Being Totally Attached and Completely Detached

Financial advice for women

Preface: I am not perfect or trying to appear that way. I was raised by financially smart parents, married a financially educated man, and have spent several years researching and practicing good financial habits. I will say it again; I am not perfect, but here's what brings me peace...

I like nice things and I actually have some now! They didn't come fast or easy, but they're here now and they have brought me joy, not because they are nice things, but because I am not a slave to them. I have saved, studied and searched for them. And even at that, they aren't the nicest things I could have bought. They are the nicest things I could afford.
Let me go deeper. When John and I got married 8 years ago, he was 23 and I was 21. We were both in school and working. Our first apartment had thinning carpet, dingy linoleum, and an ever dirty bath tub, but do you know what else? It had two bedrooms, a living room and kitchen, all of which were ours! We were thrilled. We had nothing to put in our apartment and very little money. We decided we didn't want to go into debt at all, so we went to the "BYU board" (a place where students could advertise various items for sale) and found a couch and a table for $20 total! Hurray! They were ugly, but they were ours. The couch was at least 40 years old. It was terribly uncomfortable. My poor mom slept on it for a week when she came to stay after we had our first baby and didn't complain once! I did splurge and bought a $20 slipcover for it, so it at least didn't look so bad. It wasn't as nice as our neighbor's leather couches that they financed, but I didn't care. That couch was OUR place to sit while watching OUR TV (which we got for $35 because it was a display model at Target) in OUR apartment, not an item that defined me. I was completely detached.
Just after our first baby came (a year and a half later), I found a couch set at a garage sale for $250. We gave away our $20 couch and happily welcomed our new set which was less ugly and more comfortable. Unfortunately, it was previously owned by smokers, so it only lasted a few months. By this time, we had been married nearly two years, driving a ten year old car with two doors and no AC, had spent less then $500 to furnish our apartment with all of our firsts, and were putting away as much as we could each month. I knew what money came in and I knew what went out and to where. We had a strict budget, paying our tithing, then ourselves, then our bills, and using the rest to eat out or do other fun things. I kept track of everything and could tell you in the third week of the month if we had enough money to do a date night at Winger's and the movies (and by "movies" I mean the dollar theatre) or if we would go to Taco Bell and borrow a movie from a friend to watch at home. I was totally attached.
The next couch set we bought was actually purchased from a store! We, of course, got it in the scratch and dent section. We didn't find it the first time we went, so we began to frequent the store and wait for what we wanted. What did we want? Leather! That was the only requirement. I wanted and deserved a standard, but couldn't go too high. Since our first baby was now 3 months old and we had experienced the plethora of body fluids that soak a couch, we decided on leather as our standard and left it at that. I really wanted a cream or tan colored set. One day, after weeks (at least) of watching, we walked in and saw a leather couch set with ottoman right in our budget ($1000). It was black. I didn't care. It was leather and in our price range. Those were our standards. Color was less important because I was completely detached. We paid cash for it and it felt so good to wipe my baby's spit up right off of OUR couch, no one else's.
3 years later, out of school, another baby and running a fairly successful business started by my husband, we bought our second home, which was much bigger than our first home and apartment. As a side note: We were "pre-approved" for a $600,000 home. We laughed, cut that in half and bought ours for $290,000. More on that later. Continuing with our couch situation...My new home had a family room AND a living room. My black leather couches looked great in the family room (and by the way, that table I bought with the first couch for $20, looked great painted black in my new kitchen- YUP! We still had it four years later). My living room sat empty for a month, then two months. I asked John "When can we buy couches for the living room?" He gave me a number, an amount. He wanted to have a certain amount of money in our savings account before we bought them. I was a little frustrated, but agreed. I started cutting corners everywhere I could to save money. I would make my kids peanut butter sandwiches and take them to eat at the McDonald's play place. I put myself on a strict grocery budget, bought only what was necessary for clothes, and watched every penny coming in and going out. I was all in for growing our savings and I was totally attached. It took a year. We disagreed completely on our "standards" for this new