About a year ago, I went through a little streak of unexpected and unpleasant surprise expenses.
One travel booking made in error, one last-minute dogsitter… even that time when FinnAir misdelivered our luggage in the winter and I had to splurge on a whole new snow-wardrobe for a four year old. No major mishaps, but just a bunch of things here and there that cost extra. I remember sharing with some friends, things are good, but man, it’s been a pretty expensive stretch of life.
If I thought this time a year ago was expensive, they’ve paled in comparison to things the past couple weeks. I’ve had some pretty serious home repairs I’ve had to take care of. Those repairs, more often than not, are the things that seem the most likely to turn into sudden pocket holes. They’re really expensive, and unlike spending on a new car you get to ride around in or on a vacation you get to enjoy, the big fancy treat is not having drops of water leak through your roof. Having a house is a privilege in the first place, but oof.
These things happen. Like untimely celebrity deaths, they often seem to happen in clusters. And they range in disruptiveness from ugh, fine, I’ll pay it to where the hell am I gonna get the money for that?!
Even though these aren’t especially fond memories, I’m actually glad I have them as memories. The reason why is that while these things were pretty bad financial gut-punches at the moment, looking back, they seem like pretty minor blips. Once the dust settles, I’ve walked away realizing that I still have enough to meet the needs ahead, and in life, money comes and goes like that. Much like how cuts and bruises heal, financial gaps tend to close one way or the other.
Things always feel a lot worse in the moment than they seem in retrospect, which is really important to remember the next time you’re in the moment.
The first house we bought as a couple was the two bedroom condo we brought our first kid home to.
We only lived in it for two years before having more kids and needing more bedrooms, but it was an experience. It was honestly a pretty good place, but not necessarily in the best part of town. We’d have people rifling through our dumpster almost nightly.
We had to deal with a roof leak, and although insurance took care of it, it meant there was a chunk of time when we all had to move into the nursery.
We had mice in the walls, which we could only do so much about since the unit was attached to others. This is how we learned our dog’s animal instincts were practically nonexistent after years of suburban living.
We were there for the pandemic lockdowns.
So even though we were only there for two years, we picked some memorable years.
The exterior of the place was managed by an HOA… a pretty awful one that I could never get ahold of to get me the right documents when making that roof repair. Within a few months of us moving in, they determined that the roof seal on the upper units had worn down and that they needed to replace it. Since our reserves were drained, they had to pass an assessment for a rather large figure. I love that you think I have all that just sitting around waiting for you, I thought. Since we just bought the place, it felt like I had just made the financial stretch to get in there.
It was a rough blow at the moment, but these days, I don’t think about it very often. Wouldn’t be thinking about it if I weren’t writing about the exact topic. You bounce back from that sort of thing.
When it comes to managing money, I’ve learned that there are at least two big pieces of the equation.
There’s the actual math of what’s going in and what’s going out. In theory, this should be simple. Have the former number be larger than the latter, make sure it can keep that pace for the future, and things should be okay.
The other half of the equation is one that’s a lot more complicated, and therefore more interesting… at least to me. It’s people’s relationship with money.
This is one of those things that comes up a lot in couples counseling, and for good reason. Two people who might have very similar backgrounds, interests, education levels, lifestyles, and values can still have wildly different relationships with money. One person may have been raised with a sense of scarcity and a tendency to hoard. The other might have found it normal to spend-it-if-you’ve-got-it.
Seeing someone with a vastly different relationship with money than my own strikes up so much curiosity. I know somebody who psychologically struggles to not spend all their income as it comes. How? I have no idea, that would cause me so much anxiety. To them, though, it’s almost as if it relieves anxiety. I’m glad I have running, instead. But I know these things are deep rooted, and are baked into us as muscle memory.
One thing I’m working really hard to avoid in my relationship with money is a scarcity mentality. I’m extra motivated to avoid this mindset as my relationship with money kind of sets the groundwork for my kids’. I typically save and manage carefully, and I’m on the frugal side. I like that about myself. I just never want it to get to the point of excess where I start living out of a sense of scarcity.
So how does one walk that line of having an abundance mindset while still exercising careful stewardship?
I have one practice I suggest.
Whenever I get hit with a sudden, big, unexpected expense… or perhaps a series of them, I try to look for an opportunity to also do something generous.
If you get hit with a sudden medical expense in the thousands, perhaps there’s someone out there for whom $50 of support would go a really long way? It doesn’t have to be a 1:1 ratio. It doesn’t even need to be financial support, necessary, if that’s totally not possible. But I do think being generous in a way that runs parallel to the unpleasant surprise you were dealt is pretty key to this practice.
The idea is that if your instinct to a financial gut punch is to immediately start looking for someone else you can help, you’re really helping to protect yourself from a scarcity mindset around money.
You’re also doing something else really cool. You’re shifting your own focus off of yourself and onto somebody else. You’re creating a worthwhile safeguard against ego, which tends to be fed by a sense of scarcity or threat.
If instead you’re asking, hmm, who can I help? You’re back in a position of agency, and back in a position to remember how much you really have been given and where that sits in relation to much of the world.
Doing a lot of work internationally has also provided a lot of helpful perspective. What might seem like very modest support coming from me can be a real game-changer for somebody else. And that’s true in a lot of areas domestically, as well. Whenever I look at stats around median income by state, and so on, it’s my reminder that a lot of people really are mid-struggle. In spite of whatever setbacks come my way, I’m still in an advantaged situation in a rather unequal world.
I don’t know if this practice will work as well for everybody, but based on how I’ve seen it benefit my relationship around money, I’ve found it worthwhile to share.
There’s nothing within it to support the first half of the financial equation: making sure you’ve got more coming in than going out. But it can work wonders with the second, elusive, psychological part.
I’ve usually been on the more frugal side, at least in a strategic way where I’ve realized being cheap in areas of life I don’t care about so much allows me to splurge.
When I was younger, this went to such extremes as couch surfing my way through a semester of school or living in my car… since skipping a few months of housing would save me thousands. That money could go much further when spent on enriching travel experiences abroad.
These days, those instincts might look more like realizing that the differences between a $20,000 car and a $60,000 car are rarely worth $40,000 to me, especially as long as the cheaper option goes between point A and B just as reliably. Cars never were a big priority to me. Traveling with my kids? I’ll be much more likely to splurge in that area.
Frugality for the sake of frugality, efficiency for the sake of efficiency, is not a virtue. It only makes sense if its in service of allowing you to pour more of your resources into something that matters. And that’s why I think it’ll always be a matter of importance to avoid seeing things through the lens of scarcity.
One of the best ways to go beyond that is to tap back in to the fun of being able to help someone else who needs it.