Single By Choice

One of the things that I think goes unaddressed is how failing to fulfill people’s social wishes for you and who you are affects your relationships with others.

Let me enlighten you:

If your friend is avoiding your buddy that you are trying to fix them up with, it may not be because they are secretly in love with them. It may be because your buddy doesn’t have a job and was fired for stealing from his previous job.

It may be that he gets on her nerves.

It may be that he’s has money spending patterns that are not in line with her values and future goals for herself.

It may be that he doesn’t take care of himself in the least, and she isn’t interested in ‘fixing’ him if he is older than say, 25. Because its damn well past time to grow up and use deodorant.

It may be that she is focused on herself in a positive (non-narcissistic) way and she does not have time right now- she is taking classes, focusing on self-betterment, or realigning her own values.

It may be that you need to re-evaluate the friends you think she should be with.

Why are you trying to fix up a friend with accomplishments and goals with someone who has done a stretch in prison? How are you being a good friend to the accomplished person in that situation? Why are you trying to fix up someone who has their act together with someone who in on track to declare bankruptcy at 35? How are you being a friend to the person who has their act together? Do you think that having someone else is so paramount as to void common sense at all costs?

Then you go around telling everyone that she’s probably gay. She isn’t gay. She just is strong enough to know that your friends aren’t going anywhere. They are still waiting tables at 45 because they don’t want to have to pass a drug test. She had a real job at 21. She has been working since she was a teenager. She has 3 degrees. She watches productions of Shakespeare for fun. She isn’t some uptight character from television that can only find love by getting some man to loosen her up. No. She has plenty of fun. ON HER OWN and paid for BY HERSELF and she isn’t about the pay for HIS.

She can’t date at work because it would ruin her level of respect and how people may perceive her. The one who supposedly “slept her way to the top” or “dated her way to the top” or “married up” is always seen with a side-eye. She realizes she has to be appreciated for her work, and that her partner will be a part of how she is perceived in the work environment– he will come to parties and events and in a sometimes very very very classist world, what he does WILL matter in terms of whether she moves ahead and ends up with a decent retirement.

But you aren’t interested in that. You want her to be something you have predicted because it will make you feel good. It will give you something. Something you should be able to give to yourself instead of seeking it out of the social outcomes of a third party.

But the way people perceive you and your life choices and who you choose to be with can affect things without your knowing. I’ve heard comments and conversations about things that people do not realize affected their ability to be taken seriously in the work environment. I’ve been thinking about careers and my own retirement since I was a kid and was aware of people retiring.

I’ll be honest with you: All I have ever wanted to do is retire. I am exceptionally good at filling my own time. I was the firstborn of the youngest kid my grandparents had. I was the baby. The only kid around during my first 3 years of childhood. My mother didn’t trouble herself much with me. When my brother came along, it was a different story. She had to keep him at her side all the time because he was a boy.

As a result, I had to hang out with kids much older than myself. There are tons of photos of me hanging out with teenage cousins. I had a radio when I was very young and listened to pop music all the time. I had leftover makeup samples from Avon when I was 3. I had a sense of independence that was sometimes encouraged and sometimes loathed by my mother: I was supposed to be adult enough to do x and y but not adult enough to think for myself.

I did not relate well to children my own age when I did go to school. I read early, swam early, and just was… early. At the same time, my mother was trying to hold me back into not just childhood, but a childhood that wasn’t at all normal for the 1980’s. She wanted me to want to stay home. She wanted me to not want the cool things. My wanting things like a pair of Nikes or a Levi’s jacket was a fundamental betrayal of something, somehow.

It was hard to relate to other kids. They didn’t understand. It was very hard. And now, I find it is hard to relate to other adults. My parents were giving me dolls at 25 and I had to beg them, absolutely beg them, to stop. But I was doing adult farm work at 13. And I had makeup at 3. And I had a radio of my own by age 5.

At 16, I went on vacation with relatives who were all in their 40’s-60’s. Alone. The only teenager.

To say that I lived in a space of strange contradictions is an understatement.

