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01
Feb 2009

Helpful Advice From Wells Fargo

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Yesterday we finally got our letters in the mail from Wells Fargo, officially letting us know that they had closed our business credit card accounts.  The letter is ridiculous, and I thought I’d share it with you all.  It’s good for a laugh anyway.  They mention that they closed the accounts and that they understand that we will have questions about why this happened and what steps we can take now.  The letter goes on to say “to save you time and give you the most direct path to the answers you need, we have included “The Guide” on the reverse side of this letter.  It provides you with the information that we believe you will find most important and useful”.

So I turn over the letter, wondering what brilliant insights “The Guide” will offer.  First, it mentions the supposed reasons why the accounts were closed (as I described in my last post, their reasons don’t make much sense, but it’s convenient for them that the reasons are purely subjective, proprietary, and impossible to fight).  Then, they included some advide that they say will increase the likelihood that they will someday be able to reinstate our account (thanks, but I think we’ll pass on that).  Here are their words of wisdom:

  • Ensure all accounts are handled satisfactory.  Unsatisfactory performance may include untimely payments, items returned for insufficient funds, involuntary closures or overdraft occurances (um, excuse me, but does what you just did count as an involuntary closure?  Just curious)
  • Work to preserve your credit and avoid building excessive additional credit balances.
  • Make sure there are no late payments on any of your accounts.

I minored in math in college.  That advice from the helpful folks at Wells Fargo would be like someone telling me that I really ought to brush up on algebra.  Thanks guys – we’ll be sure to work on that.  In the 12 – 15 years that we’ve had credit, neither of us have ever had a bounced check, overdraft, late payment, etc.  We pay off our credit card every month, and have always done so other than the couple years after we started our business (late 2003 – 2006, during which time we carried balances but always paid far more than the minimum payment, and were always on time).

We’re a week out from finding out that our accounts were closed, and at this point I see a lot of humor in their letter.  If we had received it a week ago, it would have just made me angry, but staying angry doesn’t do anyone any good.  We are going to look at other bank options, but we’re not going to rush into a decision.  I like the idea of a credit union, but we want to make sure that we get one that has a local branch in the town where we’re hoping to move.  So we’ll see what our options are and weigh the pros and cons.  Switching banks will be a very time consuming process because of all the direct deposits we have to our business account and all of the automatic payments we have coming out of our accounts.  It’s not something I want to do without comparing a lot of options, but it is something that I’m motivated to do thanks to this little episode.

Category: just my life, savings, work  4 Comments
30
Jan 2009

Very Disappointed In Wells Fargo

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An open letter to Wells Fargo and anyone else who cares:

Dear Wells Fargo,

I have been banking with you for six years.  My husband has been with you since the mid-90s.  When we bought our house and consolidated our finances, we decided to merge my bank accounts with his and move everything to your bank (in hindsight, I wish we had moved him to my bank instead, but you know what they say about hindsight).  We added my name to his checking account, and opened a joint credit card through Wells Fargo.  Our Heloc is also through your bank, and has been ever since we bought our house.  Three years ago, we incorporated our business and opened a business checking account, along with a corporate credit card for each of us.  Last month we opened a corporate money market savings account.

Our high-yield savings account is not with Wells Fargo, because as far as I know you do not offer one.  And our HSA and IRAs are with investment brokerage firms.  But all of our other banking is done with your bank, and has been for a long time.  We have a perfect record with you and with every other bank/lender/financial institution we’ve ever done business with.

Last Sunday, we got an email from a vendor we use for our business, letting us know that an automatic payment had been declined.   I called the 24 hour number on the back of my corporate credit card to find out what was up.  I was informed by a very nice employee that our credit cards had been closed as of January 20th.  Well that’s lovely – any particular reason why?  The gentleman told me that they were closed because of a report from Experian.  But I would have to call back the next morning to talk to someone during normal business hours to get more information.   That doesn’t make for a particularly good evening.

We called the next morning and talked to another rep who told us that the reason the cards were closed was because of low usage on the accounts.  To back up a bit, when we opened the credit cards, we told the business banking rep at our local Wells Fargo that we would only be spending about $300 – $500/month on our cards.  But we were given accounts with $10,000 credit limits.  True to our word, we’ve put approximately $400/month on the cards over the last three years.  We always pay the balance in full, and have never paid any fees or interest on our corporate credit cards.  But the cards are essential to our business.  All of the charges are automatic, recurring bills from vendors for services that we cannot operate without.

