Spending CASH for Christmas?!: Not Owing Santa All Year Long

Hopefully I can inspire readers who haven’t been paying for their holiday shopping with cash yet to hop on board making cash king because while days like Christmas come but once a year, banks are making bank from your bills & interest from December – December.

*Quick note – I will be referring to Christmas in this article as it’s the holiday I celebrate; I recognize there are different cultures in the world that do their own thing and I appreciate your different viewpoints!

Spreadsheets are a Shopper’s Best Friend (especially if diamonds are too expensive)

-Risa Sonrisa

I labeled 8 columns across:

Who; What; How much; Store; How; Savings; Final Total; Notes

Who are you shopping for; How much money are you spending; What store you bought the item from; How did you get the money (PayPal/Debit Card/Checking Account/Cash Envelope) *note credit cards should NOT be used here*; Savings (coupons/deals over another store), the Final Total of the item after the discounts; Notes: Was the gift delivered/returned?

Results: You will not repeat gifts (and if you continue this year after year you can look back and not get the same person an identical gift); You will be conscious of how much you are spending vs how much you wanted and planned to spend; You won’t forget anyone important on your shopping list because it’s easily customizable. Finally, you will know where your money is flowing out of to cover these items. This helps if you have automatic bills getting paid through your account and need to replace the money before a certain date.

Try a Cash Envelope Savings Challenge or Holiday Bank Account

-Risa Sonrisa

Yes, you can go to your bank and open an account specifically for holidays. Some banks will have accounts that are meant for this type of saving – you deposit all year long and you receive the funds via a check in October (for example). Other banks or credit unions will allow you to just open a new savings account with no minimum deposit required and no early withdrawal fee.

Unfortunately (in the past), I couldn’t trust myself with this! I found that I withdrew from the account and used the cash for things – all the things.

Now that I’m much more disciplined and have been using a cash envelope system for the better part of a year, I am saving for Christmas via a cash envelope. I literally folded a piece of pretty cardstock and drew pictures of holiday-themed pictures on it. When I save $10, I color in a Santa hat. If I save $50, I color in a whole star. Woohoo! Since I tracked my Christmas spending for the last 2 years (and I make a low income), my goal is $800. It used to be $600 but I’m accounting for inflation – and don’t get me started on that topic!

If you are in somewhat of a more dire financial situation, I would highly recommend getting “one month ahead” with your predictable monthly bills before saving for the holidays, which (depending on your situation) may be considered non-essential spending. It’s not that we don’t want our loved ones to have a gift from us that shows we care, but if we’re having trouble putting food on the table or gas and/or oil in the tank, we need to get our essentials taken care of. More on how I got one month ahead in an upcoming blog post!

Example of a cash envelope for Christmas

Student Loan Debt: Is Cancel Culture At It Again?

Did I really just read that a pro- student debt cancellation group is encouraging people to go on strike with their student debt payback?(1) I’ll be the first to say that if student loan debt gets cancelled, I’d be a happy camper, but I am not in agreement with anyone taking out a loan, knowing what they’re getting into and signing on the dotted line, utilizing the benefits of the loan, and then just trying to wipe it out – unless they’ve truly had a life hardship that would prevent them from actually paying it back.

Before anyone gets offended, let me explain – I’m right there.

I signed on the dotted line, not knowing how compound interest works when it works against you. My loan service provider (pardon if I don’t give them a shout-out here) screwed me over with their absolutely terrible (and dare I say insane) rules and procedures regarding yearly recertification. There was a time I made all my payments in time, but then when recertification came around, they’d take 3 weeks to recertify, and then rejected it because I didn’t sign one of the 8 pages. Then, they’d take another 3 weeks and start charging me the regular payback rate of over $600/month. It was like punishing me for doing everything right.

Finally after a failed marriage and becoming a single mother of 2, there was a time where I just couldn’t pay them anymore. I was at the bottom and my hands were tied. Guess what they gladly did for me? They spoke with sugar and sweetly said how they would apply a hardship deference to my account – my payments would go down to $0/month, and something about interest that at the time, I was so frustrated with them I brushed off that key detail and agreed to it. I had no choice anyway because it was either that or totally kill my credit score. If that were to happen, I wouldn’t be able to finance a car to drive my kids to school or take out a credit card to use in emergencies (or so I thought, until I learned about the secured credit card and all its wonders for b.a.p., or broke ass peoples).

