Cash Only, Week Two

Another week has passed, and although my cash-only "experiment" is over, I have a feeling that my cash-only lifestyle is just beginning.

Oh, I don't necessarily mean to say that I will be forever free of plastic, but I am loving the freedom that comes with not having to owe a credit card payment each month. In fact, just this morning, I pulled up the website(s) for my credit card(s) just to look at how little I would be paying at the end of the billing cycle. What a happy thought!

It does somewhat surprise me, the slight gleeful feeling that I get from this. After all, it's not like there was debt involved. I treated credit as debit, for all intents and purposes, paying it off each month. So why, then, does it feel so good not to do it?

Perhaps it is because I don't have to worry about deadlines for payment (or looming late fees if I don't pay on time). When I pay something in cash, it's done. No fees later, no companies tracking what I'm spending my money on. I like it.

Peripherally speaking, I also feel much better to have put myself back on a budget. I had played around with some software that was supposed to replicate the envelope system, but it was terribly difficult to use (and I am quite good with computers and learning new software!). Instead, I opted for Excel. Really, with a few good formulas in place, Excel is perfectly fine for tracking the budget. At least, that's my opinion after one week. We'll see as things progress.

Paying attention to the budget also helps me focus on short- and long-term goals, such as paying off the car and starting to save for retirement.

It's time to be intentional. I'm not a kid anymore; I can't allow myself to keep relying on hope if I care about achieving long-term financial freedom.

The Value of Money

Well, I have come to the end of my week-long experiment in spending cash only. I realized after the first couple days that although the long-term goal here is greater frugality, for the sake of this experiment, I needed to actually spend money so that I would be able to judge the difference between paying with plastic and paying with cash. Ergo, I stopped hoarding the cash and started allowing myself to spend it.

A few observations follow:

1. Paying for food in cash really makes you think about what it is that you're buying and eating. For example, on a busy night this week, in conjunction with my roommate, I ended up stopping by Hideaway to pick up a pizza. Typically, no big deal (and it's not like I go there very often). But when the guy told me it was $16-something for the medium pizza, I have to admit, I was rather taken aback--knowing, in particular, that there was a Little Caesar's just down the street where I could get a large pizza for $5.

Was it worth it? Yes, in the moment. It was really, really good. And I think there are times when a splurge is ok. But will I think more about where I'm buying pizza or other food-to-go when such occasions arise in the future? You bet I will.

2. Suddenly, coins are valuable. I mean, they're money, so of course they have value. But how many of us stop to think about the value of coins? Rather, we drop them in the drive-through or lose them in the laundry. (Well, I don't, but a lot of people do.) But an accumulation of just a few coins equals a dollar--a whole dollar!--which can also be spent without breaking a bill. This leads to my third observation....

3. It's a lot easier to spend small bills than big bills...and a lot easier to spend coins than any bills. I'm sure someone out there has done a study on this, but for me, it was kind of a different idea. It didn't hurt so much to break a $1, or a $5, but handing over a $20 was a big deal. Ouch! Especially when I didn't get much change back. Suddenly, I started having thoughts of, "Will I need to stop at an ATM before the end of the week? What if I don't have enough left for [fill in the blank]?"

I suppose here is where budgeting makes a difference. Although I didn't go crazy spending money (or probably even spend as much as I likely would have in a typical week), I know I could have been better about planning what money was going to go where and approximately when that expenditure would occur. I still haven't committed myself to the envelope system, but I can definitely see how it would be useful.

4. Eating at home makes a big difference. I packed my lunch every day this week, and I ate dinner at home most of those days as well. The thought of wasting my cash on food that wasn't already in my refrigerator was more than a little distasteful.

5. Paying with cash forces you to have to think. What I mean here is that when you pay for something with plastic, you whip out the card, hand it over, and voila! You have paid. When you pay in cash, you're suddenly confronted with such things as counting. Granted, counting is not difficult, but it's something that has to be done, and since you often don't know the exact amount of a purchase until the cashier has added tax to the bill, it's not always easy to have the exact amount (bills plus coins) ready to be handed over right away. You have to stand there for a couple seconds and fumble with the money until you count out the right amount.

