Money Magic Part 3 - Battling Budgets

I'm back with more on Money Magic.  If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, you may want to read those articles first.

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.

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
Transportation	Defense	Shelter	Clothing	Food
Auto Fuel	Medical	Water Bill	Child Clothing	Groceries
Car Maintenance	Pet care	Mortgage	Personal Clothing	Dining out
I-pass and Tolls	Child care	Home Maintenance	Work Uniforms
Parking fees	Cell Phone	Electric
Alternate transportation	Internet	Gas
Registration	Insurance	Cleaning Supplies
	Gym Membership	Office Supplies

Spiritual Needs
Culture	Religion	Vanity
Outings	Debt repayment	Kid’s Activities
Vacation	Education	Costumes
Mementos	Fees	Gifts
	Taxes	Donations
		Makeup
		Personal Care

My chart did make me feel a bit better about spending money, but it wasn’t making magic happen. Some element from my own chart was missing. There was something magical about my son’s chart, so I compared them to see if I could figure out what it was (beyond those colorful pictures) that made my son’s chart special.

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.

Financial Fiasco + Fundamental Needs = Money Magic Part 2

I am finally able to continue my story about my journey from financial ruin towards a money magic.  If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

The Great and Powerful Witch

I am very flattered by my friends and others in the magical community. I am often told that I am a powerful witch. My spells do work, and largely the way I intended. The only unexpected results from my spells usually are added bonuses that continue to pay forward after the spell has come to fruition. I know, because I track the results. I meticulously track the results; and I would attribute my magical success largely to my particular attention to the tiniest of details.

I keep a detailed grimore, but unlike the witches of old, my grimore is digital. My spells are all written in Microsoft Word. And my spell template (yes, I have a spell template) is four pages long. Once I complete writing a spell, it can easily be over six pages and will continue to grow as I track its progress. It usually takes me more than one day to compose a spell before I cast it and it is not unusual for me to spend a week designing. It is a lot of work, but if I am the powerful witch that my friends proport me to be, it is probably due to my meticulous planning.

Learning from Magical Mayhem

Of course, I have had spell malfunctions and failures. They are great learning tools which in turn helped me fine tune my spell template to consider as many probabilities as possible. One of my most malignant magical mayhems I dealt with was another money spell. So, I wanted to make sure that this spell with the Fundamental Needs did not go as haywire as that one did. That meant that I would have to do some serious research into my personal habits before I even so much as looked at a wand or cauldron.

The first thing I did was open up my bill spreadsheet (yes, I have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet where I list my current bills – I’m noticing a distinctly anal-retentive theme here). If I truly didn’t have expenses to be cut, but Fundamental Needs I had to figure out how to pay for; then it was time to figure out what Fundamental Need I was buying with each of my bills.

My son's Fundamental Needs chart from his Montessori Education

Under the first half of the month I had listed my two mortgages, my car insurance, the babysitter, a few of my credit cards, my loan from my mother, and the electric bill. Under the second half of the month I had listed my internet provider, the gas company, more credit cards, and my cell phone.

Shelter

The mortgages were an easy fit – shelter, of course. After thinking a few moments, it was easy to place the electric bill and gas under shelter too as they both provided power to keep my son and me warm and dry. This is pretty easy! I thought, and I merrily continued down the bill spreadsheet.

Defense

Next was the car insurance and because it had the word “car” in front of it, I started to list the insurance under transportation. But then I stopped. Insurance really had nothing to do with getting somewhere. I wasn’t purchasing transportation with that, so what was I actually buying? I decided that I was buying peace of mind. If I was in an accident, financially, I’d be okay. With that in mind I placed my car insurance under the heading of defense. It dawned on me that my internet access was less about entertainment, and also more about defense. I paid my bills online, communicated with my babysitter service through the internet, and it was my lifeline to information. That spiraled my thought process. My babysitter was also defense, because she protected and cared for my child when I was unable to do so. And my cell phone was my connection to her and my child when I was not with them; that meant the cell phone bill was also purchasing defense.

