$20 Discipline Plan

I'm sure there are lots of parents out there who have the whole discipline plan nailed.  Their children never flip off the neighbor kids or get in fights or leave their skid-marked underwear on the bathroom floor after a shower.  Yey for them.

I don't happen to be one of those parents.  My discipline techniques change from day to day because I get bored easily and can't be bothered to enforce a time out or a grounding.  Unless it's a grounding from video games.  I hate video games and am always happy to declare them off limits for lengthy amounts of time.

So Andrew suggested the $20 Discipline Plan.  Each child will start the month with a jar of twenty one dollar bills. For every wrong doing, tantrum, fight or neglected chore the child would lose a dollar - which would then be placed in a jar labeled "Mom and Dad".  At month's end, whatever money they have left in their jar they can keep.

Turns out that I wasn't very good at remembering to fine the kids.  I just wanted to yell at them or give them the death glare and be done with it.  Plus, who can remember the tally of dollars lost for each child when you spend the day away from home and those stinking jars?  It got to the point where Andrew begged me to remember the jars or we would be out $80.  That's money we need if we're going to get to see Total Recall, people.  So just in the last few days of July I claimed a collective $16 from their jars and stuffed it triumphantly into the jar labeled "Mom and Dad".  Phew!

On the morning of August 1st, all four boys came charging down the stairs to see what spoils they had managed to hold on to.  They furiously counted their dollars, and I asked, "Who has the most money?"  Drew, with his fists full of ones and shoulders slumped said, "You do!"

Victory.

The Ka-Ching! After The U-Haul

Moving is really expensive. And it's not just the U-Haul and the gas to put in it and the security deposits and what-not.  It's the toilet brushes.  And the new broom because apparently way back in December I deemed all three of my brooms unfit for use in Oregon.  I'm not sure what I was thinking.

Anyway, we got all moved in to our new place on Saturday, and while I love it here and smile every morning when I wake up, I've already dropped $149 at Target on cleaning supplies and trash bags.  I keep checking my receipts thinking there must be some mistake, but no - Lysol, sandwich bags, and toilet paper really do add up to one fortune and twenty-seven cents.  And then I remembered that I have to re-stock the flour, sugar, cornstarch, and baking soda.  There goes another twenty.

So with all that money spent on absolutely nothing fun, I find myself broke and still shy of several larger items.  I'm about to tell you how good we are at improvising.

In our last house we had a built-in microwave above our stove.  What is that called?  A micro-hood?  Where's my kitchen designer husband when I need him?  Anyhow - we moved in here and realized we now have no microwave.  We're getting along alright without one thanks to my mad air-popping-corn skills.

We also have no book shelves.  Andrew keeps telling me to design one on paper or tell him what I want and he'll have a cabinet company make it for me.  And I keep telling him that I love that idea as long as he is planning on delivering pizzas to pay for it.  In the mean time, all our books are staying in the boxes and we've located our neighborhood library.  Boxes full of books will temporarily be serving as end tables, where we will set our open cans of Dr. Pepper, because there is always money for Dr. Pepper.  And then we will smile at our trashiness.

And finally, our tour of improvisation ends with the home office, located in the master bedroom.  We felt no urge to bring to the Northwest with us our dumpy kitchen chair that served as my desk (blogging) chair.  Now we have a desk with no chair.  So I improvised.  

 Sits a little low, but not too shabby.  And as least the thing isn't in my living room!

Wasting Money

"I've Got Better Things To Spend My Money On"

This is a category that I'm sure exists in every person's financial life, but which holds different items depending on one's income, how many children there are to feed, and whether or not a Volkswagen is parked in the driveway. 

Some of the items in my "I've Got Better Things To Spend My Money On" category are paper towels, food from a buffet, make-up remover, and bras.

But today, the bras were a necessity.  Only two left and one of them with a faulty strap.

I do kind of love to buy clothes, when the stars align just right and there is money to do such a thing...  But I hate to buy bras and dresses.  I hate wearing dresses and skirts, and (almost) no one ever sees your bra, so it seems a waste to spend good money on those things.  

And, hello!  Why do bras have to be so expensive?  $36.00?  Small busted people should get to pay less than that, because there is seriously more fabric on my ankle socks.  What is up?

And why are there always huge, busty women offering you a bra fitting?  I'd rather someone who understands my flat-chested woes be all up in my booby business than to have Double D Bertha direct me to the Tween Department.

So today I bit the bullet and bought three bras, (not the Hannah Montana kind this time, Mom), and it only cost me $81.00.  

Hot Damn.  Those things better last a while.

Self-Exploration #3 - That Dollar Burning a Hole In Your Pocket?

This week's question:

What frivolous things do you spend money on?  Do you ever get buyer's remorse?

I think that what we spend our hard-earned money on says a lot about who we are.  Think about that one for a minute.

I am a Snickers shake from Arctic Circle.

All of us have different budgets and different spending habits.  We are accustomed to different lifestyles.  But we all have an extra few dollars now and again, and I got to thinking about how we use them. 

