On savings
On payday, this Friday, my savings level will reach a peak. Never in my life has this amount of my money been sitting in one place, fully accessible, and all at once.
It doesn’t matter how much, or how I got it, only that over time I’ve minded my manners and tracked my spending and saving enough that I have a tidy sum set away for emergencies or big projects.
That kind of thing does something to your brain. I’ve noticed, for instance, that what Dave Ramsey said about Murphy and his law staying away when you have money is totally true. If something unexpected does spring up, I won’t be anxious about how to pay for it. Unless it’s something huge and disastrous (hint: zombies), I’m ready for anything.
Goodbye, worry. Hello, peace of mind.
None of this is meant to be a bragging point. Goodness knows I don’t have as much money stashed away as many of my friends, and I still have a number of debts that I’m tackling over time. I have a modestly-paying job doing what I love, and my biggest expenses are prescription drugs and Macintosh computers.
Which points out another benefit of having money in the bank credit union: my recent iMac purchase ($1,200, out the door) barely put a dent in my savings. It’s mostly because I used my freelance income to pay for it, but still. It felt good to drop $1,200 on the barrelhead and not be affected by it. That’s the definition of security.
Back to the brain. My thinking, in the last year or so, has changed in ways that I’ve only begun to understand. An emergency fund, for example, is great medicine for paranoia, and it allows me to be more carefree in my everyday dealings.
Because I remember what it was like, not so many years ago, when the opposite was true. I learned money management on my own, with no help, until the Dave Ramsey class, and I see now that I made a lot of mistakes. But it was all an education. And it helped lead me to where I am now.
The single biggest change from then to now? Diligence, and simply paying attention to where my money goes.
I don’t want to go on and on about Ramsey, but he says that if you don’t control where your money goes, it controls you. That simple maxim is truer than true in practice. My secret? I keep a simple spreadsheet with each month’s expenses and income, what bills are due, and what long-term expenses (like my license renewal, or doctor appointments) to expect.
That’s it. Well, that, and a follow-up session at the end of each month. I have my budget, but then I track what I actually do over the month. When I get a positive number each month, I pat myself on the back. When the number’s negative, I know that was an expensive month, or that I slipped a little bit, and try again.
Some months, like April, are categorically more expensive because of taxes. Last month I bought my iMac, so it ended up in the negative column.
No biggie. I have money in the bank credit union.
The whole thing is hard to describe until you experience it, but it’s like a great big sigh. Like, aaaaahhh, life isn’t so bad after all. It sets your brain free to do other things, like not worry so much about the future. That’s incredibly powerful.
But I’m humble enough to realize it’s all temporary. Something, anything can happen between now and Friday. Unkowns creep from every back-alley trash can, diseased knife in hand, waiting for me to get complacent.
Thing is, that Unknown isn’t so scary anymore.