55 + 1 = 56... and Advancement

Advancement - 15-20 per cent of income.

The title to this category caught me off-guard at first. What could they mean by "advancement"? Here's the scoop:

Now for another main heading of our budget - advancement or development. Under this heading come health, recreation, pocket money, personal care, automobile expenses, gifts, contributions and education.

Okay, I get it. The "pattern" budget includes separate columns for both "health" and "automobile expenses" - acknowledging that these items probably make up the lion's share of expenses related to advancement. This is such a wide-ranging category it's going to be tough for me to come up with any kind of estimate as to what I'm spending, but I'll give it a shot.

Under health we list medical and dental care and drugs. Regular visits to your physician and dentist are cheaper than emergency measures necessitated by neglect. The Chinese pay their doctors to keep them well, and this seems to be the best idea of all. Hospital insurance, costing two to three pennies a day, is a wise investment for every family, even though they may never need it. And meeting bills caused by illness, through membership in an insurance association, is a method which is now becoming available.

Thankfully, in 2010, I can count on more than just "hospital insurance" - as long as I'm employed at my current job, that is. I spend $73.70 per month on medical, dental, and vision insurance premiums + $39.16 per month on long- and short-term disability premiums. During the past month, I've also spent $70.00 on co-pays. As near as I can figure, I've spent $35.58 on medication and vitamins during the past month. Though my premiums are steady from month to month, these last two figures will always vary. My total spending on health during the past month is somewhere in the neighborhood of $218.44.

Monthly automobile expenses include my car payment ($210.14) and car insurance ($60.17). I've only spent $26.33 on gas during the past month, but I'd better deduct from that the $18.63 I estimate spending on gas for my commute to work during the past month. (That falls under the "shelter" category in my vintage budget.) That leaves $7.70 spent on gas for non-commuting travel. I haven't had any maintenance or repairs this month, so my costs are definitely on the low side. My total spending on automobile expenses during the past month is about $278.01.

Recreation almost deserves to be listed under health, so essential is it to well-being and happiness. It is not at all necessary to be extravagant in order to have fun, but neither is it wise to be stingy to the point of starvation.

Sadly, I can't think of anything I've purchased during the past month that truly counts as recreation. Something to think about...

Magazines, newspapers, books and circulating-library fees all come under the head of education, as do fees for professional associations, school expenses, etc.

Nope, nothing here. I don't have any magazine or newspaper subscriptions. I rarely buy books, and the libraries I visit don't charge any circulating fees - unless you're late! I don't have any expenditures to chalk up to education during the past month.

What's left? Personal care --- here's where beauty products, haircare, and other toiletries come in ($63.24 during the past month). I've spent $10.79 during the past month on gifts and $11.00 on contributions. The one item I haven't really been able to categorize, but seems to fall into the "advancement" area, is a bouquet of tulips I bought last weekend for my desk at work. I guess I'll just have to consider that $12.95 as pocket money!

My total spending on "advancement" during the past month = 594.43 or 16% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67. I fall squarely into the 15-20% figure recommended by the authors of The Manual when it comes to this category. Next up: Savings.

PS: I weighed in at 138 this morning --- 1 lb. closer to my mini-goal of 134 by Saturday, February 20. All aboard! It's full steam ahead on the reducing train!!!

Shelter

Rent (if heat is included) - *25 per cent of income

Rent (if heat must be supplied) - *20 per cent of income

(If you are buying your home, or already own it, the "rent" is the total of interest on mortgage, taxes, interest, upkeep and repairs which should not ordinarily exceed 1/8 to 1/10 of income. If payments on principal are included it may reach 1/4 to 1/5 of income.)

*Provided that in your community it is possible to provide safe shelter for your family for this amount.

One of the things I really like about The Manual's budget advice when it comes to rent/mortgage is how inclusive it is. Their attitude seems almost modern - it's so green. And yet in that day it was just considered good old fashioned logic. Gathered in with all the other things you might normally consider housing-related costs is "Transportation to Business." Take a look:

Shelter
1. Rent or Mortgage Interest
2. Taxes
3. Insurance
4. Improvements
5. Repairs
6. Transportation to Business
7. Other

When deciding whether what we're spending on our rent or mortgage is in a financially healthy proportion to our income, we must take into account how much where we live impacts what it costs us to get to our place of business. After all, if you think you're saving money on housing in a metropolitan area by living far out in the suburbs and commuting one hour each way every working day, isn't it fair to include the costs related to that two-hour commute with the money you spend on housing? Only then can you get a true picture of what you're spending on shelter. If you had opted for more expensive housing in the city but your "transportation to business" expenses were the cost of a subway token, you might find things come out quite even in the end. Financially, that is. (Your carbon footprint is another picture entirely.)

I rent what my landlord calls a junior one-bedroom apartment for $425 per month. My rent does not include heat, but it does include water and garbage collection --- though not recycling collection. (There are some advantages to living in a dump of a city. Cheap apartments is one of 'em!) I don't now - but ought to - have renter's insurance. If I did, the premium would fall into this category.