Now is this a big deal? No, not at all. But if you're used to paying with plastic, those extra seconds seem to drag on and on and on....

Same goes for tipping at a restaurant. When paying with plastic, you just put the card on the table, and when the server returns, you have really an unlimited amount of time to calculate the tip. I was at a restaurant yesterday, and suddenly realized that when the waiter set the bill on the table (and the person I was dining with had her card out and ready for her ticket), it seemed that all of a sudden, I had to get the appropriate bills out of my purse so the server could run both tickets at once. And what I wanted to do was give the perfect amount and say, "I don't need change." But I didn't. I felt the haste of the moment and just plopped down a $20 and waited for him to bring me change. Now, could I have asked him to come back after I'd had a minute to prepare better? Certainly. But I was so used to the convenience and relative speed of plastic transactions that it didn't feel right to do so.

6. Some things are still better paid in ways other than cash. For example, as discussed in Dan's comment on my earlier post, gasoline. I didn't have to buy gas this week, but if I had, it would have felt very inconvenient to go into the gas station to prepay and then go back out to pump my gas. I like paying at the pump--a lot. Some people have recommended buying gas station gift cards, while others have advocated using regular debit/credit cards for gas. I can't see myself taking the time to go into a gas station on a regular basis, so I'm pretty sure the gift card idea isn't my best option. But the debit or credit card? Yep.

Another thing you can't really pay with cash is an electric bill, which I did pay this weekend. Granted, I could have driven somewhere in town where I could stand in line to pay in cash, but to me, that is completely counterproductive. This is why having a bank account with online bill pay is so valuable to me. You can pay your bills directly from your checking account, from a single screen on the computer. No late fees, no stamps, no reminders to drive past the post office on your way to work. It's a beautiful thing.

In spite of a few items that are really better off paid using another method, this week of cash-only has taught me that I really do think more about what I'm buying when I pay for items with cash. Although I don't feel the need to throw away my plastic (it is, after all, quite convenient in a pinch), this practice is something I would like to continue in the future, perhaps in conjunction with a better-developed budget.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

A little after 9:00 this morning, as I was sitting in my office, the ceiling started to shake. Now, a momentary shake isn't terribly abnormal since my office hangs over empty space above a sidewalk--"this used to be a porch," the facility people never cease to remind us--but the shaking didn't stop right away.

And then the outer wall/window started to make an odd popping sound. I'm still not sure what it was; I'm pretty sure I don't want to know, actually. A moment later, my desk started vibrating and items on my bookshelves started rattling.

My second earthquake.

I'm told that this state has more earthquakes than any other state--even California--though I don't know if this is true. But according to those who tell such tales, most aren't strong enough to be felt. This one was: somewhere between 4.3 and 5.1 on the Richter scale, they think.

Funny thing was, I wasn't afraid. There really wasn't time to be. By the time I knew how to respond to the strange shaking in my office, it was over.

At the same time, in another part of the world, Chilean miners were being rescued one-by-one from their long imprisonment underground. A couple months ago, their world shook as well. I can't begin to fathom what must have gone through their heads each day down there in the dark, especially during those first 17 days, wondering if anyone would believe they were still alive and come find them, wondering if their last breaths would be breathed in stagnant darkness.

Sweet joy of rescue. Sometimes, the shaking does end--and everyone does emerge from the depths, dirty but unscathed. I hold such days close to my heart. They are evidence that good still happens--and that there is always reason to hope.

Day Two of Cash Only

It struck me today that my little experiment isn't really going to yield the sort of results that will be meaningful. I say this because I started after I already had groceries for the week, and my car won't need to be filled up during this time, either. Also, because I am intent on observing how paying for all purchases with cash will affect my spending habits, I'm pretty sure that I am being more frugal than usual in order to really see if I can do it.

