By Anne, on September 14th, 2012%
Pin It Last March I posted Getting Bored and made some commitments to try to let myself get “good and bored.”
And while, for the most part, I kept those commitments, I have not gotten good and bored. Not surprisingly, starting to homeschool my children and moving halfway across the country does not really lend itself to boredom. But I find myself still yearning for the boredom that might quiet my mind enough to allow me to hear my inner knowing and to be more present.
I’m not even sure that boredom is the right word, but rather a step along the path towards stillness and presence. Is boredom what comes just before appreciating the present moment exactly as it is?
The move is behind us now. After two months in a temporary sublet we have now been moved settled into our new home. for almost two months Everything is unpacked and we are all settled. I’m thinking it might be time to try to find this stillness. I’m just not exactly sure how to go about it.
A book I’m reading right now called Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron has a section in it called “The Practice of Mindfulness and Refraining”. It speaks to what I’m trying to accomplish.
REFRAINING IS very much the method of becoming a dharmic person. It’s the quality of not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming on. It’s the practice of not immediately filling up space just because there’s a gap. …… Refraining—not habitually acting out impulsively—has something to do with giving up the entertainment mentality. Through refraining, we see that there’s something between the arising of the craving—or the aggression or the loneliness or whatever it might be—and whatever action we take as a result. There’s something there in us that we don’t want to experience, and we never do experience, because we’re so quick to act. The practice of mindfulness and refraining is a way to get in touch with basic groundlessness—by noticing how we try to avoid it.
So my plan is to not purchase or borrow any new books for the next two months. I will only reread things I already own or have already purchased. I’m not sure if this will do anything to further my boredom, but I know that I tend to fill my free time with reading. Since what I read is mostly non-fiction aimed at health, wellness, self-improvement, parenting—things I am wholly immersed in, I may not find that boredom. I don’t have cable, and I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. But I do have a bit of a reading addiction, so we’ll see what happens. I’ll let you know.
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
ECKHART TOLLE, The Power of Now
from Waiting for Godot — by Samuel Beckett
VLADIMIR: When you seek you hear.
ESTRAGON: You do.
VLADIMIR: That prevents you from finding.
ESTRAGON: It does.
VLADIMIR: That prevents you from thinking.
ESTRAGON: You think all the same.
VLADIMIR: No no, it’s impossible.
ESTRAGON: That’s the idea, let’s contradict each another.
VLADIMIR: Impossible.
ESTRAGON: You think so?
VLADIMIR: We’re in no danger of ever thinking any more.
ESTRAGON: Then what are we complaining about?
VLADIMIR: Thinking is not the worst.
ESTRAGON: Perhaps not. But at least there’s that.
VLADIMIR: That what?
ESTRAGON: That’s the idea, let’s ask each other questions.
VLADIMIR: What do you mean, at least there’s that?
ESTRAGON: That much less misery.
VLADIMIR: True.
ESTRAGON: Well? If we gave thanks for our mercies?
VLADIMIR: What is terrible is to have thought.
ESTRAGON: But did that ever happen to us?
VLADIMIR: Where are all these corpses from?
ESTRAGON: These skeletons.
VLADIMIR: Tell me that.
ESTRAGON: True.
VLADIMIR: We must have thought a little.
ESTRAGON: At the very beginning.
VLADIMIR: A charnel-house! A charnel-house!
ESTRAGON: You don’t have to look.
VLADIMIR: You can’t help looking.
ESTRAGON: True.
VLADIMIR: Try as one may.
ESTRAGON: I beg your pardon?
VLADIMIR: Try as one may.
ESTRAGON: We should turn resolutely towards Nature.
VLADIMIR: We’ve tried that.
ESTRAGON: True.
VLADIMIR: Oh it’s not the worst, I know.
ESTRAGON: What?
VLADIMIR: To have thought.
ESTRAGON: Obviously.
VLADIMIR: But we could have done without it.
By Anne, on December 2nd, 2011%
Pin ItSome people do their best thinking in the shower. I do my best cleaning when I’m on the phone.
