Month: September 2023

I just read two interesting articles about spending habits. One focused on boomers and the other discussed the differences in spending habits of boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. The latter article was based on data from Bank of America.

My Spending

I started seriously tracking my spending in mid-life and must admit it gave me pause. I can identify with the boomer woman who wrote the article about her spending habits. She found it much easier to spend on her children than to spend on herself. In fact, she felt guilty spending on herself – to the extreme! She attributed it to growing up in an environment where needs could not be fully covered by family income, not to mention spending on any wants.

I grew up in a household that covered its needs – we were clothed and fed and had a comfortable home – but my parents had to set priorities for any extras. To ensure that their priorities were met, my father kept a ledger of income and expenses to the penny. I learned those values but also decided that I did not want to keep track of every penny and wanted to have disposable income to spend as I wished.

Family is a priority for me. I have four sisters and two sons who are married and have blessed me with six grandchildren. I love to see them regularly and celebrate birthdays and holidays together.

Throughout my career I developed close friendships. Our get togethers for lunch or happy hour are truly my attitude adjustment time. Combined, I can easily overspend on gifts and eating out so that is where I concentrate my watchfulness.

Spending Patterns

After COVID, boomers (born 1946-64) and Traditional households (1928-45) showed high growth rates in credit card spending while Gen X’s (1965-80), millennials’ (1981-96), and Gen Z’s (1997-2012) spending dropped.

The COLA increase for Social Security is attributed to part of the boomer increase as well as higher saving rates during COVID. On the other hand, higher housing costs and the end of the student loan repayment moratorium affected younger generations. Spending patterns also played a role.

A survey by Qualitrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma found that 36% of Gen Z and millennials reported having a friend who influenced them to overspend. As a result, 88% of millennials and 80% of Gen Z have taken on debt. “The overspending is concentrated on dining or drinks and nights out, trips and vacations and birthday celebrations.”

Sound familiar? Their patterns of overspending do not sound much different than mine except to the extent of taking on debt. So, what causes that degree of overspending according to the above report?

Reasons for Overspending

According to Credit Karma, these are the top reasons survey respondents spend money they don’t have when they’re with friends:

1. Not wanting to feel left out. (31% of Gen Z and 32% of millennials).
2. Wanting to keep up with their friend’s lifestyle. (29% of Gen Z and 28% of millennials).
3. Wanting to please their friend. (29% of Gen Z and 28% of millennials).
4. Another 28% of millennials admit they just don’t know how to say “no” to this friend.

As we age, perhaps we are less enamored with matching the spending of friends, and our friends have less influence on our lives. Perhaps we are more conscious of the need to watch spending to buy a house, pay for the education of children, or save for retirement. Priorities change with age.

As we become more self-confident, perhaps it becomes easier to say “no”? Or maybe we distance ourselves from those friends whose influence is damaging to our financial health.

How to Combat Overspending

My parents taught me to watch expenses and save by their example. My former husband and I tried to do the same although we indulged our boys more than either household we grew up in. I admit that I never sat down with my sons and discussed family finances or talked about good saving and spending patterns. I expected them to learn the same way that I did – by example.

Parents still set the standard, but what happens if the adults in the household do not set a positive financial role model?

Because of my experiences as well as those of my investment and financial planning clients, financial literacy education has become my passion. I believe that age-appropriate financial concepts should be available in our education system at multiple levels. There are some wonderful programs offered in our communities – Junior Achievement, for one – however, mandated study in school would touch every boy and girl. According to the latest research, only 25 states currently mandate at least some financial education, sometimes as part of an existing course. That must change!

We set an example for our children and grandchildren, and they are watching! If you want some ideas for age-appropriate money and saving tools and programs, watch for my upcoming blog on that topic.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Did you have formal education on a financial topic? If so, where did you receive that education and who taught it? What is the most important financial tip you received?

For a brief moment, I heard the universe vibrate when I thought a man was a God; I had never experienced soul-moving love before. I was 33.

