I am the oldest of two children in my family. When I was a kid, my parents both worked at respectable jobs and we lived in a newer but modest house on the east side of our small town in Connecticut. The east side was considered the nicer side of town. My parents each had a car. My father had to drive some distance to his job so he would get something newer than my mom who worked locally, but both were nice, modest economy cars. My dad was in the hobby of snowmobiling and we had a couple of those, never the newest, but nice just the same. As a child I do not remember anything extravagant in our house or any reason to believe that my parents were living beyond their means.
So where did I go wrong?
I’m not sure.
I do know that once I began working, fresh from graduating out of the local trade high school that I bought myself a nice used truck. I took out a loan for it. At some time not too long after, I bought myself a nice used motorcycle. I took out a loan for that too. I’m sure that you begin to see a pattern emerging, right? But I was young and I had to build my credit I would say.
I was able to pay for that stuff. I had a good job making good money at least for me at the time.
When my wife and I started dating, she moved in with me after some time. Then she needed a car, so we bought one and financed that too. We lived in either a rented condo or a rented house, never an apartment. She had a job and contributed. It was “our” money, not her money and/or my money. This effectively doubled “our” income. So now my perception was that we could afford more things, so we bought stuff, lots of it. We had a cool leather sectional couch made just for us. I needed a new dirtbike so hey what the heck, let’s get one. A friend was selling his streetbike and it was a pretty fair deal so why not, WE can afford it. One more thing after another.
We were married when I was 24 and by the time I was 28, I had taken a job that had us moving to Arizona. When we moved, it took us driving a 24’ U-Haul truck pulling a car on a trailer to get all of our stuff across the country. We had only been together for 8 years and yet had accumulated a ton of things.
My Arizona job meant that she had to leave her Connecticut job behind. At first, we struggled with just my pay, in our newly rented house (not an apartment), with all of our stuff. Soon my job had me earning more than we used to earn together back in Connecticut. We were doing ok.
Then we had a kid.
Happy parents we were. We got the daughter that we always wanted. We bought her some cool stuff.
Right about this time, I took up motorcycle roadracing. It was something that I always wanted to do and I believed that at the time, I could finally afford it.
The first full year of racing had me spending almost $50,000 chasing championships. I got them, but it put us in the hole, deep.
On top of all of this, we were in the process of building a house. We were spending a ton of cash on this house and it had a lot of real nice upgrades.
Then we had another kid.
Happy parents we were. We got the son that we always wanted. We bought him some cool stuff too.
There were car replacements, not new but nice used, motorcycle replacements, also used, a used toyhauler and lots of baby stuff. By the time I had decided, with two kids, that roadracing was too difficult and expensive to continue we were deep, deep in debt.
Did I mention the brandy-new diesel truck?
Well that is a whole story in and of itself. Suffice it to say that it did happen and that just compounded on top of everything else.
In all of this, we never had a budget. My wife and I had been together for 17 years at this point and during all of it, we had been living paycheck to paycheck. Each time that I would get a raise, our quality of life would increase as well. She was working, and as you might have guessed, it just increased “our” income and spending ability.
Fast forward 13 more years. My kids are teenagers and my job has us moving to California, on my dime. No paid move for me. While I do get a nice increase in pay, we lose my wife’s Arizona income so it’s a wash.
What I found when I arrived is that even after selling our house in Arizona, due to the buyer’s market there and the seller’s market in California, and the bills that we accumulated moving out here, we cannot afford to buy a house. So, we are renting.
The house we are renting is a big one, real nice, with a pool. I will say though, that the rent is low for the house we have. Still more than my Arizona mortgage was, but lower than what it should be for size of the house and the ameneties.
Still, in all of this, no budget. However, now is the time. And the cool thing is, it has never been easier, but you have to wait to find out why.
See you then.
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