Sometimes it is still hard for me around people. It is hard to relate to people who didn’t come from my unique set of 80’s era behaviors in the first place. When you add in my own unique blend of inner assessment-making tools of other people, well, it tends to hamper things.

I went on a short vacation recently. A short, cost-effective vacation.

I realized that what that kid me wanted more than anything else was her own space. Her own time. To not worry about relating to anyone. To just be.

I have my own house. I have my own pets. I can do what I see fit now. And that is enough. That, and a sense of financial stability, is all I have ever wanted.

I realize I’m disappointing people by not being the construct they have thrown on me. Whether that is reflective of the need of their friend who just needs a woman to understand his pot addiction, or reflective of their desire for me to really just secretly be in need of the right church, or reflective of their desire for me to be secretly gay. I’m sorry that none of those are true, because I know that there are people out there that would find those things emotionally fulfilling to view on a social media feed. What is the self these days, except the social media performance of the self? What was the self yesterday, except the public performance of the self?

And what do you do with someone who refuses to be a package neatly tied up in a bow by either? A person who refuses to exist in a character’s story arc, instead determining to favor life itself? The messiness and the un-story-ness of it, the reality of work and its class expectations and choosing to navigate a world that encourages so wholeheartedly for women, especially single and childless women, to make stupid decisions about career and money to participate in a character’s story arc?

I’m just living my life. Alone, and extremely grateful, to be where I am at– with no bankruptcies, and with a small, easily-paid-off house. To not have someone else killing my finances or arguing over the bullshit of life.

I don’t want to have to listen to a partner telling me how I should be handling the care of my pets. Or know that he is bitching to his friends about it.

I don’t want to have to listen to his Aunt Becky talk about my neighborhood. Fuck. That. My house will be paid off before I retire. When Aunt Becky is crying of her husband’s new affair and taking out her third mortgage.

I don’t want a man to bitch because I don’t want to blow a gazillion dollars on drinking during our vacation. Some drinks? Fine. All the drinks? NO.

I don’t want a partner’s stuck up relatives. I don’t want his jealous broke relatives. I don’t want mine. Why would I want yours?

I don’t tend to feel lonely. At least not that emotional “need to have someone around” type of lonely. If I do, all I need to do is be in a store and know that other people exist. That is enough for me. I don’t need real connection in the way that other people do. I grew up having to learn to be okay without it.

But I’m also not some broken little person needing a man to rescue my poor wounded heart either. I don’t need to be fixed.

What I need is to retire one day. That is what I NEED.

The Feminine Price Tag

I can’t seem to get off my mind lately how much the things tagged as evidence of femininity are evidence of financial well-being in our society. It is bothering me every minute of the day. I would love to stop thinking about it, but every second it is there again.

My grandmothers both had 7 adult children. Evidence of lots of sex. But I can tell you that as poor rural women in the south, they didn’t wear a lot of cosmetics (one didn’t ever wear any at all, or any perfume due to her religious husband.) They didn’t have pretty, feminine hands. The years of summers without shoes meant that they didn’t have pretty feet. They never had a manicure or a pedicure. They worked in the farms they were raised on and then lived on as married women. The years of exposure to elements and work, helping to butcher hogs and cows and deer, the hot work of canning food, and not having money for any luxuries… it doesn’t invoke a life of glamour. They didn’t “exercise” and my paternal grandmother was always taller and plumper than her husband. In terms of home decor, they made do with whatever they could afford, find, make. My maternal grandparents were exceptionally conservative. My mother was taught that you aren’t “supposed to” shave above your knee. I’m not sure what the mysterious consequence was supposed to be, but that is what she said to me as well when I started shaving sometime around the late 1980’s.

(Note: I didn’t believe her. )

Women are hit with messages so regularly about the things they must hit to be considered acceptable. But a lot of the messages we hear now are quite new. My grandmothers weren’t going to get pedicures or get their lip waxed or eyebrows professionally threaded. These were the women who made do at home. They cut their kids hair and rolled it and set it themselves. A $7 bottle of nicer drugstore body lotion would have been as much a luxury to them as a an expensive handbag is to me. I can buy it, but Lord knows I shouldn’t.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a cheerleader. I really really did. But the uniforms were particularly expensive at my school and my mother balked at that. She was shocked and angry because when she was in school, the mothers in the community got together to make the cheerleading uniforms. And her mind just couldn’t understand why they would be so expensive. Or why we couldn’t, for example, wear cheap, white canvas shoes instead of the actual athletic shoes that were in the school colors.