I’ll never clean otherwise. But get me on the phone and I’m wiping down the cabinets, cleaning the refrigerator and de-cluttering everywhere. One day about five years ago, while on the phone, I went into my walk-in closet and noticed a few things that we never used. Our house was plenty big and the closet wasn’t overflowing, but I grabbed a box for the seldom used items. I looked again and saw a few more things, and then a few more and so on. When I was done, I could see what was left just a little more clearly. By putting space between the things I’d kept, I was able to notice and appreciate everything more. It felt good. I was hooked. An addiction was born. I am still getting rid of our stuff.
I don’t know what it was about that moment or that day. Perhaps feeling overwhelmed with raising these three little boys and all their toys and clothes and equipment all over the place left me feeling suffocated by all the stuff. Maybe feeling out of control of my life and at times helpless to know if I’m doing the right thing as a parent left me feeling like I wanted to have control of something.
While life definitely feels more manageable now that the boys are older, I have new motivations for getting rid of stuff.
My family and friends think that it’s a little odd to be getting rid of things when there’s plenty of room for it, and I’ve never really been able to explain why I feel so good when I get rid of my stuff.
It’s really more than just a pleasure; it’s an actual relief. As if I’d been carrying each item around with me and getting rid of it allows me to move more freely, breathe more deeply. I’ve grown to see each possession like a small pet, a goldfish. Individually, they’re small and don’t take up much space. It doesn’t take much time to feed and care for them, but when you add up all the goldfish you’ve collected over the years, it’s a lot. Each item is a responsibility. A responsibility to make space for it (which sometimes means buying more storage), a responsibility to clean it, provide for it and pack it up and move it when it’s time . And when you have so many fish, none of them are very special.
Each time I decide to get rid of something, I feel like a tiny burden has been lifted. I am free from the responsibility of caring for that item. I see the space that has been made by its departure and I feel lighter.
So now whenever my husband and I talk about whether or not we should get rid of something “big” or “meaningful,” we look at it as another goldfish.
By Anne, on October 3rd, 2011%
Pin ItThis post comes at the request of one of my readers, my friend and fellow blogger, Mara, at Kosher on a Budget. Her blog has great recipes, financial tips and links to fantastic deals.
Mara has been to my house many times and claims to have never seen any clutter. She recently asked how I keep all the paper that comes into the house under control.
The first thing I’ll say is that the paper — mail, magazines and books — have not escaped my move towards minimalism. In our last house we had a library with six shelves of books. Over the years we’ve gotten rid of most of them as we realized that we rarely used the books and dwindled it down to what we truly valued. We cancelled the newspaper subscription and get our news online. I’ve gotten on the list to reduce the amount of junk mail I get. I’ve gone back and forth on magazine subscriptions. But what I think I’ve finally come to realize is that there is nothing I find that valuable in any of the magazines that is worth the drain that they put on me. I start to see my pile of magazines as another to-do and I don’t need another one of those. I recently subscribed to several that I got for free by redeeming points, and even those I don’t enjoy. So, I’m going back to zero magazine subscriptions.
Having said that, here is how I deal with the rest of the papers that come into the house.
Snail mail:
I walk from my mail box to the recycle bin and toss all the junk. That’s most of it. I also toss the EOBs, since they’re available online. The bills get put on my husband’s desk and magazines get put on the appropriate nightstand. Bank statements are delivered via email.
School papers:
Each day, right when the kids get home I go through their school folders. If I find a cute piece of artwork or something I think the grandparents will like I put it a box in the pantry. When it gets full I divide it up and mail it to the grandparents. The rest goes the recycling bin.
Permission slips and report cards get signed immediately and sent back to school. If it’s a note about needing to bring something to school I put it on the clip-board with the grocery list.
The newsletter for our grade-school is sent via email and if there is a date to remember or item to get I mark it down on my calendar or grocery list immediately so I can get rid of the email. Reading and homework calendars are on the fridge.
Other:
In my desk I have a large envelope that I throw all my business receipts into. In our bedroom we also have a spot where we put any tax forms that we collect throughout the year like when we make a donation to Good Will or Savers.
In addition to all these systems, the thing that has made a huge difference in my ability to stay organized and as paper-free as possible are my calendars. Yes, that is plural.
Even though I have access to my calendar on-line through my phone, I like to be able to look at my monthly plans on paper, so I keep a small 5×7 book style calendar in my purse almost all the time. It is thin and has a handy inside pocket where I keep business cards, prescriptions I’m holding onto, my reminder to get my new drivers license, etc. This calendar is for appointments only. Then there are my beloved Google calendars.
