Adulting

(I hate the word adulting)

Oh, man, I am having one of those days, one of those weeks, where I just can’t focus on anything. I need to clean my office. It’s very bad in ways I’m ashamed to even broach in mixed company. I still need to take several condiments out of my office refrigerator where I stashed them to make room for a defrosting turkey over Thanksgiving which was…TWO WEEKS AGO! It does raise the question, if a condiment can be across the house chilling in my soda and skincare fridge for two weeks without anyone looking for it, could that condiment not then go straight into the garbage instead of back into the main fridge, which is for the moment, reasonably clean and uncrowded with superfluous condiments? (I’m focusing on condiment chaos, but my office fridge is also currently being used to age a rib roast which is an experiment that could either result in a delicious dinner or botulism. Time will tell!)

I told myself I was gonna wrap a few gifts today, just to get started on doing something to avoid a time crunch later, but so far? I haven’t done that. Not at all. Currently telling myself I still might. I STILL MIGHT!

One thing I did do, which I am choosing to be proud of, is moved my savings account from where it was sitting, gathering dust, to a high yield savings account. I’m trying to learn a little bit about personal finance after years of just ignoring how banks and interest rates work because I was intimidated and confused. Better late than never? I wish this had been mandated curriculum in schools, but they did teach us how to make pancakes in home ec and put a condom on a banana in health class, which have also helped me in life, I guess.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

The weird thing is, I am kind of decent at math! I’m not going to tell you my SAT scores, because I’m too old for that to be impressive by about 30 years, but numbers don’t scare me. My entire career has come with an extra-large side of piping hot budgets and calendars and clocks stuffed with numbers. Digits, more specifically digits doing addition, subtraction, multiplication or percentagization (this is just a word I made up) have been integral to my success. Messing them up has never really been an option!( Except for every time I was counting seconds backwards from twenty as a show was about to go live on the air, and for some reason I would often stumble over 13, and one time the audience of a show laughed at me and the guest, a famous rapper, was like, “Don’t laugh at her! Counting backwards is HARD!” And in the next commercial break, when I didn’t fumble 13, he cheered for me, LOL.)

The fact that I’m not nervous about numbers in general, but have tried not to make direct eye contact with my bank statements ever in my life makes me wonder. Why do I do that? Is it because I think there are more important things than money? Because I do. I think just about everything is more important than money. Which is why it’s annoying to have to care about it at all. Or maybe it’s because when I was growing up, we lived paycheck to paycheck with many weeks and months of no paychecks sometimes, and nothing ever actually went into the bank? I don’t know. Maybe that’s for me and a financial therapist to figure out. Is there such thing as a financial therapist? If not, there should be.

It might also be because I have dreamed of becoming so successful that I never had to look at my bank balance for anything, but friends, I have unfortunately never become that successful. Hardly anyone does, and this should have been a reality I planned better for.

So, I finally busted out some scratch paper and did a little math that was compelling enough to get me off of my ass and move my savings account to a better savings account. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t even have to get off of my ass, because I did it all online and it took ten minutes. It’s embarrassing to admit that this idea that was nagging at me for a long time, literal years actually, took about a half hour to set up from soup to nuts, including finding a pen that worked so I could do my initial figuring. Oof. And without getting too much into the mathematical weeds, I’ll tell you this. I just got my first interest deposit on the new account after my little quail-sized nest egg went in there and that first interest deposit was more than I had earned in interest in the old account in the entire prior year. And that was after just two weeks. Two weeks. Next month, it will be twice as much. And that will compound, month over month, if I can manage to leave it where it is. Or maybe I’ll have to move it if the interest rate on this account goes down? I’m still learning. But the point is, I have a much better awareness of how to do that than I did just a few weeks ago.

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash

I’m choosing not to beat myself up by thinking of how much better it would have been if I had acted sooner and instead just congratulating myself for doing it now. I’m planning to have a conversation with my sons ASAP, where we sit down with scratch paper and I can show them what I was never shown.

Anyhoozle, that’s what I’m doing my best at this week. Even though I started a couple weeks ago, I finally saw those first results with my own two eyes, so I’m counting it for this week.

As I’m sure you can tell, I’m far from being an expert at this, but maybe it’s something we can learn more about together? I’m happy to answer any questions I do know the answers to. And maybe some Besties know tons about banking and wouldn’t mind sharing? For the record, I explored several different FDIC insured institutions before narrowing it down to these two, based on several factors including 1) interest rates 2) favorable reviews and recommendations 3) ease of use. My final two candidates were MARCUS and WEALTHFRONT, I liked both for different reasons, but there are many others that I’m sure are just as good too.

Ok, your turn. What are you doing your best at this week?