"So what's the point?" I started to wonder. "Is only using cash for the week really a meaningful experiment?"

Well, maybe scientists would fault its construction a bit, but I've decided there is still value in my experiment--if for no other reason than the fact that I am saving money. That's the point, right?

Today I skipped buying coffee and drank a bottled iced coffee that I had purchased some time back. I packed a lunch, and when I was thirsty in the afternoon, I filled my water bottle. Tonight, I cooked dinner and ate at home. No errands today, so no non-food-related desires to spend money.

I realize that some days will include necessary expenses--not all days can go as smoothly as today. But at the same time, going through a day without spending any money brings a good feeling. So far, so good.

Total money spent: $0.00.

My Battle With Budgeting

I guess you could say I received a pretty good financial education growing up. My parents taught me two very important things: (1) debt should be avoided and (2) living within a budget was not just a nice thing to do, but rather, essential.

As soon as I was old enough to start handling money, my parents taught me their budget system, which I followed to the letter for many years afterward. And then I started grad school, and reconciling my budget started taking too much time, and I stopped.

For the last few years, I haven't bothered. It's been ok. I've still spent less that I've made. I haven't gotten into financial trouble as a result of my laxity, so I haven't been too worried.

But I think maybe there is a better way to live.

I'm trying a baby-step experiment this week: I'm only paying for purchases with cash. Some people say that's a good way to save money because it forces you to be more intentional about what you spend money on. Maybe if I remind myself how good it feels to intentionally save money, I'll want to do more of it.

Today, I only spent $0.27. A good start.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Dog...

What a great way to begin a very bad story: "Once upon a time, there was a dog."

Is this a dog story? Is it a story about a person who gets attacked by a dog? Does it have nothing at all to do with a dog, but the dog appears in the first line merely as a hook to grab the reader? There are probably so many ways you could go with that story, but I can't foresee any of them being good.

So why am I writing about a dog? Because I don't know what else to tell you.

I would rather speculate about poorly written dog stories than tell you the real things. Or maybe I want to tell you the real things, but you are Internet (with a capital The), and I can't tell whether you mean to do me harm by sharing my secrets with strangers (or worse, certain family and certain colleagues) or whether you mean to help nurture my creativity back to health by sharing the best of me with a someday-soon-to-be-adoring audience.

You are big, Internet, and so very, very open. And sometimes you frighten me.

In Which I Rant About Plagiarism...Again

I find it mildly ironic that a comment left on one of my previous posts is from someone advertising a website that writes papers (for a fee) that are guaranteed to be plagiarism-free. I find it even more ironic that the first question that crossed my mind was, "I wonder if they're hiring?"

The thing is, I am tired. Tired of all the cheating. Tired of people who claim to live by a certain moral/ethical code who then have no qualms about having someone else do their work for them, whether that be in the form of lifting information off the Internet and inserting it into a paper (which is just plain stupid) or in a more crafty form that maybe I can't even discern.

I graded some papers today from a student whom I had caught plagiarizing on another assignment previously. All the new papers went through Turnitin.com without any problems, and yet, it irked me that it felt like the student had submitted extremely well-written papers that had no major flaws but yet weren't quite what I had asked for in the assignment.

Truth be told, I asked myself the question: Is it possible that the student got someone else to write the papers? And the realization I came to was that yes, it was possible--but no, I was never going to be able to prove it.

It's things like this that make me wonder what I see in distance education, how it's possible that I could believe in it. (And I do.)

But the problem isn't the distance. God knows, students on campus cheat and/or plagiarize just as much as online students do. And God knows, the people who are determined to do it are going to find a way.

The problem is that there are so many people who care more about turning their education into a commodity than they do about actually becoming educated people. Because once education is comprised solely in a diploma, then it's an easy sequence of steps that will lead a determined individual to achieve that end.

Tragic waste, if you ask me. For all parties involved.