Fiscal responsibility
My good friend Rebecca recently had her first child, a strange and hilarious new experience for the Hipster Queen and her band-fronting fiancee, and the past 18 months (factoring in the obligatory nine for gestation) have been a flurry of breastfeeding debates, stroller debates, car seat debates, bottle debates, crib debates, and a lot of Rebecca screaming her disdain for others. Here is what I have learned from Rebecca’s parenting escapades: no one likes to be told how to raise his or her kid, and everyone likes to tell other people how to do it.
Rebecca has made solid decisions on raising Søren, yet people continue to tell her why she should have used formula, why she shouldn’t have Søren up at midnight, why she should make Søren sleep on a set schedule. She gets terribly frustrated and can’t seem to make people realize this: Søren is her baby, not their business.
I run into the same conundrum in a similar, but much more materialistic, sense. I spent 21 years finding fiscal responsibility a Cervantesesque dream. I do my best to overdraft on unoverdraftable debit cards, to put off paying credit cards until legal summons show up on my doorstep, to write checks in a way that defies even the most intricate of Ponzi schemes. Rather, this was how I did things. For two years, since going to Alaska, I have only used cash. You may recognize it: it’s green, smells weird, and minted on Crane’s Kid finish linen paper (a huge mark in its favor). But I’ve discovered this: not only is what I do unusual, it’s also downright weird. Ill-advised. Illogical. And best of all, it’s just plain stupid. This is what people have felt free to tell me—that my decisions on how to deal with my money are wrong, that the carefully honed system I have for saving, not spending, and keeping track of the money I make is the stupidest way I could handle my finances.
To replace a savings account, I make my highly-trusted aunt keep a carefully updated ledger of my savings. When I find things online, I mull over the decision for days, weeks, before buying a gift card with which to purchase them. My iTunes runs on iTunes gift cards, bought only when my “to buy” list reaches a full $15 or $25 worth. My using only cash means that while buying things is difficult, impulse buying is almost entirely impossible, and buying on credit is completely unheard of.
My cash-only rule is not a reaction to the recession, but to my own financial indiscretion. My lack of savings and checking accounts is completely intentional. But even people who would die if they heard someone talk about salary or inheritance find it perfectly reasonable to tell me I don’t have enough money, have too much money, am doing the wrong thing with my money, and being fiscally irresponsible. Like Rebecca, I have taken something everyone has, and made it uniquely my own, tailoring my spending habits to my life, not striving to make them like everyone else’s. It’s my baby, and it’s none of your business.