I have one for this blog where I can lay out the schedule and look at the entire month. I have my own personal calendar. This functions more like an ongoing to-do list. This week includes things like: return phone call; file quarterly photography tax return; make hair appointment for the boys; schedule chiropractor appointment; and write birthday letters to Segundo & Trevino. This allows me to free up mental space so that I’m not actively trying to remember these things and I can move items from day to day if I don’t get them done.
And I have one last calendar that is for things that are not urgent or important. Just things I want to look up or look into or just remember for sometime in the future. I used to have it all on my regular calendar but I’d get distracted with these little things and would end up doing those instead. With Google I can actually view these 3 calendars separately or all at once. I keep the unimportant stuff hidden so it doesn’t distract me. It’s there when I want a diversion.
I keep my recipes online at www.food.com. If there was a cookbook that I used only a few recipes from, I added the recipe my online cookbook and got rid of the bound version.
There are two other new tools that I am using to organize information. The first is a free software program called Springpad. Instead of having electronic notes everywhere (stickies, word documents, emails saved in file folders), it allows me to have all this information in one place. If I’m on a website I wan to keep a record of, I can just click a button and save the webpage to a folder I’ve named. I have about 20 folders with everything from recipes, health info, how to make my own cleaning products, etc. I can easily search Springpad for anything I’ve saves there. It makes things so much easier.
The other tool is a site called Pinterest. This allows you to make digital bulletin boards full of images, but it links back to the original site where the image came from. I can visually scan my different bulletin boards, and the site is searchable. It has a social aspect to it so I can see what my friends are pinning, and if I see something I like I can pin it to one of my boards too. I’ve found great recipes. I’ve found several great ideas to do with the kids when we are stuck inside on a rainy or super cold day. I also have one pinboard that is just pictures of happy places when I need a sanity break. This has replaced the need to tear pages out of magazines when I see a good idea or recipe.
I often get teased about how organized I am, but life with three little boys can be overwhelming on a good day, so I just try to make things as easy as possible on myself. These are some of the things that help keep me from losing my mind.
By Anne, on September 7th, 2011%
Pin ItI can’t remember a time when I didn’t love photography. It was always my dream to become a photographer, but since it was an expensive hobby to get into I didn’t really start taking pictures until I was in my mid twenties. Once I picked up my first SLR camera it was always in front of my face as I attempted to capture the perfect photo.
To improve my skills both technically and creatively I took a few classes, attended workshops and seminars and read countless books and forums so that I could learn how to get my photos to look just how I wanted them to.
Once I had children my efforts continued. I wanted to capture every sweet candid moment whether it was during a typical day, birthday party, holiday or family gathering. And I didn’t want to just capture it, I wanted it be a great photograph. During this time I also starting taking pictures professionally, so if I wasn’t taking pictures of my own family or someone else’s I was editing images or reading something to improve my skills.
Fast-forward a few years and all of a sudden I wasn’t so in love with photography.
Not only had photography taken over my life with all the time dedicated to doing it professionally and always trying to learn more, but my camera had become a filter though which I was experiencing my life. I was missing out on conversation with friends and family because I had the camera in front of my face while they were all chatting over a cup of coffee. I missed the look on my son’s face as he was opening his birthday presents because I was busy with my camera. Everything was becoming a “photo op” instead of what it really was. Time to spend with my people.
I decided that I would much rather have fuzzy memories of my life than a bunch of pictures of things that I really didn’t fully experience because I was too busy trying to take a picture of it. I wanted to be THERE, present in my life, and not behind a camera. I wanted to experience my life, not just take another picture of it.
I haven’t stop taking pictures all together, but I have stopped taking my camera with me everywhere. Sometimes, I don’t even bring it with me on vacation. (Yes, you heard me right!) Now I sit down and enjoy the party or just watch my kids do whatever they are doing. I still sometimes jump up to get my camera and capture something that interests me but then I put it away and get back to whatever it was that I was doing.
I haven’t stopped taking pictures professionally either, but I have stopped taking every single job that comes my way, and started taking only the ones that really fit with the kind of photos I like to take.
I like it better this way. Now, I’m not trying to take a great picture of everything going on in my life. I only get my camera out to capture something that has moved me to do so.
I’m enjoying life, and photography, a lot more now.