Long Story Short…

Interest started accruing so fast and my loans ballooned, I mean skyrocketed – once I finally saw the net effect on my loans and saw interest compounding (even though I literally just told them I had a hardship, so why were they making my life so much worse?) I own the fact that I did not do enough research before getting into all this mess.

If people start claiming hardships left and right because they want to stick a middle finger to the government, they might end up with $0/month ballooned loans with interest on top of interest instead of what they intended, which was to put pressure on President Biden to cancel their debt. Then they’d really better pray for debt cancellation!  So what are we as debt-makers (see my upcoming YouTube video on why I use this term!) to do? (Feel free to disagree btw – this is just my list of ideas).

As always, thank you for reading my blog and for your continued support – I’ve had quite a few life surprises one after another and will be looking to update you on my net work progress, sharing how Christmas 2021 went financially, and more!

Kids & Money Conversations

I’m not saying to lie to your children about your financial situation! In fact, that’s the complete opposite of what you should do. However, I believe it can be extremely empowering for a child to be involved in the age-appropriate money conversations of a household. Take it from a mom during the holiday season – you’ll want to have these discussions during the year so by this time you can let them know about how much they might get (or not get) for gift-giving.

Oh, we try to make holidays like Christmas not be about the presents under the tree or lack thereof, and focus on “the spirit of the holidays” – especially if the gifts are also in spirit because we just went through a global pandemic, with the economy damn near a recession, are struggling with depression, or we may have lost our incomes and worse, our family members. Somehow, despite having had to cancel the cable and whittle our entertainment to streaming services, these darn kids still find out about all the cool toys and gadgets that are popular and that all their friends are talking about.

They know what items will give them street cred, popularity (even if it is fleeting), and status.

In some cases, what they don’t know is anything about work, finances, budgeting, appreciation, or humility. In my home, we talk about money – saving it, earning it – but I still can’t get them to “not want”. Why? Because I don’t know how to reprogram brains. Therefore, the only equipment I have in my arsenal for softening the blow of the holiday season (because they are too young to understand how student loans + compound interest = broke AF) are the things we talk about and do during the year that involve them in the finances.

1.    Chores & Earning – I instill the principles of earning money from having them do chores that enable them to earn very small sums of money. When they get $1, I let them pick a treat – but not before showing them what they could get for $2 if they waited. This introduces an aspect of patience that is lacking in many people who spend everything they earn instead of building up an emergency fund or saving for retirement. Delayed gratification.

2.    YouTube videos – There are many screens for kids to watch, but somehow when I watch videos about the debt-free community or people calling into a show to ask questions about getting out of debt, the kids sometimes choose to stick around and hang out with me and watch too. I can’t guarantee they’re absorbing much from these bite-sized shows, but they can certainly pick up the fact that a lot of people make mistakes with money (or are very organized with their funds), and there are consequences for those mistakes and wins.

3.    Counting & Credit – If you say ‘money is dirty so children shouldn’t touch it’, you’re part of the problem. Let kids count the money! Have them hold the dollars and cents in their hands and feel the friction pass through. It’s essential so they can understand that they don’t just swipe plastic magical rectangles to get everything they want! Show them how the money enters your home, and show them how it exits. Show yourself too.

Choose Your Words Wisely

Sometimes the phrases you are used to choosing to explain financial concepts are doing more harm than good. If you have a negative connotation of money, you might say things like:

“That’s too expensive” – it might be true but it doesn’t explain the problem or make them a part of the solution. You could use this as a teachable moment to describe a low supply of an item forcing the price to go above your means, or let them know you have a budget and are sticking to it. Extra points if you talked about or showed them the budget before you left the house.

