(This musical sprang into my head, and this is the most famous number…  Although I really am shy.)

So when I turned 30, my back decided to be lame.  Seriously: right after my 30th birthday, I began to experience chronic, but low-level, back pain.  Just enough to remind me that something’s not 100% but not enough to really complain most of the time…

Except that I also began to notice that I felt especially creaky when I got out of bed in the morning.  Our mattress (which was about 7 years old at that point) might not be the culprit, but was complicit.

That was also about the time of my employment instability, so while I wanted an awesome new mattress, I also wanted to pay the mortgage and buy groceries.  So a few more years slipped by before I finally yielded and bought a new mattress.

But I made a HUGE mistake and bought a cheap mattress.  So while the first few months were fan-freakin’-tastic, the mattress started to get soggy pretty quickly.

So, fast forward about a year later: I’m now newly fiscally responsible but I want a shiny new mattress.  While I absolutely advocate buying or trading for a lot of things second-hand (i.e., our dining table, our dining chairs, some office furniture, some kitchen tools, quite a lot of our books), I draw the line at soft furnishings.  (Well, I draw the line at buying soft furnishings.  I have no problems selling ours on Craigslist.)

The child in me just wants to slap down a credit card and hope we pay it off sooner rather than later.

The newly fiscally responsible adult in me says to save for it and buy it with cash.

My back is wondering if the couch is more comfortable.

So I’ve spent the day on business development (as well as blogging) to try to speed up the cash flow so that I can get my new mattress soon!

It’s February, it’s cold, and I still dream of moving to warm weather.

Then I remember: I have theater tickets next week.  And the week after that.  And the week after that…

I honestly do not believe there’s a better theater scene in this country than right here in Chicago.  It’s one of my many, many vices and I can’t imagine giving up attending live theater.

Yet, if one is supposed to convert one’s passions into one’s profession, could I do that with this passion?  A friend of Facebook once suggested it and it stuck with me.  One problem, of course, is that I’d really like to preserve this passion as a passion: in other words, I’m concerned that if I worked in the arts, that I’d get sick of the arts.

The bigger problem: I’ve got the performance talent of a stick.  Wait, no, that’s insulting to the talents of sticks.

Well, what about behind the scenes?  No, not making my toes curl.  The biggest challenge facing the arts, the biggest challenge that has forever faced the arts is fundraising.  And I’m the chick who couldn’t sell Girl Scout Cookies when I was a kid.  (This is the same reason why I’ve crossed politics off my list.)

But I’ve got plenty of other vices I could consider converting into a profession…

Yeah, I like things.  Just yesterday, I vowed to Chris that I wouldn’t buy from Amazon for two months.  Then I learned this morning that the ebook of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere was on sale for $3…

No, it’s not much.  But I promised myself!  And we had just decided to eliminate our CC debt by a combination of cashing out of tanking investments (yes, Chris was on board with yesterday’s idea) and some strict-ish budgeting for two months.  Which means I can continue to buy stuff I had already planned for (like theater tickets!), but not random crap.

And there’s so much random crap that I love and want.  I’ve got a crafty hobby (cross stitching).  I love books (real and electronic).  I love iPad games.  I love TV shows on DVD.  I love Apple gadgets.  I want to refurnish our bedroom and the dining room (and not with IKEA!).  I love shoes, purses, and sweaters.  (But I hate bathing suits.)  I love fine dining and great wine.  Can I tell you how badly I want to score tickets to Next Restaurant’s El Bulli menu?  I love to travel, especially to Europe and especially in first or business class.[1]

Not to mention the absurd part of me that wants a house (!) in our neighborhood.  (What on earth would I do with a whole house?)

Chris shares some (many) of my vices (but not the house thing) and has a few of his own.

It’s been hard (and sometimes costly), but we have learned some self control with time.  After all, first and foremost, we also want to enjoy financial stability.  So over the years, I’ve consumed quite a few personal finance books to help us figure out how to balance love of spending with financial stability.  We started with Ric Edelman and I read The Millionaire Next Door.  Liked Edelman, hated MND (not surprisingly, given the number of vices I’ve got).  I then moved on to a slight tangent on consumer behavior (Stumbling Towards Happiness & Affluenza) to better understand my own spending.

