A lot of young witches make the mistake of gathering up exotic ingredients for their spells. They burn some sage, cast a circle, and release their spell into the universe. Sadly, when their spell doesn’t work, they start giving up on magic. I learned that magic has little to do with eyes of poor little newts and everything to do with will. Will – as in – “What am I willing to do to make a change?” The universe, the Gods, the magic itself is very willing to help, but the person who has to do the actual work is most certainly the witch. When I found myself buried under a mountain of debt I knew I needed a very mundane action plan and probably some tools that were a little more associated with money beyond my magic wand.
When it comes to money, the first tool that many people think of are budgets. I had tried budgeting in the past. It hadn’t worked for me. Every month I broke the budget on multiple categories and not only did it put my bank account in the red, I felt like a total failure. My income was exactly the same every month, my expenses…rather, my Fundamental Needs, fluctuated. Not only did I not know how much gas was going to cost each week, it was hard to predict sometimes just how much I might need.
Budgets, in my opinion, are a lot like diets. I had been on lots of diets. My parents had tried one that I can remember when I was a child. My one-time husband had tried many. Despite my athletic physique, I wasn’t given the option not to be on those diets. In each case, neither my parents nor my husband had lost a significant amount of weight. I, on the other hand, was left starving. These diet foods did not have enough calories to balance my physical life and the food tasted bad. The only thing diets dwindle in my experience is positive attitudes, not waistlines.
Diets work on the premise of deprivation. The theory is that if you remove certain foods from your life, and carefully calculate calories, you will lose weight. Budgets work from a similar position – you will only allow yourself to spend a certain dollar amount in set categories and when you reach that point, you will simply deprive yourself of anything more in that category. More often than not, deprivation just leads to frustration and then to hopelessness, hence the reason why most budgets and diets fails.
In my case, no matter how I much I tried, there was never enough in my paycheck to spread out to all of my expenses. Something always had to suffer. Well what was ultimately suffering was me – anxiety at the grocery store, sleepless nights, and a lot of tears. Getting a second job was out of the question. I had already gone over the advantages and disadvantages of getting a second job and the disadvantages heavily outweighed the advantages. There weren’t any expenses to be cut either. I hadn’t had a haircut in years, and I certainly wasn’t visiting Starbucks daily. I didn’t have expenses, I had Fundamental Needs I had to figure out how to pay for.
When my son brought home his homework assignment of his Fundamental Needs I couldn’t recycle it. I loved it so much that I actually still have it to this day.
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| My son's Fundamental Needs Chart |
I had even made my own fundamental needs chart, although it was less exciting without all the colorful photographs of my son’s chart.
Fundamental Needs
Material Needs
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Transportation
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Defense
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Shelter
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Clothing
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Food
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Auto Fuel
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Medical
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Water Bill
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Child Clothing
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Groceries
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Car Maintenance
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Pet care
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Mortgage
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Personal Clothing
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Dining out
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I-pass and Tolls
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Child care
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Home Maintenance
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Work Uniforms
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Parking fees
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Cell Phone
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Electric
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Alternate transportation
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Internet
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Gas
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Registration
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Insurance
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Cleaning Supplies
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Gym Membership
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Office Supplies
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Spiritual Needs
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Culture
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Religion
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Vanity
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Outings
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Debt repayment
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Kid’s Activities
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Vacation
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Education
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Costumes
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Mementos
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Fees
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Gifts
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Taxes
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Donations
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Makeup
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Personal Care
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My son had chosen to place transportation first on his chart. That could have been completely random, but for a child of divorce living in two households, transportation is a pretty big deal. I could make the argument that transportation was probably the most significant event my son regularly dealt with. I could understand that so clearly, and I appreciated why my son had arbitrarily chosen to place transportation first on his chart. I wondered what the other children in his class had put first on theirs.
I knew what I would put first, I thought - Food.
It was food. That was what was most important to me. It was so important that I gave myself a panic attack at the grocery store every time I went. The question that haunted me at night was “How am I going to feed my child?” And for me, food was more than nourishment for the body. When I thought about the cakes I made with my son, that time being together was nourishment for the soul. Moreover, I attributed the health my son and I enjoyed to the food that we ate. I wasn’t succumbing to the lure of fast food on my crazy schedule and shoestring budget, I was actually cooking at home. It was so important to me I served “dinner” at lunchtime, so I got to prepare the biggest meal of the day and left the sandwich making to the babysitter when I went to work at night. Food was my most significant event.
