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In this week's Ten Money Questions, we speak with Kyran Pittman, a writer who blogs about culture, identity and family life at Notes to Self, and about poetry and writing on 1,167. I asked Kyran to wax poetic about finances and below she responds with candidness about her money journey. Enjoy!
1. You write on your blog, "I never wanted to be the poster girl for frugal living." How are you frugal today compared to say, five years ago? Ten years ago?
I wrote that in reference to an article that profiled us in our local alternative weekly paper a couple of years ago, as an example of a family who had gone off the payroll grid. I was pouring a lot of creative energy into frugality at the time--making grocery store price books, consulting the online gas price reports before going out to fill up the van--and I had all the zeal of the newly converted.
At the same time, I wanted to be clear that I was looking at frugal living as a temporary measure; not a religion. When my husband, the majority breadwinner, went into freelance graphic design, it was with the expectation and hope that his business would eventually afford us a very comfortable lifestyle.
His studio has done well for a start-up. He nearly matched his salary as an agency creative director the first year, and was at par with it for most of the second. We have just entered year three, and the past few months have been extremely tough. We are living more frugally than ever before, and I can tell you the fun has gone out of it. I have frugality-fatigue.
Five years ago, we were hardly living high off the hog, but we were pretty much on auto-pilot. We had two small children, were committed to not having them in daycare or school forty hours a week, and were subsidizing that decision with debt. We would run a deficit a little each month; a little more around holiday or vacation time. Then pay it all down periodically with a windfall, and start building it back up. For a middle-class family with a steady and predictable paycheck, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
I've had a part-time administrative job, since 2002. I wasn't writing at all. It was assumed that when the youngest went off to kindergarten in a few years time, I'd get a "regular" job, and we'd get caught up. Then in 2004, we had a third child we hadn't counted on. Oops. Our horizon line to "regular" was extended by another five years.
Ten years ago, frugal was just how we lived. We were getting married. The wedding was paid for mostly out of my tips from waitressing and bartending. We didn't have a credit card. We rented an apartment, and drove a '64 Mercury Comet with fins. We were both starting over from scratch, after getting divorced, quitting our jobs, and running off to Mexico together. We had been back in North America for about a year, after all the pesos had run out.
My husband had gone back to agency work over my initial objections, because I was afraid of being tied down again to that illusion of security, but he was enjoying the work, and I was beginning to feel like settling down again might not be such a bad thing.
2. What is your most significant memory about money?
I guess I was around eight or nine when my parents woke me up one night, to tell me that a university library was purchasing my father's papers--manuscripts, drafts, and correspondence related to his writing--for a five-figure sum. This was the late seventies, and it was quite a bit of money.
They were so happy and excited. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, but my father said it meant we wouldn't have to worry about money for a long time. I understood it was good news, but I don't think I'd realized until that moment that money was something we had to be worried about.
Of course, the worries came back in due course.
My parents both worked salaried jobs, but feast or famine defined my childhood experience of money.
So much is packed in that memory; including the awareness that writing has the potential to bring in large sums of money.
3. What is your worst habit around finances?
It used to be impulsiveness, but the past couple of years have cured me of much of that.
More than a