There were some local branches of two different southeastern chains of department stores, J.B. White’s being one of them, that had “modeling classes” in our area. Two of my friends participated. It was pretty silly- they had a group of kids that took lessons on walking and turning and did a fashion show a couple times a year. I asked to go as well, but the 45 min drive was just too much and my mother refused for several reasons, one being the cost of the gas to drive. The other, she “needed to be at home” when “dad got home”… not that my father even really cared at all and would have possibly been happier with her out of the house. She was raised in such an ultra-conservative manner that she needed to believe she needed to be present.

A couple of my friends also tried doing pageants. I wanted to do that too. My mother wasn’t wild about that idea and all the work and driving it would represent. It represented work for HER, so I wasn’t allowed to participate. I wasn’t allowed to participate in a number of things because my mother thought it was “too much”– selling girl scout cookies, school fund raisers that would win prizes, etc.

I went to school with a lot of girls my age who didn’t even have what I had. My cousin got a pink room only by default because her parents moved into a house that was already furnished with a room with a pink bedspread and curtains. They weren’t about to pay to get new stuff. Her previous room had been an amalgamation of whatever they could find.

For the 80’s and early 90’s, was woman-ing wrong, and I wanted badly to do a different group of things, but I had no options. I had to go with what I could do and make the best of it.

And I suppose I still am.

The pedicures, the manicures, the hair salons, the waxing, the perfect homes… how far is the needle going to go? Am I woman-ing wrong for doing my own yardwork because I can’t afford to hire a yard service? Am I woman-ing wrong by being financially literate? Am I woman-ing wrong by doing my own hair, my own mani-pedi’s? Am I woman-ing wrong by making practical choices instead of impractical ones? Am I woman-ing wrong if I choose to use Ivory bar soap instead of something like Calypso Lime Explosion Body Gel Mousse– the kind of product that didn’t even exist in most stores in the US until the 90’s? My great-grandmother made her own lye soap. Was she woman-ing wrong?

The best analogy I can use is this: I used to live in a world where women were wore pantyhose- you can easily fake smooth legs in them. The fashion expectation in recent years, Kate Middleton notwithstanding, has turned into the expectation that your legs are always perfect enough to be shown without pantyhose. The expectation is that your legs are always smooth, hair-free and ready to be presented to the public without the slightest covering. It becomes almost implicit that you are expected to be able to afford regular waxing, or at the very least, the type of razors that don’t come 12-to-a-pack for $1.50.

The women you know, the women you see every day, the ones you think of as being “unfeminine” may not be that way by choice. They may not have the resources to have developed into the kind of woman that is seen as “correct” in the current climate. They may not have the resources now to maintain what is demanded as “proof” of playing the game the “right” way. They may have been raised in a very different socioeconomic circumstance. They may live in a circumstance that requires them to have a different approach to womanhood.

Reading things into Things

I read an article recently (Good Housekeeping, no less) citing that Kate Middleton’s re-wearing of a certain hat was a “nod” to Meghan Markle.

And I couldn’t help but think–Is it really? Or is it just a lady who likes a hat wearing a hat again?

It’s a lot of meaning to read into wearing a hat more than once.

This was after extra super tons of meaning was read into several other remarkably ordinary celebrity incidents in the same week. The near-nothing made into something newsworthy via a handful of speculative twitter comments and someone in the “entertainment” area of media picking up the story.

Why is all this so common these days?

If Doris Day wore the same hat twice in 1963, no one would have taken the time to give it a second thought.

I am not in any way a celebrity. In fact, in many circles I’m quite unpopular. However, I have had similar things happen to me. Small things trumped up with meaning that doesn’t exist. Blanks filled in without my awareness or knowledge and verbalized as truth based on the barest blush of “evidence.”