By Anne, on May 6th, 2011%
Pin ItAt one point in my life I was an accumulator of ‘stuff’. Clothes, shoes, purses, toys, kitchenware, garden tools, you name it. I didn’t have as much stuff as some people, but it was more than I needed. Our house was big enough to hold it all, so I never gave much thought to how much stuff I had? Or needed. Or wanted.
Then we started having kids and the stuff really started to pile up. Cribs, high chairs, bouncy seats, walkers and all the things we think a baby needs. The stuff would get pulled out as each baby needed it and then put away until the next baby came along. With three boys, there was also a never-ending cycle of pulling out the right size clothes and saving the rest for when the next boy grew into it. It was exhausting to keep track of it all.
A few years ago, I decided to participate in our neighborhood garage sale. After going through our main storage closet I had pulled out half of our stuff. Instead of seeing a blur of well-organized stuff, I could now see the space in between things and I could actually SEE it. Appreciate it.
I read a book by Peter Walsh once called It’s all too much. He said, “If you have too much, then none of it is special.” I realized how right he was. I went to my coobook shelf where I had about 50 different cookbooks and started going through them. I pulled out the ones I didn’t use and the ones I didn’t care enough about to keep and when I was done I had about 15 cookbooks left. When I looked at them, I could see that what was left were the ones we used all the time, the two that my aunt gave me and the one that was my mother in laws. Suddenly the ones I decided to keep were special. I was hooked. The more I got rid of, the more I was left with only the most used, most special and most beautiful of my things. This was the first step.
I discovered that getting rid of stuff made me feel free. I don’t need 15 vases. But the 4 I have left are special. If you read my post on our trip to Paris you will remember how that trip inspired me to get rid of even more stuff. Just seeing how the French were able to live in such small (by American standards) quarters made me realize that there was so much more that I could do without and what was left would all be useful, beautiful or special.
As I was surfing the web one day I came across some posts that were discussing something called Minimalism. I realized that there was a name for this ‘thing’ I was doing. It’s called Minimalism. Minimalism can sometimes have a reputation for being extreme but that’s not what I am trying to accomplish. A post from the blog Becoming Minimalist talks about something called rational minimalism and this really hit home. My idea of minimalism is probably going to be different than anyone else’s. There are varying degrees of minimalism. Some people attempt to only own 100 things. That version isn’t appealing to me personally but there is some version of minimalism that will work for my family and me. For me, it isn’t about having bare walls and empty closets, it is about having only what is important to us.
Right now I am on a journey to find my own personal style of minimalism. I find that the less stuff I have, the more free I feel. It’s less stuff to take care of, less to clean, to manage, to store, to move, to think about. The less stuff I have, the more money I have. The less stuff I have to take care of, the more time I have to live my life and be present and enjoy whatever it is I am doing in each moment.
If you are interested in reading more about minimalism, check out these blogs.
Becoming Minimalist
Be more with less
Zen Habits
By Anne, on January 25th, 2011%
Pin It“She attended faithfully and well to a few worthy things.”
This line is from a book of meditations called Walking Towards Morning. One of the meditations was the subject of a sermon I heard recently. The line is an epitaph that the author came across once. She initially thought it a strange thing to put on someone’s headstone but eventually determined that she could not imagine “a more proud or satisfying legacy.”
The essay goes on to say:
Every day I stand in danger of being struck by lightning and having the obituary in the local paper say, for all the world to see, “She attended frantically and ineffectually to a great many unimportant, meaningless details.”
How do you want your obituary to read?
“He got all the dishes washed and dried before playing with his children in the evening.”
“She balanced her checkbook with meticulous precision and never missed a day of work–missed a lot of sunsets, missed a lot of love, missed a lot of risk, missed a lot–but her money was in order.”
“She answered all her calls, all her e-mail, all her voice-mail, but along the way she forgot to answer the call to service and compassion, and forgiveness, first and foremost of herself.”
“He gave and forgave sparingly, without radical intention, without passion or conviction.”
“She could not, or would not, hear the calling of her heart.”
How will it read, how does it read, and if you had to name a few worthy things to which you attend well and faithfully, what, I wonder, would they be?
I often think of that line and hope that I am giving well and faithfully to a few worthy things and that I am not attending frantically and ineffectually to a great many unimportant, meaningless details.
