"Rich People," Bad Stuff & Dickens

My dad used to tell me and my brother, "Rich people aren't rich because they spend money. They are rich because they have money."

This is common sense, but as Voltaire said, common sense isn't common. My dad's point was having a bunch of fancy things doesn't make someone rich. Money in the bank (or assets or other investments) does. My dad has worked both as a corporate account and then had his own private practice. Years ago, he had a middle-aged client with a great business and a large income who was living paycheck-to-paycheck. My dad also studied psychology in college. The client came into my dad's office, confessed is situation to my dad, and then cried. My dad sat and listened, as if part of his job was to be a therapist, too. 

"You have choices," my dad said. "You don't have to live this way."

I have other friends in the same spot--they make a lot of money, and spend all of it. How? A large and beautifully decorated house in one of Seattle's nicest neighborhoods. Private schools for the kids. Fancy vacations with first class air travel and expensive hotels. New luxury cars. New clothes. Nice shoes. Everything is first rate and top notch.

"We don't have two nickles to rub together," said one of these friends.

So what is wrong with that? What is wrong with living large, spending all of your money, especially if you have a large income? There is always more where it came from, right? Why be conservative?

This is where values come in. Values aren't right or wrong, they just are. I was talking to a friend in college about how I planned to work hard, save hard, and then travel when I retire. She looked at me in a strange way. I didn't think there was anything wrong with what I said, but so I asked her what she was thinking.

"My parents lived like that," she said. "My dad worked really hard, then he died two years ago when he was forty-eight. Don't 'wait until you are retired' to take the big trip."

Happiness probably lies somewhere in the middle. Financial hardship is stressful, even if it is self-imposed.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

                                                                    -- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

I am not advocating for never eating dinner in a restaurant when you can eat at home, never buying a book  when you can get one at the library, or camping instead of staying in a hotel on vacation. All of those are choices that need to align with our values.

But I will say this: bad stuff happens. We can't plan for a life where nothing miserable happens to us. Statistically, it is unavoidable. In fact, the probability of nothing ever going wrong is much, much lower than the odds of perfection.

What are the odds of losing your job? Let's say 0.5%. "But I work hard and I'm smart!" Great. But then funding dries up, investors bail, there is a global pandemic and even though you are the best waitress/hairdresser/masseuse, you are out of luck.

"Fine," you think. What are the odds of getting so sick you can't work? Maybe you will get disability, and then it will very likely be less than you are earning now. And usually there is a lag between when you can't work and then the money kicks in. Let's say 0.25%. I am making up a number.

Now think of twenty other things that could go wrong, and the likelihood of them happening. Small, right?

The joy of those types of probabilities is that you get to add them up because each of those are different events. So the odds of losing your job or getting sick are 0.75%.

Think of it another way. Let's say there is a bucket with a 10,000 balls. In this bucket, one ball is painted red. Every day, you pick one ball out of the bucket, and the ball stays out. On any given day, the odds of pulling the red ball is 1 out of 10,000 on Day 1, which is fairly low. What are the odds of pulling a red ball within 10,000 days? 100%.

Some of those bad things don't cost money, like when Ada died. (I had a stillbirth before Eleanor was born.) Other bad things do, like losing a job, or having a heart attack where if you survive, you might might be able to return to work. It doesn't need to be a big cost to swamp the boat if you are living financially close to the edge. It could be an unexpected car repair, or needing a new sewage line dug for your home (which is in the top 1% of the least fun ways to spend $10K.)

What can you do to mitigate this, to make picking the red ball less painful? There are things you can't control, and thing you can. You can't control something crummy happening, but you can control your savings. 

Let's do some math--because I love math--to see the magic of savings. Let's say you make $5,000 a month, and you save 10%, or $500 each month.

