Figuring Out How Much We Spend

Dear Crystal Lou,

Remember when we were young and we both worked at the Dairy Queen and got paid every two weeks and sometimes got tips? I know we didn't make very much, you know by the hour, but somehow all that money was all we needed to have a good time. I could make $134. go pretty far in those days. I'd get my bleach done every 6 weeks, and my nails (OF COURSE) and some clothes and food, and still save enough money for a new Homecoming, Spring Fling or Prom Dress.

I never had to ask Momma and Daddy for money although I now know, they were spending every last cent on us. Still. I had my own money. That pride thing will bite you in the ass that's for sure.

These days, I feel like I'm poorer than I was when I worked at Dairy Queen!

I listened to that investment guy, Dave Ramsey, on the radio and he said the key to handling money is to:

1. Get debt free (Seriously!)
2. Put a whole bunch of money away. I can't remember how much but it sounds like a lot.
3. Then learn about investing.

I talked to Bill about it and we realized we aren't really sure how much we spend each month.  That was a great conversation...NOT!

I guess the answer is ALL OF IT.

What ever we earn we spend. There is no doubt about it because I am always holding my breath juggling the bills and timing payments and it's an endless cycle. It's like that nightmare I have of getting tossed in the lake in February, the water so cold I can't feel my arms or legs but I keep kicking in order to get a breath of air only to be pulled back under. God I hate that dream!

That's what it feels like with our bills and money and budget. One terrible long slow winter drowning.

Well I have to start breathing and get this pressure off my chest or I'm going to be in the cardio ward and I don't mean with the Panthers (Cardiac-cats HA HA )!

Since we have no idea how much money we spend in a month we thought we'd just save every receipt and bill we pay for two months and then take a look and see how it matches up with what we earn.  I just got a basic envelope and marked it up like this:

Basically we need to get an idea of what we are doing. My suspicion is that we are doing what ever we want and ignoring the fact that we only make a medium amount of money. Probably one of the problems is THAT CREDIT CARD, but I will reserve judgement until two months are over and we have evidence.

We have only been saving the receipts for three days but already I feel like I have a leash tied around my neck. Is this a good thing? You tell me...UGH

I Talked To A Lawyer Today

Dear Crystal Lou,

I was standing in the janitorial supply section at the Rusty’s Nail and Feed picking up some shop rags for Cash, still thinking about corporations, when this guy who was entirely too well dressed for grunt work, asked me if I preferred Ajax or Comet to getting porcelain clean. That sounded like a weird question because one look at his hands told me he hired someone to do that work but I said, “Either one would work, you need Pine-sol for disinfecting and Pledge for dusting, and Dawn for anything greasy.”

He said his wife told him to get something organic and I said, don’t bother.

He liked that, and laughed, so I added that if he really wants to be “natural”  he could get some baking soda and rock salt and use that with some plain old vinegar if he didn’t mind using some elbow grease or the smell.

Get this: He asked me where to get elbow grease! I just about split my pants!

He said that it was for the cleaning crew for their lake house and it didn’t matter that much to him. I said, “Well most cleaning crew people bring their own things. They know what works. Just make sure your check doesn’t bounce.” Ha Ha.

He laughed again, like he had been waiting to laugh for a long time and hadn’t been allowed to.

He introduced himself and told me he was a lawyer in Raleigh so I asked him if I could ask a question and he looked at me funny and cleared his throat. “Well, I’m a…kind of …business lawyer, not criminal law.”

So I said, “Good, cause this is a business-y question”

His eyes kind of bugged out a little so I just asked him, “My question is, Why would someone like me, care about corporations?”

 I could see he was confused so I kept explaining,

“I get why a corporation would like to be a corporation, I just don’t get why it’s good for the rest of us, who will never form a corporation. I mean, why should some businesses get special treatment, when the rest of us don’t?”

