Posts made in February, 2012

Habit Creep

Posted by jefferson on Feb 28, 2012 in Eliminating Debt, Saving Money | 18 comments

The other day, I was browsing one of the fine blogs listed on the right of this page, and they mentioned Dave Ramsey and how his book had a huge impact on their financial habits.  Don’t worry, this isn’t a blog about Dave Ramsey.  That post has been written a thousand times by a thousand other people.  I have never read Dave Ramsey’s book, but after seeing it mentioned in yet another post, I decided that I should probably go ahead and read this book and see what it was all about.

So, we reached the point where “Jefferson Wants a Book!”  Immediately, old habits began to creep back.  My first stop was Amazon.com, which is probably my favorite store in the world, because they have everything.  They were charging $16.38 for the “Total Money Makeover,” which seemed a little steep.  While I haven’t read Ramsey’s book, I am pretty sure that a portion of it will be dedicated to controlling your spending.  My own “total money makeover” was not going to include buying really expensive books. The Kindle version was a little cheaper at $9.17, but still more expensive than any other Kindle book that I have ever purchased.  I then remembered that you can usually get books for dirt cheap at eBay’s half.com website.  Lucky for me, they were selling the Ramsey book, brand spanking new, for $4.00 +$3.99 shipping.  I immediately got excited, and quickly added the book to my shopping cart.

Right as I was about to finalize my order, the little debt birdie on my shoulder began to chirp at me, “Jefferson, you can get books for free at the library, ya know?  Why would you buy this?”

Oh yeah.  I knew that.  I *could* get the book at the library.  So, why was my first instinct to spend money unnecessarily?  Why is this so ingrained in my brain?  When my mind decides that it wants something, it starts a snowball effect (no Ramsey pun intended, I swear) where I seem to suspend rational thought until the purchase has been made.

This voice of reason (the little debt birdie) that saved me is a new creation, created by the same efforts that have also spawned this website.  It is a combination of mindfulness and accountability, and it is clearing the way towards financial sanity.  It is replacing my old patterns of unnecessary spending with new patterns, but it isn’t easy.  Believe it or not, I battle habit creep every single day.

Michelle talked yesterday about her struggles with shopping withdrawal, but my cravings are a bit different.  If I have to stop at a gas station on the way to work, I have to restrain myself every single time from going inside to get coffee and a snack.  I know very well that I can get free coffee at work if I just wait 15 minutes.  To make matters worse, I also have to drive past a McDonald’s each morning, and their coffee is really delicious these days! (Yeah, I like coffee).

Old habits die hard.  For a good portion of last year, I would entertain myself during down time at work by visiting slickdeals.net.  For those of you that don’t know, Slickdeals is a lovely site where folks post about the amazing deals they’ve found at various stores. Mindlessly reading through the forums on slickdeals is a very dangerous hobby when you are trying to save money.

Slickdeals via Jeff: “Somebody is selling a 1TB External Hard Drive for $50!!!”
Debt Birdie: “But you already have an external hard drive. You don’t need this.”

Before Debt Birdie was around, you could see how this could cause problems.  I probably spent a thousand dollars last year on Slickdeals items that I wouldn’t have bought had I not seen the deal.  Yeah, all of these items were being sold for a “great price,” but it isn’t really a deal if I wasn’t planning on buying the item in the first place.  I should note that I still heart Slickdeals, and I do think it can be a major tool in trying to save money, but instead of browsing the site, you should just search for something that you need to buy.  If you need a new waffle maker, just search for “waffle maker” and see what deals are out there in waffle maker land.

I am not perfect and this a work in progress.  I have stopped to got coffee once or twice this year, and I do occasionally catch myself browsing the Slickdeals forums from time to time.  A big part of developing new habits and getting spending under control is avoiding the triggers that cause spending in the first place.  If you can successfully do that, you can keep habit creep under control.

Debt Dieting

Posted by michelle on Feb 28, 2012 in Eliminating Debt | 10 comments

If you’re a self-proclaimed shopaholic like myself, you know the feeling with which I’ve been struggling. I’ve been being so “good” all month! I didn’t buy a thing. Even though I haven’t been to the mall since buying the 7 year old some new shoes, the temptations were still all around me. The other day, my mom talked about a sale she came across online, describing some items she had purchased, and my fingers itched to go online and “just look.” My sister talked about fitting into a smaller size of jeans this week, and it reminded me of the high I had felt while shopping for jeans months earlier. One of my girlfriends bought a new camera (the same camera I have actually), only she bought all the accessories that I couldn’t afford, and it made me wonder innocently “what harm could a couple hundred dollars really do in the grand scheme of things?” It is honestly like a drug. Fortunately, I’ve had a problem controlling my impulses, but they still exist. Just because I’ve been good at suppressing the inkling to splurge doesn’t mean that it’s not consuming all of my waking thoughts. If anything, this whole process of getting our finances in order has made my feelings even stronger. I feel like I’m dieting, and I hate diets! I started thinking about it, and wondered if that’s why I have had so many issues with money in the past. Am I going at this whole budget thing the same way I try to tackle a new diet? If so, I’m doomed to fail.