	Monthly income	Savings Rate	Monthly Savings Amount	Yearly Savings Amount	Cumulative Savings
Year 1	$5,000	10%	$500	$6,000	$6,000
Year 2	$5,000	10%	$500	$6,000	$12,000
Year 3	$5,000	10%	$500	$6,000	$18,000
Year 4	$5,000	10%	$500	$6,000	$24,000
Year 5	$5,000	10%	$500	$6,000	$30,000

Now you are probably thinking that this is so obvious and simple, you want your money back from reading my blog. But hey -- my blog is free, so don't complain.

No, seriously. The magic isn't in the $30K you will have at the end. The magic is in the $500 you don't spend each month.

What? 

Let's say in Year 3 you need new tires for your car and they cost $800.* You spent all of your budgeted $4,500 that month. Guess what? Instead of having to float $800 on your credit card, you can take $300 out of savings and use the $500 you would have saved that month to pay for the tires. At the end of five years, you will have $29,200, which is still pretty cool. And I haven't even talked about interest and dividends and capital gains! This example is equivalent to money in the mattress.

The point of saving money (for me anyway--you might have a different view which is totally cool) is to sleep better at night knowing that you have the ability to absorb crap that may happens.

Let's say you up your savings rate, or get a raise or a bonus. Your buffer gets bigger. What if your buffer gets too big? 

Hello, Hawaii.

"But Lauren," you say, "I don't want to go to Hawaii."

At this point, I could do one of two things:

a. Extol the virtues of Hawaii and post pictures from my vacation to Maui years ago, or

b. Tell you that you have the power and freedom to do whatever you want with that money! You get to decide! You want to buy a camper van and drive to all the National Parks? You want to buy a pet boa constrictor? Go you!

Power and freedom? 

Yes.

I like it. See, when you save money you still get to do fun, cool, stuff, but just maybe later and less impulsively, minus the debt hangover. And it if is money you saved for, you will very likely have more careful consideration of how you spend it, and likely it will be closer to your hearts desire than a binge purchase because you want to spend money ease some temporary pain.

* Now you may be thinking, "Oh my god! $800 for car tires? Lauren had no clue! Who spends $800 on car tires? That is nuts. Who needs Michelins when Goodyears are fine?" Congratulations. You are smarter than I am when it comes to tires and you will drive a bargain, which is totally awesome. Seriously. Pat yourself on the back. You can do this!

"A Cloud Called Hope" and Jo van Gogh

I've always dreamed of collecting art.

Back when I was a college student, I took Introduction to Modern Art fall quarter my freshman year. It was one of my most favorite class in all of college. My dad was freaking out that I might become an art history major.

"Economics, Laur," he'd plead to me over the phone, "Economics."

Instead of art, I studied math and history, but my itch and interest in art never went away. Seattle has (or used to have) a rich and vibrant artist community. I am lucky to live walking distance to several galleries. Before the Boy was sent away and before the pandemic, I'd poke around them.

For the past two weeks, Vincent van Gogh has been dancing in my brain. I was re-reading parts of Range by David Epstein where the author discusses the variety of work van Gogh did before he became a painter. Epstein wrote that Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White was he best book he had ever read in any genre, which I found remarkable. When an author I like so strongly recommended a book, I had to read it. I went to the library and checked it out. One of my most favorite paintings is Wheat Field with Cypresses by van Gogh. When I see this painting, I understand the meaning of choice. Every painter has a blank canvas and they can choose any topic in any style in any color. The magic is in what they choose.

Last week, I read a brilliant, BRILLIANT article in the New York Times about Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law. After both Vincent and Theo died, Jo became the biggest fan and advocate for Vincent's work. She is responsible for presenting Vincent's work to the world. I would love to see a movie or read a novel about her life. I imagine her alone surrounded by 400 of Vincent's paintings, trying to convince the world what she saw in them. (Note to self: Maybe I should write the novel or screenplay...#nextproject)

Which brings me back to me.

Today, I bought a painting called "A Cloud called Hope" by Hart James. It is a landscape that cuts through the bedrock or clay layer of earth in browns, followed by the greens and then a bright blue sky with a white cloud. I hung it above my bed.

