Money Obedience

We all know that the current economic crisis is hitting every pocket in the economy. There is nowhere to hide. For example, we were shocked about the take-over of Wyeth where one of our friends works in the research lab. He is super-smart and holds a PhD in chemistry. Yet, his job may very well be eliminated within a year, and this will have dire consequences for his family. Of course, they depend on the income from his job for their economic well being.

So, this morning Hubby asked me if my profession feels the downturn – I guess he presumed that because college professors are on multi-year contracts, they don’t. Well, class sizes have gone up and so will tuition. Conference travel has been cut significantly and international travel is disallowed. Our already meager office supply budgets are being cut again. Recently, I was promised cash remuneration for doing some service work, and the whole thing was just “renegotiated” – without my input! That is, I was told “Thank you very much for the service,” but told that I can have goods instead of cash. If I need to get a new keyboard, I guess that’s where I can get it from, but I’d rather have the $300 I earned, in cash, thank you very much.

So, we do all we can to improve our home life, since work life in this kind of economy requires greater and greater sacrifices (like working harder and receiving less, that is if you’re lucky enough to hold onto you job). If I look at it this way, there are actually some good news about the crunch. Like my baking. Since we’ve become a gluten-free household, and gluten-free store bought stuff is (1) expensive in the extreme and (2) cardboard-like in flavor and texture, I’m doing an awful lot of my own baking. That’s been well received in the household, especially by the kids. I learned that even the baby loves brownies (a shocker to me because I don’t even like chocolate!). My kids are so content with what they have it makes me proud, and they’re even elated when family and friends send over hand-me-downs. (Daily, my three year old specifically asks for his “Merrick” shoes, the cool shoes his cousin gave him.) And I’m happy to put on our kitchen bulletin board the pretty pictures the kids paint for me on the white backs of the “mistakes” that come out of my printer.

Still, some discomfort remains. Hubby and I talk often about how the crisis is affecting people on the brink – and we well know so many who are struggling today when they were on top of the world six months ago. I shudder to think of how those living (or as Kevin Bales says “slowly dying”) on a dollar a day are doing. It is easy to forget these very poor people of the world when you are concerned about your own immediate economic prospects. They are still out there and struggling more than ever.

As I think more on these issues, if anything that brings relief to my overtaxed brain comes up, I’ll surely let you all know about it. One thing is likely though. The economic crisis will make us refocus on what life is all about – living, and not chasing more and more dollars. I’ll be glad to hear comments on how you’re all making it work.

When we decided to write this personal finance blog, my wife and I wanted to use this blog for our own benefit to some extent. We want to explore how our financial choices impact our overall well-being.

I actually think that many blogs are partially written for the benefit of the writer. I read to a number of bloggers who track their success with their own personal finances by keeping their struggles and successes public. This makes them more accountable since they have readers watching over their shoulders. It seems like this strategy works pretty well. In the course of their public account they probably also give some of their readers an incentive to get their finances in better order. So, we hope that we will be as successful in exploring the connection between happiness and our financial choices and in stimulating our readers to think about this ultimate goal, too – what really makes you happy in the long run?

Now, today I was wondering whether our mission for our blog was still a viable idea after I read the article “Happy Despite It All? Thank Your Friends, Study Shows”. This article refers to a long-term study that shows that happy friends make you happy, too. Maybe we do not need to focus on how our financial choices make us feel better. Maybe we should focus on how we can make friends with happy people instead. For example they noted that someone is 5.6% happier if the friends of their friends are happy, while gaining $5000 makes someone only 2% happier!

Well, for all we know, maybe happy people have their personal finances in good order. I cannot cite a study that proves that. (Maybe we should commission one.) But people who stay up at night worrying about their finances are probably not happy during the day. Okay, then, I think we should stick with the mission for our blog. After all, the article also says that happy people cluster together, i.e., happy people attract other happy people. As long as we focus on how our financial choices impact our overall well-being, our readers may be inclined to do likewise. And right there, we would have a cluster of other happy people in our social network. Welcome to the club!