Personal Finance Sundays: Taking Control of Your Money
When we think about giving, we often think about billionaires or millionaires who give in such a lot way. Or we think about some big charitable donation. Or some heart warming story. All these are good examples of giving. But if giving scares you because you feel like you can’t make a grand gesture, there are ways to give in bits and pieces. There is no wrong form of giving.
As a child, one of the rituals that my mother built into our journey to school was giving. At the Festac gate, when traffic would trap us, she would extend her hands out and give to the beggars on the street. In my family, quite a few people are known for carrying spare change that is specifically for giving alms. Now as an adult, that is a habit that I am trying to cultivate. A habit of giving not in extraordinary circumstances or quantity but just as an habitual thing that I don’t think about. I have built a margin of giving into my budget.
For me, I have found that one of the easier ways to give is through my pay check. My company supports a charitable foundation whose goals are aligned with my ideals, so I simply have always chosen the option to donate a fixed portion of my paycheck. The other avenue that comes for giving is through tipping. Yes, there are times when I refuse to tip generously because of bad service. However, there are certain services that I have committed a certain level of tips for such as my taxi ride home. There are days when I want to give less but I have learned to give regardless of my circumstances at the moment. I have found that when I give, I never lack; and for that I am thankful.
Giving for is an act of self gratitude. It is a way of recognizing and appreciating my privileges. In the past, I have tried to give through specific organization like Kiva that allow me to give money as a loan and recycle the money. This something that I would like to return to in the future when I can make larger commitments. In the meantime, I intend to keep giving in bits and pieces here and there
How have you cultivated a habit of giving? Tell me in the comment section
Personal Finance Sundays: Taking Control of Your Money
In the past couple of years, I have pretty much maintained the same financial commitments. I have lived in the same house. Taken public transportation work. Used the same phone plan, etc. Lately though I have been thinking to myself that I want to move closer to the city or at least buy a car. Then I sit down and do the financial maths. I think I can afford to do this. However, there are days when I get scared and I tell myself to thread carefully. What about all of the other savings goals that I have set for myself?
So I have decided that the best way to ascertain if I can actually afford to increase my financial commitment is to act as if I have those commitments already. A few years ago, I was watching a talk show and I think it was Suze Orman who advised a couple to determine if they could afford a bigger house and a bigger mortgage by pretending like they had made the leap. The trial phase helps to figure out how much of a strain making the increased financial commitment would be on a day-to-day basis. It is always easy to make a budget on paper. You cut a little bit of this and a little bit of that. However in real life, your daily happiness quota might just hang on being able to afford that extra manicure every month. Or knowing that you can see a movie on a whim without breaking the bank.
Financial planning, I am learning everyday, should not be about living a miserable life now to reach some happy place later. Financial planning has to balance current needs and WANTS with future needs and WANTS! This is why I think practicing increasing my financial load will help me determine if I am ready or not. Practicing would mean figuring how much extra moving into a new house or buying a new car would cost me monthly. The extra is then deposited into my savings account. In about 3-6 months, I will be able to determine if the extra commitment is livable. At the end of the trail period, I am rewarded with more money in my savings account that I can use to cover short term expenses of either buying a car or moving house.
Do you have any goals that you need to practice for? Tell me in the comment section.
And the speaker, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, says in this TED speech that “These women lived in the ‘and.’ You could be fierce and feminine.” As I listened to this TED talk about a band of female soldiers who served on the frontline of Afghanistan even as there was a ban of female soldiers on the frontline, I thought about the many ways women have to live a dichotomous lives. Women live in the ‘and’ everyday in the choices that we make. Sometimes the ‘and’ is a function of cultural of expectations of what womanhood is. To be soft AND firm. To elegant AND strong. To be quiet AND heard. To navigate a tightrope between womanhood and the desires to be more than the prescribed bounds of woamnhood.
For me, the ‘and’ is something that I have struggled with all my life. I was thinking back to my teenage years earlier today before watching this TED talk. One of the things I am trying to come to terms with is the abuse that I inflicted on my body via an eating disorder. Surviving an eating disorder is something that has shaped my view of my self, body and my place within the world. I have come to realize that there are times when I try to make myself smaller because I feel ashamed to take up space. When I was in secondary school in Lagos, I remember that one of the pleasures of having an eating disorder was the eating less. Being less at something gave me lots of pride. The look of surprise from classmates when they realized I was eating just a small portion of food. The ability to be more with less. The surprising part of the less obsession was I couldn’t see myself shrinking. Even in my memories of myself in that phase, I still see myself as being large. It is only when I see pictures of myself that I realize that I was shrinking.
This many years later, I can say that I am past the worst of my eating disorder. I think of myself in the terms of a drug addict. I am always going to be in recovery. It is this acknowledgement of my continuous struggle with my body that allows me to be conscious of myself. I am able to look at my approach to life and reel myself in when I am about to make crazy extreme decisions. In the past decade, I have been unable to maintain a stable weight. I have been big and I have been small. I am, and I have been, on a journey to understand what it means to exist within my body.
I am learning that it is possible to be a lot of things in one body. I can be fat and graceful. I can be skinny and love food. I can be sad and happy. The sadness and the happiness is one that took me a long time to learn. I can be strong and I can be weak. I am somewhere in the spectrum of being an introvert and an extrovert although I identify more with being an introvert. Wanting a different life that my mother imagined for me does not make me less of my mother’s daughter. I can be some of who she wants me to be and I can be somewhat different that she imagined I would be.
I can be pure AND own my sexuality. One of the things I struggled with through my early adulthood was that idea that it was okay to be desired and to desire others. I was one of those girls who reached puberty really early physically but mentally I was still a child. Having older men lust openly after my body and make insinuating comments to me made me feel ashamed. In a lot of ways, I wanted to shrink and disappear. Also growing up in a society in which women who appeared to be sexual desirable where considered cheap and tainted made me feel ashamed of my body. I hid myself from the rites of adulthood by being oblivious to appropriate advances and making myself unavailable for the dating rites.
When I started choosing to live in the ‘and’, I gave myself permission to live a life that is authentic. This is why I relate to those soldiers’ lives. In the story that Ms. Lemmon tells, there runs a line of authenticity. A line where being a soldier on the frontline does not mean giving up the feminine. By occupying a space that is considered masculine in a way that celebrates the ‘and’ these women where able to create authentic roles for themselves and many other young women.
In what ways are you living in the ‘and’? Let me know in the comment section.
Personal Finance Sundays: Taking Control of Your Money
You may have seen one of those lists that get around on Facebook everyone is a while asking you for random facts about yourself. Or you may have filled quite a few online dating profiles where you have to create an image of yourself that is extraordinary enough to catch someone’s eye, but simple enough not to scare them off. One of the random facts that I always list is my love of the New York Times. I started reading NYTimes when I was 17/18 and living in California. I have read NYTime through my travels and changes in life. I was broke, unemployed and depressed when the NYTimes paywall went up in 2011. I remember being elated when I discovered that Chrysler email offering me a year-long subscription. Then that year was over and I had to find all kinds of cunning ways to read the NYTimes because I just could not afford to pay the subscription fees.
In December 2013, about 3 months after I started my current job, I finally subscribed to the NYTimes. I cried when I paid it. For me, being able to make that commitment to auto-pay for a subscription was a sign of financial stability. Yes, making a commitment to pay less than 20 dollars a month was a dream come true because it was one of the benchmarks of financial success for me. Since I made that commitment to the NYTimes, I have subscribed to other services ranging from gym services with Boston Sport Club to make-up sample delivery service with Ipsy to Netflix, even Skillshare, an online learning platform.
Recently though I had to take a step back and assess my commitments. Were they worth the money I was paying? In the short term, I can justify paying out 10 dollars a month. But in the long term, 120 dolllars a month is 120 dollars plus accrued interest that is missing from my savings account or my 401K plan. So I started canceling subscriptions. I cancelled my gym membership for the summer simply because I realized I was not going. Instead, I started doing fitness videos at home and walking around my neighborhood. I cancelled Skillshare because I never used it.
In the end I was able to make small monthly savings by focusing on the subscription services that added value to my life. I look forward every month to my new make-up from Ipsy and I use to the samples regularly. Also Netflix is something that has filled the void of not owning a television. Now, I am also more discerning in what I choose to pay for. I think I am more likely to do one time payments now than monthly payments simply because I like knowing that payment is finite.
Tell me in the comment sections if you have any subscriptions that you maybe should be canceling. Also, does anyone else have a moment when they realized they had a reached some measure of financial stability? Share it with me in the comment section.
I fell off the wagon. It is week 4 of my living on a cash budget lifestyle and I fell off the wagon. I got bored and I started shopping. Before I knew it I had spent 50 dollars on clothes. Earlier in the week, I had also indulged by ordering out. I feel really guilty. However, I am glad it happened.
Yes, I said “glad”. The reason I am glad it happened is because I expect that as I walk towards securing my future financially, there would be detours. There are going to be times when my impulses are stronger than my control. At this point, the important thing is not whether I got off my cash budget. The important thing is what I intend to do after.
For me, that has meant logging into my bank account and taking stock of the damage that my impulse buying has caused. With knowledge of this damage, I am figuring out ways that I can correct the issue. Is it possible to return some of the stuff I bought? Probably. So that means that I am able to recover some of the damage.
The other thing I did that helped was confess to my sister immediately that I had fallen off the wagon. My sister is the person that I share my goals with. She is the person that I am comfortable breaking down my bank account to because I know she is supportive of my goals. There are times when I am really broke and we figure out a way for me to move cash around. There are times when I having money and she talks me down from the high of wanting to spend all my money.
As I go towards week 5 of this cash budget thing, I am focusing on recognizing my impulses and how to abate them. This week I bought because I was bored. I had the day off and I had nothing to do so I went to Downtown Boston and started shopping. The reason why I am able to spot the impetus behind my behavior is because I hate shopping in stores. When I do my regular shopping that is planned, it is almost always online with weeks of planning and waiting for sales. The fact that I casually walked in and shopped means that I need to find other ways to occupy my time outside of work.
Are there any financial goals that you are working towards? How are you doing with your goals? Please share in the comment section.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”
-Audre Lorde
I recently read this quote somewhere random and it stuck in my head all of this past week. Self-care is something that I sometimes neglect. My lack of self-care is not a reflection of my self-esteem. For me, my lack of self-care is reflection of the importance I place on my own agenda in lot of ways. There are basic things that make me happy. I like the way my face looks with make-up on. I do much better when I am physically active. I blossom when I make myself a healthy meal.
Somehow, even though I know what makes me happy, I find myself cheating myself out of my self-care routine. A few weeks ago, I started massaging my feet and my joints before going to bed. A couple of weeks after starting this soothing routine, I stopped. I just do not enough place emphasis on my own self-care.
This past week, I started wearing make-up to work, again. Instead of placing emphasis on getting to work extremely early, I chose to place the emphasis on looking as I desired. Putting on make-up for me is a seduction of self. It is a moment of vanity when I look at my face and touch my face. I acknowledge my own beauty and allow myself the creativity of choosing who I want to be for the dance of the day. A bright red lipstick to make my lips look full. A girly pink for my feminine days. A smokey eye for the days when I want to catch the gaze.
Putting on make-up is one of the few times when I get to look at my body. I generally don’t dress with a mirror. I actually haven’t owned a full-length mirror in a long time. I find that I like to avoid my body in some ways. I love getting dressed in the morning. I love putting things together and playing with shapes, textures and patterns. I can tell if an outfit fits by the way my body feels in it. To look at my body however is to ask too much of my fragile self. I have learnt to engage with my body in a way that is not threatening to me. Looking at my face is one of the joys I get from a mirror though.
I was thinking about this self-care quote tonight when I decided to play around with my face. I sometimes miss the days when I used to wear a lot of color on my face to work. These days, I am firmly in the nude/brown palette phase. I am enjoying the brown/bronze/black look alot. I tend to concentrate lots of drama on my lips with bright reds and pinks in the summer. This past fall/winter I was really into plums and wines. Tonight though, I sought out my gold dust and played fairy on my face. It is a bit of a wild look but there was so much joy in playing with that face. So much joy!
Do you have a self-care routine that makes you feel your best? Let me know in the comment section.
Sometimes I wish life was simpler. I wish I could be as bold as I was when I was much younger; probably in college days. I grew up an extremely shy girl. Then something happened towards the end of high/secondary school and for all of college that made me really bold. I was still shy; but I took many risks. And then some years after college, I did a 360 back to the shy girl I used to be.
The dating game is really just that; a game. It was so much easier in college. Or maybe it wasn’t. But it’s even more complicated now. You meet a guy. You think there was a connection. You exchange numbers. And then the waiting begins. Day 1, 2, 3…. At this point you’re wondering if you should call him. You talk to your friend and she says, ‘Don’t call him. Don’t let him think you’re desperate.’ So you keep waiting. And wait forever. But sometimes I wonder if the guy also needs a push. Maybe he’s not sure whether you like him or not. Maybe he’s wondering if he was the only one that felt the connection. Maybe….a million and one maybes. And you’d never know if you don’t make that call. But we never make that call.
Why can’t life be simpler? Why can’t women be bolder? Why can’t I like a guy and call him up and straight up ask if he likes me too? Why waste all that precious time, when you can find out immediately and start to build something good OR move on and close that door?
Being single is fun. You only have yourself to think about. You can go wherever, do whatever; without thinking about someone else. You don’t need a man to define you. You shouldn’t plan your entire life around a man. Yes, I know all that. However, let’s be honest. It’s also pretty lonely. It’s my theory that after a certain point (different ages for different people), you are supposed to be with someone. And the absence of that someone messes up your balance and throws you off completely. And until you find that someone, you can’t find your balance. No matter how happy you are, there’s that nagging question at the back of your head….”Where is he?”
One of the sage saying that is supposed to make people feel better is “Money can’t buy happiness.” And I have come to realize that I disagreed with the saying. Let me explain myself before I become branded as materialistic. Money is a tool that many get to take for granted. I am guessing the person who said that money can’t buy happiness probably had enough.
Money beyond a certain threshold can not buy you any more happiness than you already have. However below that threshold, money, or the lack of it, can lead to a miserable existence that is governed by worries and anxieties over meeting your basic needs in life. Notice that I said basic needs. I am talking about the things that are at the very bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
It is the acknowledgement of the importance of reaching the threshold and going beyond the threshold that has informed my decision to start Personal Finance Sundays. In the past week, I have spoken about some of my personal finance tips such as spending cash only. In the future, I intend to introduce more articles about personal finance that focuses on good money habits. Writing about good money habits is a way of holding myself accountable as well because I am really at that phase in my life where I need to start building a good base.
Let us go on this journey of actively managing our personal finance together. Tell me know in the comments what kind of articles you would like to read and discuss as part of #PFSundays.
I have never really been a frivolous spender. Okay, I think what I mean to say is I never thought I was frivolous spender. I was not buying anything outrageous. Most of my splurges were on food items. I am a self-labeled foodie and I take pleasure in new recipes and taking food pictures.
Even with all the spending on food though, I thought I was doing well. My savings account grew and…then stopped growing and would go downhill again. I would do clean outs of the kitchen and find food hiding away that I had forgotten I bought. Somehow, I started seeing all the signs that I needed to put my spending under control and the best way to do that was to say bye-bye to my card.
My beloved debit card is one of my most precious possessions. A quick swipe and I could buy almost anything I wanted. That bag of fancy rice I dreamed of making into a pudding. The cheese that I just had to have for one meal of grilled cheese sandwich to be forgotten later in the back of the fridge. It all seemed okay because it was 10 dollars here. Another 15 there. One weekend, between here and there, I spent 200 dollars and I could not really account for it. This was one of the big red flags for me.
Last summer, while I was in one of my melancholy sessions, I confided in a co worker that my financial future was bleak. I have never been one to stress out about money. I have been lucky to have parents who encouraged me to view my success in life beyond finances. But at the most basic level, I still yearn for things like knowing that I have enough money to see me through an emergency without having to call my father. I want to be able to buy a house sometimes in the next few years, with or without a significant other. I want to dream of vacations and know that they are within grasp. These are things that I know to be only possible if I am financially responsible.
After years of skimming articles and feeling superior because I felt that I had a grasp on my spending, I took the time to read the book suggested by the co-worker. It is called Total Money Makeover. The book advocates for living a cash only life. I read that advice and I thought to myself, “I am good at math, I will just tally up how much I spend and set a limit on my spending.” Then I got a credit card to help build my credit score because I have been smart enough not to have credit cards. But now that I had the goal of buying a house, credit history seemed like a smart thing to build.