Religion

That left the loan from my mother and all of my credit cards. What the heck were those? What was I buying when I paid those bills? Were they actually needs? Well, I couldn’t stop paying them, that was going to add to my financial problems. I decided that if I needed to pay them, then they had to some kind of need and not an expense I could just cut from my expenditures. I remembered when I had gone to see a financial counselor at my credit union. I felt utterly hopeless when she told me to declare bankruptcy. I felt like she just wanted me to give up. I didn’t want to give up. I had already bought things with that money, I felt it was morally my responsibility to pay back my debts. Morality sounded an awful lot like to Religion to me, so I put my loans in that category.

Considering the Fundamental Needs

As I was looking at my actual bills they seemed so small. My monthly bills – those checks I sent out every month only covered shelter, defense, and religion. I realized that there were quite a number of things not on my bill spreadsheet. The water bill was irregular and medical bills were too, hence they were missing from my monthly spreadsheet. The gas I purchased for transportation, clothes I needed to buy, and the groceries that caused my anxiety to soar like no other expenditure, were not on my bill spreadsheet. And what about culture and vanity? I decided that if they were Fundamental Needs, they could not be ignored or cut out of my life.

I went back to the fundamental needs. Using my son’s homework assignment as a template, I created my own chart. Gasoline obviously fell under transportation. Were there other expenses that fell under this category? How about car maintenance (also not on the bill spreadsheet)? What else belonged under defense? After thinking about it I decided that Medical bills belonged under defense. I was protecting my son’s and my body with routine checkups and was healing illnesses with medication. Likewise, pet care fell here too. I had cats, and I was responsible for these creatures’ well-being. 

Shelter was pretty straightforward, but I added the utilities and then after some consideration, I added cleaning supplies and office supplies. Yes, those were things I usually bought at the grocery store, but they weren’t food. I often tried to sacrifice them, but I couldn’t. I needed stamps to mail bills, and pens to write checks and I certainly wasn’t going to live in a filthy house.

Vanity

I made a change from my son’s chart when it came to clothing. I made the decision to file the expenditures for the costumes I made under Vanity. This was because I was very proud of those one-of-a-kind costumes and the process of making them brought a lot of joy into my life which was otherwise full of financial anxiety. I also filed under Vanity the gifts I gave to my son and other people in my life. When I did that, placing the charitable donations I tried to make into the category of Vanity made sense too. It went back to that day I watched my son attach that picture of his chess trophy to his Fundamental Needs homework assignment and then watching him proudly carry the project into school. For me, selecting gifts for people I cared about and giving to those less fortunate than myself had that element of passionate effort that I had so admired when I watched my son with his project. This led to a bit of an epiphany of compassion. Because when I added makeup and personal care to the category of Vanity I realized that getting my haircut and making the occasional purchase of a tube of mascara was not something to berate myself for or to be ashamed of. The giving of gifts, even to oneself, was not a frivolous want, it was a part of being human.

Material Needs
Transportation	Defense	Shelter	Clothing	Food
Auto Fuel	Medical	Water Bill	Child Clothing	Groceries
Car Maintenance	Pet care	Mortgage	Personal Clothing	Dining out
I-pass and Tolls	Child care	Home Maintenance	Work Uniforms
Parking fees	Cell Phone	Electric
Alternate transportation	Internet	Gas
Registration	Insurance	Cleaning Supplies
	Gym Membership	Office Supplies

Spiritual Needs
Culture	Religion	Vanity
Outings	Debt repayment	Kid’s Activities
Vacation	Education	Costumes
Mementos	Fees	Gifts
	Taxes	Donations
		Makeup
		Personal Care

This was a start.  This was certainly some much needed perspective on my financial situation.  But this wasn't quite magic, not yet.  I will be back with the magic in another article.