set. I wanted a smaller set to put in the living room. John wanted a big sectional to go in the family and to move our black set to the living room. By this time we had baby number 3, we had been in our new house a year and I had just spent that long saving for this set. I could've fought harder for what I wanted, but I had decided 6 years earlier that my couch had nothing to do with who I am, it never had and it never would. As I type this, I'm sitting on a tan leather sectional. I think it's too big for this room and it's color clashes with my walls. Sometimes I think about it and roll my eyes, but I really don't care that much. And John makes a good point "It seats more people comfortably." That's what I really want! Instead of perfect furniture in my perfect home, I want more people, more comfortable in my home. I'm completely detached.
The couch story is us on a small scale. Cars are bigger and more expensive. I will shorten the car story, because it illustrates the same point. When we got married we drove an 11 year old car that my parents bought for me at the end of my freshman year of college. As I mentioned earlier, it had two doors and no air conditioning. I literally jumped for joy when I got this car at 19. As a 22 year old pregnant chick, I was less enthusiastic. That summer of 2002, we decided that it had to be the last summer we drove that car because we didn't want our little baby to get heat stroke. So we started saving. I had my baby in November and shimmied his carseat in and out for over 6 months, dealing with the two doors just fine since the heat wasn't an issue yet. Come April, we started our search. Our standards for a new car? 4 doors, AC, and under $5000 (that's what we'd saved). We searched online, in dealerships and even went weekly to a car auction in our county. 2 months later, and just as the heat was setting in, we bought a great 4 door, air conditioned car for $4000 at said auction. We lucked out. It was cute and even nicer than we expected. But what should you expect from an auctioned car? I'm being completely honest when I tell you that we found a dissected frog in the trunk! Formaldehyde and all. YUM! And before the summer was through, we had to put another $1000 into making it a truly reliable vehicle. Thank goodness we held on to that extra $1000 we had saved. Are you getting that subtle lesson? I actually liked driving this car, but soon enough it started to have more problems and we knew we had to either sale it or spend on it. We sold it and bought (after months of search) the most hideous mini van known to man. My only standard was 2 sliding doors and AC (still traumatized from my 3 summers without it). It was purple and ugly. I didn't feel cute, young and hip driving it as I had my auction car. The good news though, we paid cash and it was ours. No one could ever take it from us (at times, to my dismay), but I was completely detached. That van is only in my nightmares now and we drive a lovely silver one for which we also saved and searched and paid cash. Car debt makes me sick...another subtle lesson.
Bigger scale? Our house. I mentioned we could have gotten a loan for twice as much as we actually did. I'm being totally truthful in saying that it didn't even appeal to me to buy bigger and nicer. Why? Because it would totally ruin our lifestyle. Our first home was itty bitty. We finished the basement and rented it to newly weds. This paid most of our mortgage. We were able to be a little looser with our budget and I liked that. It was fun to buy my kids happy meals for a change! If we bought a bigger, nicer, more expensive home, all of John's hard work would go right back into our home. We wanted it to go to vacations, date night, new clothes, and more importantly for us, others. We included a third party in the decision of which home to buy. It was the Lord. Inviting Him into the process made everything turn out right and doing what we knew would be pleasing to Him gave us that much more direction and guidance. If you ever run into me, I'll tell you the story of finding our home. It's a good one. I love my home because it's my home. I don't love my floor plan, my tile, my smallish kitchen and the formica counter tops, but you know by now that I'm completely detached from that. Because of that detachment in buying a more modest home, we were able to put in a killer backyard (yes Dad, "killer" is good). We take our family on amazing vacations, go on nice dates and I even take liberties in my clothes shopping. But most importantly, we have excess to give. We love to give. This is where detachment really comes in handy...Just give. Sometimes it will be your widow's mite and sometimes you may not bat an eye at a large some, either way, it's spreading around what is not truly yours anyway.
I will admit, I am not totally attached to every aspect of our spiderweb of finances now. I hate it and desperately need to get more involved, but I still know what money comes in and where goes out. My attachment to this strengths my marriage, allows me to teach my children, and empowers me.
And that detachment from the things of this world...Makes me free!!