personal stories

Using a Quarterly Review to Stop Feeling Perpetually Behind the Curve

February 26, 2021 By Kathryn Vercillo Leave a Comment

I have felt behind the curve in work (and life) for … well, let’s just say for a long time now. I encountered a series of health challenges that set me back. That snowballed into some financial challenges. After that came COVID-19 which required new adjustments. And now it seems like almost a way of life: always feeling like I am several steps behind what I want to be doing to move forward. I’m hoping that a new quarterly review process will help me get back on track. Maybe, if I really work at implementing it, it’ll even help me to get ahead!

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How I Already Use a Quarterly Review

The quarterly review isn’t entirely new to me. I’ve worked for myself for a long time. Therefore, I’ve established a variety of different work and personal finance routines that work for me. Historically I’ve done a quarterly review of all finances. Actually, I do an end-of-month review, but then at the end of each quarter I go into more depth with that.

So, at the end of each quarter, I review:

How much I’ve earned and where it’s coming from
Total debt including interest rates and repayment amounts
Debt-reduction opportunities including balance transfers
Breakdown of where all money is going (budget review)

Honestly, I’ve dropped the ball on this in the past year. 2020 was rough for many reasons. Therefore, I need to go back and do my 2020 financials. As a result, my 2021 financials started off with less review than usual as well. However, we’re only two months in, and I can get back on track. Part of the benefit of the quarterly review is that it prevents me from slipping too far behind. So by March 31, 2021, I will have this routine back in place.

New Ideas to Benefit from a Quarterly Review

I want to stop feeling perpetually behind. I’ve been behind on deadlines for a long time now, which isn’t like me. But more than that, I’m behind on the projects and ideas that I personally want to establish. I’m hoping a quarterly review will help me feel like I’m catching up.

Here’s how I imagine this going:

The first two months of every quarter will be for planning, starting new activities, and promoting my work
The third month of every quarter will be for catching up, review, and rest

So, for example, I’ve spent a lot of time in January and February trying to plan out the year. I’ve started a bunch of new projects – or at least the initial stages of them. If I kept that up the whole year, I’d always feel behind. Instead, I’m going to take March to assess and make progress on what I’ve done in January and February. Instead of starting new things or committing to new deadlines, I’ll just catch up and get organized. Then in April and May, I’ll resume planning, spreading the word, looking for new projects, etc.

My hope is that having a stop-gap every third month to just catch up will actually assist me in moving forward.

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How I Saved Money By Moving to a Rural Area

January 28, 2021 By Vicky Monroe Leave a Comment

I’m lucky to be able to work from home, which gives me the freedom and flexibility to move wherever I want. Recently my partner and I packed up our Boston apartment and moved to a rural area in Michigan to enjoy a slower pace of life.

As an added plus, moving to the country has already saved us a significant amount of money. Because the cost of living is lower and there isn’t as much to do as in the city, we’ve been going out a lot less and investing more of our hard-earned money.

Here are all the financial benefits I’ve experienced since moving to the country.

Lower Cost of Living

I knew that living in the city was expensive, but I didn’t know just how much money we’d save by moving to a lower cost of living area.

Instead of renting, we were able to buy a house that was triple the size of our old apartment. It’s also on 10 acres of beautiful forested land.

Our mortgage payment is a whopping $650 less than our rent was back in Boston. So not only do we have more space, but also more cash in our pockets every month.

Surprisingly, the savings don’t stop there. Our car insurance payment is also lower, and we’ve noticed that groceries and restaurant meals are more affordable too.

Fewer Places to Eat and Shop

Although eating out is more affordable here in the country than in Boston, we’ve noticed that we’re not going out to eat as much.

There are far fewer restaurants and places to shop here. To get to a mall, we have to drive two and a half hours, and we’ve only discovered a few restaurants we really enjoy.

With less to do in town, we’ve been finding ways to entertain ourselves at home instead, which has already saved us a couple hundred dollars.

Utilities

Our house has a wood-burning furnace as well as a central heating system. The previous owners were kind enough to leave behind firewood from the property for us so we could start using our furnace right away.

