Community Magazine April 2013

In these trying times, you’re probably looking for ways to manage your household finances. Personally, the way I handle my finances is as follows: I try not to think about it. Once in a while, my wife gets it into her head that we have to sit down and come up with a budget. “We have to make a budget,” she says. “Uh-huh,” I say. Then I don’t mention anything about it for a while, and hope she forgets. My philosophy when it comes to thinking about my finances is based on my philosophy about acne cream, which I came up with when I was a teenager. For my entire teenage years, I did not once put on acne cream. I had friends who used acne cream, and I could not help but notice that all of them had acne - lots of it. Of course, you could argue that the reason they were putting on acne cream was because they had tons of acne, but the truth is that I spent many nights in the dorm trying to carry on conversations with guys who were applying coat after coat, sometimes using paint rollers, and many of them still have acne to this day. Whereas I, who, when the topic came up, tried not to think about it, do not, baruch Hashem . Andmy philosophy is true, to some extent.What happens when you try to think about saving money? You open up a magazine and read a whole list of tips on, say, saving money on your heating bill. And then, following the advice, you buy new windows and drapes and reinsulate your home and buy a big wool hat for your hot water heater. And then your first credit card bill comes, and you realize that you spent more money that first month trying to save money than you did all of the other months when you were spending money. So the next month, instead of sitting back and enjoying the lower heating bill, you feel guilty about how much money you spent, and you read another article that says you can save money on gas for your car if you replace all the parts except for the “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go” bumper sticker. And so on. But I’m starting to get the idea, based on the fact that you’ve made it this far into the article (I personally stopped paying attention in the second paragraph), that you are the type of person who does want to think about finances. So here’s some advice: The first step in managing your household finances is to think about where all your money goes. The way to do this is to sit down at the kitchen table, put your head in your hands, and say, “Where on EARTH does all of my money go?” You should keep a detailed list, using one of those tiny accountant notebooks, as follows: •Tiny accountant notebook: $4.00 •Gas to get to the store to get the notebook: $5.00 •Depreciation on car: $3.25 •Impulse purchases bought in the store when you bought your notebook:$93.00 •Parking ticket received while in the store: $55.00 •Amount of money you could have made if you had been back at work instead of standing on the street corner arguing with a cop and pointing at things: $30.00 •Bail: $200.00 Household Budget “…the way I handle my finances is as follows: I try not to think about it.” BY MORDECHAI SCHMUTTER 58 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE