Self Help

Me and My Mother’s Daughter

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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.

#PFSundays: Reviewing Subscriptions

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Picture of cash spilling out of purse
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.

Thanks for reading!

#PFSundays: Off the Budgetary Wagon

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Picture of cash spilling out of purse
Living a cash only life

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.

Personal Finance: Living on Just Cash

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Picture of cash spilling out of purse
Living a cash only life

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.