So on Monday morning we were told that our cards were closed because of low usage.  We asked to speak to a supervisor and were told that one would call us back.  But that never happened.  The next day, I called back to try to get a supervisor on the phone.  The person I spoke with on Tuesday told me that our cards were closed because of BOTH low usage and a report from Experian that indicated (according to Wells Fargo) that the balances on our personal credit cards were too high and that the amount of time our credit had been active was too short.

I spent 45 minutes on the phone with two people on Tuesday morning trying to figure out what was going on.  Conveniently enough, I had copies of our credit reports and credit scores from Experian and TransUnion from the same week that Wells Fargo had apparently gotten their report from Experian.  According to the credit scores I paid for when I got our credit reports, my husband’s credit is better than 93% of Americans, and mine is better than 78%.  So it would seem that you must be closing an awful lot of accounts. There’s not much we can do about the length of time our credit has been active (we haven’t closed any accounts recently), and it’s been active now for three years longer than it had been when you gave us $20,000 in credit (even though we told you we only needed about $500).  I discussed with the rep the fact that we don’t carry balances on any credit cards (confirmed by the credit reports), and that we charge a small fraction of the limit on our personal Wells Fargo card and AmEx each month, and pay off the balances in full.  She didn’t know what to say other than that she was sorry.  As for the low usage factor, no one at Wells Fargo was able to tell me what your requirement is for usage.  That sure does make it hard to adhere to, now doesn’t it?

The reps we spoke with earlier this week told us that notification was sent to us on January 20th, informing us about the accounts being closed.  Today is the 29th, and we haven’t received anything yet.  Did you send the letters on one of your horse-drawn wagons?  Just curious.

So, you want to know what I think?  About three weeks ago, I called to see if we could have our cards set up with automatic payment from our Wells Fargo corporate checking account.  Since we always pay the balance in full anyway, I figured it would make my life easier if I didn’t have to write checks from the account each month, and could just have the balances paid on the due dates.  Ironically, we got our credit card bills on Tuesday, and notification was included with the statements telling us that the balance would be deducted from our corporate checking account on the due date.  So now Wells Fargo is well aware that we will never be interest-paying clients.  We never have been, although I suppose the possibility was always there.  Until we set our accounts to be automatically paid in full each month.

Once you knew that we would never be interest-paying or fee-paying clients, you decided to get rid of us.  But you did it in a way that we can never fight.  Your minimum usage requirement is supposedly a corporate secret.  And while the information contained in credit reports is objective and can be contested (ours is all accurate), a company’s use of that data is subjective, and we can’t argue with how you interpret a credit report.

I truly felt sorry for the Wells Fargo reps I spoke with earlier this week.  They seemed resigned to having a pretty rough time of it right now.  I asked them if this was happening to a lot of clients, and they both said yes.  I was very upset, but I was restrained and apologized to the reps for being upset.  I’m guessing that a lot of your clients weren’t so polite.

The most frustrating part of all this is the $25 billion in tax dollars that Wells Fargo received in the banking bailout.  You’re welcome.

Category: lessons learned, savings, work  36 Comments
26
Jan 2009

Crazy Jobs

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J. Money over at Budgets Are Sexy has put together a great list of crazy jobs that we frugal folk have held over the years.  My days as a dishroom girl in a dorm cafeteria are chronicled, along with plenty of other good jobs that will either make you grateful for your 9 – 5 or make you want to think outside the box and find creative employment.  One of my friends had a job a few years ago that involved finding dead sheep for the Division of Wildlife.  She lives in a rural mountain area, and when bears kill sheep, the ranchers are entitled to a payment from the DOW.  But they were having problems with excessive claims, so they hired my friend to verify that bears had killed the sheep in question.  Ranchers would find the dead sheep, report them to the DOW with GPS coordinates.  Then my friend would head out with her GPS, trekking over the mountains to find the dead sheep and verify that they had been killed by bears (yes, she had to go through a class to learn how to determine if a sheep had been killed by a bear).  I think she got $150 per sheep, and basically got paid to go hiking, although there was quite a bit of bushwacking involved.  Apparently bears don’t stick to the hiking trails.

