The Weight of Money

As I mentioned in my last car post, we’re not actively looking for another car but we are keeping our eyes out if the right situation appears. Well, this weekend, we thought that situation had come. On one of my local email lists, someone posted a four-door car with air conditioning for sale. The details sounded right and the price was right. We went to check it out, had one small concern with it that we decided was worth accepting for the price, and agreed to get the car pending the safety inspection.

The sellers and I agreed to split the cost of the inspection and they got it done today. Since Maryland loves to nit pick all the details on safety inspections, I wasn’t surprised to hear that the car failed — I doubt any car ever passes the first go round. But the list was rather lengthy and touched on the one concern we had with the car – the transmission. In all, to get the car fixed would have been $1,000 in repairs. The sellers were willing to drop a few hundred dollars off the price, but it still took the car out of the “right price” category for it. If we were confident these repairs would resolve our transmission concerns, we would have probably gone for it. But since it included a long list of nit-picky detail that safety inspections love to hit on and just a couple minor tinkerings with the transmission, we took a pass.

I’m a little disappointed because I got very excited that our car woes would be satisfied, but I’m also not interested in throwing out money to bring another vehicle with issues into our life. Sometimes you’ve just got to let things be and I’m glad that the partner and I were both willing to walk away from this situation without trying to talk ourselves into it. It’s nice not being in a position where we *have* to take action.

The partner and I got an unexpected date night last night since the daughter wanted to hang out at a free movie event at our local library. We stopped at a local yarn store and chatted with the owner and some of the other ladies before heading over to a yummy dinner of thai food. Even though we took our time at each stop, we were still early in picking up the daughter from her event and ended up parking in library lot waiting for her to get out.

This was the perfect opportunity to talk about anything and everything without losing sleep – usually these discussions take place as we’re both drifting off to sleep. The partner reveal another upcoming change with his company’s 401K program. It sounds like his company continues to struggle financially and is still cutting corners here, there, and everywhere to stay afloat. The partner is expecting that the newest announcement, only alluded to at this point, will address the account fees associated with the 401K accounts. He expects that the company, in addition to dropping their matching program and tacking on a lengthly vestment clause for previously contributed dollars, will also stop covering the fees charged by the 401K company and will be passing those charges on to participating members. To me, this is just another kick in the shins from the company at this point.

The partner is currently on is 3rd years with this small start up company. The past year has been full of lay offs, cut backs, scaling down of options, and other negative financial steps (negative from the employee’s perspective at least). What was a nice company to work with has really drained away to just some job this past year. The other draw back is that this company doesn’t pay that well to start with, so the few perks (most of which were not financial) it offered, made a big difference in employee satisfaction. All of that has been stripped away this past year or so. I’m sad to see this change since it was a very family-focused company that seemed to go out of it’s way to support it’s staff in recognition that it’s financial support wasn’t the greatest. At the same time, I’ve hoped that these changes would prompt the partner to look elsewhere for employment, and while there have been days that he’s lost all patience with the company, he’s still pretty loyal to sticking around longer.

During our parking lot discussion, the partner mentioned just stopping all retirement contributions. This would put a few more dollars in our pockets each month, but would it be worth it? I don’t think so. Retirement is something that is going to happen – having a couple more dollars more a month might ease our financial stress a little bit, but not to the point to put future retirement in jeopardy. Since we’re already not seeing that money, I support continuing with contributions, even if we’re paying all the fees to make it happen.

This past year of making no financial progress is taking it’s toll on the partner as well – he wants to see debt going down, savings increasing, or equity growing. I understand the feeling, I want to see those things happening too – but we’re just not there yet. In fact, I’ve been anxiously waiting to hear what his raise is going to be and am starting to worry that one won’t be happening at all since his company has been struggling so much and we’re already entering the third week of July and there has been no word about this year’s raises (they usually go in effect July 1). I also struggle with the fact that the he chooses to stay with a company that limits his earning potential. In my mind, if he really wants to see progress in those areas, he’d be making the effort to apply for other positions that are available to him at this point and would come with a decent pay increase as well. But that’s not a fun argument to make and is one area that I’ve finally learned to not push too hard – but it’s difficult to not push when I see that as one of the only positive steps to reducing our financial struggles.

