September 2022 – Amy Liming

Temptation.

Excuses are easy to come by; temptation to break the No Purchase Year is running rampant.

It’s Fall; it’s getting cold. I could use some fall clothes.

Ummm, these wrinkles around my eyes need to go. Botox would do it.

Halloween is coming, and I would love some new fun Halloween and fall
decor. And dog costumes!

I could go through more, but they all sound the same in the end. “I should
forgive myself for breaking the No Purchase Year because….”

Because Fall, because Halloween, because aging. I’m happy to report that
these all ended with reminding myself what I’m doing and why, but the
temptation is real.

It also ended because I took each temptation and ran it through my mental
scanner. Fall clothes—I do NOT need these. When I decluttered and organized
my closet, I came up with four similar tan sweaters, two similar brown
cardigans, and eleven pairs of boots suitable for Fall and winter. Listening to
myself describe the number of things I have was enough to dissuade the
suggestion of purchasing any fall and winter clothes.

Arguing against Botox is hard on my pride, vanity and insecurities. I have all
of those things at once. The only way I got past this was to remind myself of
the associated cost and the feeling of thirty little needle pricks in my skin.
Pay for pain.

Halloween is tougher. It was my favorite holiday until my father died on
October 31, 2021. Distracting myself with skeletons, witches, and candy sounds
like a fantastic idea to keep me swimming around this time. When I tossed this
one into the hopper and mulled it over, it was harder to talk myself down. I
still cry nearly daily (alone, in my truck) about my father’s death; I cannot
imagine the reaction and pain on the actual anniversary. Maybe a distraction,
some joy, humor, and horror would be just the ticket not to cry myself into a
swamp of blankets and running mascara.

Historically, that’s what I’d do. It’s what I’ve always done when things are
too difficult, but it’s not the right thing to do. On August 5, I clocked into work, told everyone I was “fine,” and went about my day. I probably ordered 15 things from Amazon that day, too. But then I got a migraine, and I got sick on top of that, and I told myself it had
NOTHING to do with the emotions boiling under the surface that I would not and
could not discuss. August 5 is the day my mother died, and I was not there, and
I am not okay with anything around this event.

I haven’t processed my mother’s death fully. It’s a challenging calling; growing
up, we never had the chance to be honest about our feelings or feel deeply
traumatized and cry. I’ve used the “push it down, jar it up, explode
later” method since I was little. Even trying to write about what happened
turns me into knots, and I have yet to confront, acknowledge or allow myself to
mourn these things.

While Forgetting is sometimes a good thing, avoiding is not.

So on October 31, I tell myself I am going to mourn. I am going to feel it
even if I’m in public. Even if mourning means I pull the blanket over me,
snuggle with dogs, and do NOTHING productive at all. This is what I’ve told
myself to keep from launching into a Halloween shopping spree and filling this
void with things.

Ah—there’s the rub. I’ve always filled the void with temporary, material
things to take the edge off. I didn’t become an alcoholic or a substance addict, but I did become an emotional shopaholic. The Year of Less isn’t just resistance to my financial waste or of the American tendency to hoard and live in excess.

It’s about taking away that crutch and living with myself. Bare, unfettered,
without the camouflage of new things.

Skeptically Yours.

Saturday, September 29—2012

I wore pink. Part 2.

see part 1 here: https://amyliming.wordpress.com/2022/09/17/saturday-september-29-2012/

“Why the hell not” turned into a series of brief interviews, during which we talked about everything that happened during these last two years. The good folks from Harley asked mom about the experience with cancer, and right away, I think they knew that we weren’t going to be average.

Mom talked about the diagnosis very quickly and the treatment even hastier. She spoke of not wanting to join a support group because, in general, it was a bunch of sick people talking about being sick.

Instead, she wanted to get through it fast and be surrounded by healthy people that reminded her of the future, not the present. The Harley folks were smiling. We talked about how far we were willing to go, even thinking about running to Mexico for coffee enemas and juice therapy. They laughed; they loved that we were laughing together.

They asked me why I started riding, and I wasn’t lying when I pointed at mom and said, “because of this, because of cancer.” I know that was the answer they expected, but as I explained, I hope they knew it was genuine. I had been enamored but highly fearful of motorcycles. Involving myself in the car industry meant I got plenty of adrenaline, but bikes—nope. It wasn’t until mom’s diagnosis that I looked at my list in an old journal titled “things I want to do, but probably won’t, because they’re scary.” So many of them had been checked off, surprising things I couldn’t believe I was actually afraid of, but there were a few that remained. “Ride a motorcycle, ” and a few odd ones here and there about love and my intense fear of commitment. I decided to tackle the motorcycles.

They asked my mom what bikes she liked, and she smirked and remembered the bikes I’d been showing her, rattling off. “Fatboy, Softtail.” Wow. No wonder we were cast.