Category: work  7 Comments
11
Dec 2008

Frugal Because We Want To Be

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I got a comment today on my post about our financial goals that I thought was worth further discussion.  Dave wrote:

“I don’t know much about you but it seems like you folks have plenty of money. Anyone know of a blog directed toward the working poor? Somebody making / surviving on $30K a year?”

Dave, you make a very good point, and one that I’ve thought about a lot as I write a blog focused on frugal living.  But as as recently as 2004 we were indeed living on about $30K.  That year, our savings amounted to $100/month into our IRAs and that was it.  We were frugal out of necessity.  When we found out that my husband would need $5000 worth of dental work that year, I took a second job at the library, shelving books for $8/hour to pay off the dental bill.

When I started this blog in 2006, we were still in debt and although our income had increased a little beyond $30K, it still wasn’t huge.  Over the last couple years our income has increased further, but our lifestyle has stayed about the same.  Yes, we could spend more money now.  But we choose not to, because we’d rather save for the future than spend everything we have right now.

We’re actually earning a pretty typical income for two college-educated professionals in our 30s.  But we’re still in the same modest house we bought six years ago (we plan to stay, and are paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible).  We still drive cars that were made when nobody outside of Arkansas had ever heard of Bill Clinton.  We buy all of our clothing in thrift stores (and rarely shop at all, even at thrift stores).  I think the last time we went out to eat was in September when my in-laws were visiting.  Yes, we have options – we could choose to drive new cars, upgrade our house, shop at the mall, and go to Starbucks.  But instead we’d rather pretend that we still earn $30K and save the rest.

In order to make our goals happen next year, our family of three will have to keep our monthly expenses to about $2500, including the mortgage and health insurance, which amount to about $1500 together.  I feel confident that we can do it, because we’re used to living frugally.  Being forced to make do on very little money in the past taught us that we really don’t need a lot of money at all.  Now that we have more money, we’re able to give to causes that matter to us and save for the future, since we’re still perfectly happy with our frugal life.

I remember when I started blogging, I read NCN’s blog and was amazed at how much money his yearly savings amounted to.  I remember thinking that he was saving nearly as much as we were earning in a year.  And that served as a huge motivator for me.   The nice thing about being committed to living frugally is that if you work hard and focus on increasing your salary, chances are it will go up as the years go by.  But although the cost of living will increase too, frugal habits will mean that your expenses won’t increase as much as those of the people around you.  I’m sure that people see me pulling out of the thrift store parking lot in my 91 Civic and assume that I’m poor.  And that’s fine with me.

I’ll open the rest of Dave’s comment up to my readers:  what are your favorite blogs written by people who are working to stretch small incomes?  And what about your own experiences – have you found that frugal habits you developed years ago have stayed with you even though your income might have grown to the point where you don’t have to be frugal anymore?  Anyone finding that well-ingrained frugal habits are helping them weather the current recession?  I think this is a great topic for discussion – are you frugal because you want to be, or because you have to be?  For us it started out as a necessity, and then just became a way of life.  My guess is that a lot of other people find the same thing – once they get used to living frugally, they notice that big TVs and shopping at the mall and cars and fancy houses no longer hold much appeal.

Category: savings, ways we save money, work  31 Comments
06
Oct 2008

So Much Better Off With Less Money

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We went to a retirement party on Friday evening. It was for a man my husband and I both worked with back in our bad old corporate days. Being back at that office revived a lot of memories for both of us. Some good (like meeting each other) but mostly bad (like 13 hour days, intense pressure from clients and corporate management, a long commute…) We were struck by the contrast between our lives then and our life now. My husband quit that job in 2002, and I left in 2003. The next few years were very difficult financially. Some months we barely made enough money to pay the mortgage, and everything else went on the credit card. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, and I’m glad that we’ve gotten ourselves back on reasonably solid ground as far as money goes, and that our business is doing well. But I’d do it all over again rather than still be working at my corporate job.

