The money cycle

 I got 25 things ready to ship but pretty soon I was late enough that I decided to set them aside and have some dinner and practice. 

Practice went fairly well; due to a little peeled place on my lip it was interesting - I was able to get a good tone an octave up (when the flute wasn't moving slightly in my hands and messing things up) but on the lower octave it was not great - I think because it uses a larger part of my lip and was affected by the little peeling place. This would have been a killer on trumpet though. 

I went to bed and had weird dreams. One was about having, and then losing, my old SRX-6 motorcycle. I was in some town where everyone was in party mode, and while the street was not jammed with people there were a fair number around, partying and laughing and whooping it up. I parked the bike on the street across from one of those old-time theaters that have been there since the (last) 20s and came back and it was gone. I looked around on the street but it was gone. 

In this dream, upon finding my beloved bike gone, I sat down and wept. I actually cried, knowing how odd it would seem to all those other people who were so happy. After waking up I was puzzled that I'd cry over that bike. At the time I had it, it was just a machine to modify and race around on. I realized I was crying over the loss of how my life was when I had the SRX-6. It was completely different than it is now. It was different for everyone except the few "the end is nigh" survivalists/preppers who existed at that time. 

The next dream was a sort of sequel. I was trying to decide whether to buy a car, another motorcycle, or just get a bicycle - this last because they're so cheap and hassle-free yet you still get so much transportation out of them. I ended up with this weird little bicycle and then was in the market for a replacement laptop. I went to this real estate office where I'd bought one from 'em before, and they had this one that was supposed to be the latest thing but I was skeptical and decided not to get it, but somehow inadvertently walked out with the thing, and was walking back up the street to return it and that's when I woke up, at 6. 

Since it's such a horrible date on the calendar, mid-term election day, it's understandable that I make for myself a bit of respite from watching my country die by having weird dreams. If I were still a drinker I'd sure be drinking. 

But getting back to that dream, about the motorcycle. My life certainly *was* different back then, in the mid-80s. It was the last hurrah of the white working class, and I was able to have a nice little apartment, pay down my student loans, buy motorcycles, and I never cooked at home so I must have been pissing away a ton of money on restaurant food. 

I could describe various phases of my life in term of money cycles. When I was a teen, and earning a little money doing artwork or any odd work I could find, the money cycle was pretty simple - the money went into food for myself or food for myself and my two sisters, depending on need. It was simple in those times: Spend it and literally eat it up, or it'd be taken and someone else would eat, or get their cigarettes. So money had a sort of Weimar Period quality in that it must be spent at once. 

As a young adult, money followed pretty much this same pattern. Making about $350 a month with rent at $150, it all went to rent, food, other things needed and the very cheapest way possible. I had $500 in the bank for emergencies and after a while when my pay went up a bit, $1000 in the bank. Once the $1000 was in the bank, it stayed at that level although obviously I could have saved more. 

I believed that I was not to worry about saving, as I'd do that later when I started making a lot more. 

This is also where college exerted its pernicious damage. "You're smart, you ought to go to college" is really on a par with "I hate you, I hope your bowels rot out with cancer". I got that message from several people, the rotten bastards, and so I fell into the college trap. Being in college meant financial aid, and that meant having to prove I needed it by not having savings. Thus passed a few years. 

Then I moved to the mainland and entered the wonderland of having an apartment of my own and being able to buy motorcycles. I didn't worry about saving, as that was a thing for the far-off future, when I'd somehow be still working for the same company but for a lot more money. So money came in, and it went out. 

Looking back, moving to the mainland might not have been so bad (although if I were wise I'd have stayed in Hawaii) if I'd "game-ified" saving money. I thought a measure of coming up in the world was not having to cook, and although a full meal, the daily special, was $5 at Norm's and a fairly decent breakfast was $3, it all added up. Let's say I spent $12 a day on food. That's $360 a month and much, much more recently I've eaten really well on $150 or $160 a month. That makes $200 a month that could have gone into the bank, or $2400 at the end of the year. That's just shy of 10 grand at the end of the 4 years I worked as an electronics repair tech in Orange County, California and that was enough for a down payment on a place, or to buy a quite nice "mobil" home, large enough to get a room mate and save even more. 

I had no friends who'd sit down with me and work out the math, I believe partially because for some reason talk about money is considered "dirty" and partially because they weren't any better with money themselves. So the money went in, and it then went right back out. In fact, I didn't even maintain the $1000 in the bank that I did back in Hawaii when I made $5 an hour. 

Since then, money's come in, and it's not, and I've been very poor, or I've had thousands, in cash, in my pockets, and about the best I can say about it is I've survived and that's about it. Discovering Ebay was a huge step up for me, but it did not teach me about game-ifying saving money. 

In fact, it was worse and that's what I've realized that spurred me to write this. If I had money, the "best" thing to do with it was to go out and spend it on something to resell. This actually makes sense, but only in a perfect world where there's never a need for a financial "cushion" and where the rents will never rise and a person will never need to think about buying a house or saving for retirement. The real world does not work this way. And I was still eating tons of restaurant food... 

If I go back to Hawaii and get back into selling on Ebay, that's what I'll have to be careful about. To never, ever, borrow money like on a credit card, to buy some "good deal" and to be extremely careful about what kind of life am I buying? Because selling on Ebay requires a place big enough to store things, and shipping supplies, and going out and scrambling around every day for stuff to buy to resell, etc. 

If you end up doing this, the Ebay treadmill, scrambling around, selling and packing and shipping and dealing with all the complexities, paying for a bigger place than you'd need otherwise, and eating mac and cheese, vs. doing something very simple and in both cases sleeping on the same kind of bed and eating the same mac and cheese, it makes far more sense to choose the second option. 

This probably explains the guy I was told about by my neighbors (Really! I was on friendly, gossiping terms with the neighbors!) when I was back in Hawaii in '03. The guy had done something with computers, and burned out. Now he detailed cars. He did a couple of cars a day and that was it. That's all he needed. At least back in '03 you could live just fine on $50 a day in Hawaii, and my really large studio apartment was $600 a month. I could have put a 2nd person in there and we'd each have paid $300 a month and barely bumped into each other. 

The car-detailer guy may have paid a bit for soap and sponges, but his money flow was pretty simple. Work out, money in. And if he was smart, he was saving a lot, buried in a hole or under his mattress or someplace sensible like that. 

Well, back to the horrors of the election...