When I first saw this painting, I was immediately struck by my own powerful emotions. The Boy finishes school in June and will return to Seattle for the summer, and this painting is symbolic of my own journey for the past several years, of supporting him while I also sort out my own layers of co-dependency. Co-dependency is a fancy way of saying I habitually put the needs of others before my own to the detriment of my own sense of self. This lead to my own breakdown in 2019. Slowly, I have been regaining my sense of self, but not without a lot of effort. The fact that I even bought this painting is a major part of my recovery, that I allowed myself such an indulgence as a reward and symbol of all of the crap I've been through for the past two years. The brown dirt, clay, bedrock represents my challenging past where I felt like I have been dragged through the mud and beaten down (even if some of it was self-inflicted), that whether I like it or not, will always be a part of me. In life, there isn't a chance that bad things might happen; there is certainty. Challenges will arise, and we have the choice of how we meet them. The green represents my growth over the past year and a half, and the blue sky suggests brightness. 

The cloud represents hope, hope that brighter days are ahead.

I lost eight pounds. Why do I still feel fat? And Credit Card Debt Cruncher

As I mentioned in my last post, I am using this Noom app to help me lose weight. Noom's idea is to build self-awareness around nutrition and diet, which is both good and kinda of bullshit because I really don't want self-awareness. I just want to be thin AND eat chicken wings smothered in BBQ sauce with a side of garlic fries. Or maybe a wedge salad with a cup of bleu cheese dressing. I also want to wear the hottest spring fashions. Think Alexis Rose. 

Why hasn't Noom taught me how to deal with the fact that in two months I've lost eight pounds which is super cool but also kind of depressing because I still have forty-two pounds to go? (Maybe that will be tomorrow's lesson.) Friday I was so excited and happy then yesterday I caught my reflection in a street window and I thought "Holy cow I still look pudgy." How can I have patience for the long haul?

This reminded me of back in the days when I had credit card debt. In my early twenties, I lived in Lincoln Park in Chicago, which is a very cool and expensive place to live. I was carrying $2000 on my Visa. I'd add some charges every month, and pay some off, but the balance was always about $2K. My dad, an accountant, wouldn't judge me or anything about it, but he would drop subtle hints that giving my hard earned money on interest was a waste. Finally, I realized my dad was right and I paid it off. 

That is the simple and short version of the story.

How did my credit card bill get out of control in the first place? I wasn't tracking my spending. The first December after I graduated from college, I went Christmas shopping with my friend H. We were in downtown Chicago and I spend $50 here, $60 there, and so on. I remember we went to the Chop House for dinner and had steak, potatoes and creamed spinach. It was divine. Was it worth the $45 I spent at the time? Yes because I remember that meal and that day all of these years later.

In January, I got my credit card bill for $750, which at the time was a lot and I couldn't afford to pay it off. I was shocked--How did I spend all of that money? I only spent $50...fifteen times. My gut got in the game and said this is not cool.

How did I pay off this debt:

• I became aware of how much I was spending by tracking all of my credit card purchases in a spreadsheet and compared how much I was spending relative to my monthly income.
• When I saw how much I was spending, I made better choices and spent less. If I was going to enter it into my spreadsheet, it had better be worth it.
• I used the money I saved to pay off the credit card debt.
• Every time I came into a small wad of cash (like a tax refund or birthday money), I dumped it towards the debt.

That is the practical way I paid it off. Spiritually, it was a lot harder. How did I tame those gremlins in my mind that wanted to buy fancy shoes? How did I stop the tug-of-war between my head that knew I needed to pay off the debt and my heart that wanted cool stuff and nights out on the town? I needed to convince my heart, my head and my gut that I needed to not spend as much money. Enter self-awareness.

Was I aware that I was self-aware at that point? No. This is me looking back through the retroscope. But I was aligned. My brain knew maintaining a credit card balance was a dumb idea, but self-discipline will only get you so far before your heart starts to object. Once my heart agreed that I needed to reign in my spending, the rest came into place. 