But when I tried to budget my groceries, I always felt like a failure. Food prices, just like gasoline, fluctuated all the time. I couldn’t predict it accurately. However there was one glaring issue that I had never considered, I waited to go grocery shopping after I paid bills, usually leaving almost nothing (and sometimes actually nothing) to make food purchases. I couldn’t even be tempted by the seemingly low prices of fast food, there wasn’t anything in my account to pay even the clown.
But if food was so important to me - my personal most significant fundamental need - why on earth was it the last thing I bought with my limited income? It simply didn’t make sense to do that. My reality was simple: I had a very fixed income that wasn’t going to change and I had a number of expenses that fluctuated but were also unchangeable. Something else I had to face was that I had more expenses than I earned in income. This was my reality and there was little that I could do about it. But I was so tired of the panic attacks at the grocery store, they were exhausting and they wasted so much of my time.
So, I made a radical decision. I decided that before I paid a single bill, I would go grocery shopping first. When payday rolled around and there was money back in my account I would buy food. I would buy anything I thought I needed. If it was food and somebody was going to eat it, it was going to be purchased. And whatever the price on the sale receipt, I would pay it and I would simply stop freaking out about it. Because if I went shopping first, I would not be turned away for lack of funds. I also knew that food would be eaten. It wasn’t going to languish or rot in my refrigerator, I knew I was going to cook it, and feed healthy food to my child. I was absolutely sure of that. When it came to food at the grocery store, I knew with certainty, that I had nothing to feel guilty about.
Defense as a whole was the next category that was obviously important to me. I filed a number of things under defense that perhaps wasn’t an obvious fit to someone else. But this was not about what was obvious to other people, this was about what I needed. Both my son and I had chronic health conditions, I in particular, required daily medication. So, I decided that the first bill I would pay after going to the grocery store would be medical bills. I could do a payment plan to make them manageable. And as an added bonus, this was not necessarily a regular expense.
The health and well-being of my child was always at the forefront of my mind and that was largely the reason for the category of defense having a number of expenses listed there. The babysitter’s payment was what I decided I would pay next. She was my son’s caretaker and protector when I was unavailable to fill that role.
Next, was the mortgage. Having food was priority number 1 for me, protecting my child was obviously number 2, but if I didn’t have a place to keep and serve the food or to house the child and the babysitter, that would be problematic. I had two mortgages which did not make that an easy feat to tackle. I had to get a little creative here. What if I broke them up? What if I paid the smaller 20 percent mortgage early, at the end of the month? Then I could pay the larger 80 percent mortgage after payday on the first of the month. The mortgage company would hardly balk at getting their money early. Most of my smaller bills were due at the end of the month anyway, so I really only had to worry about groceries and the larger mortgage payment at the first of the month. That would make things a little bit easier. My anxiety lessened.
I took every expense I had and ranked it. Defense was very important to me, but the car insurance which was filed under defense would be useless if I didn’t have gasoline to power my transportation. Both my work uniforms and regular clothing were filed under clothing, but I wasn’t growing like my son was. In fact, I’ve been the same size my entire work career. I knew there would be times that an unavoidable tear might require me to make an emergency purchase, but as a general rule, clothing could take a backseat to other fundamental needs.
Culture was very important to me but as I was looking carefully at what I spent my money on I had to give myself some kudos here. I was pretty creative. I regularly searched the internet for fun (and free!) events happening in the city. My local library had passes for free entry to many museums for children and their caretakers too. I was always expanding my son’s world with culture (Not such a bad mom after all!). So, I was able to push culture to a lower quarter of my financial priority list without feeling like I was depriving myself and my child.
That allowed me to address some other shelter needs; like the utilities. I decided that gas was more important than electrics. Gas powered my stove which tied it to the all-important food, but I decided that if the electric company cut me off, well, I’d use an ice chest and camping stove if I had to.
The Moment Magic Happened
It was at that moment – choosing to pay the gas bill before the electric bill – that the magic started to take root. Because, I had foreseen a possible consequence to my action, and I decided I was willing to live with it. It was at that moment that I stepped beyond the role of victim, and into the role of a survivor.
Being a victim, sometimes is inevitable. It isn’t karma, sometimes bad things happen to good people and there isn’t a reason or a purpose to it at all. It’s a happening, and it is tragic and terrible. Being a victim is nothing to be ashamed of. However, getting stuck in that role, as I had for nine years, is a terrible place to live. In fact, I believe I’ve already stated, it’s not living, it’s dying - every day - for the rest of your life. For me, the difference between a victim and a survivor, is one simple thing: choice. A victim cannot choose. They are unfortunately at the mercy of their attacker and abuser and that is not their fault or their karma. A survivor though, gets to a place where they make choices and regain control of the path their life takes.
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