One has to wonder: What do these couples do when, twenty-five years from now, she gets fed up with dragging thirteen feet of split ends behind her and chops that shit off, or he has an affair with his slutty secretary but can’t fork over five million cool ones like he swore in writing he would? What if he has gallbladder surgery or testicular torsion and can’t get it up for a while, effectively denying his wife the four-to-ten shags per month that he promised her would be available to her for the duration of their union? What if his mother buys her a nasty-ass emerald sweater for Christmas and begs her to put it on, right then and there, for a family photo? Is she supposed to refuse her mother-in-law this simple, harmless indulgence because she promised she’d never wear green?
It’s all absurd, and not just because, at least in the article in question, the lists seem to be heavily skewed in the husbands’ favor. It’s absurd because marriage is as dynamic as the two people in it. And like the two people in it, if it’s not changing and growing, it dies. Plans and priorities and bodies change; obstacles crop up; hairstyles go in and out of vogue; sometimes tragedy strikes. “The best-laid schemes of mice and men,” poet Robert Burns famously wrote, “often go awry.” Or as I like to say, shit happens—shit that you never saw coming and didn’t have the wits or the wherewithal to prepare for in that other faraway lifetime.
Part of what keeps my own marriage going, beyond the fact that I really enjoy having someone to run to the store for hemorrhoid cream for me, is that we are who we are because we agreed to spend the entirety of our lives together and because of every experience we’ve shared. We’ve been through a lot, Joe and I. We’ve traveled the world, brought new people into existence, bought and sold homes and cars and big-ticket furniture items, buried pets and parents together. We’ve nursed each other’s wounds, forgiven each other a thousand transgressions, and survived earthquakes and wildfires and terrifying, turbulent, transoceanic flights. We’ve assembled dozens of children’s toys and accessories—and I’m talking monstrosities with a million different parts, including a play house, a boat-shaped sandbox, and a four-piece wooden kitchen set—without killing each other. We may weigh a tiny bit more than we did when we got married and have sex a little less,* but despite the nose hair incident and countless others like it, I am still wildly attracted to my husband. I love him more wholly and more profoundly than I did the day I promised I’d be true to him until one of us would be given the heart-wrenching task of scattering the other’s ashes. I respect him more, too, because I’ve seen him handle flat tires and disasters involving sewage and demanding kids with humor and grace. I may be slightly less painstaking in my grooming and date prep these days, and he may be somewhat less patient and attentive, but we both know we’re lucky. And I’m really glad his are the only nostrils I will be asked to tidy until one of us dies.
CHAPTER 11
Screw the Rainy Day: I Just Want Enough Money to Pay for My Funeral
Karen Carpenter tragically taught us that you most definitely can be too thin, but I’ve yet to find living (or dead) proof that you can be too rich. In fact, while economists used to claim that increasing income did little to boost well-being, new research suggests that, on average, the more money you have, the happier you are.
I know. No shit, right?
Not that we can’t all list at least a handful of miserable, disgustingly well-to-do SOBs we know. But I’m pretty sure the researchers are talking about generally likeable people here, ones who work their asses off or maybe even win the lottery or land a sweet inheritance but still remain likeable even when they’re flying their private jets to the Caribbean or lounging on their ninety-foot yachts. For those people, the ones like you and I will be when the gods of fortune finally decide to answer our prayers, more bank equals more bliss.
While I would consider myself almost obnoxiously happy, I am definitely not rich. (So can you imagine how repulsively ecstatic I would be if I got a financial windfall? Honestly, it boggles the mind.) I’m far from poor, of course, especially relative to a homeless guy living under an overpass or a commission-only door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. But as I creep ever closer to what some people refer to as “retirement age,” I’m feeling some serious financial anxiety. After all, if I want to stop working, say, ever, I’m going to need some cash in reserves. And how exactly is one supposed to stockpile a respectable amount of money to live on while also saving for weddings and college tuitions and vacations and home improvements and the drive-through, incision-less full face- and body lift they are going to invent any day now?