We got caught up on the last five years of office news – who quit, who got promoted, etc. There were a few colleagues I worked with as a manager who have been promoted several times since I left. I have no doubt that had I stayed, I would be earning a lot more money than I am today. But being at the office literally gave me shivers, and there is no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice. The freedom, flexibility, and overall happiness that we have is worth more than any salary I could be making at my old job. We get to snuggle with our baby in the mornings instead of jumping out of bed before dawn to be at the office by 7. We get to eat lunch together and have our baby with us during the day. We have dinner together, and go for a bike ride or walk as a family afterwards. We aren’t rich money wise, but we have enough to pay our mortgage and our day to day expenses and save for the future at the same time.

We drive old cars. We wear second hand clothes. We use homemade cloth diapers. We watch movies once they come out on DVD and we can borrow them from the library. We go for bike rides for entertainment. We go out to eat about once a month, sometimes less than that. We look for creative ways to save money, and it works. We’re able to live very well on less money than either one of us would be making if we had stayed at our corporate job. And we can’t even begin to describe how much happier we are with the life we have now. Simplifying and cutting back on expenses in order to be able to work for ourselves has paid off in so many ways. And I definitely wouldn’t trade my current life for the fat paycheck at the corporate job. There are some things that money really can’t buy, and those are the things I have now.

In other news, Stephanie at Focus Organic has put together a great Carnival Of all Things Eco.  Check it out for some great ideas on frugal, green living.

Category: carnivals and festivals, the simple life, work  9 Comments
27
Jul 2008

Nearly Finished Painting The House

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We’re so close to the end of our painting project. We got our HOA to give us an extension to the end of the month, and it looks like we’re going to make it. We’ll probably have to spend two evenings this week and then it will be done. (actually, it looks like about two hours worth of work left, but every time I estimate a timeframe for a home improvement project, it takes us three times that long, so I’m going to give us two evenings and not be disappointed).

This weekend, we worked on the really high parts of the house. The top of the chimney, and the gables at the front and back of the house on the upper story. Our 22 foot ladder wouldn’t reach them, so we rented a ladder. We had thought about buying a used one on Craigs list, but everything we found was at least $100. We rented a 40 foot ladder for $26, and now we don’t have to store it anywhere. This is the first time in over five years that we’ve ever needed a ladder taller than the one we have, so it didn’t make much sense to buy one and have to store it. We picked up the rental ladder yesterday at about 11:30 am. We worked until dark last night – about 8:30. Then we got up at 5am and were outside painting by the time it was light. (bonus – it’s much cooler at 6am than it is at noon… something we night owls don’t usually get to enjoy). We worked all morning, taking turns on the high ladder. It’s nerve racking being up that high, and very tiring – probably because every muscle in your body is tense the whole time, hoping that you’re not going to end up skewered on the picket fence way down there. So we found that it worked better if we switched off, with one of us working on the shorter ladder and the other on the tall ladder. Half the battle was moving the darn thing. It weighed 200 pounds – seriously. Getting it into position would take us at least half an hour each time we needed to move it. Guess we got our workout in today.

We finished the last high spot, got the ladder loaded back on the roof racks of my trusty civic, and returned it to the store, with two minutes to spare. Now we only need to do the back side of the chimney (we just have to stand on the roof behind the chimney to do that) and one section of trim where we can stand on a patio roof. We’ve bought 10 gallons of wall paint, 3 gallons of trim paint, and 16 tubes of caulk. When you add in the ladder rental, the grand total comes to $360. Not bad for a full exterior paint job. We started about the middle of June, but we took a couple weeks of recently when my husband’s family was in town. My family pitched in one day last month and helped us make huge progress – otherwise we’d probably be working on it until September. It’s looking great, and although painting a house is not that high on my summer fun activities list, it feels great to have done it, and I’m so glad that we did it ourselves for just the cost of materials, instead of paying someone else to do it.

Next up… the HOA says we have to paint our fence. I think we’re going to put in a vinyl fence instead – either way, that will be next weekend’s project.