On Wednesday, we went to Leo Carillo Beach and met the crew of the print ads. They fed us a fantastic breakfast, put us through hair and makeup, put us on a Sportster and shot pictures for about an hour, fed us lunch, and called, “that’s a wrap.” Before we left, the rep from Harley hugged my mother and me and gave us Pink Label riding jackets.

Harley Davidson treated my mother like a superstar.

I have always admired the brand, loved the rumble of a Harley V-Twin, always secretly wished I was a little bigger so I could ride the bigger bikes, and now…I fully respect them more than I could ever put to words appropriately. The people in their ads were real riders, not just pretty (although Holy Christ, they were pretty, too!!). The causes they support aren’t just on paper. Their brand ethos isn’t just marketing.

As for the word ‘cancer’ in our house—it’s not a death sentence, it’s not something we talk about often, and it’s not something we dwell on anymore. As Breast Cancer Awareness month rolls out and everyone sells something pink, we haven’t ever participated. It’s been very under the radar. Now we’re about to be on posters and online and wherever else, the faces of people affected directly by cancer, the faces of a brand all about “pink.” And both of us will now make the exception to wear the color, so long as it’s on our Harley Davidson jackets.

To shop H-D Pink:

https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/shop/c/collection-pink-label?format=json;i=1;locale=en_US;q1=collection-pink-label;sp_cs=UTF-8;x1=superCategoryCodes

Saturday, September 29—-2012

I wore pink. Part 1.

Pink—it’s become the color chosen to represent a fight with or surviving breast cancer. It’s also been a color that I always found dreadful for the girliness attached to it and simply because I hated it. As a symbol, I hated it also because it reminded me of the very, very vicious disease that has, for decades, been picking my family off one by one. Not just breast cancer, of course; I have a virtual medical degree just keeping up with the diseases from which my relatives have died. But breast cancer, indeed, was among them.

It’s a fact of life, partially from having a huge family.

It hit home when my mother called me on my way home from work over a year ago and told me, with weakness shaking a voice otherwise powerful and opinionated, that she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. In the months that followed, I jumped a plane countless times on the trek from LAX to CVG Cincinnati, read numerous books about cancer on the journeys to and from, and spent days and nights with my mom as she was operated on, bits of her removed, stuck with needles, chemotherapied, and on and on all countlessly. Medical—very medical. Very clinical. The smell of antiseptic sends me back sometimes to swabbing her sutures, to watching bags of blackness slowly drip into a port in my mother’s chest, to waiting awkwardly in a room with other cancer patients who didn’t speak to each other for fear of not seeing them again next week and knowing why.

If I were an only child, it probably would have broken me. But I am not an only child, and my brother and I switching on and off with my mom meant we both got to spend time with her; we got a break from the medications, hospitals, and heartache.

My mom, of course, never got a break. She lost her hair, her eyebrows, and eyelashes. One never fully appreciates those things until the sweat beads from a torturous Ohio summer stream into your unprotected eyes or until the snowy winter months leave your home encased in a snowdrift, the heater barely warming your sensitive, bald head. All of this, I observed as a spectator. My mother…well, she had to survive it.

And she did, and she’s here, and we don’t talk about it a lot because we all agreed to get on with life and leave the past to the immense universal shredder. And we don’t wear pink.

Just this once, though, I decided to go backward for a minute and asked my mother’s permission. Harley Davidson, which grew on me through the years as a popular brand and company and a helluva motorcycle, needed real riders and cancer survivors to be poster girls for their Pink Line. They donate to cancer research through the proceeds of this line, and their donations may well have touched my mom’s life and my life without us even knowing it at the time. In any case, I thought, “why the hell not??”

Don’t forget to check out part 2 here: https://amyliming.wordpress.com/2022/09/17/we-wore-pink-for-breast-cancer-harley-davidson-and-my-mother/

Comfort

Did I tell you about the last two years of my life?

Mr. Manne died. I moved to Ohio. My mother died. My father died. I married the love of my life, with whom I had only spent four weekends since 2005.

So it goes, right? That’s how everyone rolls through life, right? Life seems uncertain, and then BOOM—you hit forty and do everything all at once, No? Just me? Okay.

Just after the wedding, I started this experiment of purchasing nothing. I decluttered (and am still decluttering), reviewed my finances, and realized that, oh CRAP—it’s a mess. It’s always been a mess.

I looked at everything except vehicles; my vice and passion were left off the table for scrutiny. I had trimmed the excess fat off every other expense and bad habit. I’ve even cut out 90% of my eating-out and take-out coffee. It’s not perfect, but I sincerely thought I’d do worse with this.

