One Potato, Two Potato…

On a clip above my desk is a gathering of Post-It notes going back several years. There are columns and cross lines, and in them are amounts paid out for various debts and services. There are amounts paid out payday by payday. It’s not a budget at the molecular level, there has always a certain amount of easing built in for the impractical. But over the years, it has changed as we paid off the mortgage and the second mortgage.

It shifted as well when I got serious about reducing credit cards. As that debt declined, I was able to start putting that money into savings. So, year by year it shows alterations in budgeting. And it celebrates progress in taking control of my finances, rather than having banks and credit companies have control.

Train Wreck

“Is he anal compulsive?” No, but I had a terrible experience in the Nineties when Bill Bob Clinton decided to “Reinvent Government.” Jobs for anthropologists, even in the applied fields, were hard to find. As a family, we had some tough times, and my federal pension was eroded as I paid for a family of six’s health care and other expenses from it. The erosion ended when, at age fifty, I took work loading trucks for UPS. No matchmaker would have thought that the anthropologist and the package company would make a good pairing, but it did.

When I started the marine carving business, I had to develop bookkeeping skills I had never needed before, and they stayed with me. Hence, the tracking of income and expenditures.

Rebuilding & Playtime

Another part of all this is the need to rebuild a retirement. At seventy-nine, I still make contributions to a retirement plan; that’s part of the budget.

But man does not live by bread alone, so there is a part of the budget that is built in for treats, fluff, and whoopee! Taking my sweetie out for lunch, expeditions to the cafe, or bookstore, and trips to our favorite getaways. Also some hobby money gets stashed.

Eventually, I’ll stop working, and I’ve started planning that out too, with a separate planning budget for the decline in income. Having led an “interesting life” full of upsets, I know I can’t plan for everything, and I won’t even go down that rabbit hole. I don’t do plans, per se; I do planning. Planning is more flexible. If one thing doesn’t happen, all is not lost. I learned this while working with planners.

I think the Engineer Andy Grove said it best: You need to plan the way a fire department plans: it cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.