Never enough

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

My youngest son and his wife are DINKs. Yeah, I know, that kind of sounds like some kind of new gender things, but it’s an acronym for “Dual Income, No Kids.” They are 26 and 25 now, so that’s likely to change in the next couple of years, but I hope they understand that financial stability is a sliding scale.

You see, in my experience, it really doesn’t matter how much money you make, because we tend to live up or down to whatever income level we find ourselves — and it’s never enough.

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely folks on the income spectrum who do a great job with what they have, and there are definitely those who could buy a new car every month and not even think about it, but for most folks, they just get right up to, and sometimes over, their margins.

Back in the day, whenever my wife and I would happen upon

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an unexpected windfall — a big tax refund, a bonus check, an overpayment refund from the colleges, etc. — we would have to tell ourselves, “Just because we have money, doesn’t mean we have to spend it.” It was like a mantra. But inevitably, the more money we made, the more money we spent. When we were in the early years of our marriage, I got a job making $6.50 an hour at Southland Greyhound Park. This was at a time when $4.25 was the minimum wage, so I thought I was rich — bringing home almost $1,000 a month! Add to that the $100 to $200 a week my wife made waiting tables at Bonanza on the weekends while she finished college, and we were rolling in cash!

Of course, you add a couple of kids to the mix, add in a new car payment, then the air conditioning goe out or the refridgerator conks out, or insurance rates go up, and boom… now you’re swimming in debt. And of course, once yo start making more money, you start upgrading things, often with “no money down and easy monthly payments.” It’s very easy to suddenly realize that “extra” money you’re making isn’t really even covering the “easy” monthly payments and you are basically worse off than before.

I am no financial expert, but I have made enough bad money moves that I think I can at least weigh in on some money matters with a bit of insight. I passed a lot of this on to my kids and I now offer it to you to do with what you wish.

I mentioned the “Just because we have money, doesn’t mean we have to spend it” thing earlier, but further along in life, my new mantra, which I shared with my son when I gave him his first credit card (in my name, but with his added as a secondary card so he could build his credit), is, “Don’t go crazy, but don’t go hungry.”

I also strongly recommend never having two vehicle payments at the same time if at all possible. Having two car notes just puts a lot of financial strain on your monthly budget. Not only is it two monthly bills, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 a month each for a minimum of five years these days, it also means having to carry two full-coverage insurance policies and a higher personal property tax bill each year.

We have gone with a “you get a new car, then when that’s paid off I’ll get something new” approach. I kind of got bumped to the back of the line when we started getting dirving- age kids but it has still worked out.

I’d also recommend staggering the purchase of big-ticket items like appliances and furniture and gadgets. Sure, a $100 a month payment on a new stove isn’t that bad, but if you’re also making payments on a new living room set, or a big 72-inch TV or the latest iPhone, it all adds up pretty quickly, especially if there’s also double-digit interest included in those “easy” monthly payments.

And my number one tip: If you get a big raise, just pretend like you didn’t. Then you really can have “extra” money!