If you like this post, you may also enjoy:

Financial Fiasco + Fundamental Needs = Money Magic Part 1

It Is Easier To Get What You Want Than To Know What You Want

Financial Fiasco + Fundamental Needs = Money Magic (Part 1)

In 2006 I had been served divorce papers. The financial climate of my marriage had never been exactly sunny; and that divorce was one of the first snow storms in what became the avalanche of my financial demise. One money crisis I had to face in my new status of mother and now single mom was securing housing. As a city civil servant, I am required to live in Chicago proper, but I could not afford a two-bedroom apartment. So, I applied for an 80-20 military loan and received one. However, it was a dangerous adjustable-rate mortgage with a high interest rate; it did solve my housing problem, but really was more than I could comfortably afford. Another crisis was my work assignment to midnights and the afternoon shift. This meant find overnight child-care, or quit my job and risk homelessness and the loss of my child. I chose overnight care with an au pair service that allowed me to pay by credit card (which I maxed out). I maxed out two more credit cards and borrowed from my elderly mother in Arizona to pay my divorce lawyer. It turns out, lawyers tend to sue you if you don’t pay them within a couple of weeks.

By 2013, I was struggling badly. I had gotten myself into a horrendous amount of debt. Every single month, checks were bouncing, and the balance in my bank accounts were in the red. I was behind on those two mortgages I had. Debt collectors were constantly calling me demanding their money. I was desperate and depressed. Particularly when I went to the grocery store. I calculated every single dollar in my head and made myself so anxious, I was actually shaking at the checkout. My credit union was advertising free financial counseling, so I made an appointment to see this financial planner. She told me to declare bankruptcy. Even the financial planner had no hope for me. I was in ruin – a financial failure.

My financial salvation came not from Bankruptcy but from a most unlikely of sources. My son’s father was begrudgingly paying for private Montessori education for our son. He had argued to the courts to no avail to force me to pay for part of the tuition, but the courts agreed – I simply did not have the funds. So, it was either public education, or his Dad would have to pay for the private school alone. My son’s father has no idea how grateful I am that he fronted the bill for the Montessori education. Public education has its merits, I’m sure, but it does not have the Montessori Fundamental Needs.

The Fundamental Needs is a learning tool within the Montessori educational system that allows students to analyze and learn about culture. The basic premise is that all cultures share some basic concepts – fundamental needs that reoccur throughout all humanity. These needs are first broken down into two main categories: Material Needs and Spiritual Needs. Material needs are readily identifiable; under this umbrella are the needs of Food, Shelter, Clothing, Transportation and Defense. Applying the word “spiritual” before “needs” is likely to bring out the skeptics, however if you think about the study of culture, Spiritual Needs are often readily identifiable as well. Under the Spiritual Needs are Religion, Culture and Vanity.

I learned about these Fundamental Needs from my son as he prepared a homework assignment. The assignment had a simple premise: in order to understand and connect to other cultures, one first has to understand their own culture. He had to look at his own world and assemble a chart with photographs of him and by him that captured the essence of what he thought these Fundamental Needs meant in his own personal environment. As he began the assignment, I was fascinated with how personal and unique his choices were.

My son chose to begin with transportation. In a split family, that makes sense, transportation between households is such a frequent and prominent event. He defined transportation with a photograph of my car but he also wanted to include an airplane and a picture of a boat ride we had once taken. I was surprised by the boat ride, because I was unaware that it had made such an impression on him. But it was also interesting because it was an indigenous mode of transportation in our city of Chicago. 

Defense was next. For this he chose some pictures of his martial arts class. He apparently associated defense as a physical idea. Not all of the children in his class thought this way. I realized that I take physical health and strength very seriously and I had imparted that to my son. Not that it was bad, it was just an interesting observation of our microcosm.

Shelter was a no brainier for my son. He took a picture of our house; but that had a telling backstory though, because he did not include a picture of his Dad’s apartment. Perhaps it was a simple oversight, but maybe not. Maybe the concept of shelter to my son was the permanence and consistency of a house rather than the more mobile life of his father.

For clothing my son photographed his favorite t-shirt. It had some cool cartoon characters on it that he liked but more importantly, it had a hood attached with long sleeves that matched. He loved that thing. Another unique observation was that he included his last Halloween costume as well. It was a very glamorous vampire costume with a vest of red fabric with diamond buttons and of course a velvet cape. He sported a dapper top hat as well. All of it I had sewn myself to his specifications. Clothing for him was about customization.

