Frugal Fanny™

Butterball Naked

When I first graduated college (back in the 70’s) and plowed into the business world, wide-eyed and full of hope, things were easy. I was fortunate enough to be employed with a major airline. My future was secure. My husband, at the time, was career military. Life was good. Life was simple. Work, home, play, family. (not in that particular order). Life has done some major flip-flops along the way. I’ve been a single mom, worked two jobs to make ends meet, been both mother and father to my son. Struggled with house notes, kid notes, car notes. Sometimes succeeded. Sometimes, failed miserably. (my own doing and the result of some circumstances that I had no control of).

I always thought that there was time. Time to save. Time to plan. Time to make up for my own short comings. Tick-Tock. Fast forward…2008.

I remarried, after 20 some years of single life (post divorce) 4 years ago. Things have changed.

Now I:

• have less time.
• am more skeptical
• am wired in to the net
• am more prone to discount a good thing
• expect more, for less
• am scared (more like petrified) of our financial future
• know that the 30 year career in one company is a joke
• know that it is COMPLETELY up to us to manage our finances and retirement
• somewhat envious of others we see that have fabulous amounts of money, and don’t seem to work hard for it

Last – I understand that we are playing with fire if we don’t do something, anything, to improve our financial situation. We’re butterball naked in the finance department.

We’re not broke. But, at 52, we work HARD. We’re bustin our mutual fannies to keep up with expenses. There’s always month at the end of the check. We now live more frugally than ever. No cable or satellite TV, our grocery list is carved to bare minimum (a carton of ice cream blows the budget for the month), my personal car ( a collectors item diesel), sits silent in the driveway (who can afford $5 fuel?). I spend hours clipping coupons from the papers, scouring the web for promo codes and coupons and literally agonizing over whether we should replace the refrigerator (the freezer no longer works) or simply make do. We canceled health insurance, because our policy costs were just plain out of reach. (fingers crossed we’re all healthy). My retirement account is almost nil since we lived through Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis and Katrina and a few lesser blows and the funds there helped restore house and home.

I personally would call it retirement roulette! And I don’t think we’re alone.

Am I feeling lucky? Lucky enough to win the big lottery (despite it being easier to get struck by lightening twice in a month), lucky enough to inherit a large sum of money before I run out of my own (despite older generations living much longer than ever before, and spending their money on themselves rather than saving it for you), or lucky enough to come up with a brilliant idea for a business that makes me a kings ransom (despite the fact that 85% of offline businesses closing every 5 years and 99% of online businesses in that same time)? Not really. But, I’m lucky enough to be alive. To face each new day with renewed energy and hope. And lucky enough to work toward things getting better. Lucky enough to know that we’ll be… ok.

So, how lucky are you feeling now?