We even started to see a personal finance expert in 2005.  She rightfully scolded us over our credit card debt but then hooked us up with a turkey investment.  We stopped going to see her.

Yes, I’ve also read Dave Ramsey.  But his co-mingling of personal finance and Christianity (as well as his gender stereotyping and his reliance on familial norms) drives me crazy.  Not to mention that he’s weak on investment strategy and he’s too extreme on the evils of credit card use (although we are on a CC fast until it’s all knocked out).  So while he does say some good stuff, it’s hard to see past his preaching.  (I have not subjected Chris to Ramsey.)

Lately I’ve been reading personal finance blogs and one of them directed me to Elizabeth Warren’s PF book from 2005, All Your Worth.  This sounds like the secular viewpoint I’ve been looking for (not to mention I joined the Warren fan club a few years ago).  She (and her co-author/daughter) repeats some of the good Ramsey stuff, but the message is in tune with our philosophy: personal finance is about personal balance.

The basic idea: income gets split among three buckets.  Needs, Wants, Savings.  50% (preferably less) goes to Needs (food, clothing, shelter, insurance, transportation).  30% (at most) to Wants.  The remaining 20% (or more) goes to Savings (which includes debt reduction).

This is completely in line with our experience.  When we realized we were in over our heads (thanks in large part to my unemployment), we first tried to pare down Wants.  But the most effective change we made was reducing the amount we spend on Needs (especially shelter) to about 28% so that we could take our Savings to 50%.  Leaving us with 22% to spend on Wants.

Could we get out of debt faster if we reduced the Wants portion?  Of course.  But we’d be miserable in the process and since we have a reasonably aggressive debt elimination plan in place, it’s just not worth it.

Does that make us hedonistic?  Perhaps.  But it also makes us realistic.

[1]  To be fair, there are stereotypical things that most people want that I don’t.  I’m not a diamonds girl (I truly can’t tell the difference between real and fake except for the price).  I have no desire to ever own another car.  Awesome kitchens with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances?  Been there, done both, no need to do so again.  Neither one of us are really into gift-giving to each other for special occasions.  We HATE hitting restaurants for major occasions too (how awful is dining out on Valentine’s Day?).  And, most significantly, we don’t want kids.  So there’s some savings right there!

So I think I’m developing a blog style: I’m not the musical one of the family, but there does always seem to be a good song to match what’s on my mind.

So another New Year’s Resolution: financial fitness.  Honestly, it’s embarrassing: Chris earns GREAT money, and while my income has been uneven over the years, I’ve managed to earn a bit myself.  So why I am constantly left wondering where does it all go?

Part of the problem is that we got into the terrible habit of credit carding too much stuff during my best earning days; we’re still paying down that mistake.

Part of the problem is that we automate some savings into accounts we never see or touch, so it feels like we have less than we do.  That is a “problem” I don’t mind.

Part of the problem is that we have too many vices: theater (which I haven’t blogged about yet but will), good food, excellent food, good wine, excellent wine, travel, books, DVDs, music, gadgets…

So I sat down yesterday to figure out where exactly all our money is going.  To do that, I tracked our actual spending in our checking account for all of 2011, broken down into 13 categories:

• Cash withdrawals.  I figured this wouldn’t be too much, because we never have cash.  Ha!  Was I wrong…
• Housing expenses.  Our housing expenses are very, very simple: rent and renter’s insurance.
• Utilities.  The usual: electricity, gas, internet, phone.  (I’ve never had a water bill my whole life: the upside to living in the Great Lakes region my whole life, I suppose.)
• Food.  This was further broken down into subcategories to track grocery and restaurant spending.
• Pet.  We don’t have kids, but we do have a cat and while she’s SO MUCH CHEAPER than a kid, she does still cost something.  (But she gives back so much more!  [kinda sarcastic...  but she is really sweet.])
• Transportation.  Another simple category, since we don’t have a car and Chris’ job pays for his monthly public transportation pass.  Just my transportation costs and our occasional Zipcar use.
• Clothing.  I figured this wouldn’t be much, since I feel like I never buy clothes anymore, but was I in for a surprise…  I also tracked our dry cleaning bills in this category.
• Insurance.  In addition to Chris’ awesome health insurance, we have life and disability insurance policies.  I suppose I could have tacked our renter’s insurance in this category, but it doesn’t really matter.
• Entertainment.  This was a hodge-podge.  Theater, travel, and subscriptions (I subscribe to Audible, he subscribes to eMusic, we subscribe to Netflix and TiVo and a few magazines) made up the bulk of this category.  Again, I suppose I could have put dining out here, but it didn’t really matter to me so long as I kept track of it somewhere.
• Debt.  So not fun.  We have some student loan debt but we still have credit card debt.  My priority this year: to wipe out as much as possible.
• Savings/Investments.  This is a more happy category, although how we’re saving and investing is making me pause because, based on some research, some of these investments are pure suckage.  This exercise was a great reminder to re-evaluate our investment portfolios.
• Charities.  This was a pathetic category.  Another resolution is to give more in 2012.
• “Other.”  If I couldn’t quickly categorize an expense, it got thrown here.