Food was what you might expect from a seven-year-old – pictures of pizza and spaghetti (what young child doesn’t like pizza and spaghetti) but he also included a picture of a birthday cake that I had made for him. I like to bake, so it wasn’t a box mix, and it was a shared process – he got to stir and more importantly – lick the spoon. To him, food wasn’t just nourishment, it was family time.

You might think that the subcategories under the spiritual needs would stump a 7-year-old, but my son knew immediately how he would define them. He placed culture first. He chose pictures from outings to his two favorite museums: The Chicago Children’s Museum and The Museum of Science and Industry.

Religion was next. He had drawn a classic pagan pentacle long before this project, labeling each spire of the star with the elements. He knew he’d be the only Pagan at school, but it wasn’t an issue for him. Children, if left alone, are far more accepting than adults give them credit. They are really only judgmental if an adult has diligently taught them to be so. That reality was probably beyond what my son was trying to convey, and yet was clearly part of the statement he made with his religious symbol.

Finally, for vanity, he chose a picture of himself with a chess trophy he had won. He was one of the youngest in the chess class and it wasn’t a participation trophy. He had meticulously collected the necessary points to place first in the class. He was proud of his accomplishment and he really liked chess. That was vanity to him – passionate effort and pride. I have to say, I think I admire that definition most.

The truth was, I admired his whole assignment. I still have it to this day! When he brought it to school I watched him carry it in with that clear passionate effort and pride on his face. My son was so confident in our little world. He was walking into school with a huge poster of proof that all of his fundamental needs were being met. Meanwhile, I was shaking at the grocery store checkout. Did that mean that my needs were not being met?

I thought long and hard about that. I began to think that maybe I was missing a few needs and I wondered if there was anything to be done about that. Money, was not on the fundamental needs, but money was my obsession. Didn’t money fund the needs? Certainly, I needed money to purchase food and pay the mortgage. But when my son assembled his homework project, at no time did he struggle, for him money was not an issue, it was irrelevant to his Fundamental Needs. It dawned on me that many of his depictions of his Fundamental Needs had cost me nothing. I had used library passes for the museums, the costumes and the cakes were more labor than dollars - I was actually pretty savvy and frugal when I thought about it. My son was in fact getting all of his needs met, some with no financial cost at all. Was money as important as I had made it?

So often I laid in bed awake with my stress and worries over money, or my lack of it. I had always thought that if I could just find a way to make more money that my problems would simply vanish. But making more money wasn’t so simple. Overtime at my current work was somewhat available for me to work but working overtime came with even more problems. Overtime meant overtime for the babysitter – extra hours were not allowed by the service I was using. That meant hiring a second babysitter and since I was already borrowing money to pay for the first, it didn’t seem realistic to borrow more to work overtime. But more importantly, overtime meant sacrificing time spent at museums and baking cakes with my son. My son lived in a world where despite his mother’s money issues, all of his fundamental needs were being met. Did I really want to sacrifice his needs for overtime dollars? No, I simply did not.

I went back to my worries and I lost more sleep. I replayed in my head the advice given from so many well-meaning people that I should cut back on my expenses. What expenses could logistically be cut? I was already dangerously stretching our food supply. I bought almost all of my son’s clothes second hand and I hadn’t purchased new clothing for myself possibly since my son was born. Canceling my car insurance was reckless and irresponsible. There were just no expenses to cut! Did that mean that bankruptcy really was my only option? But I just couldn’t see how bankruptcy was an option. Bankruptcy wasn’t going to buy food, clothing, gas or any of the fundamental needs. That was just it, I didn’t have expenses to be cut, I had fundamental needs I needed to figure out how to purchase without going further and further into debt.

In addition to all the anxiety and depression I was frustrated at myself! My friends and people in the magical community kept flattering me by telling me over and over again how powerful a witch I was. I was the real deal apparently, my spells worked. I had results I could not only articulate, but I had tracked tangible results. I suddenly knew I needed to write a spell, but it had to incorporate the Fundamental Needs which had been taught to me by my seven year old son.

___________________

I will be back with another article with details from that spell.

If you enjoyed this post

You may want to read more of my backstory on my Money Magic Journey:  It Is Easier To Get What You Want, Than To Know What You Want.