By burning wood from our land instead of relying on our central heating system, we’re going to save at least a few hundred dollars on our heating bill this winter.

We also have an artesian well, which is common for rural homes. Because we get our water from the well instead of the city, we no longer have a water bill and are saving about $50 per month.

Gardening

Although there’s still snow on the ground, we’re already preparing for the gardening season by planning out our vegetable patch and purchasing seeds. My partner plans to grow 80% or more of our produce this summer and preserve it for the year ahead.

Before we moved here, we shopped at Whole Foods and spent a lot of money on food—around $600 a month. By purchasing organic seeds and growing our own healthy, organic produce instead, I anticipate that we’re going to reduce our food bill by $400 per month or more.

Moving to a rural area definitely isn’t for everyone. But thanks to my remote job as a freelance writer, my partner and I were able to make our dream of moving to the country for a more relaxed lifestyle a reality.

And in the process, we’ve saved hundreds of dollars in the short time we’ve been here. In the long run, moving to the country may turn out to be one of the best financial decisions we’ve ever made.

First Book of the Year: And Then We Grew Up

January 1, 2021 By Kathryn Vercillo Leave a Comment

I read a lot. I mean, a lot – more than most people I know. Often, I read books related to personal finance, especially when I kind find money psychology books. But I have also found throughout the years that a lot of the good financial advice emerges from books on other topics. Some are tangentially related to money: work, life balance, productivity, etc. However, I’ve also gotten financial insight from novels, memoirs, and even occasionally a poem. This morning I started reading the first book of the year, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far (about eighty pages in).

And Then We Grew Up by Rachel Friedman

My first 2021 read of the year is And Then We Grew Up. The subtitle is On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood. Rachel Friedman authored this book.

The book is my favorite type: a combination memoir and advice book filled not only with personal anecdotes but also with related research. In this particular case, it’s a book about trying to figure out what it means to make a living at a creative life.

Who Is Rachel Friedman?

Rachel Friedman started out wanting to be a musician (a viola player). However, in her first year of college, she became overwhelmed with the anxiety of the path. She ultimately quit music college and spent some time traveling around the world. As she did, she indulged another creative passion: writing.

Then she became a writer. As she notes in the intro of the book:

“I had taken on any and every freelance writing assignment, from churning out SEO clickbait for travel websites to “reporting” on heat-resistant makeup for a glossy women’s food mag.”

As a writer myself, working from the only city comparable in cost to where Rachel lived (she in Manhattan, myself in San Francisco), I can certainly relate. More importantly, I can relate to the deeper questions of what it means to be a creative person working in a field where earning money through your creativity doesn’t always look like what you had hoped it would look like when you started out on that path.

Premise of the Book

And Then We Grew Up is Rachel’s story of her own journey. Moreover, she seeks out a handful of highly creative people that she went to summer art camp with as a teenager. She visits them to discuss the paths that their creative careers have taken now that they’re in their thirties. Through analyses of those conversations, she comes to new conclusions and insights about what it means to make a living as an artist.

Additionally, she incorporates a wealth of research and relevant quotes about the artistic life, work-life balance, productivity, definitions of success, and making money through creativity. She is well-read, which shines through, and she curates her resources perfectly in the context of a memoir/biography.

And Then We Grew Up: Money Lessons

What does this have to do with money, per se? Lots, actually, both directly and indirectly. Directly, she mentions the reality of finances in the creative world. Indirectly, her exploration of what satisfaction means as a creative person naturally takes into account issues of finances. After all, unless you happen to be born into extreme wealth with zero need to work at all, your creative life has to find balance with earning money.