For "transportation to business" expenses, I'm going to include gas and parking. As crazy as it sounds to have to pay for parking at your place of business, the university I work for requires that employees pay for annual parking passes in their garage or lot of preference. (I bristle at this sometimes, but I know it makes good environmental sense. They're trying to encourage as wide a use as possible of public transit and other means of transportation to campus.) I pay $29.42 per month for parking. I drive a 12.76-mile round trip to work each weekday. That's 255.2 miles per month x my 2001 Toyota Corolla is supposed to get about 26 miles per gallon with city driving x $2.53 per gallon for gas (running price around town this morning) = $24.83 per month for gas to commute to work. These are very rough figures, of course, but they should give me some idea to start with what I'm spending on shelter. I'd probably own a car whether or not I used it to commute to work or not, so I'm not going to include any other car expenses in this category.

My total spending per month for shelter then is approximately $479.25. That's 13% of my gross monthly income of $3666.67. I fall quite safely within The Manual's recommendation that no more than 20% of your income should be spent on rent "if heat must be supplied." So far, so good!

In addition to kind of guessing where I stand now in relation to the The Manual's "pattern" household budget, I'd like to track all my expenses - at least for the next month - to see if there are any leaks in my spending that I'm completely unaware of. I've uploaded images of the Suggested Budget Form included in The Manual that I'll be using to record my expenses every day. Maybe it'll come in handy for some of you as well! If you click on each page, you should be able to open an extra large printable version. Tomorrow: Clothes.

One Foot in Front of the Other

I've always wished I could snap my fingers, find myself with the figure I'd like to have, and get on with life. There are more important things to think about, you know? That's impossible, of course, but that's never stopped me from wishing I could make it so... As I was walking today - had to get those 30 minutes in - it occurred to me that as nice as that kind of magic would be, it wouldn't equip me in any way to maintain the weight loss. I'd snap back to where I am now in no time. Just like with the housework. Even if I could magically have a spotless house overnight, I wouldn't be able to keep it clean if I hadn't learned how to keep house. There's no way around the learning process.

That's the thought that kept me putting one foot in front of the other today. My walks may be the long way 'round to a great figure, but for now 5 walks per week x 30 minutes = 150 minutes = the minimum weekly aerobic exercise recommended for a healthy adult (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans).

Once upon a time, walking was more a matter of daily function than it was a special kind of workout women needed to fit into their lives. I always think of the 1940s as an era when long rambles through the countryside or the park were popular weekend entertainment. Of course, walking was part of the workaday routine for just about everybody. Whenever possible, women walked to do their marketing, to pay a call on the next farm down the road, to make one appointment or another. If the distance was too far for city dwellers or suburbanites, they'd walk to a point where they could pick up a bus or streetcar. Cars were around, but they were used much more sparingly as the war continued. Many ended up on blocks when the last set of tires gave out and - for those with cars still in working order - gas rationing and the ban on pleasure driving must have made any kind of unnecessary automobile travel seem unpatriotic. Walking most places was a way of life, so a regular low-impact aerobic workout came along quite naturally with getting from point A to point B.

Living in a city with public transportation, there are certainly some very environmentally friendly ways that I could make less use of my car. My workplace is just a walk, bus ride, and walk away from home. The grocery store where I do my shopping on Wednesday evenings is just a short walk from where I live. My eye doctor and dentist, even my bank, are quite close to home as well. If I was ready to make some radical changes in that direction, walking could definitely serve a somewhat more functional role in my daily routine.

In practically every other place where I've lived as an adult, though, this wouldn't have been at all possible. This urban sprawl we've visited upon our landscape has left us so far from every place else we need to be that walking isn't even an option. Instead we commute. We drive great distances to work and to play, to shop and to worship --- even to get to a gym, a track, or a yoga studio where we can get the exercise that used to be a more functional part of our everyday lives. Full circle in a distorted kind of way.

So this is how I find myself here, in 2009, stretching to find ways to fit a walk into my life. Trying to find the thirty minutes needed to schedule a walk and planning a drive to the park in order to get some exercise on the weekends. I will do what has to be done in order to lose this weight, but it's appropriate, I think, to stop and reflect on how we've changed. (Maybe even to lay out some plans for the future.) How backwards this way of life would have seemed to my '40s counterpart! Going to such lengths just to walk.

Busy as a Bee

After lunch, it's time for Mrs. Amberg to give the living room a final touch. She's got guests coming for dinner tonight! Then off to the garage to see about the car - and a trip downtown with the children after picking Peter up from school. I love her spectator pumps and the striped awnings over the windows looking out on the backyard...

Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, standing on ladder to place special china plate as decoration above doorway in living room that she decorated herself, as her son Tony plays on the floor in their rented house.

Jane Amberg conferring w. mechanic at gas station about the car she uses to chauffeur her husband to & from his office & get the children back & forth to school.

Jane Amberg, w. Peter, Tony & Pamela, as they go to drugstore to buy ice cream cones after the boys had haircuts at local barbershop in town.

Jane Amberg rapping admonishingly on window in bkgrd. as she oversees her kids Peter, 7, climbing slide ladder while Tony, 5, blocks the slide & Pamela gets kicked out of tent while playing w. neighbor children in backyard playground.