Based on this breakdown, my first impressions of our spending:

• I was glad to see our grocery spending was greater than our restaurant spending.
• Still, I was not glad to see just how much we were spending on eating out, especially on eating crap.
• We (meaning probably “I”) spent way too much at Amazon.  I’m sure I got great deals, but still…!  I’d like to redirect a lot of that money to local shops and debt reduction this year.
• We spend an incredible amount on travel: looks like almost 10% of our net income.  Part of the problem is that we own two timeshares (ugh, don’t get me started on timeshares… that’s another blog post).  If we didn’t have credit card debt, I wouldn’t care.  But we do, so I do.
• Our electricity bill could stand to go down: I’ll give that some thought in the coming weeks as well.
• We hit coffee shops A LOT!
• Since Chris does most of the wine shopping, I’ll admit I was quite shocked by the amount we spent on wine last year.  Even Chris underestimated how much we spent by 33%.
• The “other” category (which included Amazon purchases, since I couldn’t quickly determine what they were) wasn’t as bad as I feared it would become, but does require closer analysis.

So I got a lot of food for thought from this exercise.  The next step: I’m thinking we need to pull money from investments that are tanking anyway to eliminate, once and for all, the credit card debt.  Let’s see if I can get Chris on board with that idea…

One New Year’s Resolution: to exercise more.  Actually, it was Chris’ resolution: he’s backpacking for the first time in his adult life this summer and we’d both prefer that he came back in one piece.

My own weight was creeping up (still in normal BMI range, but definitely getting up there) and clothes weren’t fitting as well as they might.  Last fall, we invested $5 in 30 Day Shred (thanks Amazon Instant Video!) and while Chris was much, much better about working out regularly, I wasn’t too shabby.  I was certainly doing better than I had been.

But he lost about 20 pounds and I lost 5.  That’s annoying.  (Everyone, including Chris, keeps telling me that guys lose weight easier/faster than gals, but when it’s your own weight that you’re worried about, who cares?)

So when he said he wanted a more rigorous workout program for the new year, I decided to join him.  I went from not working out at all to working out maybe 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes to suddenly working out 5-6 times a week for 35-45 minutes.

We also got better with respect to our diet.  Fewer carbs, more frequent small meals.

We’ve been at it for four weeks now.  And while he has lost another 5 pounds (and is beginning to see muscle definition) I have lost… NO WEIGHT.  Well, virtually no weight.  I keep fluctuating the same two pounds back and forth.  Worse, I’ve only lost an inch around the waist (my biggest trouble spot) and gained half an inch in each of my upper arms (stupid muscles).

Not to mention my back pain isn’t going away.  Isn’t strengthening my core supposed to help my lower back?

To give credit where credit is due, I’m a bit more flexible and I’m a bit stronger here and there.  Cranking out push-ups is now doable and 100 crunches is a regular thing.  Eating smaller-but-more-frequent meals is also helping my energy levels.  So I suppose I am getting more fit.

But damn it, I don’t want to be fit, I want to be thin!  I know it’s not PC to say that, that I should embrace my body type, that I should strive to be more healthy and let my body do it’s thing…  Screw that.  I’m a vain person at heart and I want to be a comfortable size 6 (or even a size 4) again.  I’m thinner than average (right now I’m a size 8), but who cares about average?  I sure don’t.  I want to be effortlessly awesome.  :)

So I’m left wondering if I should switch programs.  Perhaps try yoga.  Or pilates.  Something that focuses on long and lean, rather than strength.

