I think I figured out Paul’s issue. He says he feels like a doormat. I told him he is free to leave at any time if he is unhappy. Then he claims he is not unhappy with me. It’s very hard to understand. He says he feels like he has no power. Essentially, he thinks because he is a man I should obey him. We had a very good heart to heart where I explained power comes from a couple of sources, but in a relationship it is limited where it comes from. I told him that when we entered our relationship, I brought resources to the relationship which is why we have had such a decent life in spite of his inability to find truly gainful employment. That I patiently waited for years for him to find work which would be enough to provide a decent life. Once he did find work, I even offered to cede control of most things to him, but since he was overwhelmed by work, I ended up having to handle everything anyway. He agreed.
Let me also state that I was working and supporting 6 children while he hung around the house for years. That I was blamed for everything that ever went wrong. That I always had to juggle to make up for everyone else’s short falls. I mean just so much.
I then went on to state that after just five years out of our almost 24 years together, he has had gainful employment that really befits a man that wants control of the household. I explained, power comes from being able to provide resources which benefits everyone in the household and that currently he is not providing enough resources for himself to survive. That means that I am providing those resources. If he doesn’t like that, then he is free to go anywhere he wants or work anywhere he wants. Then he tried to blame me, yet again, for him not working. I called him out on his lies…and then he had to concede that yes he could have worked more but lied to me saying there was no more work. I then illustrated that if he worked more maybe he wouldn’t feel so disempowered because he would have more to offer anyone including himself.
I think I have a covert narc on my hands.
Either way, I told him he could leave at any time and go do whatever it is that makes him happy. I explained that I would rather live alone and deal with the abyss which is my emotions than to continue to be blamed for his inability to man up correctly. Not try to dominate me with force, because a partner should never do that and at this point that is the only way he would gain the upper hand on me. Even then, if he did…well I will save that bridge for if I have to cross it.
This is not how love is…this is a power struggle and a usurper. This is a snake that looked like a cute little earthworm. He is playing nice right now, but I can see the rage building within him. I hope I don’t have to deal with that again. I’m too old for this shit. Sorry to vent. I just want peace and gentleness at this point. I am so sick of this bullcrap that I am the man you should listen to me even though I do little to nothing to improve your life half the time I am with you. I mean, I caught him in several lies when we spoke. I don’t know if it’s dementia or just mental illness or just total disregard for me and what I try to do for him.
He even told me I am wasting my time trying to help Lucy and how he doesn’t want to. It’s not his choice. That’s my daughter. Even if she is 23, she still comes before him. Especially when he is acting like this and not supporting me materially or emotionally. Like at this point, part of me is like fuck him.
I am fighting the good fight people! Even though we had a lot of love and support from our friends and family in this rough time, we did end up having to overdraw to make it to and from Oklahoma and deal with some of the legal issues surrounding Lucy. Thankfully it is only about $200 we overdrew, which I will spend the month of April working to make up.
Also, my work did hold back pay for a month. The month of March, I did not make a lot of cash. This month is not shaping up well either since the last two weeks of March will be paid in this month. I am making up for it by adding other lines of income that pay less per hour and aggravate me more, but will be able to pay me sooner than a month from my work being done.
Good news is the bank account that pays my bills automatically is almost funded completely for the bills due to be drafted on the 13th. Another $50 and it will be ready to go. The truck payment will be late however, but probably not very late. Either way, not terribly concerned as we can get on top of that. We will start building our month ahead fund again. I am not giving up.
We didn’t save money this month except to end a subscription. That on the whole doesn’t make up for the trip. Also, we have to make another trip in June. So we will keep the give send go open in the hopes we recieve some help then. I will update that later today or tomorrow.
I still have to save money for a dentist visit and glasses. Plus we have property taxes to pay. Keep us in your thoughts.
So I used the taxes to build a bit of a buffer. I mean just a bit of a buffer and thank heavens I did because my health took a turn that left me unable to really work for an entire week! I still have part of that buffer, but I will be spending the rest of the month building it back up. That is what the entire goal of it was, to be a month ahead on the bills just incase an emergency happened so I could have bills paid on time, with no late fees, and not scrambling last minute to get everything paid.
