A story of my parents

A post at MightyBargainHunter gave me pause. The post is a discussion of parents holding control over their minor child's finances. I haven't discussed my family history too much on this blog, simply because I've tried hard to move on from that aspect of my life. However, the post sparked some thoughts.

When I was young, I hated to spend my own money. I'd happily spend other people's money, and by and large, my parents would buy me stuff to make up for their other failings. But I can still remember the first purchase I made, a $30 Timex digital waterproof watch, when I was 11, and I agonized over the purchase for weeks. I saved all birthday and Christmas money, as well as any extra money I got from allowances, grandparents, etc. My grandparents on both sides would also regularly purchase savings bonds. All this money went into a savings account, and by the time I was ready to go off to college, it had well over $25,000 in it.

Or, it should have. There wasn't a single cent in it. My parents were never good with their finances, and they took the money without telling me. I might have been more willing to accept their need, had it not gone to finance my father's prostitution fixation.

How differently would life had turned out for me if I had a cushion for when my life turned upside down and I ended up in the hospital? If I had that money now, I could be completely debt free, with a bit to spare.

That being said, if my parents had been the type to not need to raid their child's savings, my medical crisis probably wouldn't have led to the financial crisis as well.

But maybe the most significant thing I think my parents "did" to me is maybe the least tangible. When I get into some sort of trouble, either of my own making, or something that was out of my control, I'm really bad about asking for help. I panic, and usually make decisions that end up making the problem worse. Admitting mistakes, even if they weren't my own, was always a recipe for trouble, and I never really learned how to reach out.

That's not to say that my situation isn't my responsibility, it is. I had a lot of young and stupid moments, as well as some really immature decisions. I'm working on it...

Mental block

I met the major goals for this month, and really, my life has gotten back on track. I've taken control of my finances, although from now on out, my expenses will be up since I'll be responsible for rent and groceries again. I have a job, a place to live, and I'm feeling reasonably secure and independent.

Yet...I'm still struggling mentally. One of the ways I tried hard to fight sinking back into depression from the trauma I went through, the chronic pain, and the general isolation was to focus on a checklist of things that I absolutely had to fix in my life. Now that I've corrected most of the disasters, I'm feeling a little lost and unsure of where to go from here. I don't really have any more answers than I did a year ago, and I guess I was sort of hoping that I'd have some sort of revelation once I cleared the major hurdles. But I don't. Without a defined checklist, I'm floundering a bit.

May 2008 Review

My net worth as of May 31st, 2008:

($16,191.18)

Assets:

Liquid assets:
$1,579.62
Investments:
$5,232.20
Total:
$6,811.82

Liabilities:
Consumer Debt:
$23,003.00
Hospital Bills:
$0
Total:
$23,003.00

That is a 62% increase in my net worth. My assets actually decreased a bit this month, mostly due to an increase in spending. My big discretionary expenses were a large entertainment bill and a larger transportation bill. The entertainment expense was purchasing two tickets to a baseball game, this is an event that I will attend in Sept. There's a chance that my team will make it to the playoffs this year, and I had the opportunity to get front row tickets directly next to the visitor's dugout. It's not cheap, but I'm very excited about it. I'm not sure why the transportation bill was so large. My quarterly medical retainer bill came through, as well as some repayment expenses.

I'm going to try something new and put the spreadsheet I use online for everyone to see. I use it to track and categorize my income and expenses, as well as keeping track of my net worth. Check it out here. I did earn more than I spent for the month.

May Goals review

At the end of each month, I will go through and evaluate the progress I made on the goals I post at the beginning of the month.

For May:

Financial:
Increase net worth by 15%

I achieved this. I'll post the detailed breakdown further, but I've resolved all my medical debt. This caused my net worth to increase by a whopping 62.39%. I've continued to add no debt, and I'm making slow progress on my consumer debt. Things should certainly begin changing on that front over the next month or two.

Personal:
Move into a new home
File complaint with landlord-tenant board

I met one of these - well, mostly. I'm still moving "stuff" to the new place, but it's mine. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm putting some money into household items (things like new pillows, for example), since I have an actual bed instead of sleeping on a couch, as I have been for...2.5 years now. I'm going to strive to actually take better care of myself and begin making an actual life for myself instead of constantly living out of boxes. I don't know why I haven't made the effort to file the complaint letter with the landlord tenant board. I'm going to absolutely force myself to do this.

Two of three, and the two major ones...not bad.

Slowly but surely

You'll notice the graphs on the sidebar have been slowly increasing. I've managed to put an extra $2000 into my Vanguard account. By 6/6, I'll be able to split that fund into the growth and income funds I've planned on.

That means I'll have 6 months to come up with another $6,000 to manage to get all my funds bought. That'll be a real stretch to meet it by the end of the year, and 5/1/09 is definitely the more realistic goal. A lot will depend on how my debt payments end up working out. Either way though, I feel that I'm really starting to get a true handle on my finances.

I did my part

This is for all the ER docs and nurses reading this blog (if there are any). When I was in the ER, I behaved well. I tried to be as polite as possible to everyone that came into my room. I only described the pain when asked, made no complaints, and didn't ask for a thing. I apologized profusely when the EEG wouldn't work because my muscles are clenching and twitching too much for an accurate reading. I smiled and said please and thank you whenever I could. I also refused the pills and prescription they gave me on discharge.

My ER experience may have been the one of the more unpleasant things I've ever done, but I've taken the blogs I read to heart, and tried to behave in the way you've requested patients act. It didn't really make any difference to the way I was treated, but at least I can be fairly confident I won't be making a featured appearance in a blog post.

A few updates

Well, this weekend was one of "those" weekends. I managed to land myself in the ER Thursday night, for the first time related to pain. It wasn't quite normal pain though, I started experiencing sharp, excruciating, and unrelenting pain just underneath my ribcage on my left side. I called my doctor after about an hour, and he had me go to the ER thinking it could be a heart or lung issue. I thought it was more in the abdominal area, but I was panicking and scared and went anyway. After an EEG and a contrast CT, they figured out it wasn't my heart or lungs. So I got written off as a drug seeker and parked in between the homeless people passed out from a night of alcohol and left for 6 hours. Not the most fun.

Now I'm still experiencing the pain intermittantly, along with some blood coming from somewhere inside, but I'm not going do anything about it right now. If it's a small tear or something, it will heal on it's own. If it's cancer, I wouldn't get treatment anyway. If I start feeling shocky, then I'll call my doctor. Until then...

So after doing all of that Thursday/Friday, I decided to have some fun over the weekend. I went out to a minor league baseball game, which was a ton of fun - no one goes to single A games, and there's no security, so you can basically hang out with the ballplayers. It's even better when you're on the visitors side. Then I went out to dinner afterwards. I spent some money on that, but I needed something to get my mind off of things. I'm also going to get a haircut next week, which is a fairly major expense, but I only do it every six months.

I move into the new place next weekend, so I'll have to start thinking about how to make the space my own.