He took a minute thinking then said, “Well, for one one thing, corporations have been around a long time, it’s something we brought over from the British system. (News Flash Crystal Lou-I did not know that!) And the idea is that, if the government allows corporations to form, it helps create business and stimulate the economy.

People are more likely to start businesses if it’s a little less risky for them. If they can be a part of the business, invest in it to start, and not worry about the business failing and them losing their whole house and savings. Their business itself might fail, but at least the people who started the business won’t lose everything else and be on the streets.”

That makes sense to me. I do appreciate the government wanting business to be successful. And I want people with great ideas to start businesses so we can work and have a good economy.

Now I’m no economist, but that Eileen has a business that employs her daughter and she is supporting her mama, her daughter, her grand baby and herself with her business. I bet she’d like the same protections as a corporation….

I still have to think on this for small business.

He walked out of the store with me and smiled. “You know, I thought you were going to ask me legal advice for a criminal case, not a business law question.”

You know I thought a few unchristian things about him, and I guess it showed on my my face so he quickly said, “I’m sorry that was rude”

So I smiled and just said, “ I guess we shouldn’t make assumptions about each other right?”

Then he fished out his wallet and gave me one of his business cards  which is almost as thick as cardboard, and told me to give him a call if I wanted to ask him any more businessy questions.

I said, ok and you can ask me anything you want to know about our town, next time you are at the lake.

Do Our Friends Own Corporations or Just Businesses?

Dear Crystal Lou,

I was getting my nails done yesterday at Eileen’s, and oh my goodness are they so cute. She talked me into getting my usual French manicure with the white tips but she did the most clever thing. She painted the 4th finger, the ring finger, on each hand all white and painted the most darling long stemmed pink rose bud along the outer edge you’ve ever seen. It is a work of art. When I get my head shot done, I am going to make sure that you can see my hands. Eileen is the best.

When I was there, I started asking Eileen if she was a corporation and she looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I told her I was trying to learn about corporations and wouldn’t it be good if she and her employees (well actually it’s just her cousin and her daughter and they work part time at that) had some protection against someone suing them if they did something wrong.

She got all upset for a minute and almost spilled my glass of wine thinking that someone was bad-mouthing her business. I told her to settle down a bit I was only thinking out loud, no one was complaining about her.

Well after she took a big breath, she laughed and said that who would complain about her nail salon? If they didn’t like the manicure, they could always take the polish off or ask her to redo the nails. Her daughter is a little sloppy and lazy with the massage part of the pedicure she admitted but it wasn’t really a suing offense.

Well I wasn’t going to say anything after that but I did notice that when Ms. Ramseur came in for her appointment she just about tripped over the little plastic mat at the front door, and one time I did come down with a nasty infection in my big toe, just before Memorial Day and I swear to God I didn’t have it before having my pedicure at her daughter’s station. I have always thought that girl of her was dirty and I wouldn’t be surprised if she “forgot” to completely disinfect her basin.

Eileen also said that if someone wanted to sue her they just could go ahead and do it. She was barely making ends meet as it was, so if someone wanted to take all her half used bottles of OPI, a few nail files and a 50 gallon drum of acetone they were welcome to it. You can’t get blood from a turnip after all.

I don’t know, I guess a corporation is a little over the top for someone like Eileen but I would hate for someone like Mrs. Ramseur to trip and fall and have a greedy lawyer from Charlotte or Raleigh come down and make poor Eileen go bankrupt. Eileen laughed and said, she’d just change her name and go back to doing nails in the house. It be easier especially since her daughter and grand baby just moved back in.

Learning What A Corporation Is..and I have a blog which you know already

Dear Crystal Lou,
This is so much fun. I haven’t learned a thing about finance yet but I did “tweet” once. Russ says I have to do some work now, which is less fun but here I go.

Today’s topic is: What is the stock market? What are Stocks? What are bonds?

Russ is still working on my diary page. It will be called a blog and pretty soon I will just write on that blog and save myself the trouble of cutting and pasting this into your email. He said to keep writing to you though so I have something to put on the blog when he gets it up there.