That has already saved me forty dollars this month just by having money set aside for bills ahead of time. That is such a satisfying feeling. I didn’t even dip into that extra money to go to the doctor or emergency room. I didn’t have to plead poverty when the co-pays came due. Also, even though my boss threatens to hold back pay for almost a month, I am not concerned. I have one bill due on the first of every month and I have another line of income to build up for that in the meantime. I already have part of that built up anyway for next month. Normally, this would be a financial disaster. Simply putting aside one month’s income saved me so much hassle.
I have also started implementing other money-saving strategies. I have changed my pay from PayPal to check. I wanted a direct deposit, but my work is refusing to do that. Either way, this will save me another $20 to $30 a month in payment processor fees. This is all low-hanging fruit, but I could not have saved this money by switching to a check or direct deposit without having some money set aside for the month’s bills primarily because anything other than PayPal is always late. Just these two measures have saved me $70 this month which was more than enough to pay for my co-pays and my gas to the doctor.
Then I bought our cat food in bulk and paid cash. This saved me about twelve dollars on the cat food in total this month as I was no longer paying a dollar a pound, but seventy cents a pound now for buying in bulk, and I didn’t pay card processing fees at the local feed store because I paid in cash.
I still have yet to consolidate my errands. I found that is quite difficult to get done. Also, I have yet to fully move all my banking to the free bank account and close down my bank account that is costing me seven dollars a month. I have automated most of my bills in special “stash” accounts at the new bank which has free accounts. I still need to automate the water bill. I even have a tiny amount saved in my savings account.
I still have a lot to do obviously, but the “easy” stuff has been done. Now comes the harder things to save money. Once all my bills are automated, I will no longer pay a single late fee. Then I can start getting our basic necessities put on grocery pick up to lessen the temptation to impulse buy when I am in the shops getting our needs met. I picked up four ladies panties for fifty cents each the last time I went shopping. That is two dollars I would not have spent if I didn’t wander around in the shops trying to get the groceries.
I am in the process of getting my medications delivered to my door every three months so I no longer have to go back and forth to town every single time the pharmacy makes a mistake. Also, this will stabilize the prices of my medicine instead of the pharmacy changing the prices everytime I go up there. I don’t trust the local pharmacy. They have given me expired meds, ruined meds, half a prescription, doubled charged my card, over charged me, double charged my insurance, and so many more unacceptable mistakes. I don’t know how they are still in business.
I have had overseas pharmacies send medication quicker, more professionally, with less hassel, and they were half way around the world. In fact, I am waiting on my overseas pharmacy order right now and expect I will get it before the local pharmacy can figure out if my script made it in or not. It is cheaper, even with insurance, to get some medications I have prescribed in my family to buy it outright with cash from overseas.
After this, it’s time to go through the house and sort what we have and what we don’t in the various areas of life. I did recently splurge on an electric tea kettle to have some tea quickly instead of using the propane. I love my electric tea kettle. It gets plenty of use daily.
I read this blogger and really, I was about to write on financials today anyway. Today has been very serendipitous in many ways. I personally could never imagine living without even a rough draft of how to manage my income financially. That’s like shopping without a basic grocery list or cooking without a vauge menu plan. How do these people even live? God must be working miracles everyday.
I say Financials for this post because it goes beyond just a budget. I live with a variable income. My income can range from 1k to 2k a month. I typically need about 1.5k to make it barely. You already see a problem, don’t you? Yes, so do I. This is just to pay the bills, with may be $200 left over for everything else…think food for a family of three, gasoline, propane to cook or wood to heat, medicine and medical supplies, animal feed or cat food, toilet paper, trash bags, gas for the mower, well you get the idea. On the months I don’t make 1.5k, I start to figure out which bills I can pay later and not get a fee. Then you get into a whole cycle of always paying late and paying a fee…you get the idea. I want to end this.
Federal tax rebates will be coming in soon, so I thought I would do several things to end this cycle of never-ending late fees and struggling to make the bills. First, I want to make a month-ahead fund. That way, I always know that I have my basic bills paid a month in advance. This will end the late fees that siphon my few precious dollars away for being broke. So that knocks about half of the money I will get back out. It also creates an atmosphere of less worry since I already know how much I have ready to go.
Second, I need about $500 in “reserve” for those months I don’t make that extra $500 I really need to just barely survive. Most people would call this an emergency fund, but that isn’t an accurate telling of it’s purpose. It would be a flex spending account for short months. I anticipate this will take the next little chunk. I plan to build an emergency fund over time, but this is really first.