How do you convince your heart? Or your partner?

When Jack and I first got married, he had a large amount of credit card debt. He had just finished medical school and residency, and was in his fellowship. While he was paid in residency and fellowship, he was making less than he was spending. His student loans from medical school were due, and all of his non-medical friends had "real jobs" with some discretionary funds.

I was able to convince myself to stop spending money, but how to convince Jack? 

Spreadsheets, baby. Spreadsheets.

My dad taught me how to use spreadsheets when I was in college because he thought they were cool. Back then, only accountants and engineers used spreadsheets. Now, they are ubiquitous. I created a spreadsheet for Jack of how much credit card debt he had, how much interest he was paying each month and the interest rate per card. Then I did a running total of the interest. 

There was no shame, no blame, no calling him a stupid fool for spending money. It was just a spreadsheet that showed how much he spent and how much he owed.

"Oh my god this is terrible!" he said. He wasn't arguing with me or against me. He was looking at the data. Why do you think the entire business world wants to move to "data-driven solutions?" Data has no feelings. (Shock was a useful tool, though, I have to admit.)

And so this spreadsheet became the credit card cruncher. Each month, I added rows until it was all paid off.

Back to my diet, which is a lot like debt. First I had to admit there was a problem. I was not happy I gained weight. Then I had to decide to do something about it. I wanted to stop gaining weight and lose weight, so I started a diet. Finally, I had to ride out the ups and downs of getting to my goal. There were times I paid off a decent amount of debt, only to still have a decent amount of debt left. There are times where I have lost eight pounds and still feel pudgy.

As Dory says, "Just keep swimming." Keeping going towards the goal. I was able to manage debt. I can lose fifty pounds. 

Will fifty pounds make me magically happy and my life perfect and beautiful and wonderful? 

No.

Will it make me less stressed and feel more energetic? I hope so. 

The same goes with debt. When the debt was paid off, the psyche burden went away. I slept better and I felt better.

My Noom Diet and "Money doesn't come with instructions"

At the end of February, I got sick of how much weight I had gained during the quarantine so I decided to sign up for the Noom diet app. It is a few hundred dollars (like $180) for seven months of nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress-reduction education, plus coaching. Before the pandemic, if you asked me if I would have ever used my smart phone to track every glass of water, every step I took, and everything I ate, I would have said you were crazy. And here I am, with my Fitbit and weighing myself first thing every morning, trying to drop all of the weight I've gained not just since the pandemic, but since before the Boy (now to be known as Pedro) was born when I weighed ~125 pounds. After Claire-Adele was born, I went kind of nuts and exercised twice a day a several times a week. I'd bike in the morning for an hour before Jack went to work, and then I'd go to this kick-ass aerobics class at the YMCA with every stay-at-home mom in central suburban St. Louis. The more I worked out, the less I ate. My food choices also improved. I ate more vegetables and less fatty and fried foods.

When Pedro was born, I didn't have make or find time to get enough exercise. It was a pain in the butt to make go to the grocery store with a toddler and infant and cooking is my least favorite chore, so we ate out more. I didn't gain weight all at once overnight. It was a slow steady, packing on of extra pounds, a few at a time. I have an hourglass body shape, so I tend to carry my excess baggage in my boobs and my booty, which isn't bad. I never felt like I looked fat or ugly. 

Why now? What is the urgency? I am tired of carrying these extra fifty pounds around with me wherever I go. When I hike with Claire-Adele, she kicks my butt. Last time she was in town, we hiked Little Si. I imagine my excess weight to be bags of groceries. Do I want to carry fifty pounds of groceries up Little Si? Because in effect, I was. I want to be able to hike. I don't want my legs and joints to ache. I am fine now, but how will I feel in ten years?

I tried Keto and I lost a few pounds, but it wasn't a diet I could permanently maintain. I like bread, but how much is enough? How much is too much? 