Then came the honesty—I’ve always spent too much on my cars. I’ve typically had more than two cars for my entire adulthood; usually a classic (or 2 or 3) and my daily driver. All of these cars would be purchased, registered, and insured and start the lengthy, neverending, expensive process of modification. What can I say? I am, always have been, and always will be a gearhead.

I remember when I found my Roadmaster in a field in Pensacola during my Freshman year of college. She practically mesmerized me, and I thought about her nonstop until she was mine. At that point, I had the Nova, a little 5sp V6 Ranger, and then added the Buick into the stable. I was the only college Freshman I knew that had multiple cars.

It wasn’t like I easily had the money to do this. College was spent living with family, forgoing parties, bringing my lunches with me, and living like a miser in every other way. Then at night, I’d plug in the work light and tinker under the hood until my body ached with fatigue. Everyone else was partying, networking, drinking, and creating social bonds. In hindsight, I can’t say this was the best way to spend my college career, but it kept me out of trouble.

So now I look at these expenses, and the blaring cost is my Raptor. These days I only have 2 vehicles: the Raptor and the Roadmaster. I reluctantly put the Roadmaster up for sale. She’s a challenging sale to anybody but the most fearless of us petrol-headed type people. While the big stuff like engine, transmission, brakes, and suspension are present and accounted for, countless things need to be finished, installed, and buttoned up. If she weren’t mine, I would read that ad and think, “Yikes, too much work.”

My Raptor, though…

I decided to trade her in on something cheaper, reducing payments and overall cost-to-own. Cost-to-own is one of those sneaky topics that is easy to overlook. For me.

I test-drove. I tried. Folks—I’m skeptical that this part of me could ever…EVER…be subdued. The minute I started driving these potential replacement vehicles, I was picturing the mods. A tune, no doubt. Maybe lowering. A wrap? Yeah—I didn’t really like the color. Turning that part of myself off seems like an impossible task.

So, I have backtracked on this part of my expenses experiment. These last two years have been chaotic, and feeling like one thing is staying the same brings comfort. Sometimes that alone is worth hanging onto, even if the actual cost is monetarily higher. This has been the one constant in my life since I was three years old, and I’m okay to pay extra for this one thing.

I guess my silly ass will just accept the expense.

Skeptically Yours,

Bigskeptic

I Should Be Honest

My Biggest Personal Finance Challenge

I know I must answer for wasteful buying practices, blind purchasing, and emotional shopping. And a dining out proclivity. And relying on to-go coffee. Subscriptions. Ugh, the list goes on.

I have planned and listed plenty of things for this year of adaptation.

The one thing that was suspiciously left off these lists were my most significant expenses: mortgage, which I can’t change at this point, and I feel like my rate and payment are fine, and vehicle.

I drive a Ford Raptor. I LOVE this truck. It has saved my ass several times by practically driving itself with Advanced Cruise Control and Lane Centering when I’ve been sick and had to get myself to work or the doctor. She has been a champ during the Ohio winter months through sleet, snow, and ice. On a treacherous night in my previous position as a Field Rep, the biggest blizzard I had ever seen seemed to bear down on me in particular. My windshield wipers were so frozen they would barely move, and I was in the outer stretches of Ohio by West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. My CleverGirl triumphed through it all, and I was high and dry inside. It felt like she did that alone, and I was merely a passenger enjoying her bulk, strength, and capability.

If that sounds dramatically attached to a vehicle, you should know it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I have a relationship with every car I’ve ever had. My 1954 Buick Roadmaster sits in the garage unfinished, but I say “Hello Mattie” every time I see her. I have put blood, sweat, and tears into that machine to get her this far, and I would do it all again.

Automobiles aren’t A to B tools for me. Cars are the one place where Art, Physics, Design, and History meet a usable, tangible thing. The car has been alongside epic moments, moving our society forward. Think of JFK for just a few seconds and tell me—tell me that you don’t see his Lincoln Convertible attached. I can tell you many more examples, but know that for me- I cannot untwine the vehicle, history, art, and culture.

All this is to say, I’ve justified CRAZY high car payments because my vehicle is much more than a vehicle. A look back at my automotive past shines a light on the willingness to accept that a sizeable chunk of my income would be spent on vehicle-related items.

Silverado 6.2L 4×4 into Charger Daytona Scat Pack

From custom Mustangs to an F-Type to a loaded Charger Daytona Scat Pack and more—my vehicle purchases have been mainly for enjoyment.

And that brings us to now, with me listing my expenses meticulously and planning ways to do better. I have dissected everything in my life…except my costs regarding automotive. I LOVE my truck, but the truth about this Raptor is that it’s expensive. My monthly payment is crazy, insurance isn’t terrible but could be better, MPGs are deplorable, and anytime I have to replace something, it is UNGODLY expensive. Tires–minimum $2500. Tailight lens: $1200. You read that last part right: I had a pinhole in my taillight lens, and because of equipment like Blind Spot Monitoring and Cross Traffic alert—you can’t have ANY moisture inside those lenses.