Why I loathe diets

Years ago, I studied in a local dietetics program and learned everything that I could about nutrition. One of the interesting topics that I learned about was how the body reacts to deprivation of nutrients and cravings. It’s not only a psychological anamoly. When you go on an extreme calorie-limiting diet, your entire metabolism slows down, as your body goes into what it perceives to be a sort of starvation mode. This is evolutionary and is necessary to preserve life when food is limited. Your heartbeat slows, you become more tired (so that you rest more), the extremities become weaker, etc. The body treats the lowered caloric intake as it would an emergency situation. A lot of times, people on diets become highly irritable. The cravings become more intense, especially if on a diet with limited calories. You start seeing food everywhere. Every commercial makes you hungry, every person you encounter is eating or just ate or is talking about food. You can’t escape the thoughts!

This is why I hate diets and refuse to ever change mine….again. I eat whatever I want, but in moderation. In fact, I do moderation in moderation. If I feel like eating a chocolate bar, I eat a chocolate bar. I simply do not look at foods as evil or fattening. On the other hand, I never eat just because it’s “time to eat.” A lot of times, my husband will slave away making the family a beautiful dinner and I will not even finish half of what’s on my plate. My husband knows that I’m not being rude or picky, but just not very hungry and eating til you bust just isn’t good for you. I believe that I have a healthy outlook on eating now, but this hasn’t always been the case for me.

A Sickness Sets

As a teenager, I was a little bit pudgier than I would have liked. Some of my family and friends who read this are likely rolling their eyes at me for even saying that, as I was never bigger than a size 9 in the junior’s department, but even though I was never “overweight,” I was once a teenage girl, after all. When I was 16, I applied for an entry-level position as a fitness trainer in a local gym. I thought this would be a great way to earn some money (for shopping, of course!) while working on my now-womanly figure. The pay listed for the position was well below what I assumed most trainers would make, but I figured the free workouts into my salary and thus decided it wasn’t a bad deal. After the interview, the manager of the gym gave me a tour of the facility. This was when I realized that the job description should have used the words “fitness cheerleader” instead of “trainer,” as my main job was to root on my clients, and to work out alongside those who were in need of motivation and encouragement, and count reps for them. I’m good at smiling and counting, so I was perfect for the job!

After only a few days at my new job, my manager became a great frenemy. Upon joining, she had measured my weight and body circumferences. I thought that she was doing this to show me how to help the clients, but later, it became obvious she wanted a baseline for her own competitive ways. She started talking to me about weight loss and dieting, which eventually turned into her competing against me to see who could get skinnier faster. It was a sick relationship. Here I was, a 16-year-old girl who wasn’t fully developed, physically or emotionally, and here was this middle-aged woman who got off on the fact that she was in better shape than me, someone less than half her age. She opened up something inside of me that I had never known to exist before. Sure, I had wanted to get into better shape before having met this woman, but never before had I worked out for 6-8 hours straight or eaten restrictive diets to get there.

I never fully became what I would consider anorexic or bulimic, because I never passed out from starving myself and never made myself throw up. In retrospect, I was lying to myself. I had some the most disturbing eating habits, which don’t have clinical names of which I’m aware, but were dangerous and emotionally-driven just like the well-known sicknesses with household names. Once, when I was on the grapefruit diet (a supposed cleansing diet suggested by the boss lady), I was starving after working a long day. This meant that I had exercised all day, and had eaten nothing but grapefruits, grapefruit juice, and a handful of dry cereal. I didn’t want to ruin my day of hard work and discipline, but I couldn’t stay away from the kitchen. I sneaked downstairs after everyone else had gone to sleep and raided the refrigerator, where I found some delicious smelling brownies. After some thought, I decided I would only take a small bite. But once the bite was in my mouth, I found it very difficult not to eat another…and another. I got so mad at myself for ruining my day that I began to spit out the half-chewed brownie bites into the trash. Sadly, this shameful moment repeated itself several more times in next few months.  I only spit my food out a handful of times, and only if the foods were “really bad,” but this type of behavior can be very dangerous. The crazy thing is that neither the grapefruit diet nor the spitting helped me to lose any weight. My body was so deprived that it was holding onto every calorie I absorbed. I was so exhausted all the time that if I wasn’t working out, all I wanted to do was sleep.

Acceptance

Thankfully, the crazy dieting didn’t last very long. I decided it wasn’t working for me and that something needed to change. I slowly started eating more normally and working out less. More important things came into my life; boys and hanging out with my friends, of course! Along with these changes also came a new job, one in which I wasn’t put under a microscope for not being perfect.

