Money

I have been thinking a lot about money. This is unusual for me. I have been in the incredibly fortunate position all my working life of not having to think about money. This is as much luck as the result of the choices I've made - I am very conscious of that, and grateful for the way things have worked out in my life. But I very soon will reach some milestones that make it feasible, though not financially easy or desirable, for me to retire. More luck in my life, not so much planning. As things in our government (where I work) get confusing, it's a huge sense of freedom to have. Life is full of possibilities and choices. I am conservative, reluctant to make change, but I could if I wanted to.

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My friend wrote a great blog post about bill paying that is the immediate inspiration for this post. She and her husband each own their own businesses, they have children, their financial lives are infinitely more complicated than mine, and she is infinitely more organized. But I need to be more in command and control in order to know what choices I could make. I'm making some strides in that direction.

Guess what? I have DATA. I have LOTS OF DATA!

I have automated almost all of my routine finances, and outsourced other parts of it. I started using Quicken twenty-five years ago, and I still use it. Once, it was just for record-keeping. Then, it printed my checks. Now, almost everything is paid on-line. Every bill that can be automatically debited from my account or my credit card is automated. My paychecks reliably get deposited every two weeks. I manage cash flow by manually making the credit card payments, timed to be able to pay off completely. The most manual thing I do is withdraw from savings by check from the credit union in my office building and walk that check across the street to my bank to deposit it in order to cover my credit card payment.

With a reliable paycheck that exceeds my daily and routine expenses magically going into the bank regularly, I have never had to have a budget. I have been prudent in big expenses and unconscious and casual about little ones. After a splurge, I slow down on discretionary purchases until I feel in balance again. I have saved money every single year of my professional working life, with two exceptions.

Twenty-five years ago, I had a couple years of living bigly. I took up photography as a serious hobby, bought a serious camera, and then a second and several lenses, and capped off a year of intense learning and study and practice with a several weeks-long photography field trip with the Sierra Club to the far north slope of the Alaskan tundra. Fabulous in every way, but it was the first time I had ever been in a small plane. I was infatuated with the freedom and the view. I signed up for flying lessons the day I got home from the trip, and a few months later was licensed and most of my social life was hanging at the airport and flying to places just for the fun - and for the photography. It settled down into ongoing expensive twin hobbies, but one that was financially feasible, after the initial splurges on equipment and training.

The second time I spent more than I earned was the year my sister died, when without thinking I paid cash for her funeral and largely supported the family until they got back on their feet. Glad to do it, no regrets, and look where we are now!

But now, I need to figure out what it would take to live without a paycheck. Worklife has not been financially a bed of roses forever - I worked for two private sector companies that each set a record at the time for their spectacularly large bankruptcies; they turned their pensions over to the government. In fact, the bankruptcies were largely designed to do just that. Thank goodness for the government safety net provided by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. It doesn't make us whole for the promises my former employers made, but it helps. For many people, it is the difference between poverty and not. For me, at these companies some few years each towards the beginning of my career, it is a very useful leg up.

So with twenty-five years of records in my computer, I have a lot I could do with the data. I think of graphs and charts as one way to write my memoirs, where my money went and what I did with it, and why- what was happening then? But I'm trying not to go down that rabbit hole of memory, but stay focused on what would be useful now:  knowing with some certainty how much money I need to live on. I need to develop a budget. I have lots and lots of information on which to develop that.

Besides being automated, I am very nearly cash-less. (In 2016, I only took cash from my bank twice!) Since small businesses have embraced credit cards, via Square and Paypal and other conveniences, I charge almost everything. Some food trucks don't even accept cash - they don't want to handle it. The only checks I write go to individual service providers  or small scale local clubs - once a lot of things for the kids like piano teachers and therapists - but now pretty much just my dogwalker (who does take paypal but strongly prefers the checks for the bigger net) and my sailing club. That means, via Quicken, I know where every penny is going.

I also use Amazon a lot. Did you know you can download a list of your Amazon purchases? I use automated Quicken categories for my credit card transactions, but "Amazon" could be any of several categories. So one recent project was matching my Amazon purchases for the past couple of years in Quicken with my downloaded list of transactions and putting more accurate categories on them. Looking at all my spending for the past couple of years gives me a much better picture of where my money is going and what is truly necessary. It allows me to think about how I could prioritize if I were to cut back.