I also didn't have some obvious "one thing" to fix and tada! drop my flab. Jack has a co-worker who lost 45 pounds in the first three months of the pandemic. How? She stopped going to the bar after work (because bars were closed) and drinking five beers. Instead, she walked seven miles.

This Noom app helps me build self-awareness around what I eat and how much I move. I've learned that exercise won't overcome a bad diet, but moving and building strength can keep me healthier. When I was twenty-three, I could go to John Barleycorn on Belden and Halsted and have a beer, eat half a plate of nachos, the best hamburger on the planet and their potato chip like fries. I might have gained a few pounds, but nothing epic. I could still bike and walk and play tennis. I'd go to water aerobics. After I had kids, I drank a lot less (I'd get cranky when I'd drink around my kids. Not a good parenting look.) 

The Noom app is doing two things:

• Helping me make healthier choices to help me lose weight.
• Even if I am not losing weight as fast as I'd like, I am not gaining more weight, which alone is a miracle.

I've lost seven pounds so far. I am moving the ship in a different direction. Yay! Forty-three more to go before I get to my pre-Pedro weight. 😒 

The worst part is that I am kicking myself for gaining all of this weight in the first place. I wish I had developed healthier and more consistent eating and exercise habits years ago. I wish I would have ordered a salad instead of french fries for the past decade (or two), and then I wouldn't be here. I wish I had managed my diet and exercise as well as I've managed my money.

Wait...What?

I wish I had managed my diet and exercise as well as I've managed my money.

Whoa.

By my own admission, I am really good at managing money. A year after Claire-Adele was born, I asked Jack why he loved me. The first thing that came to his mind was "You are really good at managing money." 

That was not that answer I was looking for or expecting. "What? No, seriously. What do you love about me?" Then he doubled-down.

"I am serious," he said. "If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be able to buy a house."

I was hoping he would have said that I was kind or attentive or thoughtful. Instead: my ability to manage money.

Some of my friends ask me for advice with their money. I have other friends who are really good at managing their money whom I ask for advice. My dad is an accountant, so I have a built in family member who provides direction and insight. Heck with having a doctor in the family--you only need a doctor when you are sick. Money is around 24/7/365.

Years ago, I was in a memoir writing class at the University of Washington. The teacher asked us what was our passion, our obsession, and to write about that. The first thing that popped into my head was money. I didn't say it to the class because I was too embarrassed. 

The thing is, I am not greedy. I don't aspire to be rich so I can buy lots of stuff. I want to be comfortable and secure and have money for a rainy day. I want my money to work for me, in addition to me working for it. I want the freedom money provides. I want to know that I can pay my bills if I lose my job, that I can afford a new roof if the current one leaks. I want to send my kids to college. That I can manage a crisis if one happens, just like it did with Pedro.

"Money doesn't come with instructions," my Uncle Bob once said. Food doesn't come with instructions, either, but I am learning about it through Noom. Love, relationships, family, friendships, career: none of those things come with instructions. Yet, we can learn from one another, in a safe place where was can share our fears, as well as our hopes and dreams.

In this next phase of my blog, I will write about something I have self-studied for years, something I am passionate about, something I want to share, something I have discussed with friends and family: the relationship I have built over the years with money.

Rebound

When I talked to the Boy Sunday night, he was in a great mood. Cheerful, in fact, which was surprising considering he punched a hole in the wall Wednesday night. I didn't think he'd be happy to tell his parents that he "done fucked up."

But he was. He was happy (and I daresay proud) that this punch gave him awareness of how far he has come, how much progress he has made, in the past two years.

"I felt like I did when I was at home," he said. "I was reactive and explosive. I saw what was happening. I was upset for about ten minutes, and then I calmed down." He went to the brink and instead of fully going over the edge, he came back. He sounded relieved, grateful, and proud.

