Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

I’m Fine, Thanks

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I’m Fine, Thanks, the documentary that Adam Baker has been traveling the country recording over the last several months is almost complete.  As part of the finishing up process, he, and his crew at Crank Tank have opened it up for funding on Kickstarter.

From the moment that Adam announced the project, I’ve thought it will be an excellent project.  There’s not much that Adam turns out that isn’t top notch, and the topic of I’m Fine, Thanks is one of my favorites.  It deals with complacency, in work, family, and in life and how the different people that he interviewed deal with breaking free of the complacency that they face, and looks to also include several people who have done it and share their story.

One of the biggest things, on my journey from work, to quitting my job, to going back to work, has been recognizing my own complacency with my life, and attempting to break free of it.  It doesn’t mean you have to quit work and walk off into the wilderness.  What it does mean is that you have to recognize the areas that you are being complacent, and make efforts to change them.  I’ve made great strides in the right direction (I think) and still have a long ways to go.

That’s why I think that I’m Fine, Thanks is such a great project.  I’ll be adding to the funding pool, I just haven’t decided how much yet.  Consider doing the same.

I Quit My Job: Back to Work

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This is a bit of a hard post to write. If you’ve been following the I Quit My Job series, you’ll know that I quit my full-time job back in November 2011 and have been working a part-time job and running my websites ever since.  With any journey that entails so much change, things are always changing.  Several weeks ago, I made the decision that it was about time to start looking for a new full time job.

Resume t-shirt © by WikiThreads

Why, you ask?  Do you want the simple answer, or the complicated one?  The simplest answer is that I’m running out of money, and need to earn more.  Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but that reason is the largest of the bunch.  In truth, it’s less of a reason as it is a symptom for a few other reasons.  One of the biggest of those reasons is a lack of preparedness.  When I quit my job, it wasn’t after months of planning and saving.  It was a decision that I came to after a week and was based far more on an unhappiness with the position I was in.  I don’t regret having made that decision, and I truly feel like I’m in a better situation now than I was there.  The fit of the position and I had fallen out of sync, and it was time for me to go.  Nevertheless, it wasn’t the soundest decision financially.

When I quit, I decided to give the new situation of blogging and a part-time job 6 months to see where it went.  While the part-time job remained fairly stable, the blogging income has been anything but.  My income on that front has fluctuated by several hundred dollars from month to month, and hasn’t grown at the rate that I had hoped it would.  Because of that, and the fact that I was operating on limited funds to cover any differences between my income and what we needed to pay bills, I’ve got to make the right move here and get a job.

In a way, I feel like I’ve failed.  But, sometimes, you have to fail in order to move ahead.  I’ve failed in that I wasn’t able to grow the income from this and other sites at a rate that would allow me to continue doing what I’ve been doing for the last 7 months.  I’ve failed in that I wasn’t able to see that lack of growth in time to find better (other) ways to increase my income.

I’ll be in a better place.  The new job is at a company that I feel is much more in-line with what I want in an employer.  They’ve got a very progressive business model that I feel is very unique in North Dakota, and was key in my making the decision to accept their offer.  While looks can be deceiving sometimes, I don’t think that they’re that far off.  Many of the issues that I had with my previous employer don’t exist at my new employer from what I can tell.  Time will tell, but I truly believe that I’ll like and enjoy my new job.

I’ve struggled a bit over the last few weeks, after I accepted the position, as to what it meant for the direction of this site as well as my other sites.  What I’ve decided is that Beating Broke isn’t going anywhere.  I really, really enjoy the interactions with you, and the writing that I do here.  I may have to scale a few of my other sites back a lot, and will likely get rid of a few of them as well.  I may even scale back how often I write here, but at the moment, I plan on continuing the 3 a week schedule that I’ve been keeping.

That decision is two-fold.  I enjoy Beating Broke as a creative outlet.  I also am not giving up on my dream to do this on a more full-time basis.  I want to continue to grow the site as best I can so that I might, someday, be able to come back to what I’ve been doing the last 7 months.  But, hopefully, next time, I’ll do it right and do a lot more planning and saving in order to do that.

What would you have done in my position?  What other thoughts do you have? How about questions?

The Struggle with Enough

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If you’ve read any of the more popular personal finance blogs, books, or attended any of the seminars, one of the more pervasive themes is the idea of enough. Heck, I’ve even written about it before.  Just what is enough, or how much is enough.  They’ll tell you that you need to find your “enough”, and then hold yourself to it.  Instead of using the inflated “enough” that the Joneses next door use, you’ve got to take a good look at your finances and find your own “enough”.  Now, a show of hands, how many of you have actually found what enough means to you, and held to it?

I can’t actually see your hands, so maybe a show of hands wasn’t the right way to measure the tally.  But, I’d bet that only a few of you actually would have put your hands up.  Why?  Because, you struggle with enough.  I do too.  Enough is an arbitrary measurement.  What you think enough is today isn’t necessarily going to be enough tomorrow.  So many factors go into what we believe enough is, and many of them change regularly.

A few years ago, if you’d have asked me what enough was, I would have told you that it was having a good paying job, a nice house with room for my family, and enough leisure time to enjoy the benefits of having those things.  Today, my answer is a bit different.  I quit my job a few months ago, and have had no other income besides what a part-time job and a handful of small sites provides.  We still have my wife’s income, but, compared to what we were making before, it’s a fraction of what it was.  Today, enough has a totally different feel to it.  And, we struggle with it.  Just like I’m betting you do to.

Enough money does © by Michell Zappa

The struggle is rooted deep into our psyches.  Growing up, we’re inundated with commercials touting the latest and greatest toys.  As adults, the only difference is the price of the toys.  Instead of a “Castle Grayskull Playset“, we want to have the newest credit card with all the fancy bonus miles, the new car with the rearview camera, or the house with the dedicated room for a library or mancave.  And that doesn’t even begin to touch the use of money as a security device.

People fear being broke.  A quick reminder that the name of this site is Beating Broke, will tell you that even I am not immune to the fear of being broke.  I’ve got a small secret to let you in on though.  Like “enough”, how you define “broke” makes all the difference in the world.  For some, being broke means making less than $100,000 a year.  If that’s the case, my family is way beyond broke.  Even when I still had my job, we were a full-time income away from making $100,000 a year.

What does broke really mean to you?  To me, broke is a place where you have tons of debt, and your income is the only thing keeping you afloat.  You’re stuck in a job you don’t like, so that you can make money to pay your bills.  The funny thing is, I feel less broke now that I don’t have a full-time job, than I did when I had my job.  Part of that may be straight up delusion, but it’s true.  But, I think a good part of that also comes from changing my definition of enough.  Instead of the good paying job, nice house, and leisure time, my definition of enough is something that feels a little bit more like satisfaction.  I’m satisfied with just barely making enough to pay the bills.  I’m satisfied with finding free or low cost activities that will entertain us.

And yet, we struggle with it.  For the last few weeks, I’ve been struggling with the idea of getting a new full time job.  Partially because the income from this and other sites hasn’t scaled to the degree that I thought it might.  Partially because with the amount that I’m making we teeter on that precipice of being able to adequately pay our bills.  And, partially, because we still struggle with the definition of what enough is.

What is your definition of enough?  How has it changed over the years, and do you feel that your definition of enough is enough?