I'm wondering about analogies to dieting. The first step towards eating right is to be mindful and aware of what you are eating.Serious focus on that requires writing it down - tracking every bite. Because I've automated the wazoo out of my money, it is frictionless and I have not bothered to be mindful. Just looking at the history has made me more conscious of what I'm spending as I'm spending. I know many people use cash as a conscious budgeting tool. I don't think I want to do that, but I could use tools like Quicken or Mint to more actively and even daily review what I have spent and what I want to spend on next.

Hmmm.... how to use my data analysis tools and learning from weight management to make me a better financial manager?

Fine, Thanks, and You?

Ice cream was the first symptom... Things are not out of control, but not tightly under wraps either.

It's fine, though. I'm focused on walking, getting in shape for a fabulous vacation coming up. I want to write, though. It is so helpful to feel a sense of accountability. So hopefully I'll be able to carve out time to keep in touch.

So here's the quick weight picture, just to be honest, you can see the small loss has stalled and even gone up a bit. More later, on more interesting topics.

The Incident of Ice Cream in the Night

I continue to manage my eating, and I continue to lose a small amount of weight. At the same time, I've really upped my exercise because I'm planning on a walking vacation and I will have a lot more fun if I am in better shape. I'm very mindful of what I'm eating, logging it all, and thinking through my approach to mindful eating, asking myself "Do I want this now?" (ask twice, once with the emphasis on this, once with the emphasis on now).

One night this past week the positive answer to that question led me to consume two four-ounce cups of mint chocolate chip ice cream that just happened to be in my freezer. I did pause and ask myself about it, and I owned the moment. It was not hurried, mindless consumption. I slowly savored each and every spoonful, noticing the uneven distribution of chocolate through the ice cream, enjoying the way the cream melted in my mouth, leaving a last chew of chocolate before swallowing. But I don't know what happened to drive me to a "yes" answer. I tried to talk myself out of it, but I kept coming back to "yes" and so I chose to go for it. Asked again, harder, before the second cup went down the hatch, and came up with the same answer.

So about 360 calories and 60 grams of sugar. So what? I was surprised at the immediate consequences on the scale the next day. After steady though small progress, the scale jumped up two whole pounds overnight and stayed there for three days before coming back down to where I was the morning of the ice cream incident. So I conclude that 60 grams of sugar led to my re-absorbing water throughout my body, because only water retention can explain that big a gain (or loss for that matter) overnight. My weekly trend, and Trendweight.com's more complex calculation, so a small loss for the week, but knowing specifically the consequences of a sugar incident may give me pause before my next chosen indulgence.

Energy

I am feeling better and more energetic and optimistic and productive than I have in a long time.  I am conscious of this, and grateful and trying to ride the wave and get a lot done, but I really don't know why I feel like this, so my Scandinavian pessimism is telling me not to get used to this. A piece of me is waiting for the bubble to burst.

Is it the spring weather in February? Shouldn't I feel guilty for enjoying it so, when it's a symptom of the ill-health of the planet? Is it something I'm doing physically, my diet, my vitamins, my sleep, my exercise? Is it something I'm doing mentally/emotionally, meditating, connecting with family, connecting with friends, planning a fun vacation, rationing my media consumption, listening to great music and reading only fun books? If it is driven by my actions, which ones? How do I keep this up? If driven by externals, it's surely not the state of the country, which is in dire peril and makes me feel helpless when I allow myself to dwell on it, which I don't. Clearly the absence of any major immediate family crisis is part of it. My work is probably at least partly responsible, where it is urgent and busy and feels important and as if my personal contribution makes a difference to the part of our nation's commerce I work in (at least). And I'm making plans, and science says we sometimes gain more satisfaction from planning and deciding to act, rather than actually acting.

Not every thing nor every moment is coming up roses, of course, but when I pause and check in with myself, I have an underlying happiness that is burbling along. Sure wish I knew the formula for this, and could reproduce it at will. If I could bottle this and distribute to everyone I know, I would!