The more frantic my schedule feels the more frantic I am in interacting with my family. When my schedule feels manageable, when there’s room for taking care of myself (enough sleep, getting to the gym, enough time to get the errands run), then I am calm and present with my family.
When I say no to joining PTA, to watching another recommended television show, to joining this group or that committee, some people might think I’m lazy or uninvolved or worse. But I know my limits. The limit being the line between being frantic and ineffectual and attending well and faithfully to a few worthy things.
By Anne, on January 20th, 2011%
Pin ItWe were in our new house and we loved everything about it. It was half the size but also half the mortgage, half the gas and electric bill and my husband’s commute was now half of what it had been, down to less than 15 minutes. We loved how with the house being much smaller we felt like we were together more. In the old house I could walk around for 5 minutes calling to the kids to find them. About half the time I would wake up in the morning to find one of the big boys, having come in from their room all the way down the hall, asleep in a sleeping bag on the floor at the foot of our bed. In the new house, all our rooms are clustered at the end of the same hall; they could even see into our room from their beds. Not once at the new house have I found them on our floor in the morning.
2010 was the year of our 10-year anniversary and my husband’s 40th birthday. He mentioned in passing that it would be nice if we could really do something special. I suggested we call our friends who live in Paris to see if we could visit. We also called one of my sisters to see if she could come stay with the boys while we were gone. With some planning, we made our way to Paris for 8 days in May. It was neither the month of our anniversary nor my husband’s birthday but it was good for our friends, my sister and, just as important, the weather would be nice.
Our friends live in a small town just outside the city limits, but it’s only a 10 minute train ride to the center of Paris. I carried my camera around taking pictures all day as we just walked and explored for hours. You might be surprised to know that, even though I love to have a plan, for this trip I wanted to bring only a very short list of sights to see and wanted to spend the rest of the time wandering the city. I wanted to live there for a week and not run around checking things off a list. And that is just what we did. I fell in love with Paris. I loved being in a big city again (we lived in Chicago for 3 years before moving back to K.C. ten years ago). I loved not needing a car. I loved that we were around people all the time. Smashed right up next to them at the café. I loved listening to all the languages. I loved walking to the café each morning for a fresh baguette. I loved watching the moms with their kids on their scooters heading up the street. I wanted to live there.
We stayed with our friends in their 2-bedroom apartment on the 6th floor of a typical French apartment building. Yes, it was small but that was part of what I loved about it. How, with limited space, each thing that you choose to keep or display or store has to be important to you. I could picture our family living there. In a small apartment in Paris just like that. I told my husband that if the opportunity ever comes up with his job I would be open to us moving overseas.
When we got home, all of a sudden a lot of our already downsized stuff seemed unnecessary. I looked through the kitchen at the things that had made the cut from the previous downsizing and saw that much of what I had argued to keep we hadn’t used in the last 6 months, and I couldn’t even see when we might be using them in the future. In the following months, I went through our basement and donated so much stuff that now we have barely more than 4 storage shelves of things we want to keep.
It’s looking very likely that we’ll have the opportunity to move overseas in 2011. (My husband works for the coolest company in the entire Kansas City metropolitan area.)
Knowing that we’ll be limited in what we can take with us, if we do relocate abroad, I look at our possessions again with a fresh set of eyes. What will make the cut this time? I told the boys we would definitely be bringing books, clothes and toys (they honestly don’t have many). I wonder what else we’ll bring? What else makes our house a home?
- The crystal that hangs above the sink and casts rainbows all over the kitchen.
- The photos we bought at the art fair and had framed.
- The paintings we bought in Paris.
- The pictures of family and friends.
- The prints that used to hang in my Nana’s house.
- The glass heart paperweight my mother-in-law gave me when I got engaged.
- The glass jewelry dish that was my mother’s.
These are the things that make our home.
There are the things I would grab in a fire (after my family was safe, of course).
- The box of things from my childhood.
- The box of things from when the boys were babies.
- My husband’s nutcracker collection.
But these are just memories I want to keep. We wouldn’t take them with us overseas and they certainly don’t make our house a home.
All the rest is just stuff. The furniture, the throws and pillows, sheets, dishes, knick-knacks, curtains and baskets. It can all be replaced, if we even need it at all.
