Money, and Panic

Many years ago I visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia. The home itself, of course, is architecturally fascinating, and it was furnished to emphasize Jefferson’s eclectic interests and wide accomplishments. The estate too was a wonderful lesson in the social history of the period, with a sensitive treatment of slavery. What stuck with me most, though, was the simple fact that Jefferson died broke. He lived beyond his means, and is heirs had to auction his estate to meet his obligations.  Among our founding fathers, as I later discovered, he was not alone.

The other day I once again moved money from my home equity line of credit into my savings account in order to cover my monthly bills. This is not an exceptional happening, but was made all the more difficult for me by having recently done our taxes. We will owe a little over $2,000. Our economic stimulus payment is going straight back to Uncle Sam.

We make about $150,000 each year and we are broke. I find that infuriating – this is a healthy income, and somehow we cannot live within our means. The $25,000 tuition bill from our children’s private school (already we are on scholarship) takes a big chunk of our monthly income, and I’m not worried about our retirement accounts. But still, I can’t figure out where all of our money goes.

The correct answer to this question, of course, is to track our expenses and make a financial plan (aka budget). Yet again, I went running around the web looking for blogs and tools about budgeting. There are plenty, and they seem to be good. I particularly enjoyed debtfreeRevolution (an outrageous concept); noCreditNeeded; Blogging Away Debt; and My Two Dollars.  Although I enjoy these blogs, I feel like they are from a different planet – none have made the kinds of lifestyle decisions that we have made (living in a city; three children; sending them to private school) and all seem to have an infinite amount of time to pursue a 25% discount.  As for tools, I particularly liked MEnvelopes, which was mentioned some months back in the Times, and might be a good way to start.

But the very thought of budgeting fills me with dread. Not only because every time I’ve mentioned it over the last 15 years to my wife she withholds sex with me for a week. We seem (to me at least) to deny ourselves a lot, and I doubt that it is the rare splurge that puts us into the red. The thought of budgeting raises for me the fear that our life is simply unsustainable as it is. Then what? I don’t see where to trim.

Every time I think panic about money, though, I also think about Th. Jefferson. I was raised very much a Yankee – live frugally within your means, etc. That was not a life for Jefferson and our other founding fathers. We have but one life to live, so we shouldn’t live it completely irresponsibly, but we should live it well. So as I dig myself deeper into a hole, and every fiber of my being begins to scream, I calm myself with the thought that maybe incurring a bit more debt is not the end of the world. Our income will continue to rise, and I am always at work trying to locate additional cash. So rationally, it might very well work out. Maybe more significantly, though, I am growing less patient. If I cannot live the life I want and think I deserve within my means, then I am more willing to live outside of my means. Hopefully, unlike Jefferson, I will be able to clean up my mess before I die (if the occasional panic attacks don’t kill me). If not, though, I have a good amount of life insurance to do it for me.

Obama, Greatnesss, and Me

 

Barack Obama is a pretty impressive guy. He is fun and funny to watch and listen to, with oratory both soaring and witty. He is smart and at least at times unafraid to follow his own judgments, even when they are unpopular. I largely agree with his vision for America (to the limited degree that he has actually articulated one), and most of his proposed policies make sense. He is just a little older than I am, and as I write this I think stands a very good chance of becoming our next President of the United States.

As pretentious as I know this sounds, I cannot help feeling when I watch Obama, “I can do that.” I too have a vision for this country; I am smart and a good speaker and can inspire. I have good judgment and the ability to assemble a productive team. True, I have little experience that would prepare me for this job, but let’s face it – how can anyone really have any experience that would substantively prepare them for the job of POTUS? Obama has more political experience than I do, but in the end I think that it matters little for his suitability for office.  How actually do you prepare for this office?

But here’s the thing: Obama is on his way to the Democratic convention, known all over the world, and I sit unknown in my office working on obscure papers or, later after I’ve put my children to bed, an even more obscure blog.

This election cycle has helped me to understand better that I will never be great and the reasons for it.