Your Financial Position in Life Affects Your Creative Career

One of the key things that she touches on is the privilege of even pursuing a creative career at all. Sure, there are outliers in the world – people who come from little access and yet persist with their art and become capable of making a living at it. But for the most part, having privilege gives you more options for exploring art as a career path. A few examples of how:

Having privilege, even of just a middle class life, gives you access to art events, classes, and opportunities throughout your childhood. You know that you have the option of becoming an artist because you see it around you.
The people in your life – parents and teachers – might be more likely to support your early creative dreams if they themselves believe that making art as a living is a viable possibility in life. Privilege makes it more likely they’ll see it that way.
Without privilege, you might not have easy access to a college education. Not that every creative person goes to college, of course. But those years of indulging in a creative education, particularly at a liberal arts school, go a long way towards supporting a career in the arts.
It takes a long time for most people to succeed financially in creative careers. If you have parents willing to help foot the bill for your daily life as you do so, then you’ll have a better chance at it.
Lack of privilege correlates with so many factors – health conditions, unplanned pregnancies, trauma, abuse … and all of those things do have the potential to limit an art career.

It’s not necessarily that you need money to make art. Instead, it’s that to be able to believe in art as a career choice over a sustained period of time is a luxury that privilege facilitates.

Most People Don’t Suddenly Get Rich Off Of Art

Friedman went to school with at least one actor who “made it.” However, she didn’t choose him to interview for the book. She was interested in what “regular people” do – people who are definitely talented in the arts but who aren’t ever going to make millions from the work. How do they make it financially and creatively? Some of the key takeaways are:

You can find alternative ways of doing what you love every day for pay. For example, one musician decided early on that she would work as a music teacher. It gave her the work-life balance she wanted and a steady paycheck. Some people say this is selling out, but for her it’s the right path to working with music every day.
People may choose to do their art part-time and other work part-time or full-time. The obvious example, cited in the book, is the actor/waiter. They may be looking for their big break. However, they may also just do both for the rest of their lives. She cites many famous people who held “day jobs” long after they could afford not to do so. Notably, she emphasizes composer Philip Glass who was famous enough to be recognized when he showed up as a plumber to work one a dishwasher.
You can add creativity to any type of work. You don’t have to work in your artistic field to create your art within your field in some way.
Living the fantasy that you’re going to get rich takes away from the richness of the process. There are so many wonderful aspects of life. The artist has access to enjoying them simply through art.
Artistic success is often as much about luck as it is talent and hard work. Your job as an artist is to do the work. You can’t decide how well it will do. If you believe in the work, then the work has to be enough. You can be ambitious in your goals but you have to also let go of the outcome.

Artistic Careers Aren’t Linear and Values Change

One of the biggest reminders for me is that artistic careers aren’t linear. We like the movie-edited version of famous creatives lives in which they start off with talent, undergo a variety of challenges, and then they “make it.” Friedman shares about a friend, Adam, who emphasizes the many starts and stops, peaks and valleys of his career. That resonated for me … the fantasy is that I’ll “make it” and do only the writing work I’m absolutely passionate about. The reality is that I’ve had so many ebbs and flows, and that those will continue.

Also, our values change with time. We may come to value financial security over creative pursuit. Or we may have times when it’s just the opposite – when we are so passionate about a project or idea that we’ll take a risk on it despite tending towards financial stability in the past. Life isn’t linear, no matter how much our storytelling brains like us to think it should be.

I stopped reading today just before Chapter 4, which – upon skimming – I see is going to include stuff about the gig economy. I’m excited to dig back in.

What is the first book that you’re reading in the new year? What financial tip can you take away from it?

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I Joined Dressember to Give to Charity Without Spending Money

December 3, 2020 By Kathryn Vercillo Leave a Comment

2020 has been a financially tough year for a lot of people. 2019 was actually really hard for me, because I took on a lot of business debt and incurred tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt. So I’ve really been trying to keep the pursestrings tight. Still, it’s important to me to give back to others. So, I started thinking about how I could give to charity without spending money. Encouraged by someone I interviewed about her Dressember experience, I decided to join the team and help raise funds throughout December.

What Is Dressember?

Dressember is a movement to raise awareness and funds to fight human trafficking. Human trafficking is a cause that I care a lot about for a number of reasons. Therefore, if I could give to charity without spending money and participate in making change in that area, then I definitely wanted to do so.