Book Spotlight: Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robin

Vicki Robin has composed a non-magical book that I think works magic. 

What Drew Me In

1. Actually charting my money on a daily basis was enlightening.  I say that healthy food is important to me and yet why was I spending so much money on fast food that I don't even like to eat?  It gave the expression "food for thought" a whole new level of meaning.
2. I've never been a fan of budgeting, it didn't really work for me.  This book offered me the idea to graph my expenses and income so I can see where I've been and make a reasonable hypothesis on where I might be going.
3. There is a whole lot of financial hope in this book - I don't know anyone who wouldn't appreciate that.

How I Think I Can Apply It Magically

1. What is a magic spell but a detail plan with a dash of faith?  If you're looking for a money spell a charm from the Renaissance may not work, but this book lays out a practical and doable plan.
2. Many of the antidotes from people describe their financial transformations as "magical."  I believe that they are.
3. This addresses a bit of the emotional and spiritual aspects attached to money.  Magic isn't just about practicality, it also is very much about feelings and faith.

Have you ever done money magic?  What worked for you?

Other Book Spotlights You Might Enjoy

Conscious Dreaming

Option B

 

Costco Magic

I have recently adopted a new member to my household family.  A dear friend from my college days found herself uprooted from her life and so I welcomed her into mine.  It has been a delight to have her, I find that we are helping each other immensely.  However, my friend and I have differing opinions concerning the best use of food and money. 

My dear friend has it in her head that shopping in bulk save money.  She couldn't bare to to consume some organic eggs which she believed that I had purchased for six dollars (I actually used a coupon); so she proceeded to go to Costco to purchase an additional two dozen eggs for six dollars.  The result being that we now have three dozen eggs taking up an entire shelf of my small refrigerator.  I really don't have the space for all of those eggs.  Having been raising my young son on a blue collar salary in modest living quarters, I have discovered that shopping in bulk for one or a family of two is impractical.

Now eggs are a food item that can last more than some other food items but the reality is still clear.  If you pay six dollars for three dozen eggs and then you find that you are only able to consume the one before they all go bad; wouldn't it have just been better to consume the one dozen?

As messy as I keep my bedroom I still maintain that I do not care for clutter.  If something has no use, I get rid of it.  I also maintain if you have no place to store something, why do you have it?

It isn't just my friend who believe in bulk, many money gurus too recommend buying things in bulk, particularly non-perishable items like toilet paper.  For myself, looking around my modest quarters where would I put all of that toilet paper?  Also, I have the unfortunate reality of living on a flood plane and these past two springs I've dealt with considerable water damage.   So if you buy all of that toilet paper and then you end up throwing it all away, honestly what is the point?  Have you saved money?  Or did you throw that money away?

Now I came home to find three dozen eggs blocking my refrigerator after spending an intense magical week with the my Terra Mysterium Clan and that of my greater Clan, Earth Traditions at the spiritual retreat of Oasis.  There were many magical workshops to attend and as interesting as Gede Parma's Servitor Workshop and Chris LaFond's Moon Mansion Talisman workshops were, I made the decision to skip them both.  It was because I know that I don't do well with magic on the fly.  Now once I did do an impromptu spell to get an airplane going but to do any deep personal magic I have discovered for myself thakes a considerable amount of planning.

I have to combat my high propensity towards self sabotage.  I must take time to discover any hidden desires for self deprivation.  For example, my first official class on talismans was given to me by my mentor Matthew Ellenwood.  In the class I decided that a debt reduction talisman would be helpful to me.  It didn't work.  Not because of any lack of magical skill, it was because I discovered that I felt I needed that debt.  It was my penitence and punishment for crimes financial and otherwise I had convinced myself I had committed.  In order for any spell of mine to work I need to uncover any hidden desires that will thwart me.  I can't do that in a two hour workshop.  I require planning.

Not everyone requires that much self excavation for magic but planning, I think is crucial to success.  You have to realistically ask yourself if you have room for all that toilet paper and if you are really going to eat all of those eggs.  What are you going to do in the case of water damage?  And what if your refrigerator breaks down?  What you stand to gain by shopping in bulk may out way what you risk to lose.  These are important things to consider.