Standhaftighet

I'm not usually one for making "resolutions"and "intentions," but this year I actually am feeling the need to be more conscious about maintaining my focus, not getting overwhelmed, and not giving up hope. I've reached the halfway point in my postdoctoral fellowship and when it's done my academic career may very well be at an end. While perusing another blog (I forget which) the writer listed "tenacity" as her intention for the year and it resonated with me immediately, so I'm claiming it as my own for this year.

There are a bunch of areas of my life that require a lot of tenacity this year. On the home front, I need to work on being more consistent and present with E; I need to keep working on communication with KE; I need to let go of savings (for our garage) and be vigilant about building it up again.

(Can you believe these two piggy banks? The skinny one on the left was my Mom's when she was an obviously deprived fourth child, the one on the right belonged to my apparently over-indulged Dad when he was an only. Now I'm the last person to criticize only children for being spoiled in general, but my Dad was pretty darned catered to... I've always loved having the two of these next to each other on my shelf, and this year I'll use them as a reminder to save.)

In terms of work, I need to be on top of the manuscript submission process for the Peer Gynt book; and I really, really need to buckle down and start writing the cabin book. My main work goal for this year is putting together a complete manuscript by December. Surely if I can write 2/3s of a book between September and January, I can write a whole one in a calendar year? I'm going to aim for 80,000 words. It's a big and complicated project, but I know I can do it if I just exhibit a little ... tenacity!

I finished my Plain & Simple Pullover this week, but I probably won't be able to photograph it until the weekend. I'm very curious as to whether I'll actually wear a short-sleeved wool sweater. To celebrate getting that done, I cast on for an Eleanor cowl with more of the alpaca yarn from the frogged fair isle sweater from last year:

Wheee, look at me, I'm knitting lace. Only a little bit, though. I also bought a used copy of the legendary Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. It has at least three sweaters I want to knit right away, so there's no danger of me not having a bunch of knitting goals for 2011!

Penger

I used to have a pretty good handle on my personal finances. I worked really hard to educate myself about money and debt and how to handle them. I am lucky to have a naturally frugal personality, so after a few years of ignorance and sloppiness, it wasn't actually all that hard for me to get my act together. A series of books helped enormously (Amazon links):

• Your Money or Your Life (Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez: the classic and still best of the "get out of the rat race" books available. It is difficult to grok because it has such a radical message. I went through the 9 steps and it really was a life-changing experience)
• Simplify Your Life (Elaine St. James: This was the fluffiest of these books, but even so I learned a lot from it about making better choices regarding my possessions and my consumerism)
• 25 Myths You've Got to Avoid (Jonathan Clements: the least well know of this list, and actually one of the best. It really encourages independent critical thinking about finances, encouraging the reader not to do the expected thing, but rather what works for her specific situation)
• Smart Women Finish Rich (David Bach: a good workbook-y kind of book with a few simple but important points. The title itself was enough to shame me into getting my act together)

There was a time (nearly 10 years ago, actually) when I poured over these books, working with them intensely and writing in them and trying to forge a financial future for myself. It was incredibly empowering to discover that "money" wasn't the dirty word I was lead by my family to believe it was, and that I could use it as the tool it was always intended to be if I just learned and implemented the basics. By the time I met KE, I had a lot of good habits in place, and I'm sure one of the reasons I was attracted to him is that he had pretty much the same attitudes. We differ a little (he is less debt-averse, for example), but to all extents and purposes we're on the same page when it comes to money.

I cannot explain the beautiful feeling that reaching each one of my small financial goals back in my single days gave me. When I learned about snowballing debt and was able to pay off my car loan early, when I learned the habit of transferring the remaining balance in my checking account from the previous month to debt repayment (in the early days) or savings (after I was free of consumer debt), and when I set up my CD ladder I gained an enormous sense of pride. Seems silly, but really when so many other people out there are crashing and burning financially I do think it is something to be proud of, since it obviously isn't that easy after all.

The move to Norway, though, meant that our personal finances got very turned upside down, and I just haven't had the wherewithall to sit down and learn the new system(s). Suddenly KE was paying all our bills rather than me, and I didn't have access to our mortgage online to track it neurotically like I used to do in the US. One of the positive results of our recent vacation is that the time off has afforded me the headspace to revisit our finances and start (re)educating myself.

Don't get me wrong--it's not like we've suddenly racked up a bunch of debt. It's just that I haven't had a handle on exactly where we stand. Now I do. I have a nifty little spreadsheet with our sole liability (the mortgage) and various assets. The good news is that the assets outweigh our liability, and that's excluding what our house would be worth were we to sell it. This is very reassuring to me right now, especially as I have been so bummed out recently about the unlikelihood of getting hired for a permanent position.

We're still not even close to where I'd like to be (totally debt free with enough principle saved up that we could live frugally off the interest!). I think it's realistic to pay off the house, but I don't think we'll get to the next step, mostly because it's just not a priority for KE. So for now, I'm just going to start running the numbers on how quickly we can pay off the mortgage...