“Money is dirty” – yes we know viruses get on surfaces and travel sometimes, but having worked in a library (where surface-to-surface contact is unavoidable) during the pandemic, I was privy to much research about this, and the result was if you wash your hands often and keep them off of your face, surfaces are not of the highest concern.

“You’ll see how it is when you’re older” – um, why not show them now? Perhaps some additional knowledge ahead of time could dull some of the pain you felt and won’t make you feel like projecting your financial problems onto them, as if that will be their future. Give children a proper head start!

Remind yourself that you have limits, and it’s totally appropriate to expose those limits to your kids during the year, so they learn to appreciate, understand, and respect what you do for the household. For the ones who still know Santa, remind them that Santa and the elves have limits too. Lastly, don’t forget about giving. I’ve never given anything to anyone and not gotten rewarded for it. Try a 50/30/20 savings for them (spending half of what they earn, saving 30%, and giving 20%) or whatever works for you. Have a happy holiday season!

Love,

Risa

No-Credit Christmas!

*Please note I am not judging how anyone does their holiday shopping! If you want people to judge you, I suggest other social media comments!

Discipline doesn’t come easy for me. I have notable issues with authority and constantly wonder why us humans/free spirits are confined to suffering under a king/deity/ruler, basically born into the world to slave for someone in a higher privileged position than us…or for ourselves as our only means of surviving. Well, it looks like I will have to put my foot down and stop adding extra shackles onto my chains. For the first time in my life since I’ve had credit cards, I am choosing to stop relying on them for things like Christmas presents, birthday festivities, and basically any fun stuff I used to feel so entitled to.

I fell for the college student trap so easily and didn’t blink when a credit card company handed me a card with a high balance while I was making very low income. The naivety and ignorance I suffered from was so tangible it could have slapped me in the face and I wouldn’t have questioned this terrible decision to start ruining my future now that I was ‘adulting’. I thought it was just normal practice to go to college, drive a car, get a credit card, and felt that everything was falling into place for me. Unfortunately, this dream would start crashing down on me – and not stop – as I worked hard to keep my single-parent home afloat while trying to take care of my own bills.

At the time, I was under the illusion that you place purchases on credit cards when you can’t afford them until your next paycheck, then have “plenty of time” to pay them back. What I didn’t know is how quickly you become the hamster on the wheel. Then, obstacles come along and you have to start jumping and dodging the student loan bills, the hospital bills, the babies…and the wheel never stops turning. This then gets compounded by the “expectations” of society around the holidays, because birthdays are about presents, Christmas is about presents, Thanksgiving is about Black Friday deals, even poor Veteran’s day didn’t fail to send scores of deal alerts, coupons, and discounts commemorating the day. 

I’m done! No credit cards this Christmas. Cash & Debit only (because debit is basically your cash anyway) and the only “exception” is if I have to make a bigger purchase and I buy it at Target with my card, I’ll get a discount – and then pay it in full right away. I have my holidays planned, a budget for Christmas (which I am very disciplined with, albeit not perfect – but I don’t break the bank by any means), and a daily/monthly/weekly plan for my finances. Let me know how you’re handling this post-pandemic Christmas, for better or for worse. You’ll get no judgement from me!

The Poor Tax is Real

This week I’m realizing a transition of privilege in some aspects of my debt-free financial journey – mainly that it is more expensive to be poorer (and more naiive if that’s the case) in so many little hidden ways.

How did you feel the day you found out that by splitting up your car insurance into monthly payments, companies will add at least $5 *every month*, just because you live paycheck-to-paycheck? I think that $60/year could have gone to an extra utility payment or some extra food.

If that’s no enough, combine it with Affirm’s helpful (Read: Predatory) deal with Wal-Mart where you can take your holiday shopping (if that’s what you’re into) and split the payments of the purchase over a number of months – all at a low low (read the fine print) 10% – 30% interest rate. In the words of personal finance (and legend and my money hero) Suze Orman,“Are you kidding me?” Those rates are worse than student loans, maybe even worse than your credit card.

What to do?

*Pay cash for all the things (without schlepping other “things” to your credit cards to compensate)

*Instead of treating your group of friends to one present each, form a Secret (Insert the name of your present-issuing deity here, mine just happens to be Santa) Giving Club so you all only have to give each other 1 gift

*Don’t fall for the ridiculous traps I’m seeing lately, like ‘Take out a loan that gives back to charity’…if you want to give to charity do it with your debit card or Paypal and go back to affording what you actually can!

*Instead of treating the whole family to a free dinner at your place, encourage a “potluck” style gathering where everyone brings a dish to share

*Finally, keep your house warm, your emergency fund funded, your belly full, and your vehicle maintained. Anyone who drops you for having ‘less than’ now will surely pick you back up when you’re back on your feet.

Thankfully due to my strict and consistent budgeting and planning, I feel that I am starting to cross over that threshold where I can make my car insurance payment every 6 months instead of monthly, I can see through scams meant to keep people poor and make them feel inadequate if they don’t have a certain product, and am making it a point to for the first time in a long time, have a “no credit Christmas” for myself. Sometimes I don’t carry cash and use my card, but if that happens I will be paying it off in 24 hours. It’s just time to care about making it to where I’m trying to go and not being pulled back into real *and mental* poverty.

Reverse Engineer Your Money Goals

You’ll get no shame from me if you’ve ever tried to do something without planning it out first – we’re all guilty of that. What about when you make a plan, and it goes haywire and strays from the target?
Let’s say this is a money goal you’re trying to reach. You’ve completed this month’s kakeibo budget, or tracked your dollars on the spreadsheet, and everything looks fine – that is of course until some random life event knocks you way off course and now everything is confusing.
If this has ever happened to you, you may have thought to yourself, ‘I wish there was a strategy I could use to more precisely reach my financial goals.’ When my good friend and I spoke about his personal finance situation, this is the advice I offered.

Play Out Your Money Goal in Reverse

Remember that Coldplay song “The Scientist” where the video starts at the end and ends at the beginning? It kind of makes you wonder if you could see how life plays out, what decisions would you change before you make them? This is how I suggest you direct your financial goals. Like a movie you made that has a determined ending, start with the happy ending and work your way back to the chaos.

For example (true story): I made myself a plan to pay off my car by February 2022. I laid the entire plan out including what date it would get paid off, how many paychecks it would take to get there, and what I could and couldn’t compromise on to reach that goal.
I created the (now extremely cliché, yet still “super effective”) vision board, in which I included picture on my what (car, money, etc) and my why (picture of a house, money, you get it). Finally, I tracked the progress of this goal every paycheck by writing out the dates all the way until the end, and crossing them out when they were completed (just like those 52-week savings challenges you see online). (It turns out that a number of circumstances caused me to be able to pay it off sooner, so be open to tweaking this often!)

Put In the Work

Keep working this plan forwards (present-day) and backwards (making sure all the numbers add up until it reaches that specific date). Life throws us curve balls that could get us off track, so my recommendation is looking over this weekly to biweekly to make sure the dollars are where they are supposed to go. Never forget about those pesky “unexpected” expenses, like having to suddenly renew your car registration for $100 this year or a doctor copay that finally got mailed out to you and is now due in 120 days. It might seem obsessive, but are you really going to let others judge your good habits right now?

Celebrate & Regoal

When the goal is reached, it’s important to acknowledge it in a short and sweet way. Having that end in sight you are able to plan for what that might look like. More importantly, ask yourself what the next goal is so you don’t get complacent! The next goal should help make sure you don’t spend unnecessarily (if that’s your vice) or help keep things on track.

Good luck with your goals!

Take Fear Out of the Equation

FEAR HOLDS US BACK
One of the most powerful obstacles in life is fear. It prevents us from living our most authentic life by crippling our decision-making so that we settle for something easy and comfortable. In fact, I have a theory that comfort and fear should replace anger and pride in the “7 Deadly Sins”.
Fear is supposed to be the body’s response to something that could be potentially harmful and deadly, yet many times it activates when we’re trying to do good and awesome positive things – ask for a raise, ask someone special out on a date, try something new we’re not used to. So in a way it can be deadly to our lives because it hinders us from flourishing to our full potential.
Infiltrating every aspect of our lives from how we handle our money to who our life partner is (or continues to be), fear and it’s partner comfort work in tandem against us. I’m no doctor, but once we get that stress in our stomachs signaling to the body that we’re doing something good, new, and potentially exciting that could change our lives for the better, comfort beckons us to reconsider, offers us warm milk and cookies if we just stop being so rash, and tucks us into bed with a comforter, reading a story about all the what-if’s until we’re lulled into not persuing that opportunity.
Sound familiar?

WHEN OTHERS FEAR FOR YOU
You know what’s just as bad as being afraid of doing something new and awesome? Someone *else* being fearful for you and poisoning your mind with doubts. For me, it was a parent who wouldn’t let me compete in a school competition because they were concerned that it was far away; someone telling me I’d starve my family if I didn’t do ‘x-y-z’; another family member putting pressure on me to get married sooner because *they* were concerned I’d be “an old bride”; and a close family member criticizing me for singing songs exactly like the artists do and saying I should (paraphrasing) stop copying them and sing my own original stuff.
How negative is all that?
The sad part is I could actually go on and on with similar stories and I bet you could too.

SUBTRACT FEAR AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE
Truth: A decision is either good or bad.
Stick with me here becuase I’m going to reference a math equation: 3-2=1. Phew, that wasn’t so bad. Now try this one.
Decision – Fear = ________.
If a decision is either good or bad, we can rewrite this using two scenarios:
Good Decision – Fear = Good Fearless Decision
Bad Decision – Fear = Bad Fearless Decision
I conclude that when making a decision, don’t “factor” in your fear gague, because the decision is already inherently good or bad! Once you figure out which one, just do it if it falls into the “good” category!

Examples of good decisions that may encite fear:
-Shopping around for better rates on car insurance once a year, and changing it when you find a better deal
-Contributing to your company’s 401K up to the percentage of their match, canceling contributions if they no longer match if you’re in an IRA
-Participating in a competition where you could so fail and end up in last place, or you could “rise up” and might be the best
-Saying no to others when they suggest something negative for your life
-Leaving an abusive situation
-Exiting a toxic work situation
Many, many more

IN CONCLUSION
To remove fear from the equation of life, don’t ignore it, but don’t act on it. Act on facts. One fact is you will usually know if a decision is good or bad for you simply based on the facts. Once you know it’s good, when the fear hits, don’t look for comfort and don’t seek others’ approval.
Feel free to seek support for this good decision, but not approval. Support says, ‘I have resources you can use to help you with this.’ Approval says ‘You should do this, I allow it.’
Make a goal for August – write down one instance where you chose something positive for your life and didn’t let fear stop you. What were the results? Do 1 positive thing in August that you are afraid to do, and write down the results next to it. What I hope for you is that it, and every other time you do this, makes your life more meaningful and authentic.

Moneybags – The Best and Worst Months to Get Paid!

Watch your budgets! For those of you who earn biweekly paychecks that fall on July 2nd, 16th, and 30th this year, it’s moneybags which means there are 3 paychecks instead of two. This happens twice a year, and the next 2 are in July 2021 and January 2022 (or April and October 2021 for those who get paid on the opposite Friday).

It’s a happy occasion but not plannimg could mess up your budget. Here’s an example!

Electricity is due on the 12th of every month and **takes 2 days to process**. Here is where the previous month’s paychecks fell:

April 9, 23
May 7, 21
June 4, 18
**July 2, 16, 30
August 13, 27

So in April you paid it on the 9th, in May on the 7th, June on the 4th, and in July on the 2nd. You take your extra paycheck and use it on a well-deserved vacation, no worries because you still have 2 checks in August, right?

Not really, because now you get paid all the way on August 13th. That makes you late with your bill, so not only do you get late fees for not paying on time, but if the electric company tried to take the money out of your account automatically and you overspent on your vacation, the money isn’t in the checking account and now you’re paying upwards of $35 in fees for that too.

And goodness forbid the electric company tries to take out the money again the next day (payday) before your bank determines your check has cleared, they now charge you another $35 fee, or the bank charges you if they pay it on your behalf.

It gets worse. If the bank decides to pay it (making your account negative) and you don’t suspect anything is wrong, if 5+ days pass your bank may charge you *another* fee for not bringing your account positive in time.

So did you catch how easy it is to get trapped into a whirlpool of debt and fees when you were supposed to be enjoying some extra cash? Don’t fall for it, have a plan just for the moneybags months so you can enjoy them!

Love Risa

What Is…Grace

They told me to let him win the first game.
I followed that advice, and I thought I’d never end.
Perfection.
Six years later, he’d be uttering the worst 8 words anyone could hear.
I don’t want to be with you anymore.
If the previous epidermal showing and subcutaneous pain didn’t prove it, that sentence finalized it.
It was time to GO.
With two days left to move, and in the midst of finishing packing and cleaning, my father died.
The last picture I have of and with him is a birthday party he and my mom had thrown for my son (then a 1-year-old), from a few weeks before.
As my son turns 4, I allow myself grace.
Grace to grieve. Again and again.
Grace to let go of the past.
Grace to accept help, and ask for help.
Grace to accept kindness.
And perhaps the most important one of all: Grace to make new mistakes. Permission to try again, in a whole new world of perspective, and to accept a, hopefully, better future.
So, a new challenger arrived.
We played a new game for the first time.
Grace.
I let him win.

Why I Couldn’t Declutter – Until Now

Life has finally caught up to me. After taking the (literal and figurative) hits, I’m finally starting to open my eyes and look around at where I am – and its kind of filthy?

How did I get to this point? It’s not just the more recent events I assure you. There are names for people like me: hoarder, packrat, unkempt. Are there worse things to be? You bet. Does that fact allow me to wallow in my pigpen and not do a Goddamn thing about it?
Absolutely not. Here’s what happened.

I have never, ever decluttered my belongings before, yet my things seemed to ‘reduce’ on their own. My theory is that my parent(s) occasionally threw things out, or maybe it happened in the Big Move. Oh yes, lots of readers know about it – the one where you have to get out and are so distressed that you have to toss shit in bags and throw the rest out before the lease is up or because you now have to vacate?
That one. Except for me, I’ve had multiple. And with that first one, I didn’t even have a choice on what I could or couldn’t keep. One day, it was just all gone. I was fifteen.

To top it off, that was right in the middle of high school, where I had to adjust to a different state, different people and no friends, I had fallen in love with someone from where I was only to be that much farther from him now, and who knew that it wouldn’t be long before I was kicked out of my room so another family member could take it over (and clutter it, lol).

A short while after, money had gotten tight again and we downgraded, but this time I had a nice space where I could put all my stuff. I didn’t have a room again, so I took over the living room, and no one could say a damn thing about it after what had just previously happened.

Alas, that situation didn’t work out so we had to move again, and this time a lot of my stuff was ruined so I had to toss it. I had to throw away something extremely sentimental, and I shouldn’t have, in hindsight. But nevertheless, it was done, and we made it to place #4. You would think with all this moving I’d be a master at it, but all I did was accumulate, and be forced to discard, over and over.

The final time this happened, I was able to bring what I immediately wanted, but I didn’t get to go through everything. That may have been for the better, because at this moment I look around and there is stuff EVERYWHERE.

Disorganized college papers from more than half of my classes
Books given to me when I thought I wanted to be a teacher
Bills, statements, and receipts from 10 years ago up until now
Lots of tiny childrens’ toys that jump under your feet while walking
DVDs I’ll never watch and books I’ll never read, including incomplete manga series and Susan Lucci’s autobiography (ok, I actually DO want to read that)
Almost every single assignment my child worked on in elementary school for the past 2 years
Plugs, wires, and broken electronics

So after watching some decluttering videos, I’m finally ready to do this. I know it’s going to be emotional, but many of these items have ‘served their purpose’ in the words of Marissa Zen, decluttering YouTuber. So I did start, and the results have already been amazing just tackling small sections one by one.

Soon, I’ll once again feel comfortable bringing guests into my home which will be cleaner, tidier, and still imperfect, just the way I like it.