Me and My Devices

Aaron Carroll, a health blogger and NY Times columnist I follow, wrote an article covering a study that looked at how a tracking device helped (or not) with weight loss and increasing activity.  The study results were negative.  I had already tracked back and read the original publication some time ago, and so I commented on it in the NY Times on-line.  This morning I looked, and my comment had risen to the top of the "readers picks" in comments. How about that? (Internet fame is so fleeting that it maybe won't be at the top anymore if you go look.)  Here is the article - if you have a subscription you can get to the comments.

https://nyti.ms/2lZULns

Steady as She Goes

It has been a good week. No flu. No migraine. I cooked enough that I carried my meal to work every day. I am mindful as I eat, and conscious of the tastes, slower, and enjoying it as I go. The weight loss I see is real, though less than the initial woosh.

Total Calorie Burn.
Big one-time drop was switch in technology.

My real focus is on upping my activity, though. If I can manage the food the way I did this week - not the main focus of my week, but good and easy due to planning, then I have more time and energy to work on the activity. I spent some time going back and looking at my activity statistics.  I've definitely got scope in improve my activity levels.

Steps from fitbit

I've tracked my calorie burn since I first started wearing a device.  The big drop shows that different devices calculate it differently.  I think the more recent data is probably more "true". The absolute scale is actually not that important - it's the trend. So the calorie count shows that the past few months I've definitely upped my game from last year.

Zooming in on steps in the past couple of years, you can see there is a lot of variability in how much I walk.  In June of 2015 and 2016 I took vacations with a lot of walking. But generally, 2016 had fewer steps than 2015. This last January, I took a work trip that required being on my feet a lot. I've got another walking vacation coming up, so I'm strongly motivated to get these step counts up!

Speaking of that, it's warm and sunny and the dog is restless.  Catch you later.

Cooking

Cooking at home is the key to controlling what I eat (and also to keeping it reasonably priced).  But I have years and years of a habit of not cooking on week nights.  Am I too old a dog to learn this new trick?

Two days a week I go to the gym, which totally shoots the evening.  I should definitely get a pass those nights.  But other nights - I get home between 6 and 7, depending on work and traffic.  I'm generally in bed before 10 (and sorry if I'm not - a post on sleep and how I crave it will be coming). There is still time in that evening window to cook.  And yet, I rarely do.

What do I eat if I don't cook?  Leftovers, mostly.  I try to have a surplus from when I do cook so I have them. Gym nights, I don't want to eat much if at all before going. Afterwards, I either grab leftovers (as I did last night) or else stop at Whole Foods hot food table.  Often, on gym nights, I end up not eating much at all - sometimes, it's just pistachios. On work nights without the gym, its almost always leftovers. There are also a very few frozen dinners I like and often have on hand.  I don't go out, unless its with one of the kids to a place like Chipotle.

Tuesday, I actually cooked.  I have an internal debate about what constitutes truly cooking. Heating up something from the freezer or fridge that was already cooked does not count.  But tonight, I had all the ingredients at home because I'd intended to cook Sunday night, and instead went out to a restaurant with the family.  So tuesday night I made italian sausages, spaghetti squash, and a fresh tomato sauce from raw ingredients, and by almost anyone's definition that was cooking.  I thought about it on the way home, and one thing I did differently tonight from most nights is that I went right to the kitchen.  I did not first flop down on the couch with the ipad to check up on facebook.  Instead, the dog went out back, I changed my clothes, and then grabbed all the ingredients out of the fridge and got right to work.  I had also walked through the steps in my mind while driving, so I didn't in the moment have to decide if (for example) the sausages were going under the broiler or on the stovetop. Decision-making is not my forte after a long work day, and that kind of indecision can drive me to the couch with the ipad while all my energy and good intentions leak away.  I also had a clean kitchen to work in.  Definitely a messy kitchen is often a barrier.

I know that for most women of my age cooking dinner is not that remarkable.  I did go through a stint where I made dinner for the family every night, but it wasn't for twenty plus years like most of us, only about five years.  Now I'm back on my own, and pistachios in lieu of dinner is actually just fine some nights.  No-one to please but myself.  But I'd like to get the inspiration and energy to cook more often than just on weekends.

So I guess the main points of my cooking success are:  clean kitchen, all ingredients already on hand, a clear plan of how it's going to go, and don't flop down on the couch first. Another key point is home before seven.  I'll see if this is repeatable more often.