Boys R Stinky

About a month ago my 12 year old daughter had 4 friends over for a spend-the-night. It was exactly what I expected -- 9 hours of non-stop giggling, snacking, screaming at a scary movie, group decisions about 'what we're going to do now' and a 3 a.m. raid on the donuts -- my arrival at which made one girl quake in fear until I asked whether they'd left me one. Exhausted, frowsy, and still dear friends, they all left at 10 the next morning and I'd felt I'd had my friends over, too.

Last night my newly 11 year old boy had five friends for a sleep-over. My unbiasesed, cooly anthropological conclusion? Boys are stinky. Every single one had a DS, of course, and mysteriously, they could all tell which identical white DS was theirs, whose dropped identical white stylus was whose, and whether the power cord on the left of the sofa or the right of the sofa was theirs. Whatever.
They played Wii and some game they can all download on the DS at the same time, and spent so much time bossing each other about what to do with their imaginary fighting creatures, screaming in occasional victory and telling each other to 'shut up' that I had to leave the room.

Is this normal? I asked my husband. Are they having fun? Are they getting along or should I send them home?
This is what boys do, he assured me.
Then you go in there. I don't understand it.

At 2:30 they woke me from a doze playing flashlight tag, after I told them it was too small an apartment for flashlight tag. They asked me where the toy click gun and the light saber were 10 seconds after I wrenched them from sweaty hands and hid them in my room. They yelled at each other to shut up some more, and giggled fitfully whenever someone said 'fart'.

Apparently it was all okay because they lived through the night, although I told them a 1, 2, 3, and 4 am to hush. At 5 a.m. I told them to shut up.

Exactly one child brushed his teeth and two of them never even changed clothes.
Strangest of all was the food. At midnight, none of them wanted a donut. This morning they had left an entire bag of potato chips and an entire bag of Tostitos. There were peanut M&Ms still in the bowl!
My son, who must be on his 20th straight hour of video games, (It's his birthday, after all) assures me that everyone had a good time. I'm going to have to take his word for it.

How to make it when money's tight

I heard a "Financial Advisor" on the TV this morning -- have you caught any of these guys talking? Somewhere between "out of touch" and "completely insane."
Omigod.
His advice was "calculate your expenses for the next five years and take that much money out of your stock portfolio and put it in cash." What!!!! Who has five years of expenses in savings? Financial Advisors. Brokers. That's who. The guys who got us into the mess in the first place. Poor Ace Greenberg, busted from 15 billion to 911 million. I weep.

Want some real advice from a real used-to-be-middle-class-now -I'm-not-so-sure mom?

Here's my vitals: I'm working, (for the moment) and have insurance (for the moment) so I'm still on the treadmill so to speak. I have a home equity loan, a car loan, three credit card payments, and I live in a co-op in New York, where nothing is cheap. Take that as disclosure.


I've run my own company for 18 years and for 14 of those years money was too tight to mention, as the song goes, and I've skipped more than a few paychecks in my life. So here's what I do when it gets tight:

Check your credit cards for those 'automatic' charges. Over time you forget about the 10 bucks a month for the kid's penguin website, or 15 for netflix -- but it adds up. Get rid of it.

Catch up on your health insurance files. There's always some doctor bill I forgot to put in for, and that can bring in an extra 50-100 when you least expect it.

Discover the library. DVDs are free to check out there. Oh, and they have books, too.

Go generic brand on anything you can stand to: you're probably already doing this.

Cook. A $10 roast chicken is good for two meals and soup afterwards. Make your coffee at
home, pack your snacks for work (healthier anyway), pack your lunches.

Pick your luxury: taxi? haircut? movie? Pick one.

Get to know your neighborhood tailor and shoe repairman: they can make old stuff look new enough to love again. But watch the charges -- it's not that cheap!

Iron. Wash your shirts, hang them to dry (they wrinkle less) and get some of that Downy wrinkle release spray. It works great, your clothes will look fine, and you'll save a TON.

MOST IMPORTANT:
Write down your budget.

I keep an excel file (paper works fine) of my income and my expected expenses.
I break it out by week (okay, I'm a little freaky) but you should look at it at least in two-week increments because that's how your bills run due: those at the first of the month and those at the end.

Start with your expected income at the top and Total that.

Then write down the absolute Must Pays that are Fixed Amounts -- the same every month:
Rent, electric, phone, car payment, insurance, credit card payment minimums, whatever.
Total your Fixed Amounts

If your income doesn't cover your Fixed Amounts, you have major decisions to make: move to a cheaper place? turn off the phone? sell the car or give up insurance?
No small amount of husbandry will really help with these major expenses. If you can make a second income, try. And try talking to the credit card companies. If you pay on time, they can try to help you. If you miss payments, they get really pissy.

Next write down your Variable Expenses: groceries, church donations, dues, those sudden checks the school needs for picture day, clothes, etc.
Your Variable Expenses will -- well, vary -- from month to month. Some of them you can control. Look for little things, like magazine subscriptions, that don't seem very expensive when you do them, but really add up. As my mother taught me, "strain a gnat, swallow a camel." (It's from the Bible.) It means watch out for the little expenses and you'll have enough left for the big ones.

If a little extra comes in one month, pay off more than the minimum on your credit cards. Every little bit helps. Some people pay off their cards twice a month -- if you have online bill pay this is easier, and it helps keep the interest down. Interest charges steal $100s out of you every month.

All this takes some planning and maturity. Is it fun? Of course not. But can you do it? People do it all over the world and have done it for centuries. Only in the last couple of decades have we become spoiled by prosperity. Conscious spending, like motherhood, is one of those duties that terrifies you at first, then makes you feel accomplished and righteous, and finally, becomes part of your character. Will you start sounding like your grandmother who talked about the depression and saved every scrap? Rather her than another pompous financial advisor.

Good luck to us all.