Here’s how it works:

You join or start a Dressember team. I joined the Namaste and Crochet team, and I’ll explore more about why in a moment.
You set a goal for how much you’d like to raise. I chose $1000. That felt doable to me but still like it could make a big difference.
Every day in December, you wear a dress or a tie. You post about it on social media, also sharing information about human trafficking. Dressember provides a wealth of statistics and research to help people better understand this critical issue. Wondering “why a dress?” Here’s why.
In your posts, you encourage people to donate to help you reach your fundraising goal. Want to donate? You can do that here.
All of the money goes to help fight human trafficking through prevention, intervention, and protective care for survivors.

And that’s it. By participating in Dressember, I can hopefully give to charity without spending money. I don’t have to break my budget to be able to make a difference.

Why I Chose Dressember and the Namaste and Crochet Team

I was touched by Dressember’s movement to help stop human trafficking. Moreover I appreciate that they help survivors of that trauma.

When I was in my twenties, I was involved in a lot of social work. I did art and writing work with prisoners across the United States. I worked in group homes and with foster children. And I worked in an office that provided case management to recently-arrived refugees. All of those populations are affected by human trafficking. I saw firsthand how much harm this does, right in our own backyard, to people of all ages. Seeing that, how could I not choose this important cause as a place to give to charity without spending money?

The Namaste and Crochet Dressember Team

One of my personal niches of interest, besides the world of personal finance is the world of crafting. Specifically, I’m interested in how handcrafting (crochet, knitting) can help heal individuals and communities. I interview a lot of people about the topic.

In that process, I had a chance to interview Dominique of Namaste and Crochet; read that interview here. She had worked with sex trafficking survivors in Thailand and Cambodia. The experience was amazing, but being around all of that trauma gave her anxiety. She used crochet to cope.

As a result of her experiences, she became very interested in Dressember. She started participating. And this year she created a team. Moreover, she specifically encourages her team to add that handmade element to the posts. In addition to wearing a dress or tie, her team can wear a handcrafted item, especially a knit or crochet item they’ve made themselves.

The fast fashion industry is a huge contributor to human trafficking. Handcrafted clothing is one slow fashion element. (And yes, you can make and even ethically buy slow fashion; it just takes some research and I’m sharing a lot about that through my Dressember posts.)

So, it all came together for me. I saw a way to share my passion about how crochet heals with a new community. Moreover, I could do that at the same time as I would give to charity without spending money.

Dressember Kicked Off on Giving Tuesday

Dressember starts on December 1st every year and runs throughout the whole month. This year, that happened to also be Giving Tuesday. If you aren’t familiar with it, Giving Tuesday is a movement launched less than a decade ago to encourage generosity around the holidays.

Black Friday sales are great. Small Business Saturday is even better since it supports local and independent shops. CyberMonday is popular. You can get a lot of discounts on the items you want to purchase for the holidays. However, the holidays are also about charity. Giving Tuesday reminds us of that. It’s so inspiring to see how many people give to charity on that day, even on this year that was so hard for so many.

Many people set up their Giving Tuesday fundraisers through Facebook. Facebook matched $7 million in Giving Tuesday donations this year. Dressember has a feature that allows you to link your fundraiser to a Facebook fundraiser. So I checked in on that and it looked like within just a few hours people had donated the $7 million for matching to a wide variety of different causes. Isn’t that amazing?

Why I Wanted to Give to Charity Without Spending Money

I spend a lot of time thinking about personal finance issues. In particular, of course, I spend a lot of time thinking about my personal finances. I know about budgeting, saving, investing. But living a frugal life doesn’t mean living a myopic life. While being money-conscious matters to me because I don’t want the stress of debt, it isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s important to live a quality life that aligns with all of your ethics.

Therefore, it’s important to me to support causes that I care about. I didn’t want to spend the money on donations this year. If I had budgeted for that at the start of the year, then I would have. However, that was not the case. So instead, I wanted to give to charity without spending money. I could have done this in a variety of different ways. For example, I could have volunteered my time somewhere. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, that feels hard for me. So, Dressember made a lot of sense.

