would just give it/sell it to me after all he said all they’re going to do is wipe it and recycle it.

My co-worker, the New Mom, was then just telling us a story about how she cried in front of the Prof in a meeting on Monday just because of all the anxiety she had this past weekend. As she was saying that I felt the overwhelming urge to a) start crying b) hug her c) tell her all of my own woes. Instead, since we’re having a hallway conversation at work, I remained composed despite what was going on in my head.

This all happened in a span of five minutes. In those five minutes I went from being “good” and sticking to a reasonable diet all day to falling nearly to shambles. If I had the access I would have eaten three McDonald’s meals already. If I hadn’t spent the entire day in spreadsheets analyzing my budget I’d go home and pick some up for the family for dinner. But honestly we don’t have the $18 that would cost.

I feel like I’m holding in too much. The H falls asleep moments after we get to bed so I can hardly engage him in a conversation. Bear is up until shortly before that so I’m not about to talk in front of him. I don’t want to burden my friends. I always feel like I’m bothering them. It’s something in 26 years I’ve never learned, I can never seem to go to my friends with troubles. How strange, what else are friends supposed to be for? I fear judgment above all else.

While I was just in the pumping room I jotted down a list of things that are currently stressing me out. I had 17 items on the list. I ordered them by how much stress they cause me. #3 was what people think of me only surpassed by money (#1) and my weight (#2). Oddly enough two of three work related ones didn’t show up until numbers 15 and 16.

I can’t psychologically convince myself not to care. Almost all of my worries are in some way correlated to other people’s opinions of me, my family and my home. Only two single worries of the 17 are actually just about me. And one is the Prof. His ineptitude and negative demeanor only affect me, and thus its 16 on the list.  #17 is my back pain (which is directly related to stress). How interesting that of all the things that worry me the last two are the ones that are just affecting me. I’m not even going to list my 17 because of what you the anonymous reader could possibly think about them.

Feb Resolution/Detox Fail

So another month in 2011 has come and gone and I have met no goals that I have set. I’ve decided perhaps I’m just lazy, selfish and irresponsible. What it comes down to is a fundamental  I don’t want to that dictates what I do and do not do. What I do not do is exercise, eat well or keep budgets. What I do is eat McDonalds, socialize with friends, lay around and spend money. I seem to be acutely aware of my transgressions but have no actual desire to change anything. Its an awful situation to be in (and realistically a probably easily remedied one) because I know everything that I do wrong, but I just don’t want to change it.

In essence I didn’t exercise once this month. I started out really good entering in what I ate daily for about 11 days and then I stopped. That was also the last time I weighed in — eek not looking forwarding to seeing how that number has fluctuated in the last 3 weeks. I’ve definitely accrued new debt. I’m constantly kicking myself for the fact that I could have paid of all of my credit cards but didn’t and instead accrued back debt that I had just paid off. Oh and back in November didn’t refinance the mortgage when the rates were 4.25%. FAIL. I did per the detox email The New Godmother weekly my spending and the first week there was definitely a feeling of nervousness of showing actual figures to someone, but that quickly went away after the first email. I feel inclined to continue sending it weekly to her, but I don’t feel like its having the desired outcome. She now is aware of the same thing I am — we eat out too much. I buy the kids too much stuff. These aren’t things I didn’t know.

Something new I’m going to try for March is not carrying credit cards with me. If I don’t have them then clearly I can’t spend. What I’ll wind up doing is maybe taking cash out and I can only spend the cash I have on hand. This will become effective tomorrow. Because I’ve already had two happy hours this week and tonight is a friend’s birthday dinner. Maybe better would be only carrying the card when I know I have to spend something like tonight’s dinner or next week when I’m having lunch with a co-worker for her birthday. We’ll see. Clearly I need to get back into the mode I was in last spring thru summer when I was a debt reduction powerhouse. I think what helped is that I didn’t pay daycare for almost 6 months so I had lots of excess cash and what doesn’t help now is that I pay 3x the amount in daycare than I did last year. We got our state tax refund last week and are expecting our federal one any day now and the H gets his yearly bonus in 2 weeks which is great, what would again be greater is that with that money we would be in a great spot, in a lets go on vacation great spot, but instead its just short of covering all of our debt. And not accruing more isn’t really in sight. We still have not figured out what to do about the fact that Squeegee died and the SIL is going to be needing her car back soon.

And exercise? Well yesterday I should have bought the Living Social deal for the Bikram Yoga studio in Woodbury, but I didn’t. As much as I complain every single day that none of my clothes fit me (which they don’t) another month passes and I’ve done nothing to remedy it. It comes down to the excuse that I’m too tired, too busy and work too late. Which are also all good excuses because when you don’t come home until 6:30 by the time you make dinner, get everyone to bed you’re: a) exhausted b) its 10pm and time for bed and c) rather watch Idol in bed and eat double stuf oreos.

I can’t wait until Bella is 3 before I get my ass in gear like I did with Bear. Mostly because when Bella is 3 I intend for her to have a 1 year old sister by then and if I’ve added more pregnancy weight on top of this pregnancy weight well then my friend I would be huge.

Referenced Blog Posts:

January Resolution Sum – up

February Detox

2011 Resolutions