I have always wondered- why don’t people just ask? If you know someone well enough for them to take up that much space in your head, why don’t you just ask them? Is asking so hard, or is it just less fun? Is the extending of possible dramatic tension necessary?

Is the fact that the truth is often not salacious the very thing that keeps people from asking the question? Are they avoiding the let-down of something like finding out that you are in the grocery store to buy groceries instead of your purchase of grapes meaning that you are in support of a union of winegrowers that no one has heard of?

You could say a lot about all of this: Markle or our obsession with celebrity or people’s lack better things to do with their time and a general lack of communication skills, modern erosion of manners, and every little thing being seen as action instead of the downright inaction that it may be.

What if Kate Middleton wore the hat because she selected another hat and the kids got chocolate on it and this was the backup? But she felt no obligation to share this because, it really is no one’s business if her kid got chocolate on a hat?

What if she just opened her closet, and said, “hmm. Yeah. This matches.”?

You may be wandering all over downtown looking to hook up. But you might be bored and wishing your town had an amusement park and wondering why it doesn’t because really, roller coasters are totally more your thing. You may be wishing more activities were open and freely available to all and that gyms weren’t such an inconvenient luxury because none of them are close enough to where you live to be economical and you can’t picture yourself using the work gym because no one wants to see their boss in lycra.

You may have bad taste in furniture and a lame car because you are without good taste, but it COULD be that you simply don’t have the funds for more plush surroundings that would actually suit your taste.

I never buy thick comforters or duvets. I am style-aware to know that is the “correct” choice of the day. But I don’t care. I always buy a quilt set that I can pop in the regular washing machine. I have pets. The cleaning bill would quickly become outrageous and I would be waiting on the item to be returned from the laundromat more often than not. My point: sometimes pure practicality can be a reason and that is okay. It shouldn’t be a point of “meaning”. I have bought things because they were on sale and appeared to be durable rather than being a color I particularly preferred. Previous generations would have applauded these choices. My bank account certainly did.

But who is to say, upon observing a person, what the “meaning” of their action might be? And why do people tend to jump to the most opaque conclusion rather than the other myriad of possibilities?

And quite frankly, if you jump that easily, who is to say you can’t be just as easily manipulated by these small occurrences?

In discussing celebrity blips that likely mean next to nothing, you can’t ignore the fact that in each incidence, there was a price tag on all the hubbub—the person got clicks. Notice. Attention. When attention is a commodity, getting attention is the same as selling goodwill, albums, and movies. So that small nothing could be easily a piece of the game sent out there for the hounds to sniff at before being told it was nothing.

That nothing is a wooden duck decoy, and it is being used to bait and train you.

The other issue that I have with all of this is a bit more pointed toward the future. When people have nothing better to do, and older people (as freaking adults) normalize reading things into every little thing – especially when there is a community of them that is influential over young minds—you start creating a younger generation that fails to demand evidence in relationships, or thinks that everything boils down to these miniactions instead of actual action. You teach people to rely on these minor whatevers instead of taking the chance to pose the questions, ask for truth, discuss where the relationship is heading and tackle the hard part of building a relationship like an adult. Believing someone is x, y, or z because they wore a yellow scarf on Tuesday is much, much easier than developing the willingness to ask the hard questions directly from the person involved. It is easier to see the world in the language of what you **hope so badly** are symbolic gestures rather than asking a question and getting an honest, yet, ultimately, less psychologically juicy answer.

The high cost of talking

I tend to be close-lipped about money around my family and friends. Even though I am doing well. It is a fools’ game to discuss such matters with any sense of openness. The first thing anyone does is try to drag you into a situation where you spend money. Money you don’t have. If you have put a down payment on a car, the logic goes, you must be able to also buy a plane ticket to visit me in Maine.

Now I ask you– why would that be true? Isn’t believing such ideas the reason why some people are in debt while others are not?

I’m very disciplined with spending. I allow myself small purchases. I think twice about every thing I buy. I want to get the most out of the things I purchase as well.

I have family members who have spent themselves into oblivion, or who routinely make bad spending choices.