Third I have a few debts that must be paid, This totals about $600 to $700 dollars, which will be paid. I have some tires I had to put on credit just to make it to town in order to get medicine. If I pay them off by April, then I pay no interest. The interest makes the cost of the tires more than double the origional price, so they will be paid off early. I have to pay off my personal state taxes and property taxes too at this point.
Fourth, I will move my banking to Qube, so I can keep better track of it. Although it will cost 9 dollars a month, doing this will allow me to drop my checking acount fees which are $7 a month, reduce my paypal fees to almost nothing when they are $20 or more per month, and keep a strict budget. Also, I can finally autodraft my bills, so no more late fees, money order fees, or debit card processing fees. I will just take money and move it into the Qube for that bill a month in advance and it is done. Also, I can’t spend the money in qube unless it is allocated to a specific qube for that spending purpose AND I opened the qube to spend with in 30 minutes. Only bill cubes allow spending without prior authorization to one specific destination or auto drafting, so really it’s so much easier. Ha ha ha I will defeat my own brain damn it!
Then there is just a tiny bit left that I will use to see a dentist, an eye doctor, and buy two parts for my truck. The truck parts are the cheapest thing. Finally, anything left will be spent on medical supplies for my diabetes, (think strips, lancets, needles, batteries for my meter, or alcohol pads), medicine like OTC insulin which is the kind I currently use, inhalers, and maybe some new under things and socks.
I wish I had enough coming back to go out to eat, get my nails done, may be even make some repairs on my chicken house, or my own house, and all the things I see others doing, but I don’t. I am so disgusted with how much money is siphoned away on fees. It’s a tiny dollar here or there, but after tracking my spending for a couple months, it really adds up. A little over halfway through February and my paypal fees are already $23 for the month. This is paying $23 a month to get paid! Add the $7 a month for a bank account, just to recieve my income, and you start to see how ridiculous it is. That is $360 a year just to recieve my pay! That is enough to go to the eye doctor and the dentist…so yeah, my plan is to fix that money leak.
In order to use Qube, I need to budget. I mean the whole thing is set up like a budget that doesn’t allow you to spend out of your budget from an incorrect category. That is the whole point of this banking set up. It will only be used for my operating budget of up to 3 months income. Anything extra will be put in savings out of that bank, in an investment account, my IRA, my son’s 529, or some other savings vehicle. I kinda doubt I will ever get three months ahead on my spending though. Right now, this is like financial first aid, because the triage says I have to act now or fall. Right now I am in the process of trying to get my Qube account approved, once they verify my identity. I will let you know how it goes from this point.
If this all works out like it ought to, I will save money, time, stress, worry, and lack of peace. It may just be the single most important thing to fixing my situation. If I have more time, may be I can finally get those business things I wanted to do finished. If I know that my next month is set, then I don’t have to worry about how will I get that last $20 for the internet or electric bill. I won’t be sitting up until 1 am praying someone calls in time so my bills are paid. I won’t be worried if I will be able to afford my insulin before I run out. I mean this isn’t JUST about saving money. It’s about saving my peace of mind.
My Budget
My budget is a little complicated because some of my household costs vary by season. I don’t pay for wood in the summer and nor do I buy very much propane in the summer unless I am canning. Then I go through a 15 pound bottle a week. However, I do use a ton of electricty in the summer. You kind of have to when the tempature gets over 108 degrees F. I have to guesstimate my annual usage from the three months I have tracked so far on my spending tracker. This can be tricky. Then I have to divide this estimated annual usage by 12 and pray I got it right. This is not the greatest strategy, but it’s all I have right now.
So not only is my pay extremely variable, but so are my costs! Can you see why it would be nerve racking to try and get everything paid each month?
Then of course, there are some costs that honestly, I could probably reduce or eliminate. For example, if I wasn’t always chasing a dollar at the last minute to pay a bill, I might be able to spend that time collecting wood to reduce my heating costs over the winter. I might be able to spend that time on the vegetable farm helping out our local farmer in exchange for free food to reduce our food bills. (I mean it’s not “free” as in for nothing, but it’s free to me) I personally would love to pick up sticks or harvest tomatoes more than I want to sit in a chair working until the wee hours because I might not make my internet bill.