While the Boy talked, I just listened. I didn't pepper him with a hundred questions. I let him flow with his thoughts and words. Isn't that what most people want--myself included: be heard and then held? As a parent, the hardest thing I am learning is to listen. Just listen. Not give advice. Not ask leading questions. 

Just listen.

The Boy relapsed and recovered. He didn't collapse. I didn't rescue or fix. He is learning to take care of himself. 

I have to give his girlfriend some credit here, too. She told him it was dumb that he skipped class last week because he might get grounded for the weekend. Her words have far more impact than mine or his therapy team's. She speaks, he listens. I am grateful that her words to him (that I know of) are honest, direct, caring and kind.

The Boy turns eighteen later this month. His birthday is a few days before mine. Soon, he will no longer be the Boy. Perhaps I should come up with a new pseudonym for him on my blog.

Or maybe not. 

Now, this is becoming his story to tell, not mine.

Regression, or When Jekyll meets Hyde

The Boy is supposed to graduate from high school and his residential therapy program this June. He is coming back home to Seattle this summer, and is slated to attend college this fall. This is a minor miracle from where he was two years ago. Actually, it is not a miracle. It is an act of a tremendous amount of hard work and introspection, both on his part, mine and Jack's.

The Boy had his first major regression this week, his first relapse of troubling behavior since he started residential treatment two years ago for his anxiety and depression.

The Boy's therapist was unpleasantly surprised when he heard of the relapse, in part because the Boy's regression does not fit the mold of typical relapses of kids in the program. When other kids relapse, they vape or drink.

"What happened?" the therapist asked me Thursday morning after he had read the email from the night staff saying the Boy had punched a hole in the wall. "He seemed fine when I talked to him Wednesday."

I love my son's therapist. I really, really do. At that moment, I wanted to say, I probably should have said, "Ask the Boy, not me. I am not the one who punched a hole in the wall." I wanted to say, "This is why I am paying you the big bucks. YOU figure it out." 

Alack and alas, I was polite. I didn't want to piss off the guy leading the therapeutic SWAT team caring for my kid. Many therapeutic professionals will look to the parent to explain the unexplainable, as if moms can read their children's minds. After many years of trying, I realized I can't. 

I could, however, give the therapist some insights. Back in eighth grade, when the Boy was first hospitalized, we were given a chart, an explanation of what happens when kids are in need of acute psychological treatment. Most professionals don't have to deal with kids in their acute phase of emotional crisis. That is left for parents, the night staff and/or the police. 

This was the graph of what a psychological crisis looks like:

Some kind of problem escalates in a person's mind. They freak out, whatever their special brand of freakout looks like. They crash into depression, self-loathing or suicide ideation because they fucked up. Maybe they drank twenty beer and tried to drive home. Maybe they screamed at their kids. Maybe they punched a hole in the wall. Some of these self-destructive behaviors are more or less socially acceptable. Eating a whole chocolate cake in one sitting typically only hurts the person eating the cake, so its level of social acceptance is neutral (until we get into fat shaming.) Punching a hole in the wall is down on the list.

I am glad the Boy had his first regression while he is still in treatment. I am glad he is surrounded by system of support that will force to him to reckon with his behavior, not hide from it, nor be ashamed. I heard somewhere recently that shaming people doesn't help change their behavior. (Maybe Brene Brown?)

I wonder what is going through the Boy's head when he punches a hole in the wall, and what happens after. I imagine it is somewhat like Dr. Jekyll meeting Mr. Hyde. I've never read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I probably should. I wonder if there is a scene where the two meet, where the calm and refined Dr. Jekyll sees his evil alter-ego, Mr Hyde. What does Jekyll think of Hyde, or rather, what does he think of the other side of himself?

Where I am in all of this? Suprisingly and pleasantly detached. For years, I spent a considerable amount of my time and attention trying to keep the Boy in the above Green Zone, so he wouldn't spike and crash. I burned myself out trying to manage something I couldn't manage. I was going crazy. Fortunately, I have found the right support for myself, to help me stay float while the rest of the world might be crashing around me.