One of the joys of raising children is that they need things, like clothes. Luckily, I have a wonderful daughter who isn’t the least bit interested in fashion or keeping up with her friends. This makes clothes shopping an easy and affordable experience.

A couple years ago, I stopped at my favorite thrift store to pick up some camp clothes for the daughter. These were clothes that I didn’t care what happened to them or if they ever came back from camp. Since we’re pretty frugal with most of our purchases, I didn’t want her taking her “normal” clothes to camp and getting them ruined or lost. I think I spent about $20 on shirts and shorts for the two week camp.

It turned out that she really liked a lot of those clothes and they quickly became part of her normal wardrobe. Suddenly, I realized that buying her clothes anywhere else made no sense whatsoever. So, we started shopping at thrift stores for pretty much all of her clothing needs. I love that I can pick up an entire season’s worth of clothes for about $30. I also love how flexible she is and the fact that she could care less where they come from or what they look like, for the most part. Plus, if you see the way she treats her clothes, you’d probably feel much better knowing that she crawling in the mud in a pair of $3 pants versus a pair of $30 pants.

So, today we’re heading down to our favorite thrift store shopping district to get some summer clothes that she’s been desperately needing. I’m really getting tired of seeing her running around in mid-nineties degree weather wearing flannel lined jeans (she swears she isn’t hot, but come on!). While I figure we’ll spend about $30 on clothes, maybe a little more if I get a few things, we’ll probably spend almost that much on lunch and gas as well. Unfortunately, there are no good thrift stores where we live and we’ll be making the partners commute to the stores that have proven time and again to be worth the drive. And, since we’ll be down by the partner during his lunch hour, we’ll stop in and dine with him too. A nice family lunch out on a weekday is a rare occurance these days since gas prices went up and we moved so far away from his work.

Of all the financial decision I make, it seems that my brain turns to mush when it comes to cars. Over the past two years, I feel like I’ve posted about car issues an absurd number of times, and the trend continues. I said that we were going to buy another car – one of those fancy, schmancy ones that have luxuries like air conditioning and four doors. Even better would be good gas mileage and less than 100,000 miles. So, that was the plan and I looked earnestly for another car.

And I looked and looked and found lots of good contenders, but looking for another car is work. And it also costs money – and one thing I hate doing is spending money. So, my determination to get another car has faded and I told the partner that maybe we’ll just continue to live with just the cars we have. My vanity issues are fading away, especially since the partner and a friend helped improve the visual appearance of my “total loss” car, and because there are other things I want more than a car – like money in the bank and eventually a workshop.

Also, since gas prices have increased and my general energy level has decreased, I’m finally in a pattern of not leaving the house for days at a time. Earlier this year, that simply would never happen because I get antsy to get out and go somewhere. At this point, there is no where I want to go. With the partner driving my car to work, I’m even less inclined to go anywhere in one of our other vehicles. So, just making do with the vehicles we have seems like a sensible alternative, at least for a couple more months.

So, the partner and I agreed that he’ll continue to drive my car unless I need it for some reason. I’ll also work on making sure that continue to plan our errands sensibly so that I only need to get out once or twice a week. And I’ll still have a backup vehicle capable of getting where we need to go if something comes up unexpectedly.

We are leaving the option open to still consider another vehicle because we feel we do need a better “family” vehicle – but it’s no longer a pressing need. I’ll continue scanning sales ads and local spots for sale-by-owner vehicles for the perfect car. Also, at some point in the next few month we’ll be closing on the insurance claim from my accident and may decide to use those funds for a family vehicle — if I can avoid just paying down debt instead.

So, since I’m not scratching my brain to buy a car, I can focus on some other projects — like how big of a shed can we buy/build to eliminate the $145/month we’re paying for storage.