In any context, “greatness” is subjective. In my line of work, it might mean generating an idea that becomes pervasive throughout the humanities – like M. Foucault, P. Bourdieu, or K. Popper. Not household names, but titans in the field. It might mean popular fame, a public intellectual or gadfly like A. Grafton, E. Pagels, or C. Paglia. On a more limited scale, it could mean a lot of important books and a prestigious chair at a great university. Or, like hitting the lottery, it could come as the result of public recognition, perhaps in a Macarthur “genius” grant or, again in a more limited context, election as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I am relatively successful. I have an excellent position at a good university, am prolific, known in my field, and have garnered some awards. I anticipate continued productivity, and perhaps a better position or a fellowship in the AAAS is not out of the question down the road. But I don’t think I’ll ever be great. Why Obama, and not me?

The key difference is that Obama wants to be great and is willing to sacrifice for it. To take that career path, to campaign aggressively for president, is to pay a hefty cost not even to be great in any meaningful way, but so that he has the opportunity to be great. Who, after all, would endure public ridicule and a complete loss of privacy (cf. Spitzer) while at the same time devoting all of one’s time and energy away from one’s family? No one, on the other hand, can become president – or maybe even great in their own fields – without making similar sacrifices. One sees the costs most obviously in politicians and celebrities, but my field too is littered with broken marriages, bitterness, and the public excoriation of those who want to get ahead by ripping you down.

Are these sacrifices worth it? To what end? Isn’t a better model of the office of president the “reluctant leader,” like the histories I grew up with portrayed George Washington (whether true or not)? And is there a humanistic idea or award in the world that makes it worth neglecting a child, spouse, or student? For some, I’m sure that the gains justify or outweigh the costs.

Not for me. At least not now, not yet. My parents always wanted me to be great, and I am not a little torn about not achieving their dreams for me. As it is, with all my nominal free time and flexibility, I feel like I can barely keep up with what’s going on with my children. Even when I go away for a day or two, I feel behind with the lives of my kids, and it’s frightening. I don’t want to give up being part of the life of my children, or for that matter the evenings I sit having a glass of wine with my wife.  Could I be great? Maybe; I still like to believe that I could. But I do know that I am not ready to pay the price to find out.

 

 

Living European

I am endlessly fascinated by the European lifestyle. An article in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times (but see also the piece that mentions European infidelity) provoked yet another round of discussions with my wife about how attractive this lifestyle appears, and why in the end it can’t really be as we imagine it.

From reading these articles, it looks like people in our income/social bracket live in the center of a major city (e.g., Paris). They (or at least the husband – it is less clear if the wife has to work) leave for work, grabbing an espresso on the way. While he (or they) are out, the nanny takes care of the child and the maid comes in to clean. Husband and wife, of course, dress well. They work a reasonable number of hours, maybe go to the gym, and at the end of the day, they walk home (perhaps also using the subway), pick up some fresh meats, cheeses, bread, vegetables, and an appropriate bottle of wine. They cook dinner and sit down to eat about 8 PM. That, at least, is how it appears to work for the 10 months that they actually work. And my wife is convinced that the wives don’t work.

What is not to like about this routine? Living in Paris, having lots of domestic help, walking everywhere, lots of vacation, nice clothes, good food regularly. Sounds ideal, eh?

But no matter how many times I read these accounts, they don’t quite make sense to me. Most puzzling to me is how they can afford it. A small apartment in a major city costs far more than my house, and from what I understand they have small or no mortgages. How can they afford to buy nice clothes, and where do they find the time to shop and then put themselves together every morning? How do they pay for all their domestic help?

Then, I figure, there must be a downside. Or rather, a number of them:

• They buy fewer clothes, and wear them more frequently. So a man might wear the same beautiful jacket every day, and maybe doesn’t clean it that often. Still, the clothes bill is going to be higher than mine, not least because beautiful clothes worn all the time tend to wear out faster.
• They live in less space. Their housing is undoubtedly more cramped than ours, even if the European apartments I’ve been in tend to be well-appointed.
• They have fewer children. This might be the key – your money goes further if you have only one child. Also, nothing fills up space faster and more efficiently as children.
• They don’t eat with their children. This, I know, is only partially right. But still, the thought of keeping my children up until 8 PM or dinner is hard to fathom. That’s my youngest’s bedtime, and even if I gave him a snack at 6 so he won’t meltdown by 8, how can he get enough sleep?
• They use illegal help, and pay little. As a country, we too use illegal domestic help, but I don’t think it is anywhere on the scale of Europeans.
• They smoke. This has got to be the key to their weight.