By Anne, on January 13th, 2011%
Pin ItWe save money from each paycheck, about $400 a month. We spend all our income on paper on purpose, not just the paychecks, so we also have a plan for that monthly savings. Being the organizer that I am, I have a special relationship with Microsoft Excel. I love spreadsheets. I have an Excel file with different tabs for all sorts of things. This is where I keep our budget, the running list of gift ideas for people, photography orders and expenses, our plan for paying for college, etc. This part used to be a lot more involved, but now it’s just one list of things that we save for every year.
- Christmas $2,500 (for our family and everyone that we buy for and for the Christmas tree)
- Gift giving occasions: $3,000 (birthday gifts, 3 parties, Mother’s/Father’s Day, Valentine’s day, and anniversary)
- Car Tags $400
- School fees & supplies $150
- Summer camp $1,800
- Summer Fun $500 (pool passes for family and regular visits to the ice cream man)
- School Bus $600
- Allowance $780 (future post coming on how we do allowance)
- Gifts for others $350 (other birthday parties, family birthdays)
Total $9,800
Our yearly savings from our paychecks total $4,800 which all goes towards the list above.
The remaining $5,000 comes from my husband’s bonuses. Our goal is that as our regular monthly income increases we will fully fund the above list from paychecks, and the bonus money will be directed elsewhere. So as my husband gets raises, we direct the raise to go towards savings, unless we need to adjust things like gas for the car or one of the monthly bills goes up for some reason.
During each year we’re saving each month for the next year. So by the end of 2010 we will have everything funded for 2011, with the $9,800 we need for those expenses.
The rest of my husband’s bonus, his freelance income and my photography income all go to things like giving to our church, family vacations, home repairs and gym membership.
The other big thing we focused on with our financial planner was figuring out how much we need to be saving for retirement. I don’t even remember off the top of my head how much we need to be saving to reach the goal. It’s a lot. Like $2,000 a month or more. Our plan right now is that once all the boys are done with preschool or after-school care we’ll shift the preschool money into college funding accounts. And as the raises and bonuses increase (fingers crossed), we’ll start increasing 401(k) funding and funding our Roth IRAs again. Sometimes I worry about retirement and other times I don’t. I feel like we have made a lot of really good decisions, and it will all work out if we keep paying attention to what we are doing and how we are spending. I try to enjoy today and not worry all the time about tomorrow.
We could do a lot of things to cut our budget down but we have made the choice not to. We could cut childcare or groceries, but those things add a quality of life that we are not willing to give up.
Being the planner that I am, mvelopes.com and the big picture work we did with our financial planner eased a lot of stress in our lives. We’ve made changes so that we can do things to enjoy our life now and we’re keeping an eye on the future as well.
By Anne, on January 11th, 2011%
Pin ItIn the past, our budget was just a backwards look at what had already been spent. It seemed like there was never enough money. We didn’t live extravagantly by any means but I was always looking at the numbers. Anxiously calculating what was expected to come in and counting what was going out. Making lists of what we might need money for down the line (new tires, replacing a major appliance). Wondering if we would have enough? We always did but it wasn’t a fun way to live. I would often look at the bank balance and think “well, yes, there’s $2,000 there, but is it all accounted for already? Or is there a little money there that we could do something fun with or go out to eat with?” I’d read all of Dave Ramsey’s books and listened to some of his radio shows online and loved his financial advice. One of the things he suggests is to spend your paycheck on paper on purpose before you even get it. In our first meeting with our financial planner he told us about an online virtual envelope system for managing your household budget called mvelopes.com. It differs from Quicken or Mint.com in that those are a backwards look at what you’ve spent. Mvelopes.com offers the Dave Ramsey style of budgeting, allowing you to plan ahead of time how you are going to spend. This one simple thing — virtual envelopes — single-handedly removed almost all the stress from my life. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, given the fact that I have 3 little boys all less than 2 years apart, but you get what I’m saying. Here’s how it works. It talks to your bank directly. Instead of going to your bank’s website to check your full balance, you go to mvelopes and log in. It synchs with your bank and pulls up any new transactions for you. You drag the transaction over to the envelope that you have already set up and funded with paycheck money and it adds or subtracts the transaction from the envelopes available funds showing you the new total for that envelope. When you get a paycheck deposited and it shows up in your new transactions, you tell mvelopes how you want it divided up into each envelope. For example, here’s how two monthly paychecks might be spent.