And, of course, in a sense I’m donating my time. It does take time to take the photos every day. It definitely takes time to write about the statistics so that people really understand why it’s important to fight human trafficking. And since I’m doing the additional handmade element, I’m also researching and sharing about the benefits of crafting and the importance of slow, sustainable fashion. Then there’s all of the liking and commenting and sharing that goes into promoting something on social media. So, I’m giving my time, and I’m hoping that people who do have money to give to charity this year can contribute to my fundraiser. That way, through encouraging them to give to charity, I’m able to give, too.

My way is, of course, just one way. Have you ever found a way to give to charity without spending money? Share thoughts in the comments for those who want to do that this year.

Don’t Focus on the Numbers

July 24, 2013 By Jennifer Derrick 2 Comments

Everyone loves a personal story. We like to hear how other people paid off debt, retired early, paid for college, or afforded that fabulous vacation. Personal stories are fun to read and can be inspiring.

However, too many people focus on just the numbers in these stories and then get all bent out of shape because the numbers given aren’t exactly like theirs. They complain in the comment trails of blogs or give bashing reviews to books saying, “This [whatever inspiring thing the author has done] isn’t possible in the real world. The numbers just don’t add up.”

But it isn’t the numbers that readers should focus on. Costs of living vary widely across the U.S. and around the world. What a $50,000 income will buy in one place may not even cover the basics in another. While certain money saving behaviors might work well in one area (going without a car, foregoing air conditioning, clipping coupons, etc.), they might not be possible or as cost efficient in another. The numbers will always be different based on where you live and how much you make. Unless you live in the same location as the author and have their exact job, you’ll never be able to compare apples to apples.

Yet instead of dismissing the author’s story as either an outright lie or a mathematical impossibility, stop and look at how they achieved their goal. Whether the person paid off $50,000 of debt in one year on a $90,000 income, or whether they took a $4,000 vacation on a $20,000 income isn’t the point. The point is that they took certain steps to achieve their goals. That’s what you should take from such personal stories. Don’t worry about whether their numbers exactly match what you think is possible. Focus on learning from the tips and advice the storyteller is giving you.

Almost every personal story tells you the things that they did to achieve their goal. They list the items that they cut out or reduced in their budgets. The detail the sacrifices they made. Some of their advice may not apply to you. Some of it will. But the point isn’t to give you a roadmap to follow exactly. The point is to get you thinking about changes you can make in your own life to achieve your personal goals.

Here’s an example: You read an article about how someone is able to live without a car and that they save $10,000 a year in maintenance, gas, insurance, taxes, etc. You think, “Bah. I can’t do that here, so this article is rubbish. It’s impossible to save $10,000 per year.”

But if you stop focusing on the numbers and think about what the person is actually doing, you might be able to come away with a few money saving strategies. Maybe you can’t eliminate a car entirely, but maybe there are times of the year when walking or biking is more appealing. Maybe you have some public transportation that, while not great for everyday commuting, can be used once per week or so for more casual outings. Maybe you can find a carpool twice per week, or work out some type of car sharing arrangement with a friend. Maybe you’ll be reminded to shop around for a better deal on your insurance. No, you won’t save the $10,000 mentioned in the article by trying some of these strategies, but you’ll save something.

It’s the same with larger goals. Someone discusses how they retired early and people cry, “Not possible for me! I don’t have that kind of income (or I have too many kids or I can’t give up my extras, etc.).” But they don’t stop and think, “Hey, I might not make that kind of money and I might have some limitations that the author did not, but there are things I can do to cut my expenses. Look at all the things this person does to save money. Some of it would work for me, and I’ve got access to things she doesn’t mention. Maybe I can’t retire at forty, but maybe I can manage it by fifty-five.” Just because you won’t make it on the same timetable as the author doesn’t mean that your goal is worthless or unachievable. It’s just different.

When you get hung up on the numbers in a book or a blog post, you often dismiss some valuable advice. At the very least, the story will likely to inspire you to think differently about your own spending. And that’s where change starts. You’ll only make yourself nuts if you try to make your numbers match someone else’s exactly, but you can take the advice, wisdom, and inspiration contained in the story and use it to make your own success. It won’t be the same as the author’s, but it might be even better.

(Photo courtesy of Luis Argerich)