Money Madness

O.K. does anyone have this book so I can borrow it because I'm feeling like a financial idiot right now.




Here is where all those CEO's and financial advisors pocketing our hard-earned money should spend a vacation. Stocks for the Stock Crash... How appropriate.

I hate money. I know – HATE is a strong word. I dislike money to the N-th degree and financial advisors, well; they are right up there too. Apparently we are the only people on the planet Earth that are not liquidating our stock right now. Don’t know why? But we are riding the market and I’m more than depressed and worried about it.

We made the idiotic mistake of hanging onto our stock during the Dot-Com bust on the early 2000’s. My husband’s company stock fell from 121 to 25 and never recovered. And we trusted the blasted experts and rode it out then too. Have any of you lost $100,000? It stinks.

Now we are watching our splendidly diversified 401K portfolio disappear before our eyes. And the experts say to stay put. I think they are secretly hoping there are enough saps like me out there stupid enough to listen to them while they make off like bandits.

That’s o.k. I never planned on retiring anyway. I want to work forever.

Now what’s going on in the market is painful to watch but I think I’d be a lot saner about it if I didn’t dislike my own inability to control money. I’m trying, I’m really trying, but I think I may be cursed when it comes to dealing with finances.

Last month gave me such a glimmer of Hope that I can finally live within my means. I was totally hanging onto that idea of making focusing on Needs and Simplistic Living the Norm around our little forest.

This month we’ve had a few surprises already. There are things that definitely need to be fixed like the blown-out back window on Abner’s portable pool, the leaky roof, the down to one burner stove-top. But any one of those things would tip us into the red if we decide to take care of them right now.

So this month I’m still shooting for spending less than we make – Still! I’m hoping now to focus on saving money. The repairs will have to wait until we can pay cash for them. Meanwhile I’m sure the neighbors (forgive us please) will just love the sight of black plastic on our roof and duct taped plastic on our truck. Can I cross my fingers and hope nothing else breaks down in the meantime? Because if I really am cursed then the repairs will pile up faster than the savings.

Here’s the real kicker. I’ve no reason to complain. My husband makes good money, and we have no auto payments. However I think we spend the equivalent to auto payments supplying fuel for our gas-sucking drivable people movers. But honestly no matter how we may be feeling the financial pinch I realize we are a lot better off than millions of others.

Honestly my hats off to single parents, and people on low incomes wages. I don’t know how you do it? And if you live within your means you are the real hero’s. I think you should replace all those silly financial advisors on wall street because you wouldn’t be silly enough to loan out your dearly saved money to people you know can’t pay it back.

Trenadoll’s organizing class on finances was a good refresher for me. Now I’ve actually just got to put two or three minutes together where I can sit down, brain-storm and follow through with the assignments. I know I could have been doing that instead of blogging but I needed to vent.
There I’m all better… Thanks for listening to my rant.

So has any of the rest of you had to change money habits of the last few months and if so what are some of the changes you’ve made? I’m washing Ziploc bags so that I can re-use them in the kiddo’s lunches and I'm picking up pennies I see on the ground. How cool is that.