There is no chance, of course, of living us living like relatively well-off Europeans. But it does make me wonder there are certain elements of this life that we can’t do a better incorporating into our own. For example:

• Increasing our clothing budget. Maybe we should buy some really nice clothes, and wear them all at time. Or at least take some of the guilt off my wife’s buying really beautiful lingerie and getting beauty treatments. But then, how would we pay for it?
• The fresh, good food thing certainly is doable. The downside would be the relative rush that we would be in to cook and get this food to the table before the kids protesteth overmuch.
• More help. We already use a babysitter for a few after-schools (6 hrs/week @ $12), and have a cleaning woman once a week ($60) and somebody to do the lawn. We could use a little more help, though, particularly with the laundry (another 2 hours/week). But maybe this is simply extravagant for us.

Even if none of this is realistic (they all involve additional expenditures of time or money), it is a lot of fun to think about.

My Wife’s Coat

I bought my wife a coat the other day.

Big deal, you say – a coat. This, however, was not just any coat. It was a very expensive coat.

My wife and I went to Manhattan for an overnight. It was kind of an extended date. Away from the kids, a chance to reconnect and have a conversation that could last for more than thirty seconds without someone needing something.

The trip was terrific. We arrived in the city, checked into our midtown hotel, and met someone for lunch at a small neighborhood restaurant. We rested a bit and then went to a wonderful play, made all the better by the fact that we got free tickets from a contact. We found a good, quiet restaurant for an after-theater dinner, and then returned to our hotel where, yes, we had great sex.

The next day we were walking around the city and wandered into an upscale store where, on a lark, my wife wanted to try on fur coats. This was a little surprising to me, because although we talked once or twice about furs, she always expressed an aversion to them. So I think that it surprised her as much as it did me to find that one of the coats, a sheerling, simply looked amazing on her. All the coats she tried on were heavily discounted, but this one, at about $1,000, could actually enter the realm of consideration. We asked the saleswoman to put it aside, and then went out for lunch.

It was a nice lunch, and we never really talked about buying the coat. My wife brought it up once or twice, but more as a matter of fantasy than the reality of actually buying it. We generally talked about other things.

My mind, though, stayed on that coat. It really was beautiful, and I loved the way that my wife’s eyes lit up when she saw herself in it. It was warm and well-made without being extravagant; she really could wear it daily through our long winters for 15 years. It was by no means a necessary purchase – the down winter coat from L.L. Bean for $150 is just fine – but I could rationally justify it.

But to say that what I was about to do was rational would be false. We have skimped and penny-pinched our way through life. We have always had enough money, but it has always been tight. Like everyone else, we made choices, and our choices almost always led to self-denial. Vacations, nice dinners, dates, good clothes, jewelry, certainly things we considered luxury goods – we never really invested in any of them.  The day before we had had a light conversation about what we both imagined our lives would be like at this stage of life.  She thought that she would be living in a Manhattan townhouse, not working, taking care of home and children.  She expressed no regrets and no blame, but the conversation left me feeling vaguely inadequate.  I could provide little along these lines.

I decided to buy the coat.  This was not something I could talk about with her.  She would demur; it was too expensive, she didn’t really need it, etc.  But I needed to get that coat for her.

So we finished lunch and began walking.  My wife has an awful sense of direction and did not know, or ask, where we were going – she assumed we were on our way to our car.  She only began to wonder when we walked back into the store.   And by then it was a done deal.  I bought the coat.

My wife did not jump for joy.  She didn’t kiss me.  She was silent, stunned.  We walked back to our car, subdued.  She was happy but conflicted.  It made me uneasy; did I do the right thing?

And now I have to figure out a way to pay for it.