Category: home improvement, ways we save money, work  6 Comments
23
Jul 2008

Credit Cards Can Be Your Friend

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I’ve made it very clear throughout my blog that I’m a fan of credit cards. My husband and I put all our purchases on one credit card, with the exception of Costco, where we use AmEx, since it’s the only credit card they take. We earn rewards on our cards, have a clear statement of where all our money goes every month, and can pay for everything with the click of a mouse at the end of the month. We’ve never been burned by credit cards, but that’s because we’ve been very careful with how we use them. During the first year after starting our own business, we barely made enough money to pay our mortgage. Pretty much everything else went on our credit card. For most of 2004, we were not able to pay the balance in full each month. Once we started making enough money to pay more than our mortgage and utilities, we started working in earnest to pay back our debts. We used balance transfer offers twice, taking advantage of zero percent interest for as long as we could. I kept careful track of when those offers expired, and we made sure that we focused on our highest interest debts first. We did pay plenty of interest on credit card debt in 2004 – 2005. But we minimized the damage, and came out the other side with our mortgage as our only debt, which we’re working to pay off as quickly as possible. Without credit cards, we’d have had a much tougher time in those early years of having our business. I know that we could have waited a few years and saved more money before quitting our jobs and starting a new business. But we were miserable at the jobs we had, and getting out of them as fast as possible was a huge priority. I guess that you could say that the interest we paid on credit card debts for those two years was the price we paid for not having to spend those years in jobs we hated. To me, that was worth it, although others might strongly disagree.

Most pf bloggers are squarely in one camp or the other when it comes to credit cards – either love em or hate em. I have no problem with credit cards, but you have to enter into the agreement with an understanding that the credit card company is in business to make a profit, and is far more concerned about their own bottom line than they are about yours. But isn’t this the case with any business? If you don’t trust yourself with credit, probably best to avoid it. But if you know that you’re careful with money, don’t spend beyond your means, and aren’t already in debt, you’ll probably do just fine with a credit card. But how do you choose a card? I got my first credit card when I was in college. I can’t remember how I chose which one I applied for, but I’m pretty sure that I just responded to the first mailing I got from a credit card company once I decided I wanted one. The other option was to sign up on campus and get a free t-shirt or bag of M&Ms… either way, I know it wasn’t a very scientific process. These days, my husband and I have a card that gives us a cash back reward – every time we get 10,000 points, they give us a $100 credit on our statement. For us, that’s much better than shopping through rewards catalogs, because we can spend the $100 on whatever we like – groceries, gas, etc.

I found a site that will help you compare options and find the best credit card for you, based on what you’re looking for. They are currently listing three cards with zero percent interest for at least a year on balance transfers, which is becoming harder to find these days (when we were at the peak of our debt, we were getting offers in the mail every other day for zero percent balance transfers, but they aren’t as easy to find now). So if you’re in the market for a credit card, do some shopping around and find the one that will work best for you. Whatever you do, don’t just sign up for one because they’re going to give you a free set of BBQ tools and a t-shirt.

Category: Debt, just my life, work  4 Comments
28
Jun 2008

A Family That Paints Together…

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We’re in the middle of painting our house, but thanks to my family we’re a lot closer to the end of the project than we were two days ago. We’re painting because the HOA told us we had to – as they did with about half the neighborhood, from the looks of the semi-finished painting projects going on all around us this month. My husband and I spent the last two weekends working on it, and it was pretty slow going. I was having to stop every couple hours to feed the baby, and a house just seems to get larger and larger as you paint. (man am I ever glad that we don’t live in a 3000 square foot house!!).

Then a few days ago, my parents called and said that they were rounding up the family and everyone would be coming to our house on Friday to paint. They showed up yesterday morning at about 7:30 – my parents, my sister, both my brothers, and one even brought his girlfriend along for the project. So all of a sudden, things started to get done on a much more grand scale than before. My parents brought ladders, scrapers, a paint sprayer and brushes, so there were plenty of tools, and lots of hands working them. We worked until after 5pm, and what’s left of the project suddenly seems much more doable – we’re no longer facing another month of painting. We have about 90% of the body of the house painted, and a good start on the trim. My little brother did a lot of work on the highest sections of the house, which was a huge help. My mother spent the whole day working on the miles of trim on the front of the house and the porch, so the house is starting to look really nice from the front. My sister got so into her section that we had to drag her off the ladder to come inside for lunch.

