Buying my way out

I think everybody kicks themselves for their past. It's why parents are so impossible, and why I'll probably be impossible to my kids. They want you to avoid their same mistakes. Sometimes I wonder if I do it more than other people. Maybe I've made more mistakes, maybe I just talk about it more. Lately it's been about money.

I make a nice living. Granted, it's all relative out here. But I make more than I thought I would ever make coming out of college. And I'm still trying to figure out a way for us to live on just my salary so we can have kids. Forget about a house. We just have so much debt. It all started when I got a credit card in college and just had to have that nice home stereo for $250. I think I'm still paying it off a card or loan somewhere.

It's easy to think about what I should have done differently. I think of missed opportunities to pay it down, like the money we got last year or the inheritance from Grandmother. It's an insecurity with me, and a good friend unintentionally struck that raw nerve recently when he said "I thought you guys just went out and bought something whenever you wanted it."

Maybe it's true, but it doesn't feel like it. I have some very nice things. A few years ago, I spent almost a couple grand over the course of about two years on a home recording studio. Keyboard, software, microphones, etc. I really love it. Were it not for my night school, I'm sure I would have posted a song here already. I used it for a while, and then decided that I had gotten so much better at recording, that I would start all over and erased all my songs. Then I started school and haven't touched it. I will again when I'm done.

Then we bought all this backpacking gear. We've been accumulating that slowly for the course of about 4 or 5 years. But most of our stuff is not particularly high performance, with a few exceptions. I feel like when we see other backpackers that we don't draw too much envy. And there are definitely things that I want to buy. This weekend I'm going backpacking and I have a laundry list of gear I want.

When we moved into the new house, I got excited about having space for a workshop and went out and bought a used table saw so I could make nice furniture if I have time. And of course, you can't forget my camera gear, which was well over a grand. And Kat is not entirely without being spoiled. I got her a new ring when her old one lost a diamond, an iPod and two laptops.

We have a nice car, and perhaps were I to do it over again, I might consider a used one. But at the time we really needed reliability and the warranty was attractive. And we got such a great deal that our payment is equal to about a $12,000 used car.

So we have some nice stuff, and of course, our true weakness is eating out, not helped by all the wonderful restaurants around here. We probably eat out once a week and order in once a week. That's expensive when cheap restaurants cost $30 for a meal.

But still, it's hard not to think about what we don't have. Despite how much we love our place, we don't exactly live in the nice part of town, and we pay very low rent for a two bedroom house. In fact, it's not bad for even a one bedroom apt. Many of our friends have one or two bedroom apartments and all pay many hundreds a month more than we do. At most, we pay maybe $100 a month more than our friends living in tiny studios in better parts of town. You take all the big purchases we've made since we've been married and I could pay for them all in less than a year with the difference in rent from where we live to many of our friends.

We only have basic cable, which is essentially paying $12 a month for just local channels, and we only have that because we don't get reception on local channels.

As much as I love the photography, there are so many things I want, it's kind of scary. Yet I haven't just gone out and bought them. Right now I essentially have two lenses. A 17-35, and an 80-400. They're nice, but 3rd party lenses, and you might have noticed that tiny gap between 35 and 80, which is where most people shoot 75% of their shots. That's just a basic lens. I also don't have a basic shoe flash. It doesn't even go into the macro and portait lens I want. And this isn't even the pipe dream lenses or studio lights that I'll probably never have.

I'm going snow camping this weekend in a place called the desolation wilderness at 8,000 feet and several feet of snow, and I don't have waterproof gloves or a serious winter coat. I'm going to look like a dork wearing ski goggles because I don't want to buy sunglasses.

I want a laptop. I want a new mac. I want an iPod. I want a big TV and a home theatre system. I want a video camera. I want tools. I want a lot of things that a lot of people have. But I don't go out and buy them, and it's not because I can't. It's because I want other things like kids and a house.

This is nothing new...nothing everybody doesn't deal with. I know it sounds like it, but I'm not asking for a pity party. I think when people get everything they want, something detaches them from reality and they become disturbed, or as the rich are called, "eccentric." The point is, I don't just go out and buy whatever I want. At least not how this friend was saying.

I think if I have to learn anything first, it's how to value the small amout of money. A penny saved is a penny earned sort of attitude. Right now, I don't think much of spending $10 or $15. And I'm sure it adds up quick. I do work on it a little bit. I ride in strangers cars in the morning to save $3.40 each day on the subway. But looking at our christmas lists, where requested gifts tend to be more realistic in price than the things at the top of my list, (such as $10 to $50, instead of the $200 jacket or $400 lens) I realized that we have almost everything we want. That's kinda scary.

Kat doesn't want too many little garden tools that she doesn't already have. I already have most of the things I need for backpacking. If it's only $20, I've probably already bought it with only a few exceptions. I have lots of little contraptions like cleaning cloths and cable releases for my camera. Maybe I want a filter or something like that, but who wants to buy that as a gift?

At the same time, it's hard not to think how things could have gone just a little bit differently. I mean, if we had moved to San Francisco literally 6 months earlier before the job market cooled, and I could have managed to hold down a job from the start, we might not only be better, we might be genuinely wealthy. I could more than easily see my salary being quite a bit higher, and the housing market is so hot out here that we could have bought the cheapest place on the market and have a couple hundred thousand in equity or more. I mean, I realize that sounds a lot like a lottery, but even just holding down a job would have made a huge difference: using Grandmother's inheritance to pay off our debt and invest for our future instead of paying rent and food. Ironically, I often find myself dreaming of winning the lottery when going to sleep at night. That's fairly remarkable if you understand how skeptical I used to be about such frivolous games.

I wonder though, even if I won if I'd be one of those people who lost it all. Money just slips though some people's fingers. I don't like to think of myself as being like that, but maybe I should. I think if I did lose it, it wouldn't be for big yachts and houses and cars. It would be for a thousand here a thousand there. Vacations and parties and flights to visit friends. I suppose in the end it would still be worth it.

And I suppose in the end, maybe it has been worth it. The trips hiking into the mountains, the pictures, the music, the smile on Katherine's face when I kiss her ring and tell her I love her. And of course that stereo. I love to turn it one and close my eyes and listen to the perfect sound. I've listened to that for over 10 years now. (Has it really been that long?) And enjoyed every minute. Time will tell if I've lived my life more wisely than not. But I think I'll be able to say I enjoyed the journey, and aside from joining Jesus, family and friends in heaven, that's about as much as anyone can hope for, rich or not.