"Budgets and Balance Sheets"

  

            I begin every month with taking a legal sized envelope and folding it into fourths. Each quarter gets a week’s designation, and each week receives a spending limit. I record all expenditures on the virgin exterior of the envelope—whether it be a major outflow like $142.15 for groceries or something as minor as $3.14 for a Sonic Slush. At the end of every week, I total the damage, feeling smugly triumphant if I’ve kept our spending in the green, or vowing to do better if we dip into the red. My obsession with number crunching allows us to indulge at the end of the month if anything extra remains. Most of the time, though, we simply break even. By the end of each month, the overstuffed envelope’s surface is covered with numbers and notes on spending habits. It remains in my upper desk drawer until the credit card statement arrives as a means of double checking the balance for our month’s expenses. 

            My obsession continues into my record keeping. I have ledgers dating back to those first months of our marriage where we stretched $850 a month income across apartment rent, utilities, insurance, school loans and food. The numbers may have changed over the years, but my strategy remains the same. I know exactly where every penny goes, can use one year’s budget to project into the next year, and based on one year’s spending will plan financial goals.

            I rarely set the goal of saving money just to save it. We don’t have some huge balance accruing that hasn’t been assigned an end purpose. The chunk of money accumulating in our Money Market goes to taxes on our home this month and anything left over will stay in place for April’s income taxes and work on the car. All of the budgeting and balance sheets pays off in the long run. We work together as a family to reach very specific spending goals. By watching the outflow carefully, we’ve plugged up leaks and pooled funds into building a secure future.

            Sometimes I wonder if I’d hold onto the monthly envelope and colorful ledgers if our income ever rose. Would I stop tracking that dollar spent here? Or that five spent over there? Then I admit with chagrin that number crunching flows through my veins. It’s part of who I am, how I think. Whether I have only a teacher’s retirement income or a million dollars doesn’t matter. I’d track my spending, set my goals, and record all expenditures.

            Maybe I’d just have a larger envelope! 

 

Copyright 20214 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"National Geographic: The Gift That Keeps Coming"

 

         Every year for Christmas we receive a subscription of National Geographic for Christmas. I think this last year marked the thirty-second consecutive year that the magazine’s been renewed. Now, I love the magazine; but after so many years, I’m running out of attic space to store the back issues. I called around once to see if any schools or local libraries would take our issues, and gave up trying to find a home for them. Recently, I’ve toyed with the idea of tossing all of them into the huge recycle bins over by the local elementary school, but that seems so wasteful.

         When I taught, I’d take several years’ worth of subscriptions in for my students to read. Many of the kids enjoyed the maps, the wonderful glossy photography, and the articles on exotic places and animals. Occasionally, students would ask if they could keep magazines, and I thankfully encouraged them to take whatever they wanted.  Eventually, the thumbed through magazines became sources for art projects. Now that I’ve retired, I’m at a loss on what to do with them. Next week, our city has a huge trash pick-up and citywide garage sale. I toy with the idea of taking the boxes out to the front yard and placing huge FREE signs on them.

         I guess my longing to clear out closest and attic space signals a shift in my life. My tendency to catalogue and box away books and magazines for “future references” shifts to a need to clean, sort, and simplify. I donated hundreds of books to Goodwill during my last year of teaching. I had “open classroom” giveaway afternoons where other teachers came to my room, raided my closets and bins, labeled book shelves and tubs, and rummaged through thirty years of teaching treasures. Perhaps the purging bug began then, and now it’s continuing into my personal life. I did begin following the guideline that if I buy something, I need to donate or throw away a similar item. A new pair of shoes means I now forfeit a pair. If I succumb to the lure of a set of dishes, an older set must find a new home.

         If I have my way, some kind person will drive up during the curbside clean-up and appreciate the wonderful gift left in our front yard. A bargain hunter may snatch the magazines up to resale at a garage sale or a flea market to try to make a little profit.  I like to imagine another family picking up the boxes and discovering the world through National Geographic's perspective.

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman  

“Petri Dish”

 

            Yesterday, a friend asked if I ever planned on returning to the classroom. After thirty years teaching and another eight years working as a substitute, she wondered if I missed my filled-to-the-brim days.

            “I can’t go back to the petri dish,” I responded directly to her question.

            “Petri dish?”

            “You know, the wonderful thing about Facebook turns out to be the Memories section. I never realized just how often I felt sick. How year-after-year, I suffered through stomach viruses and colds. Twice a year, my throat roughened into sandpaper. I caught colds that lasted for three or four weeks, recovered enough to feel decent for another week, and then cycled right back into hell.”

            Since 2020, I’ve had COVID-19 that was mild due to vaccinations and . . . NOTHING!

            At one point, I speculated that I may have had allergies since I fell sick repeatedly each fall and spring when both my husband and son suffered from airborne allergens. But during the last four years, I’ve walked when the ragweed and mold levels tip to purple without a sniffle. I bathed in oak pollen each spring with no scratchy throat, runny eyes, or chest tormenting cough.

            Work and school placed me into a petri dish of viruses that pulled me under within a few weeks of the start of each year and then again after winter break. I cycled from virus to virus and suffered tremendously.   

            The loss of substitute income means I’ve had to realign my budget, but it’s worth every penny lost because I feel so much better! In the back of my mind, I know that as I age, recovering from each round of virus induced illness may become harder. I want to live with as much good health as possible and diving back into the cesspool isn’t a risk I’m willing to take.  

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“The Silver Lining”

 
 
            My husband’s company informed him last week that his department will work remotely permanently. My resounding “Whoop!” shook the windows. We definitely celebrated this news.

            David worked for fourteen years from the home as a freelance illustrator. During those years, we loved that our son always came home to a parent in the house. When we decided to homeschool, my son and I designed his coursework, but David daily donned the role of teacher. Working from home meant we could back-burn our oldest car and keep it going for twenty years. It meant I came home to less housework and cooking because David could wash a load of clothes or run the vacuum when he took a break. During my breaks from teaching, we slowed the pace of our days—no alarm clocks all summer long! 

            The disadvantage for this type of work, of course, is that it’s a feast-or-famine financial forage. Income fluctuated dramatically from month to month and contract to contract. There are no benefits like medical coverage unless you pay out-of-pocket. No paid vacations. If David didn’t work, he didn’t earn. His parents would get upset when we couldn’t join the family on one of their various vacations. They didn’t understand that to go on a trip for a couple of weeks meant we’d have to have the money saved for both the cost of the vacation plus two weeks’ pay! Because he never knew when the next round of work would surface, we tried to live as much as possible within my Texas teacher’s low salary.
            With David’s current situation, we have the security of a regular salary and benefits coupled with the easier, slower pace that comes from working from home. David’s six-year-old car’s 75,000 odometer reading no longer worries me. The week before last, my mind ran through the scenario that we’d need to replace it long before my 2005 RX8 since David puts more than 1,400 miles a month on it. Now we’ll use it for errands all within ten miles from the house. I’m already only driving the Mazda weekly for a twenty minute spin to keep it running since I no longer need it for the part-time job I worked before COVID-19.

            We still start our mornings with an alarm clock, only it’s set at 7:15 instead of 5:15! David grabs a bowl of cereal and sets up his laptop for the day instead of rushing out the door for bumper-to-bumper traffic going across San Antonio. His department took walking breaks twice a day. Now that I can walk again, we’ll do the same breaks together. We lunch together, too.  David eats during one episode of House Hunters-International, and we admire the adventuresome spirit of the people highlighted.
            In all of the financial losses, illnesses and deaths caused by a pandemic, we’ve found our silver lining.

Copyright 2020 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman