Money: How It Comes and How It Goes

by Donna Schoenkopf

Years ago my third (and probably final) ex-husband used to go to auctions at storage companies. He would bid, sight unseen, on old trunks and suitcases and boxes that were being sold because no one had paid the storage fees on them for some time.

It was very exciting. It was so exciting that even I got excited and I am the kind of person who did NOT like spending money on “luxuries” because times were usually hard.

But the thrill of opening those treasure boxes was not to be denied.

Once we got three or four old suitcases full of 1950s era nudie magazines.

Once we got old kitchen pots and pans. And they were not very clean.

And once, (I STILL get a smile on my face thinking about it) we got several old trunks filled with the most amazing, AMAZING artifacts. It had been owned by a transvestite, whose female name was Vivian. All her things had been neatly packed away for years and years, since the 1930s, in fact.

There was an old newspaper article about her winning a majorette costume contest. She had made the costume by hand out of Wrigley’s gum wrappers and there was a picture in the newspaper article of her wearing it.

There were two huge rolls of paper that revealed woodland scenes of bigger-than-life-sized 30s-style nymphs dancing through the woods that she must have used in some sort of theatrical show. The nymphs were beautiful in their gauzy knee length dresses and bobbed hair. We sold them to an antique store for a nice piece of change.

There were lots of other things in those trunks, but what I found most compelling and endearing was a black hardcover notebook. In it was a list of every single penny she spent. I’m talking about entries of two cents for this and a dime for that. Everything was written in a small, neat hand. I could see her life in that list of ordinary things.

Years later, this past week, while under some mad delusion of changing the world, I wrote on Facebook that if everyone knew how much everyone else was making, the world would change, and with no further ado I wrote down what my net monthly income was. Darling Sarah, my beautiful and goodhearted stepdaughter, immediately responded with her own amount. She thought it was a fabulous idea. Then several people, people I didn’t even know, sent in their net monthly figures.

None of us made much. No one who had a lot of money responded. Then Sarah got nervous. Her amount was more than the others and she began to feel guilty and had to justify why her amount really wasn’t that much. And, of course, she was absolutely correct about that.

Then I got scared. What if I started a class war? Against Darling Sarah! Who was just barely making it? Oh, my God!

So I didn’t push it and kinda hoped it would all just disappear from Facebook, which it did.

Money is weird. As an old friend of mine said, “Everybody has some sort of mental illness about money.”

But FourStory is about affordable housing. And I thought you’d like to see my financial life up close and personal. How DO I carve out a life that makes my home affordable? My very own home. My FIRST home. On thirteen beautiful acres here in Oklahoma.

Here’s the math.

 

Taxes (Income and Property): $150

I put away a little every month because if I didn’t I would soon be owing back taxes which have huge interest rates attached to them. At the first of every month I hit the “Transfer Funds” key on my phone keypad and boom! The money is safely saved in savings.

 

Car and Homeowners Insurance: $125

Cheap here in Oklahoma. Most things are. Which is why I live here.

 

Garbage: $22

I use a little company (Carl’s Sanitation, owned by Carl, who has this little business on the side. I think his day job is that of sheriff. But don’t quote me.) He has one truck that operates out of Maud, Oklahoma (population 1136), which comes all the way out here every Wednesday for my trash. If gas prices go up, Carl raises the price $1.00. When they go down, so does the monthly charge. I love this company.

 

Water: $30 - $60

It’s more expensive in the summer with all the watering I do just to keep my scraggly lawn going, but the base rate is $25, no matter how little water I use. The name of the company is Pottawatomie County Rural Water District #3. The office is in Wanette, Oklahoma (population 402). The company was founded by Peewee’s dad. Peewee built my sustainable, affordable house and he is my hero. Rocky Barrett bought the water company a couple of months after I moved here. He is the chairman of the Citizen Potawatomi tribe, which is the biggest employer in the county. Jeri, the woman who manages the office in Wanette said that when Rocky came into the office to introduce himself, she asked him what he wanted her to do and he said, “Be nice to everybody.”

 

HughesNet: $85

No other Internet company will service this area. Too far out. Consequently I am charged an arm and a leg to be connected to the rest of the human race. I have had nothing but trouble with this corporation. I resent every penny I send them. I tried going with the basic, BASIC rate of $72, but found that I had used up my portion of the bandwidth within two days, and that meant an additional $5 a day to get a “token” for a day’s worth of additional bandwidth, so I had to buy the next program up. I hate them. It takes a LONG time to deal with them on the phone. Grrrrrrr.

 

TechStar: $16

This company will send their guy out, no charge, if they can’t help me over the phone. If I need one of HughesNet’s service people I am charged $125 per visit, and because I have trouble with the service at LEAST once every two or three months, I bit the bullet and signed up with TechStar. They’re nice. And they’re good at what they do.

 

State Farm Loan: $195

I had to borrow $10,000 to finish some projects here at Chigger Lake that I didn’t have enough money to do originally. I bought some kitchen cabinets, built my deck, added my shed, bought some garden tools, and other stuff I can’t remember. The final payment is on October 27, 2013.

 

Canadian Valley Electric Cooperative: $80 - $200

The most I pay in the summer is about $100 per month, with air conditioning and all. I had a $200 bill for the month of January with the intense cold and ice and snow and blizzards we had last winter. It was a killer. Now I daydream all the time about getting a wood stove and am trying to decide whether or not to use my savings for it. I plot and plan where and how I would install it if I actually cough up the cash. I’ve been on the Internet looking at Craigslist and Lowe’s and websites that sell wood burning stoves. The modern European ones rock my soul with their sleek lines and their compactness. I have also looked up how to build your own. I need a welder for that, and it would probably cost more than ordering one. So far I haven’t made any decisions. About any of it. I might just go to sister-in-law Lynn’s house for the duration, the next time the electricity goes out. It goes out when the ice builds up on the electric lines and breaks them. For sure, the electricity WILL go out again.

 

Credo Cell Phone: $40

I have been with this socially responsible phone company for a million years. In fact, I am such a long-time customer that their name was Working Assets Long Distance when I first signed up. My account number is 00000000802. Actually I don’t really know how many zeroes precede my “802,” but when I’ve called the company for one thing or another, the customer service person is always impressed with how long I’ve been there. I have withstood the onslaught of AT&T, and all their ilk, tempting me (they thought) with deals I couldn’t refuse. But I’ll never leave Credo. It was the first company I’d ever come in contact with that printed on recycled paper (that was YEARS ago), used biodegradable ink, planted trees to replace the paper they used, let the customers vote on which organizations to give a percentage of the profits to, AND they speak truth to power to legislators, corporations, and other entities in the interests of peace, justice, and the environment. So, even though it’s more expensive than other phone companies, I will never leave them.

 

Medicare: $110.50

This is my monthly payment. I have a $300 deductible, also. My supplemental insurance, provided by my teacher’s union, UTLA, used to cover EVERYTHING that Medicare didn’t, but with California’s horrible financial mess, I now have to rack up $7500 worth of medical bills before the supplemental kicks in.

I worry about paying for treatment of the skin cancer I’ve been dealing with. It’s only half paid for by Medicare.

I gave up my weekly allergy shots because Rosie the Cat seems to have permanently moved to Orval’s and Che the Cat died of bobcat fever, so there aren’t any cats in the house to give me asthma anymore. I miss their gentle cuddling. Today was especially hard. But I am asthma free.

 

Windstream: $70

This is my land line and, of course, the only company that will serve this area. It’s cheap long distance, which is good. I think it’s a monthly $20 charge. Or something like that. However, it took me four months to pay off a huge bill I incurred when my beautiful son was in jail for failure to appear in court and called me collect through the jail phone system. In a matter of three days I had racked up an additional $400 in charges. I hate them, too. I hate when companies take advantage of the poor and the downtrodden.

 

DISH: $82

I live alone and really, really love television. It is my company and my stimulation, so I have more than the basic service. Television is my friend. What would I do without MSNBC and C-SPAN? Go crazy, that’s what. I don’t use DirecTV because it was owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX Television. I hate FOX Television. And you all know why.

 

Signature Loan From My Credit Union: $150

I owe $683.93 on this loan, so there’s approximately four months of payments left. I took out this loan to cover some unexpected expenses that built up over a period of a few months this past year. I shall not go into what they were because there would be uninformed judgments made about the decision I made and I don’t want to get into justifying what I did. Please understand that I am really, really happy that I decided to spend this money. It was the best money I ever spent. Period.

 

That makes a grand total of $1195.50

 

... is from two sources—California State Teachers Retirement and my column here at Fourstory.

The total for the two of them is $2250. After deducting my monthly nut I have $1054.50 left, which comes to about $35 a day.

I use a money managing system adapted from something my sister, Annie, told me. I take out $140 a week in cash, which leaves a little chunk (about $440) sitting in the bank for emergencies. Sometimes I have to get extra cash that week, sometimes I have a little left over, but using cash during the week has definitely made me more conscious of how I am managing my money, and I have noticed I am not spending nearly as much each week as I used to when I used my debit card for everything. I’ve also noticed that I had a HUGE buildup of change in my wallet until I began giving correct change. I had actually gotten out of practice in using cash.

What do I spend my money on? I spend it on food, gas and everything else in life, like tuning up the car, birthdays, dinner out once in a while, getting my hair cut occasionally. I usually have $20 to $80 left over at the end of the month. Sometimes I don’t.

I am very proud of how I manage my money and how I get along. I don’t feel deprived, but do occasionally feel the pinch and when I do I find that either the desire for the thing I couldn’t afford evaporates OR I figure out how to make it out of stuff I have lying around. I love feeling clever, and knowing that most stuff truly isn’t needed makes me feel satisfied with what I have.

So, kids, that’s it. I thought you’d like to see my list (it’s almost like going through someone else’s purse!) just as I loved reading Vivian’s careful accounting of her daily, very real life, printed so neatly, there on the page.

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