As a huge bonus to the day, my dad fixed my muffler. My boxer shorts fix was good enough to get home the day the pipe broke, but probably not much of a permanent solution. But for $25 in supplies from the auto parts store, and a wire coat hanger, my dad got everything ship-shape in about an hour. Feeling very grateful that I have a whole family full of frugal DIYers.

My family is very good at pitching in and helping each other out. My parents move every few years to a new fixer-upper house, and whenever they do, the whole family gathers for the weekend to pack everything up and clean out the old house. When my brother bought a fixer-upper house a couple years ago, he had to do several projects before the closing in order to get his mortgage approved (things like a new roof and wiring – not small projects). My parents and sister spent a whole week at his house, helping him meet the deadline for the closing. They also spent several weekends at our house earlier this year helping us with our kitchen remodel. And on the days when my mother and I have been working on diapers and various sewing projects, my husband has spent the day doing yardwork at my parents’ house. We all work together very well, and everyone comes out ahead. Although admittedly my husband and I have come out a bit further ahead this year, since we’ve been the beneficiaries now of two major group projects – the kitchen and the house painting. Hugely grateful for that. My brother and his girlfriend might be buying a condo soon, so we’ll be able to help them move and fix up the new place. Taking care of each other – with each person bringing unique talents to the table – is one of the best ways to maintain a frugal lifestyle. Maintaining strong family and friend ties, and pitching in with whatever help you can provide, makes DIY projects much more doable and enjoyable.

We’re taking today off from painting, in order to catch up on all the other stuff we need to do. Then we’ll be back at it tomorrow. But now that so much of it is finished, it feels much more manageable. A huge thank you to my family!

Category: family, work  7 Comments
02
Jun 2008

I Resigned

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I quit my library job today. I made up my mind last week, and spent the last few days thinking about telling my boss.  She and I were coworkers for three years before she became my boss last fall, and we’ve been good friends for all of that time.  Until last month, she and I were the only people in our department who didn’t have children – we both considered our pets to be our children.  So it was tough to walk in there and tell her that I wasn’t going to come back.  She was great though – she always is – and it reinforced for me that I’m making the right decision because she was so supportive of me.  I had been working 32 hours a week at the library for the last year and a half.  I had also been working about 20 hours a week at our insurance agency, which I’ve continued to do since our baby was born.  I told my boss that while I have to resign my current job, I’d love to stay on as a sub, and I’d also love to take one of the 12 hour positions that will be open in the fall.  We have two 12 hour shelvers who will both be leaving in the fall, and either of their schedules would be perfect.  12 hours a week plus maybe one four hour shift as a sub would be perfect. The nice thing about being a sub is that I can pick and choose what shifts I want, and the shelver hours are much more flexible than the schedule I had been working until the baby was born.  My boss said that would be great, and she’s going to make it work so that I have 12 hours per week.  It will probably be more than just shelving, since I have so much experience at the library.  I really don’t care what I’m doing there – I love being there, I love the people I work with, and I’m just thrilled that they will work with me on this.

By dropping below 20 hours per week I will no longer have benefits, which means I can’t contribute to my 457 plan anymore (they don’t do matching; all the money I’ve been putting in has been my own contributions, so it’s not that much of a loss – I’ll be contributing to my Roth IRA instead).  I also won’t get the $250/month benefit that they give us to help cover the cost of health insurance, but my husband and I have been paying for our own health insurance for years, so that will be ok too (although our premium has gone up to $425/month now that there are three of us on the policy…)  I also won’t get paid vacation time anymore, but my schedule will be so flexible that it won’t really matter.  I have 225 hours of vacation saved up, which they will pay me for now that I’ve quit (at $13/hour that will be a nice little bonus check).  I’ll still get my free gym membership, and I’ll still get to work at the library, which is a benefit in and of itself.

I’m feeling very good about my decision and about my life in general.  I’ve always thrived on being busy and multi-tasking.  for the first time in my life I’m feeling very content to be a little less busy.  I love just hanging out with our little boy, watching him grow, feeding him, changing his diaper, and just snuggling him.  My husband and I have worked very hard for the last several years to get to this point.  I’ll be 30 this summer – I have lots of years ahead of me to focus on work.  But my baby will never be a baby again.  I’m reminded of a poem that was on the wall in a house where I used to babysit when I was in highschool – “settle down cobwebs, dust go to sleep… I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.”