If my lifestyle doesn’t change, I could retire in my 50’s, maybe do something else with my life. That isn’t something that happens magically. It is something that happens with commitment and discipline.

My financial discipline is reinforced around my family and old friends, but not in the way you might expect. For instance, I drive an old car that has been through an accident and repainted. It isn’t new. It isn’t fancy. The radio doesn’t work well and isn’t updated. It won’t play from my phone.

I don’t wear fancy clothes around them. I wear very basic things so they can’t tell if I spent any money on them or not. I wear very low cost jewelry around them. I keep my home very simple. I don’t live in a fancy neighborhood or in a large house. My house is a collection of low-cost furniture and things I got for free or at a large discount. When I have to buy something like a refrigerator or new stove, I buy very basic things at the lowest price I can find.

If there are fewer fancy buttons and electronic things on your appliances, there are fewer things to break. If you choose something simple, you are lowering your possible future replacement cost. But also, you aren’t showing off your money to people who might want to get something out of you. I would rather have money in the bank than a fancy refrigerator and some cousin asking for a loan. I don’t care about having a nice car, as long as I have money in the bank and no one is trying to get me to spend money on them or what they think I should be doing.

When it comes to money and family and friends, I keep my mouth closed. I’m doing okay. But there is no reason for me to discuss it openly.

They frown at my money saving tactics. They are ungrateful. And then, they ask for money, or put out some expectation that you will spend money to do something just because they think you should. They complain about people on welfare while they themselves are on welfare.

I get to choose my life. But in choosing, I have the responsibility of guarding my choice from others who I know to be toxic. I deserve that kind of space to live.

And so do all of you.

Future Plans

I have a number of goals.

1- vacation this year

2- save $1000 at least for cat care (vet bills, and so forth)

3- money for a used car to replace my current car when it finally dies

4-set up a house repair account

5- pay off student loan

6- set aside 6 mo emergency fund (currently I have about 2 in various pockets, but I would like to have a dedicated 6 mo emergency fund)

I used to have a really hard time finding ways to visualize meeting goals.  That is sometimes pretty tricky for me.  What I found with my vacation goal is an innovation, in my opinion. I reserved a hotel room about 6 months ago or longer.  I reserved it in one city, although I may not actually be going there.  This has kept me fired up.  I have other options that may prove to be more cost-effective and reasonable for this year that will provide the same sense of enjoyment.  All are in driving distance.  However, KNOWING every day that I have a hotel reservation coming up has given me a concrete goal that keeps me going toward all the goals.

 

 

 

Today’s Find

I circulate around to various stores about this time of year to sniff out deals that might keep until next holiday season or something that might be suitable for the next birthday.

Today I felt a pull toward Big Lots.   While I didn’t find anything that fit the usual description of a post-holiday find, the clearance table held a bunch of regular groceries.  Boxes of cereal for 70 cents and similar deals on crackers and cookies.   I don’t eat cereal for breakfast, but I could.  It’s more likely that I will eat it as a weekend afternoon snack or use instead of potato chips in my lunch box.   Six grocery bags for just shy of $20.

Some of it does expire in Feb 2019, which is why it was marked down.  However, crackers and the like tend to keep for a remarkably long time after the sell-by date.

For dinner, I had stovetop stuffing (generic, 45 cents a box on sale at Lidl and also buy one get one free after Xmas… so more like … 23 cents a box) and green beans and carrots (canned, about 40 cents each can.   For dessert, two generic fudge stripe cookies.  I’ll get at least 2 meals out of this, and still have stuffing leftover.

One of my goals (although not immediate) is to have “good deal cash” set aside for when these kinds of opportunities come up. I could have bought a great deal more, but I didn’t want to overspend just because I found a deal.  That’s a delicate balance.  If I had money specifically for such things, I’d feel free to indulge in my inner deal lover, therefore saving even more in the long term.

Obsessed with good deals?  Yep.  You bet I am!!

Let me be clear:  I don’t buy things I know I will never use.  I don’t buy things I won’t eventually eat.  I don’t buy things that I know I will never wear.

Like the old commercial said, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep.”