But I also know myself.  If I don’t do this with Chris, I won’t do it at all.  He’s my biggest cheerleader, he makes it fun, he makes me laugh as we’re working out.  On the rare occasion I workout without him, I’m grumpy and resentful the whole time.  And I’m pretty sure that’s a two-way street: he’s much happier if he’s working out with me than if he’s solo.

So I’ll continue to plod on.  With luck, my back pain will get better, my waist will narrow, my weight will drop, and I’ll find my self-motivation.  And even if none of that happens, I’ll know I’m helping to keep Chris on track.

I grew up without cable.  No MTV, no Nick, no HBO.  The first time I ever had cable was an apartment I lived in my last year in college: the rent was dirt cheap and included cable.  The first time I ever had to pay for cable was about seven years ago, at which point I finally met with sticker shock.  For a service that had, up to that point, been free all my life, the idea of spending $100+ per month on TV was ludicrous.   Then I became unemployed and the first, and easiest cut, was cable.

When we moved to our current home, cable and internet bundling through Comcast wound up being cheaper than just paying for internet access… for a little while.  Once our promotional rates expired, however, I began to renegotiate with Comcast and found them unyielding.

I began to think about what we were watching on TV.  Most of what we watch is on the broadcast networks: CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS.  The biggest exceptions: the USA shows, which are all available on iTunes.

Well, we already had a HD antenna (from our former cable-free days), TiVo (I can’t imagine life without a DVR), and I was in the process of ripping our DVDs.  Since we live in an Apple walled-garden, an Apple TV made the most sense to get the USA shows.

So I switched us to AT&T U-Verse for internet access and cut out cable entirely.

Am I sorry?  I’ve got to admit, saying adios to Comcast was truly fun.  Broadcast channels are coming through beautifully (thanks in no small part to our new antenna) and we’ve spent a bit less on buying our cable shows ala carte than we would have on cable.  But AT&T is its own kind of suck and our download speeds have not been consistent (which is supposed to be a selling point of U-Verse!).  We’re getting a new modem from AT&T soon (because even they admit that our download and upload speeds are insufficient).

Still, there are days I wish I could join in the conversations about the latest Top Chef.  I’ll live though.  The number of books I’ve managed to devour since we cut cable is frankly astonishing.

I’ve worked, on and off, for years on figuring out what I want to do when I grow up.  Law school seemed like a good idea: I had okay grades, a fabulous test score, and the support of some wonderful professors.  But I wonder if it delayed the inevitable: I frequently alternate between thinking the law is a good fit for me and thinking that there’s a better fit for my interests and talents.

But if there is something “better,” I still have no idea what it is.  I’ve read oodles of career books, worked with a career coach, considered all sorts of alternatives, all for naught.

But there’s three doorways in the foyer: one for the entrance, one for the hall closet, and one that leads to a small den (which we’ve repurposed into a storage room), plus the archway that that leads to the living room.  Three sets of doors in this small space makes furniture placement… interesting.

So it’s always been a bit of a hodgepodge: all sorts of random furniture has made its way there.  Right now, we’ve got two plant stands in lieu of a console table, one rolling cart that doesn’t hold my shoes very well but does hold a basket on top for all our outdoor accessories (scarves, gloves, hats, etc), and a small shoe rack for Chris’ shoes.  No bench.  No effective mail system.  But what is driving me nuts the most right now is dealing with my shoes and boots.  It’s freakin’ cold here in Chicago and I love knee-high boots, but storing these things are a complete PITA.  In a perfect world I’d have something like this:

The Sarah Storage Tower from Ballard Designs (but I think I’d want this in white/cream).  At this point, however, this piece is aspirational, not attainable.  So this is what I’ve got instead:

It doesn’t handle my boots, but it handles plenty of shoes.  Unfortunately, Chris doesn’t think it’s sturdy enough to serve as a bench if it’s on its side (and he’s probably right), but it will tidy up my shoes.  Now all I need is to figure out how to work in a bench or a chair and perhaps a boot tray…

But I hate grocery planning and shopping.  Which we’re in the middle of doing right now (which is why I’m blogging instead).  It really isn’t that hard and we’ve got some basic rules we try to follow:

• We almost always buy a whole chicken which then gets used over three meals.
• We try to have fish/seafood at least once (preferably twice) a week.
• We try to have a veggie meal at least once a week.
• Lunch is usually sandwiches and fruit.
• Breakfast is oatmeal for him, soy smoothies for me.
• Snacks are limited to raw nuts or yogurt or fruit (or some combination thereof).