If I’m honest with myself during this year’s experiment, I will say, “Self, you spend way too damned much on vehicles. What would you do with the money you saved from driving something less expensive?”

The answer to that is multifaceted. My husband and I want to foster children, which is enough for most people to make changes. We also have five rescued dogs, which are a big part of my monthly budget and absolutely my passion. If I needed to move five dogs in an emergency, it would be really hard in the Raptor. If we foster children, where would I put ALL that equipment you have to carry with you? Toss it into the bed? I won’t put dogs in the bed of a truck, and I don’t think throwing strollers, etc., back there is a fantastic idea.

And then there’s the hard truth: I have back-burner-ed until now: I NEED to trade that truck. I am not complaining about my pay or the teamwork I have with my husband, but I am not in the income bracket to easily drive this truck without stressing about costs. I would like to be, but I am not. Especially since I have, I have a debt to pay down.

And so—your humble narrator has done the one thing I have tried to avoid since starting this experiment (and since…birth). I have committed to selling this truck and replacing it with something dog and family-friendly. This is the way.

The Slip-Ups and the WINS

Progress Made (and then) the Inevitable Mistakes

I knew going in that if I cut everything 100%, I would soon see my vices and downfalls. I knew—I mean, how could I not know—that the #1 Vice in my spending would be coffee.

And oh, yeah…it’s coffee.

To date, since starting tracking everything, which began 8/15/22, I have purchased three coffees. THREE. On a normal “whatever” no budgeting type of week, I would have stopped nearly every morning for coffee and thrown in a donut or brekkie sandwich, so I’m not going to beat myself up for grabbing 3 Grande Pikes in a 2 week period. I can do better, but at $2.95/pc, I’m still okay.

But the other vice, I’ve found, is even worse! I intend to rectify my bad habits with DoorDash.

Tired, long hours, sick, busy: these are the buzzwords that keep DoorDash afloat, and they 100% are the reasons I tell myself to “go ahead and order.” I’m actually writing this currently with some DoorDashed Indian food. Womp, womp.

Not only is DoorDash riddled with delivery fees because of the convenience, but it’s also JUST PRICED HIGHER to build in profit. I work in sales management, and I understand that profits must be made where we can and then shuffled through operations in order to pay our overhead. It doesn’t mean I have to fall prey to these costs elsewhere, right?

Let’s take this Indian Food, for example. On Door Dash, my go-to meal is

And at the restaurant, this go-to meal is:

It was only $1.00 more, but these recurring charges do add up. When I forgot to bring lunch, I DoorDash. When I’m super tired and heading home from work, I check in with my husband and see how he feels. If we’re both in that same headspace, I jump in, have food delivered, and don’t think about the expense.

This exercise is supposed to MAKE me think about the expenses, so I am. And it DOES add up, particularly because my goal is to eat at home. The answer here is to MAKE SURE that home has easy meals intermingled with the meal plan of homemade dishes. On my next shopping list, I’ve included frozen pizzas and some microwaveable entrees that can fill this gap.

So far, the slip-ups have cost me :

Coffee-$8.85
Food Delivery-$164.52

I do have positive news about the close look at spending and purchasing during the first month of my One Year Purchase Ban:

It has helped me use Excel way more, and God knows I love a good spreadsheet.

The REALLY good news is that I have trimmed what seems like a ridiculous amount: $19,000 annually. I checked and checked and rechecked this math. What adds up in my life are services, mainly. Manis/Pedis, hair cut and color, BarkBox (sorry, pups), streaming services, and convenience items like house cleaning. Those are things I’m willing to give up. On the PETS side of the expenses, I am not willing to compromise on their food and medicine, but I know I can do better with toys and accessories. The entire list of items and services that I have trimmed or canceled:

That’s a pretty long list. Alcohol has never been a big bill for me; I’m topped out at one beer when I DO drink because of my Brain Injury. You may notice “ATV” and “ATV Insurance” on this list and find yourself wondering WHAT she was thinking. Well, we live in the woods, and our driveway gets iced and snowed over through the winter, so the ATV was fun but ALSO practical because it had a snow plow. I decided we could live without this additional cost and sold the ATV.

I don’t know if we can attach a snowplow to a Nissan Maxima, so this winter may get interesting. Either way, the monthly expense didn’t make sense for a tool that really only gets to shine 3 months out of the year.

I know that when starting this project, I was rather reckless with spending, but never in my life did I think forgoing some services would save me this much money. Naturally, having been wreckless, the money I save I don’t really see. It’s going straight into Debt Management (another big, long, WOMP WOMP.)