Plus I could use the more organized time and money to pursue things that might make more money, like sales or designing websites, or YouTube, or writing novels, or anything other than sitting on the line praying someone will call so I can make my bills until 2 am. Perhaps it will give me enough room to breathe and anaylize if waiting on the call center line is really my highest paying job, or are my writing gigs, or are my private clients? If I have space to just think and breathe, these are the types of things I could accomplish. Having a budget that is under control allows that.
This is my barebones budget with my characteristic middle school cursive. I can maybe make a few minor tweaks, like my heat budget could be dropped to $10 a month, the truck could be dropped by $25 a month, the food budget might be dropped by $25 a month if we get enough veggies from the farm, and I might be able to shave $25 from the internet bill if we drop to a lower speed, but that could impact our ability to work. My point is, on this bare bones budget, I have less than $100 wiggle room and that is only if certain conditions are met. Also, most months my emergency savings is eaten up by medical supplies or little licenses and fees. I am certain all categories will drop by a dollar or two because I won’t be paying fees out to them anymore. Anyway, as you can see, even this rough draft needs some tweaks here and there to eek out some money for little needs like medical supplies.
This is just the low hanging fruit I could do to reduce costs. The way I manage my health, with better time and money management, means less insulin injections everyday and in short that translates into less money spent everyday just to stay alive. Better menu planning may reduce food costs even lower although I kinda doubt it can go much below $75 a month for three people. Utilizing grocery pick up for some items like toilet paper, cat litter, cat food, and trash bags or even Amazon delivery may be cheaper than buying locally if bought in bulk and I have the time to compare products, quality, and price. (I know it is now that I looked. Dang!) Toilet paper math is no longer a mysetery, so I might be able to figure out the best deal now. Plus, I can do surverys and mterk for items on Amazon, which means emergency toilet paper needs can be met. Sewing or purchasing reusable coffee filters and ladies needs might shave another $5 to $10 from the monthly budget. The point is, once I get these items I addressed honed in, I will be able to make further reductions in the bills and monthly household needs, although at some point it becomes a game of diminishing returns. Sometimes, there’s no more juice in the squeeze.
I just can’t imagine people live without someone in their household sitting down and writing out the basics like this. Unless she is just a housewife that neither earns nor has the freedom to spend beyond her allowence, it boggles my mind how anyone could honestly live without doing this simple exercise once a month. I am not even the greatest at money, and I do this every month…sometimes twice a month. Plus I track every penny that goes out and where it goes…so I know currently I am NOT following this budget 100%. (Not even close when our income dropped to about 1k)
Moving Forward
After I get my money set up a month ahead in the Qube money app, and I have honed in my budget better, I would like to really analyze my per hour rate at my three different gigs. I know what they say they pay, but there’s a catch here or there. I get $18 per hour of talk time on the call center, but if no one calls, I get zero pay. Around the summer of ’23 I was averaging about $9 per hour. It has gone down since then, because I have expanded my hours but my pay has stayed the same.
I get $10 per blog post that is purchased at my writing gig, which each one takes an hour to write. If no one purchases my writing, I make nothing. Typically about 67% of my pieces are purchased, but that has gone down. So you figure about $5 an hour or $6 an hour writing. At the height of it I made $1400 a month writing. Now that would be a hard goal to meet just from writing.
My private clients pay about $20 to $30 an hour, but they are far and few between. I have may be two consistent private clients and at least one financially is hitting the wall. I expect them to drop off pretty soon.
I have one potential work oppurtunity as a social media manager, but I have yet to see how that pans out. I already know that job will not pay the entirity of the $1500 a month I need. I am hoping if I get the social media manager position that it will pay a minimum of $500 a month.
You see, as the months have gone on, since about December, every single gig has paid less and less. People call less into the call center, people buy less blog posts, and people need less private consultations. Almost every single client has told me they plan to call a lot less, purchase less work, or need me less in the future.
I have other earnings avenues that may or may not pan out, like writing my own books, making some YouTube videos, designing websites and driving traffic to sell items, or something similiar, but all of these require a huge upfront investment of time, energy, sometimes equipment, skills I lack, software I lack and don’t know how to use, and more. Being able to narrow down my most lucrative gigs will help me pin point what to put most of my time into in order to have extra time to learn these things.