Finance!
I've never been very good with money. Chrissy is always nervous to ask me if she can buy things because she was raised by frugal people. She hasn't quite gotten used to my typical reaction, which is "Sure! Buy it!"
I was raised in a house where our living situation went from well-off to dirt poor to well-off again, so I seem to have this attitude that I should spend it while I have it. A credit card is a horrible trap especially since all my old musical equipment seems to be wearing out at once. Therefore I am very proud to say that I sold my old amp and hunted like a madman for a cheap but good new one. I found a new one, the exact one I wanted, used, and sold the old one for the exact amount the new one cost with tax, and therefore I got a new amp without going over budget AT ALL.
Now if I could just learn to walk past a bookstore without buying something, or seeing a Starbucks and saying, "Mmm, five-dollar Frappuccino!"
I was raised in a house where our living situation went from well-off to dirt poor to well-off again, so I seem to have this attitude that I should spend it while I have it. A credit card is a horrible trap especially since all my old musical equipment seems to be wearing out at once. Therefore I am very proud to say that I sold my old amp and hunted like a madman for a cheap but good new one. I found a new one, the exact one I wanted, used, and sold the old one for the exact amount the new one cost with tax, and therefore I got a new amp without going over budget AT ALL.
Now if I could just learn to walk past a bookstore without buying something, or seeing a Starbucks and saying, "Mmm, five-dollar Frappuccino!"
posted by Spencer at 12:47 AM
4 Comments:
WE. WERE. NEVER. DIRT. POOR. I'm so sick of you saying that. We weren't well off - at all - for a while, but we were NEVER living in poverty. Not even for one single second. Quit saying that. It makes you sound like a poseur.
Dude, we were in a bankruptcy living off welfare. That doesn't qualify as dirt poor?
Mom and Dad declared bankruptcy because they'd been misinformed about it being the smartest way out of their financial troubles. They were financially strapped, but they did not HAVE to file. They've told me many a-time that if they'd known it would have so many repurcussions they would not have done it.
We were NOT on welfare. We took CHURCH welfare, but we were not EVER on government welfare. And no, it is not the same thing.
Dad still had a job. Mom got a job. We still had a house and cars. Mom and Dad had to dip into their retirement funds, I believe (and dip a LOT), but the fact is that they HAD retirement funds to dip into.
I don't know where you get this idea that we were "dirt poor," but I think anyone who actually WAS dirt poor would be insulted by that. Remember a family in our ward (a family I will not name, but the surname began with 'G' and they lived a few blocks away from us when we lived on L-6)? They had 9 kids in a 3 bedroom house. Some of the kids slept in the living room. Some in the shed out back. They had one car - a van that they had the ENTIRE time we were growing up - never got a new car. They wore hand-me-downs and were, not just one or two years, but many - maybe all the years we knew them - the recipients of the donated boxed Thanksgiving dinners and the secret santa poor family drawings at Christmas. They didn't just take church welfare food for a few months to get them through a rough patch.
And I don't think they considered themselves dirt poor. I didn't. I still don't, because they got by. You aren't dirt poor if you can get by. We were not dirt poor. You are never dirt poor if you have options.
Rebecca wins again.
btw,
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/06/24/winner-2/
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