 

 

 

The Unsexiness of Money Saving

I grew up around a lot of boys and men who liked women who came from wealthy backgrounds.  Public school boys were coached to go after private school girls, for the most part.  The boys always dated up, as much as possible.

Now many of them are on wife 2 or 3 and some married the very girls they turned their noses up toward when we were in school together.  It’s an interesting outcome.

I’ve always been amazed at the financial expectations our society has of women. To be initially attractive, you have to spend money like a damn idiot and have a lot of stuff and services.  Then you get browbeaten later on for 1- not taking care of yourself or 2- spending too much money on taking care of yourself or 3- (and most common) both things, simultaneously.

Guys- Trust me– if we could grow lingerie trees in the backyard, and designer bag trees in order to keep your interest with no actual investment, we would.

I, for one… am more of a saver than a spender. It is the outcome of my childhood. It probably isn’t sexy when a man finds out that I use DIY laundry detergent from an online recipe.  It probably isn’t sexy when they find out that I bought every appliance I have purchased from the “scratch and dent” area of the store.  And that I rejoiced when I was accidentally given free delivery for no reason once.    And that my washing machine was bought used.  Or that I don’t use name brand dish detergent.  Or that I eat PB & J nearly every day for lunch (I assembly line 4 sandwiches on Sunday night and stash them in the fridge to make it easy for myself).

I am simply thinking of different goals.

It probably throws off the sexy.

I was thinking of going to Florida for vacation this year, but have recently revised my plan and may go to Myrtle Beach instead.  Found a better deal. I dig Florida, but I have to keep the bigger goals of my life in mind.

I found an even cheaper deal in Tennessee, which I also enjoy, but that may be the plan for the year after.  I feel the sea and sand calling my name.

People in my own age group either 1- don’t travel ever because they don’t have the money or 2- look down on me for not having been to London or Paris yet.  The set I tend to run into is more into London than Paris.

Are you kidding?  for the years of 1996-2004 I didn’t even go on a vacation that didn’t involve couch surfing somewhere with friends in the state of Georgia.  From 2006-2012, every vacation was a “working vacation” because I was also dancing and furthering my hobby/side career.  Then I didn’t do anything except day trips for a while.  A few years ago I went to one weekend in Charleston.  Just overnight. Just a day away.  $35 motel room at the Radisson in the “industrial” area of town, and the next morning I drove in and did a few small attractions before driving home.

This past year, I went to Chicago.  I didn’t pay for the plane fare.  I tacked a vacation on to a work trip. I bought a multi-day train pass and didn’t use any taxis. The biggest expenses on my end were food – which I kept rather small by buying a box of granola bars to do for breakfast and hitting sandwich shops mostly for lunch and dinner- and fees to get into attractions. I visited a couple of museums and some parks and a funhouse at Navy Pier.  Mostly I enjoyed the sights and walked around.

It was still, to me, very expensive.  I am not regretting going, not by any stretch of the imagination.  But this year, and maybe next year, I will need to stay closer to home to feel like I’m meeting my goals.  Travel requires a lot of money.

And I can’t help but think about things I’m going to have to do.  Replace the car eventually.  Replace the roof on the house.  Replace the shed out back. If I don’t save now, where will I be when these expenses come up?

Again, It all makes me a very unsexy woman.  Not being able to drop it all and run off into the night.

In addition to my ongoing notions of saving, this year I’m doing a “shop only once” goal for myself with groceries. I shop only on alternate weeks – payday.   If I run out of something, no extra trips.   Make do or eat something else.  It requires a lot of commitment considering I am in a town built around shopping as a hobby.   But at the same time, I feel the stress also leaving me of having to drive here and there.   I also shop at 3 different grocery stores that are within a mile of one another.  One is a Walmart, where I go for cat food and litter, as well as discount bakery goods- they mark them down and put them in the back if they overbake.  The others are Aldi and Lidl, which I hit for most everything else.