Experts say ours is the first generation who will fail to live better than our parents did. While our moms and pops socked away an average of 10 percent of their incomes every month, most of us don’t even save a measly 5 percent. Our folks managed it, of course, because they didn’t have to pay for everyone in the house to have unlimited texting on their fancy new smartphones and enjoy nine hundred premium cable channels plus Netflix every month. They didn’t sign us up for private voice lessons and pricey tennis clinics and posh sleepaway camps; they told us to “go outside and find a stick to play with,” and holy hell would rain down if we didn’t get our asses home before those damned streetlights came on. They didn’t stock our forty-dollar Pottery Barn lunch boxes with pre-packaged, organic, gluten-free delights that cost nine dollars a pop; you got a bruised apple and a PB&J on Wonder Bread in a paper bag (seventeen cents, max) and you were grateful for it.*
My problem—and possibly yours—is that I like stuff. I like sparkly baubles and really soft blankets and useful gadgets and pretty much anything pink. I adore Depression glass and Egyptian cotton sheets and hobnail serving bowls, and you might want to get out of my way in any candle aisle. Unfortunately, nice things are everywhere we turn, and we can have all of them if we’re willing to go to the great effort of swiping a piece of plastic through a machine and signing the little electronic screen.
Of course sometimes when we throw caution to the wind and buy something especially nice, we are afraid to actually use it,* seeing as we might ruin or break or lose it in the process, and then we’d be right back where we started, except minus the money we paid for the awesome thing and with the sad, ironic knowledge of how awesome it was to have had it at all.
In my house we have a thing about knives. Joe and I like to cook,* and we like to eat, so we spend probably more money than we should on kitchen contraptions. We have damned near every chef’s tool ever invented (see the bit above about being cosmically powerless to resist nice stuff), but man do we love our knives.
True story: When we got married those many years ago, we registered for knives. Not a set of them, mind you. We picked out our dream cutlery collection, each individual knife at a time—because the one occasion in your life when other people are shelling out for you to have a few top-of-the-line gadgets is no time to scrimp, right? Anyway, when my mom asked which item on our registry I wanted most, I salivated as I described the specific high-carbon, precision-forged chef’s knife of my dreams.
“That knife costs a hundred and seventy-five dollars,” my mom said, staring openmouthed at my registry printout.
“I know,” I told her. “It’s a really great knife.”
“But you can get a whole knife block for that much money,” she insisted.
“I don’t want fifteen decent knives,” I tried to explain. “I want one amazing one.”
My mom, who’d been raised by extremely frugal Depression-era parents, literally couldn’t do it—she couldn’t buy a single mind-blowing knife knowing that she could give us a shit-ton of mediocre knives for the same price. So she sent me a gift card to the store, and I bought the knife myself. Joe and I use that knife daily, fight over it frequently, and never once have I regretted opting for quality over quantity.
With that in mind, I recently bought us Joe a new set of steak knives because I wanted them for his birthday. They rival any fancy steakhouse’s finest
blades, and let me point out, they were not inexpensive.
“What are you doing?” I asked Joe one day shortly after the purchase, noticing he was unsetting the table I had just set.
“I’m just putting the new knives back and getting the old ones out,” he said. “I want to save the good ones.”
“For what?” I demanded.
“For company,” he said.
My husband is the world’s most gracious host, and I love that about him, I really do. I also wanted to use my . . . his fucking knives.
Here’s the thing: My grandparents spent forty years sitting day in and day out on couches covered in plastic. This was in Florida, where humidity runs around 111 percent year round and ninety degrees in the summer is considered a “cool front,” so I can only imagine that lounging on those condom-covered couches must have been like a visit to the tenth circle of hell in Dante’s infamous Inferno. Gram and Gramp took the plastic off only when we came over, which I’m ashamed to admit wasn’t that often. When they died—both well into their nineties—those ugly-ass greenish-gold brocade couches looked brand-spanking-new. It was the saddest thing I ever saw in my life. My grandfather had worked hard all of his life and probably saved up for those couches for a decade or longer. And for what? So somebody else could enjoy their fine finish a crappy handful of times?