I tend to spend lonely, purposeless dollars on junk food and organizational supplies.  For example, laundry baskets because "this new system is going to make everything so much easier", spiral notebooks because I am always jotting down notes and lists and scribbling out budgets and trying to figure out how on earth I made it work last month.  And when I can't stand to add and subtract anymore I go to the cupboard and raid the stash of chocolate that I hid from the rest of the family.

All of those extra organizational expenditures are getting me nowhere because right at this very moment my desk looks like this:

One end of my kitchen counter looks like this:

And I have a box of miscellaneous paper junk that's been occupying a corner of my bedroom for, oh, a year or so.

 Is it possible that my compulsive purchasing of organizational supplies is telling of one of my weaknesses?

As for the junk food, I am an emotional eater.  Oddly, I don't eat when I'm upset or stressed out, I eat when I'm bored or when I need to relax.  Like as soon as all the kids are in bed.  I stuff my face full of ice cream and candy and chips so that the calories can spend my sleeping hours attempting to fill in the dimples in my thighs. 

I can live with that.  A bag of chips here and a gallon of MnM's there won't kill a person, (unless you ate it all at once), but it's the eating out that gets to me.

Every time we go to a restaurant I get buyers remorse.  So expensive!  Yesterday our family stopped at Carl's Jr. for a quick pre-grocery shopping meal and dropped thirty dollars on some chicken strips and a guacamole burger.  I have nothing to show for it now except a zit on my chin.

So I think I'll try to save some money and improve myself at the same time by skipping the restaurant outings more often and finally sorting out those piles of random paperwork that are taking over my house.

So how about you?  What do you think your frivolous purchases say about you?

The Curse

My husband and I do not fight. There just isn't much to fight about. We do, on occasion, argue about whether or not Adam Sandler movies can be considered classics, or why he will never play Rock, Paper, Scissors with me to determine who should change a soiled diaper. But that's about it.

Except for that one thing. The one thing that has caused yelling matches on at least three separate occasions. The one thing that neither of us can see a middle ground on. The thing that makes my head feel like it's going to explode from unquenchable exasperation.

This thing:



Andrew's 1963 Volkswagen piece. of. crap.

Andrew bought this gem back in 2003 and it has been a functioning mode of transportation for us for a total of about seven months, four hours, and twelve minutes since then. But not all at once.

You see, the cause of our disagreement over this "car" is that we put five or six hundred dollars into it, and it runs for about three months, and then we put another five hundred into it and it runs for another two weeks, and then Andrew has his buddy come over and look at it and they decide that it needs an entirely new, much bigger, much faster engine in it. Three years later, Andrew confesses that the problem was simply that a nut had come lose on the engine, and tightening it down fixed the problem, but a new motor sounded like so much more fun!

And then it breaks down again.

Andrew reminds me that we have no payment on this car, so five hundred dollars every few months shouldn't be a huge deal. Well, we also don't have a car with this car, so I call bull, and we end up pulling hair and throwing punches and biting until we're too exhausted to go on.

Ok, not really, but I think that after "discussing" the VW, we both feel like decking each other. For real.

The most recent "discussion" on this topic happened about a month ago when Andrew and I were budgeting our tax return. I saw no point in throwing away another chunk of money, and he couldn't understand how I classified that money as being "thrown away". I asked him if there was an end in sight? When will the madness end? If he has to pay $2K to get it running again and it only lasts for six months, THEN can we call it quits? Please??

He called an end to the discussion.

And finally, after all these years, I can say that I am the one who has decided to admit defeat. It's as if a light has been turned on inside my head and I can now see that Andrew will never be able to see this rationally. He is beyond reason, beyond help, just beyond. And if it's that important to him, then I have to give. I have to let it be, let it go and make peace with it. And I have. I know that I will have to live with this car for the rest of my life, and I ought to quit letting it take years off of that life.

But there is one area that I am not willing to give in. Despite how it looks in the above picture, that Bug is PURPLE. Not blue. It is metallic purple, and anyone who has seen it in person would agree with me. Except for Andrew, who insists that it is blue. Well, yeah, but only at certain angles. That car is purple.

My husband loves his purple car. And I love my husband enough to force my brain into it's happy place whenever we have to talk about it.

Poverty ain't so bad once you throw some salsa in with the mac n' cheese.

Andrew and I look forward to tax return season every year. It's the one time when we have a large chunk of money to work with. In the past we have done both inessential and compulsory things with that dough. All too quickly it is gone, but some of our needs are met, and we are content for another year. Sort of.

For that reason, I was quite thrilled today when Andrew's tax information came in the mail. Now we can get started on our forms and what-not and anxiously wait for our refund to land with a nice KA-CHING! in our checking account.

I called Andrew to tell him that he could now have a super day knowing that we were on the verge of buying airplane tickets and Phantom of the Opera tickets and setting some cash aside for when our crappy KIA breaks down two miles after the warranty expires, and maybe getting his Volkswagen bug fixed if the refund happened to be three million dollars, etc.

While talking to him, I looked at the little box which shows wages, tips and other compensation, and I just have to say -

It's a freaking miracle that we are able to survive on the number that sat in that box.

Me thinks a change is due.