Category: baby, work  6 Comments
22
May 2008

Ten Years Gone By

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JD at Get Rich Slowly has posted an article about what his life and finances were like ten years ago, and has invited other bloggers to share their stories as well.  I think it’s interesting to look back over where we’ve been and to think about where we’re headed, so here goes…

Ten years ago, I had just graduated from college.  I spent the summer of 1998 working at a grocery store, hanging out with my friends, partying, and generally enjoying life.  I was never worried about money because my expenses were so low that my grocery store job more than covered them.  I had spent my senior year of college working my way through the Peace Corps application process, and I left to spend two years teaching math in Africa at the end of the summer.

I didn’t have any debt ten years ago.  I had worked my way through college, didn’t have a car, lived in a very modest apartment that I shared with my best friend (I think rent was about $350/month), and was already an established thrift-store shopper.  I had one credit card that I had applied for the year before, and I had never carried a balance on it.

I had about $3000 in savings that I had been growing since I was five, which I had just put into a Vanguard mutual fund.  That money was part of the down payment on the house my husband and I would buy five years later.

I met my husband in the spring of 2001, and we moved in together that summer.  For the first couple years we split our expenses roughly down the middle, taking turns paying for groceries and splitting the rent check.  But we knew from the beginning that we planned to be together forever, so we were already thinking of it as “our” money pretty much from the start.  Our paychecks were deposited into our own accounts, which is why we split our expenses.  Two years later we bought our house, and that’s when we merged our bank accounts and got a joint credit card.  We’ve kept all of our money combined ever since.

The first time we had debt was when my husband and I decided to create our own insurance brokerage, in 2003.  My husband had already been an agent for a year or so at that point, but he was working for another agency.  I was working in a corporate job that I hated, so I quit to join my husband in the insurance industry.  We reached the height of our debt in early 2004, with lots of business start-up expenses (we now refer to it as tuition costs, since we learned a lot about business from some of our mistakes over the years) and lots of living expenses that had been put on credit cards during the early days of our business when we would sometimes only earn enough in a month to pay the mortgage and not much else.  The worst it ever got was about $40,000 in debt.  We started earning more money as 2004 progressed, and were able to start paying off debt.  During 2005 and 2006, we focused everything we had on paying off debt, and by 2007 the only debt we had (other than our mortgage) was at zero percent interest and causing us much less stress.  We paid it all off in the summer of 2007.

I feel like I’ve come full circle back to where I was in the summer of 1998, but with lots of additional good things going on in my life.  I’m back to paying off our credit card every month, and I’m back to pretty much not worrying about money.  Our expenses are quite a bit lower than our income these days, and we’re working to keep it that way.  I have quite a bit more in savings that I did in 1998, and a great little house.  We live a pretty simple, frugal life, and get great pleasure from small things.  I have a wonderful husband and an amazingly perfect baby boy, and a cat and dog who never cease to entertain us.  That’s about all I need to be happy.

The only real negative over the last ten years has been my father’s illness, which still makes me sad.  He’s been sick for almost seven years now, although he’s doing much better with daily dialysis and sometimes he doesn’t seem sick at all.  I would trade all of my retirement funds in a heartbeat to have him healthy again, but unfortunately life doesn’t always let us make the trades we’d like to.  I’m just grateful that he’s doing better these days, and that he’s still around to hold his grandson.

If I could meet up with the 1998 me and give her some advice, I’d tell her that she’s on a pretty good track, and not to worry so much about little things, because at least for the next ten years, I can guarantee her that every little thing’s gonna be alright.

Here are some other bloggers who have written then-and-now stories:

Five Cent Nickle: Stepping Back In Time: Our Life Ten Years Ago

Free Money Finance: My Finances Ten Years Ago And Now

Mighty Bargain Hunter: My Finances Ten Years Back

No Credit Needed:  Looking Back: Ten Years Ago

Wise Bread: Money Management Lessons: Not Quite Ten Years To Life

What about you?  How has your financial situation changed (or not) over the last ten years?

Category: Debt, lessons learned, the simple life, work  2 Comments
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