I used this story to illustrate the fact that we should use our his knives, but Joe wasn’t paying attention. At least I didn’t think he was, until a recent evening when he whipped up some massive, mouth-watering T-bones. After the girls set the table, I noticed Joe replacing the old knives they’d chosen. With the good ones. He did look a little anxious every time he heard my knife make contact with my plate (I was dulling the blade, damn it!), but I pretended not to notice. When I die, I want those blades to be rusty, dull, and gnarled beyond recognition.
There’s a difference, of course, between enjoying the things you already own and feverishly acquiring more. During a recent weeding-out session, I counted six sets of bedsheets for our master bed alone (and since I prefer one set above all of the rest, I generally strip, wash, and replace them without ever considering any of the alternatives). I have four different sets of bathroom towels, seven throw blankets in a trunk in my living room, and at least thirty different cookie sheets in various stages of dented disrepair taking over my pantry. Surveying this assortment, it occurred to me that maybe we already had enough. My suspicions were confirmed with my husband’s generous help.
“We spend too much money,” he said.
“What does ‘too much money’ mean?” I asked. “That’s sort of vague and ambiguous. Too much compared to whom?”
“Too much compared to what we make,” he replied.
“Oh,” I muttered. “How much too much?”
“Technically, we spend more than we make,” he said simply.
Well, that couldn’t be good. We were supposed to be building a nest egg,* and instead we were scrambling away our money as fast as—or apparently faster than—we could earn it. I was deeply depressed after this conversation, a condition that normally makes me want to dash straight to Nordstrom and buy something whimsical and fabulous. But obviously, I couldn’t. Instead, I marched to my computer and attempted to craft a realistic plan for my financial future.
This was not an easy endeavor. After all, it wasn’t like I was going to give up my highlights or stop buying organic half-and-half. (YOLO, you know?) And I knew for a fact my kids would wind up killing each other or me if I tried the old go-find-a-stick-to-play-with routine, so nixing all of their extracurricular activities wasn’t an option. But I could stop buying stuff I didn’t need just because it was impossibly cute or on sale or both, couldn’t I? Surely I could limit myself on my cell phone minutes and find a cheaper TV package. It would actually be a relief to cancel the half-dozen subscriptions I have to magazines that I never, ever read. And I definitely could try really hard to resist those “buy two widgets and get the third widget FREE” deals that aren’t really deals when you only need a single widget. I could even try to pay for things occasionally with cash, a trick I’ve found turns me into the penniest-pinching bitch you ever saw.
After much agonizing, I came up with the outline of what I call Jenna’s Plan for Financial Freedom (Or at Least Dying with Enough Money to Pay for My Own Funeral). I’m not shooting for millions here—let’s be realistic, shall we?—but I certainly don’t want my kids getting saddled with a bill for the car or the house I never got around to paying off. Without further ado, I present to you JPFFF (OALDWEMTPFMOF):
I Will Quit Justifying. Seeing as I am not Mother Teresa or a pediatric oncologist caring for thirty-seven special-needs foster children, I don’t really “deserve” a new purse or a night out. Yes, I work hard and I’m a nice person, but as I tell my children all the time, life isn’t fair. (Google “Jenny McCarthy in a bikini” if you’re unsure about this.) When I am pining for the latest new thingamabob, I will go for a walk, write a novella, work on a cure for athlete’s foot, or find another way to treat myself that doesn’t involve spending money I should be saving. (I may need someone to come and sit on me from time to time, but I can figure out those details later.)
I Will Distinguish Wants From Needs. Maybe this comes naturally for you, but when a friend posts on Facebook, “Brittany is selling Girl Scout cookies so hit me up if you need any!” I have been known to falsely jump to the conclusion after searching my cupboards and determining that they are completely void of Girl Scout cookies that I, therefore, must need them. Alas, I do not. I also don’t “need” a manicure, a blowout, or an extra-hot triple-shot no-foam latte, as lovely as all of these things indubitably are. I need food and toilet paper and toothpaste. Most everything else is a want. I will learn the difference. (Again, this may involve some sort of restraint system or a lobotomy. In any case, I am sure it can be done.)