I use my reclaimed weekend time to meal prep.  I make it easy for myself- things that are quick and fix easily.  I’m not in charge of a gourmet restaurant.  I just need to eat. I don’t have to eat the best of everything every day.   I just have to have satisfying food.  No one is going to shoot me for using instant potatoes.   That guy doesn’t exist (although, the way some people act about having the best, most perfect food these days… you might think he does.) I make enough for at least a few days.

Food is the second hobby in my town.  And the ratio of restaurants to people is amazing.  And quite a few of the restaurants are quite good, not very expensive.  And, to add to that, the area is a melting pot.  You name the food, I’ll tell you where to eat it. Which makes it tempting to just go out and get food.  That has been a hard one for me.  It is easy to load up on delicious Chinese and Mexican from my favorite few places and call it a day.  But… I have to stay committed to the goal.

My other goal is to only buy clothes that won’t go out of style soon, and that will last.  I tend to do this by going to online thrift stores and searching exclusively for brands that I think will be durable, and look for items that won’t go out of style.  Like a v neck sweater in a basic color that will be cozy but also can layer with another shirt if it gets super cold.   And I also hit stores that are less popular at the moment- Sears and JCPenney- to visit their clearance racks welllllll after the end of the season.  Some people are satisfied at 50% off.  I like a good solid 75%.  This past October, I went to JCPenney and loaded up on short sleeve casual shirts for $3 and $4- mostly for regular wear, but some which may be okay for work as well.

Some people shop the day after Christmas, I wait until… now.  Several weeks into January to shop for next year’s “easy” gifts– things like marked down candles.  I’ll group them with other odds and ends that I’ll collect and make it a Christmas gift for someone next year.  Stuff like this is a good “sister in law” type gift. Or a work gift-exchange gift.  I also have no compulsions at all about regifting. I keep a notebook so I don’t gift the wrong thing to the wrong person next year.   You can give a gift you got from your sister in law to someone at work, for example, if it is generic enough.

Right now, I have enough generic gifts to last through about 3-5 holiday seasons, because I hit a bunch of places last year.   Last year was pretty golden in that regard.  I was really thrilled.

I also know when the major drugstore chains in my area clearance their shampoos, lotions, and soaps that they won’t carry anymore. I hit that up too.  Usually yearly.  But I have enough to last about 2 years at this point.  So next time around, I might not jump into that.  I’ll have to assess later.

I have a budget app.

I don’t have cable.  I watch Netflix and hook my laptop up to my tv.

My car is a 2003.  And gets good gas mileage. Since I don’t have enough yard space to change the oil myself without attracting male attention (20 men telling me I’m doing it ‘wrong’) I do get the oil changed, but I use a pep boys coupon every time and I have a loyalty card.

I don’t go into something other than clothing with preconceptions of color preference.  For instance, I use a wheeled bag for hauling snacks in and out of work for certain meetings.  I bought it on Amazon.  The color I initially looked at was $40.00.  But, when I clicked on the red one, it happened to be $20.00.  So, I got the red one.  Amazon does this a lot.  A seller will have one pattern or color that is less expensive.  Click around until you find it.  Sometimes this happens in the real world as well.  It pays to not be too picky.  There is a place and time when the right color makes or breaks something, but most of the time, it is pretty irrelevant.

Every 2-3 years, I shop for car insurance.

I review my employer’s insurance offerings every year for the best bang for my buck.  I’m relatively healthy, but as we all know, that can change.  We all know someone in their 30’s or 40’s who suddenly had cancer, or some other issue befell them… so I make a point to keep good health insurance.  This year, my hunt for a better deal saved me 20 bucks per month.

I don’t mind arguing with a company for a better deal.

I recently did that with my internet company.  The price went up. I called.  I asked for a better deal.  I was given one.  But then I asked if he could go any lower than that, and was given an even better deal.

I reuse what I can when I can. I can’t always.  My town has a buff recycling program, so I do recycle what I can’t reuse around the house if it is an accepted item.

All of these things make me unsexy.  And yet, I don’t care.  Financial security and the confidence I get from feeling at ease in my own universe is, to me, HELLA SEXY.

I can tell people how to save money on just about everything.  I do try to drop tips now and then, but people tend to roll their eyes at me.   But I don’t care.  My goals matter more.