Hegemony

I’m realizing just how much the deck has been stacked against me. I work 10-12 hours a day in a very deadline-demanding, high-performance job. My wife makes near double of me, but without as many incentives. Her work is equally demanding of her mind and schedule.

It’s far from a terrible situation, and I’m sure that others would kill to have such a position. Here’s the issue: after paying my mortgage and other cost-of-living expenses, I barely have any left. It’s the rat-race, no doubt.

At the end of each day, we don’t have much left of our energy, either. It’s been a few weeks of being paused in limbo, due to a couple bouts of the flu, a back spasm, and fair-ups from a chronic illness I have. During that time, I hoped to analyze my expenses further to see where I could do some “painless” cutting.

For example, I realized that we eat-out when working late. Guess what? we eat out a lot! Last year, my wife and I spent well over six thousand dollars on restaurants. That’s an average of $540 per month. Naturally, that includes all kinds of “restaurants”, ranging from Domino’s Pizza to the high-end type. In spite of that, we also managed to spend $440 a month on food from the market.

Convenience certainly costs. Money spent taking the easy route has meant saving less for our future and having resources available for investments. Even making just a couple of different decisions – ok maybe a few – could have resulted in saving at least a thousand dollars. That’s just food. We spent $20k on “retail” purchases alone. Could we have saved two or three thousand dollars on those purchases, too? Under the conditions, changing our habits is going to be very difficult. Very, very difficult.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that my wife and I share the same values and the same perspectives on most things. Together, we need to change, and together we’ve agreed to look into ways of making our money work for US – instead of the other way around.

Last week I watched a program from the author of the book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” Among the several assertions that we should move toward having many sources of income, was a promotion to take his seminar. There’s one in LA in April. My wife actually looked into travel arrangements, and it might actually happen. Today, I called a local landlord association to see how I could talk with those who’ve taken the investment real estate plunge.

These are little steps, but they’re STEPS. I think our first objective is to really understand the landscape of this new world. How should we begin? How much should we allocate to investments? Should we spend money decorating the house and feeling more comfortable here – or, should we live simply and scrape all possible funds into something aggressive? Should start out diversifying? What are realistic goals and would we be hurting ourselves to shoot too low, (as we have so far).

I’m reminded of my first day of college – similar focus as high school, but an entirely different environment. Our culture seems all about making money, but there are those who are much more serious about it. Their world seems like a parallel universe to me.

But, that world at least allows me to take advantage of turns in the economy. Working for a job just means I have to suck it up if there are larger issues affecting my employer. Nothing is perfect or ideal or without problems. In life, there is no promised land realized, but continuing the way we have is just like trying to win a stair race by climbing up the ‘down’ escalator.