I have a very limited balance on my credit card on purpose. Even with the limit, I realize now that I abused that credit card. I would spend money on my credit card against my future income. Then spend my debit card as well. So while I was able to pay off the card every month, my savings account suffered for it.
After taking another look at my savings and realizing I was in the low phase again after a high at the beginning of the year, I went back to Total Money Makeover. I decided to do a cash only lifestyle. I am currently on my second week.
One of the things I did before starting my budget was figure out how much my monthly bills are, how much income I have coming in each month and what my weekly spend is. I wanted to set a realistic budget for myself.
One of the perks of being on a budget is making better food choices. I would rather spend my money on a banana than candy. I am baking cookies at home instead of spending money on the fancy cookies I like. More importantly, I feel proud of myself. I no longer feel ashamed to open up my account each day. Before I would see transactions and wonder what they were for. Or I had buyer’s remorse. Now that I am dealing in the absolute currency of cash, I just don’t buy because I see in my hands how much I am spending. The other day, I calculated what percentage of my weekly spend a bag of fancy cheese represented. Knowing that allowed me to walk away. I am also teaching myself to save for little items as a reward or positive reinforcement for good behaviour instead of just buying.
Ultimately I have learned from saying no to things that I absolutely don’t need all the things I thought I did. I want them and one day I can have them if I remain financially responsible.
and David Oyelowo face came on the screen sucking me into the movie “Selma.” After much debate with myself over the last few days, I finally mustered the will to get out of my house this morning and go see the movie. ‘Selma’ is a movie that I had anticipated for while. there was no way I was going to miss it because of the big media push that the cast had been making from magazine covers to talk-show. Plus, as an African living who is Boston who is just really starting to gain consciousness of what it means to be Black in America, I felt I had to go watch this. Of course, the danger in watching a movie like ‘Selma’, when you are uneducated about the Civil Rights Movement like I am, is that there is that line between the dramatization of real events and the reality of the events that gets all muddled up in the name of making great movie. It is a good thing I have been following the media push enough to know that the speeches in the movie are not real because the Dr. King’s estate chose not let the movie makers use them.
Even with all of this caveats, watching ‘Selma’ was an evocative experience. It made me realize that there is much progress that has been made in racial relations in America. I think especially in this age of systemic injustices that are represented by Ferguson and the many other instances, it is easy to let anger cloud the fact that much progress has been made. The flip side of this is that it made me realize how much more still needs to be done in terms of equality and justice for all. ‘Selma’ is a heavy movie. It is the kind of movie that is designed cause introspection. It is designed to inspire if you choose to be inspired. It is designed to educate.
Beyond the loftier goals of the movies, the acting of the ‘Selma’ cast was superb. To be honest, I really wanted to go to the bathroom 20 minutes into the movie but I was so spellbound that I did not do so until the movie ended. There is something about the elocution of David Oyelowo channeling Martin Luther King that is amazing to watch. The cadence is laced with dignity and often times the heaviness of despair. I found that the most powerful moment where not the ones where his voice was booming but the quiet whispers of a personal conversation with another. There is a point where Mr. Oyelowo’s character talks to an ADA about his personal security. His eyes and his soft speech said so much more than could ever be said in the words. I think that is what I loved most about this movie in terms of entertainment. The full-bodied portrayal of these strong personalities. The dignity that Carmen Ejogo carried into her portrayal of Coretta Scott King was amazing. I wanted to see so much more of her during and after the movie. I really loved seeing a cast that featured some of the biggest black actors in America. Plus, there are so many new faces in there that I hope this movie is a vehicle for them to get into other movies and bring some diversity to the screen.
this is the other thing struck also watching ‘Selma’, how did the spouses and the families cope with their love ones away fighting for justice across the world.Watching Carmen Ejogo made me realize that a Coretta Scott King movie would be amazing. Beyond the spouses, I wanted to know more about the big players in the Dr. King’s group. I was a bit lost when I read a review of ‘Selma’ in the past and the critic mentioned that the movie just points out so many other great stories of the Civil Rights Era that have yet to be told. Now I understand and I am of the same opinion that there is so much that still needs to be told. ‘Selma’ was just a chapter in a long storybook that is the Civil Rights Era.
Of course I have been obsessively listening to John Legend and Common’s song for the movie, Glory.