I’m older now, and I have experienced love since, but not in a way where I felt the cosmos crack open. I’m still not sure if it was the best or worst moment of my life, but I do know it was something spirit shattering and karmic. Sort of like climbing Mount Everest and dying in the process. I couldn’t stop myself despite the risks.

Foreshadowing

That August day I drove up the mountain to his house to meet him, I was filled with trepidation. We were living similar lives at 3000 feet elevation, but on different parts of the Blue Ridge. I owned my farm and worked. Yet, both of us had been living alone, and we had been searching for a heart of gold. So, when I found an educated man that read Mother Earth News, I was in!

Because the road to his cabin had been washed out and a large creek ran across it, I was forced to park and shimmy across a down log, thinking, How cool! I was greeted by a neighbor family in front of his cabin.

His looks were otherworldly – high cheek bones, almond shaped eyes, long wavy brown hair. He was tall, slim and beautiful, like Elrond in Lord of the Rings. Chalkboards lined the inside of his house where he had elaborate drawings, astrological charts, and quotes from philosophers and Jimmy Hendrix. Many years later, when the movie A Beautiful Mind came out, I gasped and sobbed in affirmation of crazy.

Love?

We laid in his bed listening to his goats, the bells around their necks jingling like fairy chimes. A bear was wrestling with the cherry tree by his bedroom window, and we were young, fine and he was the only home I thought I ever needed before I learned the only home I needed was me. For a moment, I walked in the sun so in love with someone.

As the months went by and my belly swelled and our first child was born, I walked in a cyclone of his rages. This tempest had moments of calm, peace and space, when we would ride our horse bareback in the woods with Judy Blue Eyes as our soundtrack.

If he had been well, I would have had 10 kids, but he wasn’t well. My soundtrack turned to Pearl Jam and I couldn’t, for the life of me, ever win back his love that had been captured in amber, like a wasp, in my memory. But I scrambled for his love, always falling short, not knowing how I had been cast out of heaven and trying to get back to him. His dislike for me was clear, evident and constant.

Even when he was shackled in the psychiatric unit or perhaps worse, appearing before the judge for trying to kill me, I still sobbed like a child.

How Do I Process This?

My relatives still refer to him as America’s guest because of his entitlement. Now, 30 years later, I look at him, mostly in confusion, for he bears no physical resemblance to the man I met because age isn’t kind to the narcissistic and unmedicated. My heart no longer skips a beat because that vibrational love I felt with him now reverberates all around me.

For one earth shattering moment when I fell in love, I thought divine oneness was connected to another human, and I got dazzled by enchantment and relief from existential loneliness. At that time, I was unmarried and living a life of a mountain woman, very alone, sometimes for weeks, when we still had long winters in the mountains.

Perhaps we used each other. He needed a place to live, kicked out of his farm for not paying the rent, and I didn’t want to succumb to the pressure of my entire Italian family to quit my lifestyle and work as a lawyer in N.Y.

As my father said, “I believe your National Geographic experiment has come to a close. It’s time to go to law school and enter the firm.” I sobbed, not wanting to leave my mountain but not wanting to die alone and without teeth and then the universe threw me a bone, him, so I could stay in the country, but at a dear price.

Restitution

I know what I experienced with him in those early moments was so powerful I can still remember it viscerally. He didn’t experience the same. He was a grifter – plain and simple, and I hold my own responsibility, the most significant one was being naïve. I too am culpable.

Almost four decades later, I learned how that supernova brilliance of heaven cannot be fulfilled by any person. Ask a divorce lawyer. But I do know what the poets speak of too, and in the Indian Summer days of September, when I first met him, I remember, and I can see the turning leaves, the warmth of the sun on my young skin and the smell of the second bloom of honeysuckle in the air… but I understand much more now.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How would you label your current relationship with your ex(es)? Did you know (or feel) ahead of time that your relationship will end? Do you regret taking the plunge?

Originally posted at: Erin Lichy’s Pink and Green Tie Dye Bikini

Originally posted at: Brynn Whitfield’s Coral Dress and Round Chain Sunglasses