Since then, I haven’t had any issues with anything resembling an eating disorder. I am lactose intolerant, so there are enough foods I have to avoid without any crazy dieting! Thankfully, issues with milk are so common these days that there are lots of alternative foods available, so I can eat fairly normally. Proof that I’m finally okay with my body is the fact that I’m still the same weight I was when I left the hospital nearly 8 months ago, but I’m okay with that. I’m still a fairly new mom and would rather spend my day playing with my sweetpea than working out and counting calories. My outlook is simple. I eat whatever I want, but try to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables throughout the day and drink lots of water. If you’re doing those things, you won’t have too much room for the stuff you shouldn’t be gorging on. I do eat cake and cookies, but not too often. The only working out in my life consists of carrying a baby around all day, an ocassional walk around the neighborhood, or playing “Just Dance, Volume 3″ with my kids. I am happy with myself and I’m okay with my body. It’s not perfect, but it’s healthy. It’s not model thin, but it’s strong. This is the only body I’m ever going to have in this life, so I better take care of it!

Debt Dieting

Unfortunately, as far as my finances go, I feel like my “moderation in moderation” outlook is being ignored in this new debt-reducing journey we are undertaking. Lately, it just feels like I’ve been depriving myself financially to the point that I’m close to slipping into an extreme of which I’m no longer comfortable. I know that I could save more money by continuing to not buy anything or spend anything or ever go anywhere, but I do need a teeny tiny bit of something for me or I feel I’m going to explode. I hope that, in this process, I’m able to find a happy medium in which I can live comfortably but without guilt or fear of stealing from my children’s futures. Is there a way to do this? Will I ever be able to walk into a mall and not feel overwhelmingly sad because I can’t shop, or will I always feel what an alcoholic must feel like at a bar; alone and out of place? Will I ever get to the point where I’m happy with my financial situation in life the way I am with my body? That I’m possibly not ever going to be able to afford a boat, or a luxury car, or to buy jewelry just for fun? I’m not sure, and that scares me. I live in the greatest country in the world, with opportunities all around me. We live in a beautiful neighborhood and our children go to a pretty good school, albeit public. I have my health and supportive friends and the best husband ever. I just hope that I can one day get to a point where I feel this is enough. If not, I hope to meet a rich girlfriend who wears the same size and tires of clothes frequently. I’ll wait by the SDR phone.

Report Card

Posted by jefferson on Feb 26, 2012 in Eliminating Debt, Site News | 11 comments

In the next few weeks, we will get to meet with our kids’ teachers to receive their 3rd quarter report cards, and to find out how thing have been going in class.  To honor that occasion, we present this week’s round-up in a “Report Card” format:

Debt Reduction : A-

Since starting this website on January 21st, our credit card debt has dropped from $21952 down to $14472.  This is certainly some excellent progress, aided in large part by a nice tax return.  We track this information, and graph it out, on our Debt Reduction Progress Page.  I am quite happy with the progress that we have made so far, and our goal remains to be completely out from underneath credit card debt by the end of this year.

Supplemental Income : B-

We started off great in this area, but have slowed a bit in the past few weeks.  We really need to take the time to see if we can find some freelance writing gigs at sites like Elance,  oDesk, and Problogger.

Michelle earned some extra money cutting hair at home and doing a diaper survey (she received a week’s worth of diapers as well), and I earned some extra income by delivering flowers on Valentine’s Day.  Unfortunately, we have had some major issues getting my third and final paycheck from the courier service who handled the deliveries.  It’s only about a hundred bucks that they owe me, but I might have to get viral on them sooner than later if they don’t produce a check pretty quick.

Grocery Savings : A-

It is looking like our grocery total for the month of February will eventually fall somewhere around $650 total.  Considering that we spent $1800 in December, and $1200 in January, this is quite an accomplishment.  We are still eating healthy foods, providing snacks for friends and family who stop by, and shopping at our favorite stores.  The main difference has been some meal planning, exclusively cooking at home, adding discount stores like Aldi to our weekly routine, and couponing.  This is only taking my wife an extra hour per week, but saving us a substantial amount of dough.  Good job, honey!  We will certainly outline these savings further in future posts, and we hope to get our costs down even further in March.

General Frugality: A

We really have been going above and beyond with improving our spending habits and improving our cash flow.  Neither my wife nor myself, has bought ourselves *anything* at all this month, other that necessities.  I almost feel guilty when things creep up that cause us to need to drop a  few bucks (we ran out of printer ink, our air purifier needed a filter), which is a little bit crazy.  In upcoming budgets, we are going to have to leave a little bit of wiggle room for miscellaneous.

Yakezie Challenge:  B+

We discussed our joining of the Yakezie Challenge here, and have really been enjoying interacting with other Personal Finance bloggers.  If you want to help, please be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

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See Debt Run was mentioned in a number of Blog Carnivals This Week:

• Should We Consider Moving to a New City? was featured in last week’s Yakezie Carnival, hosted by Young Adult Finances
• Making Money out of Molehills was featured in the Festival of Frugality, hosted by Penniless Parenting (thanks for the nice note!)
• The Unbearable Weight of Nothing was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Sustainable Personal Finance (again, with a very nice note!)
• I Love the Library, but Suck at it was featured in this week’s Yakezie Carnival, featured by Not Made of Money.
• Trimming the Debt, One Head at a Time was featured (first!) in the Carnival of Financial Camaraderie, hosted by My University Money.