You probably wonder what I have learned about stocks so I will tell you now. Researching stocks is turning into a rabbit hole I didn’t know existed! Here’s the beginning:

According to Wikipedia, which has all kinds of information on it but I don’t know how much is true,  a stock is:

A fractional ownership of a corporation in proportion to the number of shares.

Say what?

I didn’t really understand that, so I am breaking it down even more. I just imagined that this sentence is like a sweater I’m knitting and come to find I have more stitches on the needle than I need so I have to keep unraveling it until I figure out where I added stitches.

Unraveling this sentence..

Starting with:

A corporation:

A corporation is like a company, or a business. And it is made up of a group of people OR an organization (I would guess of people and not pigs) that are allowed to act as a single person under the law.

If you want to be a corporation you have to follow a bunch of rules and file certain kinds of papers with the government. I guess you could do this on your own but it seems like most corporations use lawyers to do this. I also guess you wouldn’t make a corporation unless you figured you’d be making a lot of money and could afford to pay the lawyers to form the corporation in the first place. That sounds a lot like me working at my job, them paying me, and then me giving them a piece of my money to let me work at my job, but whatever, maybe it’s more complicated than that, I don’t know.

At any rate: that is what a corporation does.

Now you ask? Why would you want a corporation if it costs money just to call yourself a corporation. Why wouldn’t you just start a business and hire people and pay them directly?


Good question Crystal Lou! Mostly because and I’m quoting “Corporations enjoy limited liability for their investors which can lead to losses being externalized from investors to the government or general public”

I will have to examine that sentence too cause at face value, it sounds like BS.

@FiNancy5 it's my TWITTER name!!!!

Dear Crystal Lou,

Today, Cash opened up a “twitter” account because he thinks it would be good for me to follow money people there and Bill said it will limit the number of words I use when asking questions, so I am a “tweeter” which means I ask questions and say things that come to mind on the twitter book. Russ says I should try not to ramble on and keep my questions and thoughts to the subject at hand, which is investing and finance.

Also, he said my Twitter name will be @FiNancy5 isn’t that a hoot! SO from now on I am signing off as FiNancy…

Stupid Things Financial Bloggers Say

Dear Crystal Lou,
Before I start my research I just have to say I read a funny article on line that read,
“10 things you should do with your Christmas bonus money”
I laughed so hard thinking about that bonus ya’ll bus drivers got from the school board this year…what was it again?
Crickets?

We CAN Do This!

Dear Crystal Lou

It does make my head spin when I see all those charts and lines and dots and abbreviations but as you pointed out, it can’t be any more complicated than knitting a Christmas stocking or putting sequins on a prom dress and you know how I can work a bedazzler, so maybe I can figure this out.

This blog is about us learning everything we can about the stock market, investing, bonds, finance, and more and then teaching it to other people who might one day stumble upon this nonsense.

That’s how I got good at knitting after all. It was just a bunch of us knitting together and teaching each other something after we learned it. I’m just going to do exactly that with learning about stocks and bonds and finance. Learn something, and then teach it to you Crystal Lou, and anyone else who wants to know. Heck EVERYONE else who wants to learn is welcome here.

So, if you are reading this, I just want to say “HEY” first of all and 2nd, You aren’t dumb, but you might be like us and ignorant.

I’ll bet there’s like 10 thousand things you can do really well and not one of those stock brokers would have a clue about ! So what, you don’t understand the investing world, it’s cause you never learned it.

Well dang it, let’s open the door and step inside that world. I mean if Uncle Larry can come out of the closet for being gay, and the grandma kissed him smack on the lips and said she already knows and didn’t die of a stroke, I’m pretty sure I can step into the world of finance without bringing down the economy.

So this is for all of us who have been quietly ashamed of not knowing what is going on, and mostly not feeling like we had two pennies to rub together to invest in the market anyway.