So why is menu planning still so freakin’ hard?  We’re currently stuck on what to have for lunch today: nothing is appealing to either of us.  (In our defense, we did just eat our mid-morning snack of yogurt and fruit.)  So we’re heading out with our list mostly complete and we’ll probably wind up splurging on an impulse buy for lunch… which is exactly what we try to avoid by creating grocery lists and menu planning…  argh.

We cut the cable cord late last year.  So much of what we were watching was on network, our cable bill was about to go up (we were on an awesome promo rate), and there was something very satisfying about being able to say adios to Comcast. But first, we made sure our set up would allow us to continue to enjoy our favorite shows:

• HD TV, 37″ (this was actually the first proper TV we ever bought, in 2010)
• TiVo HD (love this thing — I think the TiVo paid for itself when we did have cable by allowing us to avoid all sorts of Comcast fees — and works with Amazon and Netflix)
• DVD player (5 disc changer, because we like to marathon through TV series so it’s nice to be able to pop in an entire season at a time)
• Receiver & speakers (Chris really wanted a decent sound system, so we invested a few years ago)
• HD antenna (cheapie from Radio Shack, purchased years ago when we previously cut cable)

What was missing?  Well, I thought about an HTPC since I had quite a bit of video on my computer (legally acquired folks — I’m married to the anti-pirate).  And we’d talked about Blu Ray for years for HD video, but we have so many DVDs that the thought of the cost of conversion is quite intimidating.  Also, since the TV is under 40″, everything I’ve ever read on A/V systems suggests that 720p HD would be virtually indistinguishable from 1080p/i.

Which lead us to… the Apple TV 2.  So much cheaper than an HTPC (much as I’d like the opportunity to nab a Mac Mini), easy access to HD movies and shows (thanks to iTunes), and we could purchase the few cable shows we do watch (Burn Notice, White Collar, and Archer).  And it turned out that Netflix on the ATV2 is nicer than on the TiVo.  There’s a part of me that wishes I could cut out a box, but overall I’m happily surprised with how well the TiVo and the ATV2 work together in our tech system.  (I also have to admit that I’m spending more on iTunes video than I thought I would…)

So this set up has been running for a couple of months now.  But the bad weather here this past week has lead to iffy antenna reception, which had lead me to thinking maybe it’s time to upgrade the antenna (which is butt ugly anyway).

We’re lucky to live in a major metropolis: we pull in a ton of OTA channels (over 40).  Even discounting the informercial, religious, and Spanish stations, we still receive a ton of interesting programming for free.  (Especially since we pull in three different PBS stations: I do love our bits of socialism.)  But there’s been a lot of pixelation lately (stupid snow/rain) and I like the excuse to tinker with the system.

Not to mention the opportunity to research a new toy!  There’s all sorts of antennas: DIY (which is not happening, as I finally admit we have the crafting skills of a 2-year-old), flat, bow-tie, rabbit ears… and those are just the indoor solutions.  Since we’re now apartment living (I’ll probably get around to blogging about that), an outdoor roof or attic antenna was not going to happen.  And I like making the living room as pretty as possible, so that ruled out the truly atrocious antennas.  But the whole point of getting a new antenna was to improve the signal strength reception so that a bit of snow wouldn’t cloud up Benedict Cumberbatch’s lovely face, so function does matter more than form.  (Sigh.)

So I purchased this:

http://www.gomohu.com/the-leaf-indoor-hdtv-antenna/

Top reviews at Amazon, easy to hide, not terribly expensive.  I hope this works.

And no, I’m not sure if we’ve saved any money this way…  But I’m having fun and I don’t have to deal with Comcast, so I think this is an improvement.