Paycheck #1
- Mortgage $1100
- Groceries $700
- Savings $100
- Internet/Phone $70
- Childcare $650
Paycheck #2
- Groceries $700
- Gas Utility $65
- Date Night $250 (one date for my husband and me and one boy date)
- Family Dining out $80
- Fuel (for 2 cars) $325
- Cushion/Misc. $90 (because something always comes up)
- Life/LT dis. Insurance $325
- Oil changes $20
- Savings $300
- Cell phone (1 phone) $55
- Car/Personal Property ins. $70
- Water/Sewer/Trash $100
- Electric $155
- Hair cuts (for whole family) $85
You would have envelopes set up on the mvelopes.com website that correspond to the above items. Paycheck #1 comes in and it gets divided up according to the above plan as does paycheck #2. Before paying a bill, my husband checks to make sure there’s money in the envelope and then pays it. When the transaction comes through mvelopes, I drag it into the envelope and it zeros out. This helps with the once-a-month bills but makes a huge difference with things like gas for the car and groceries. As the gas and grocery transactions come through, it deducts the amount and shows me how much money I have left for groceries until the next paycheck. You can set it up so that you can just click a button and it automatically knows how to fund each paycheck or you can do manually funding.
Honestly, this simple system really did change my life. No longer did I look at a $2,000 bank balance and wonder. I would look at mvelopes.com and see that yes, all the envelopes totaled up to $2,000 but I could see how it breaks down. I can see that we have $40 left in the “family dining out” envelope and I don’t feel like cooking dinner tonight, so let’s go get some Chinese food!
So when someone says to me casually “you should really add another date night” or “you should sign up for a yoga class” I automatically think to myself, well, what mvelope/envelope or budget line item would I get that money from?
Come back on Thursday when I will post part 2 of Minding the Money which talks about how we budget and save for everything else. Christmas, Birthdays, Summer Camp and all the other things that we don’t save for specifically with our monthly income.
By Anne, on January 7th, 2011%
Pin ItIn some ways our decision to sell the house and downsize by half seemed spontaneous but in other ways it had been a long time coming. Like years and years. It felt good. It felt great. We were excited. I’ll spare you the painful details of getting the house ready to sell, having it on the market for 3 months before it sold (which felt like an eternity) and the search for the new house. We had about 2 months between getting a contract on the “old” house and moving into the “new” house so plenty of time to prepare for the move. The old house was 3 levels and over 4000 sq. feet. 4 bedrooms plus a main level office a finished basement with a playroom and another “bedroom” that was set up as my photography studio all the time plus all the stuff in the unfinished storage. The new house was about 2300 sq feet. Still 4 bedrooms but all of them smaller. The unfinished storage was probably half of what it was at the old house and everything was on a smaller scale. Closets, bathrooms, kitchen, everything.
Truth be told over the last few years I had discovered my affinity for organizing and getting rid of stuff. I’m not sure how it happened but it had gotten to the point that if I ever got stressed out I would go to one of the storage closets or basement storage and organize. Move things around, consolidate, get rid of things. It felt so good when I was done. It was kind of addicting. I would actually go help my friends do it. For fun. I know kind of weird.
Now we never really used up all the space in the old house. There was nothing under the bathroom sinks in any of the 6 bathrooms (I know crazy right?), none of the closets were bursting, if any of the kids had more than 10 or 12 shirts I would put the extras in a bag to donate, before all birthdays and holidays the kids would have to pick out toys to donate. But despite all this we still had to get rid of stuff if we were going to fit in the new house so I got to work. Using the general rule that if I hadn’t used it or even looked at it (except for special save stuff) in the last year then I could probably live without it we were able to get rid of enough stuff. The move went well. We fit it all into 2 large PODS and moved in. Everything seemed to fit pretty well. Except the kitchen. Our kitchen at the old house was pretty big but the new house had a decent size pantry and storage under the big island so I thought we would be ok. But we weren’t. In the end we had a bunch of stuff on the kitchen table that we went through to decide what to keep. How many sets of mixing bowls does one person really need? Serving platters? Casserole dishes? Dessert plates? You get the idea. And we made it all fit. The basement took a little figuring out but we managed to make it all fit in an organized way without having to get rid of anything more.
We were in. It was done. We loved it.
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Last March I posted Getting Bored and made some commitments to try to let myself get “good and bored.”
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