Curveballs and Catch-Ups

Do I really have 7 days of YNAB's 34 Day Challenge to catch up writing about. It's been a weird week. A weird, sad, scattered, interesting week. All over the map emotionally and I feel pretty wrecked today - compounded by the fact that my body has started treating itself like a virus to attack when I'm menstruating. What the heck is that about!? Not just cramps that put me in a fetal position for hours but now with wondering if I've actually caught influenza or is it just my hormones losing their flipping minds again...

This is going to be a cathartic, maybe not orderly, large post so get a hot beverage, or boozy one depending on where you are in the world and settle in.

Aye, aye captain! Fasting is something that evolved really naturally in my life. Applying it our our budget was a logically step. Financially, I am coming from a background of an unhealthy, uneducated relationship with money. I used it as a balm for stress and anxiety, I didn't understand debt, interest, accountability or responsibility. Life is awful right now, I'd say to myself time to put the dvd box set of Neon Genesis: Evangelion on my credit card! Ugh, an awful negative cycle that traps so many.

Being proactive and participatory in a fast isn't easy work. You are forced to acknowledge behaviours that sometimes aren't the best. Looking your weaknesses in the face and saying "Listen you, we are in this together and we know this isn't the best way we can do this so let's sort ourselves out" is more scary than it sounds on my silly blog. We want nothing more that to do right in the world, and when we fail or struggle it can be almost impossible to admit it, let alone know where to start to fix it. At least this was my story. It took CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), regular counselling, hard mental and emotional work to create a healthier behaviour with money, and more important a healthier, clearer relationship with myself. People aren't just "bad with money", that's a tell for someone who is struggling with complex issues and are hurting.

I am going to go on a coffee-out fast (and dragging my husband with me). No Starbucks, no Timmies, no McCafe and I am going to aim for a month-long fast. I make great hot drinks at home and I have great thermoses to keep them warm. Those convenient coffee shops are sanctuaries in the long Canadian winters but also easy to forget just how much money goes to that convenience. In 2018, we spent $136.93 at Starbucks, $175.40 at Tims and McDs $186.57... that's just shy of $500 for the year on coffees and our number was higher in 2017! Will we never ever EVER get coffees out again...no, that's silly but can we take 30 days to mindfully not spent $ at coffee shops - yes we can! It won't be a big chunk of change we save, but that mindset isn't helpful. Small is always going to be good enough because those small changes and challenges are the ones that lead to greater challenges and achievements. Epic isn't everything.

Mindfulness. Are we tired of hearing it yet, yes kinda. Too bad! It's important. It's present in my everyday life, from a driving force of my school council, to my children's classrooms, to my husband's work, to my everyday practice to keep myself on a healthy path. Despite its status as a buzzword, I wonder if people have taken the time to understand what it is. Without being remotely funny, Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda nailed it.

Mindfulness is right now. Your actions, your inactions, your breath, your thoughts, your feelings. Right. Now. YNAB's challenge asks us to use those super-powered smart computers we all have in our pockets to enter a transaction immediately after making it - when we are out and about spending our money as a way to engage with our actions in the here and now. You make better decisions with your money if you have a present, open relationship with it and are not relying on anything else to get it right for you. We all have time for this, we really do.

You don't have to sit criss-cross applesauce either ;)

YNAB's MixTape may be just about the dorkiest thing on the internet. 
I live for that level of enthusiasm. I love having it. I love seeing. It makes the world sillier and brighter.

Still hanging in there? Thank you❤️

Sadly, Day 17 is NOT a call to the championship pro-league of competitive budgeting. However, there is the 2019 Savings Challenge to get your competitive ya-yas out (you are competing against yourself by the way and cheering on your fellow budgeteers, this isn't the WWF Smackdown). Nope, Day 17 is basically "READ THE MANUAL DUMMIES!". We all rush into using tools and processes to improve our lives and skim the documentation. Education is awesome. Take the time to see if those appliances and applications you have, might actually have that feature you're looking for. Read the manual.

Since this past August I've been in a battle of rewards with my singular, exclusively used card. It's a rewards cards, points accrue per dollars spent at certain stores, bonus points if you buy offers on certain items. We carry no debt on it. It's paid in full all the time. So why the battle? Well, essentially because they, the credit card, company screwed up who was the primary card holder and haven't been crediting the reward points at all. Now thanks to YNAB I have a well documented accounting of all transactions on this card, thanks to recording and cataloguing all documentation from them during this issue, I know a) they owe me $482 in reward points and b) they've acknowledged that it is a problem on their end, but they have no intention of honouring their contract. Having enough of their nonsense and having better ways to spend my time then phone call after phone call after phone call to get them to do the correct thing and repeatedly send along all my documentation to be told someone will get back to me to never have that someone get back to me - I cancelled the card. Life goes on without rewards and it's not a reward to be punished for another's mistake, especially by a credit card company. There are other reward cards and my time is of value.

Make sure you understand your contracts with credit cards, make sure they are working for you! Life can exist happily without "rewards" credit card companies sell. These are companies that are working really hard to invest as little as possible in you to acquire as much of the money you have or don't have yet!

Day 19 I had done already earlier on in the year. Podcasts are a NEW THING for me, building a library of one's that reflect my interests. YNAB is on the list.

We've kept a pretty tight hold on our subscriptions all along. With our list of five, there's no fat to trim. Truth be told, we are considering Nintendo Online as the next subscription contender, but there are rigorous checks these services go through in our household to be deemed worthy.

And here I am all caught up, with my family breathing down my neck to hand-over my laptop so they can get into their Factorio LAN-party. The nerds.