When I was a little kid, my mom got me a Aesop’s fable book. It came with a record so I could listen to the words I couldn’t yet read. One of the stories I remember the most was the Ant and the Grasshopper. (And one about a vain crown who sings and drops his cheese and then a mouse eats it.)
By my basic nature, I am an ant. I toil and save and prepare. I am ready for a financial nuclear winter.
Then a bunch of shit happened and I said fuck it. Why am I saving all of this money? So if I die of cancer in the next three years my husband's next wife can drive a Telsa from the money I scrapped and saved?
No.
I went total grasshopper. "There is no winter coming!" I said to myself.
Until this week when I looked at my famous banking spreadsheet where I track all of the money we earn, save and spend.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, we had negative savings. Which means we spent more than we earned. And that is not including the downpayment for the condo.
Ouch.
The good news is we had saved a bunch of money for years and years for a year like 2018. We had a massive tax bill, college tuition, a new car and furniture for the condo, plus a vacation to London, tickets to Hamilton twice, new ski equipment and a trampoline.
The best thing about the pain of looking at my spreadsheet was the pain of looking at the spreadsheet. If I hadn't kept track of all of it, I wouldn't have known. If I could go back, would I do things differently? Not really. The spreadsheet helped us keep track of reality. If we didn't have the spreadsheet, we might have bought new furniture instead of Jack toiling for hours finding gems off of Craigs List. Would I have given up a trip with my daughter before she left for college? Never. And now I know so I can roll back my expenses for 2019.
The ant is back. Granted, I'm sitting my very nice condo, with my dog curled up next to me. Is it easier to be an ant when I am comfortable? I don't know. I'll find out. Hopefully, I'll spend more time with friends and family in 2019 instead of spending money. Maybe I need a spreadsheet for that.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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