I Will Spend More Time on Pinterest. You think I’m being sarcastic, but that place is a gold mine of money-saving ideas. (It’s also a label whore’s worst nightmare because there you will find things like—I shit you not—a Louis Vuitton waffle maker that stamps the signature initial logo into your breakfast cakes, so proceed with caution if you can’t resist designer clothes, accessories, or breakfast foods.) Even though I am not crafty,* I am going to become a homemade gift queen. I will make flavored dipping oils, granola, tea cup candles, snow globes, Christmas ornaments, refrigerator magnets, lip scrubs, scented soaps, log holders, bottle lamps, finger puppets, shaving cream, place mats, and maybe, if I’m feeling adventurous, a Star Wars clock. I will use recycled Ball jars to put my homespun goodies in, and wrap them with scraps of cloth and old newspapers, just like those crafty Pinterest ladies do. I will feel both accomplished and smug.*
I Will Avoid My Enemies. And by “enemies” I am referring, of course, to Target and Costco. I feel bad calling out two of my favorite stores on the planet, but the reality is that I have never once gone through the checkout aisle at either of these places and not been utterly, shockingly appalled at the total. Honestly, how can a few basic necessities—a bag of rice, some dinner napkins, thirty-two rolls of packing tape, a fur-lined hoodie, chicken skewers for an army, Missoni legwarmers, a few thousand yards of wire-trimmed leopard ribbon, and a motorcycle—add up to so goddamned much? Oh my God, do you see what happened there? Seriously, I’ll go in for mustard and laundry soap, and come out with $875 worth of shit I didn’t need and apparently can’t afford. Target and Costco may bill themselves as bargain centers, but instead of saving you money, they suck you in with their dollar bins and then get you drunk on free samples, and when you’re totally high on scoring a thousand acetaminophen for three bucks, they stick a siphon into your wallet and suck everything out. If you’re me, you’re too busy enjoying a two-foot-long $1.50 hot dog to notice. But not anymore. I am onto these guys, and I will not get sucked in.*
I Will Recycle the Crap Out of Everything Th
at Isn’t People, Food, or Feces. Recycling saves money! It saves the earth! I can do it, too! I will stop buying those overpriced sticky notes, and instead stockpile scrap paper for writing notes and lists and printing recipes and test documents. I will fill up one of my many, many BPA-free water bottles with water from home before I head out so that I’m not stopping every hour to buy another liquid refreshment. I will turn off lights when I am not using them and quit buying more produce than I know we can ever possibly eat. I will try to be like my frugal Little Grandma—a four-eleven slip of a thing thus dubbed to distinguish her from poor, towering Big Grandma—who made her own cat litter out of hand-shredded scraps of newspaper. (Except that would probably be a bitch to change and life is awfully short, so instead I will buy the dusty, generic scoopable cat litter instead of the nicely scented name-brand kind. My plan is nothing if not flexible!)
I Will Suck It Up and Have a Garage Sale. I know, I swore those off years ago, after a particularly bad one where a guy asked if the staple gun we were selling worked, and when I said yes, he put it up to the palm of his hand and pulled the trigger, dripping blood all over my twenty-five-cent T-shirt table. This was the same day that a nice old lady insisted I put five dollars’ worth of batteries into the giant Talking Mother Goose to prove that it worked, and then took off with them after giving me a lousy dollar for the chatty bird. If that weren’t bad enough, that evening—hours after the last of our unwanted castoffs had been hauled to Goodwill—this lady came back with the goddamned goose, insisting that it had stopped working. She handed it back to me and I gave her back her dollar, realizing only later that she’d pinched the damned batteries out of it. BUT STILL, I will have a garage sale, because as Deepak says, abundance can’t come to you if there’s no room for it to roost, or something like that.
I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty Page 12