I got married when I was 25, still living off my junky college furniture or even free furniture we got from near the dumpster, and, for many in their early- to mid-twenties, you’re in the same boat. You have junky dining utensils, plates, etc., small appliances, towels, etc., especially if you’re a guy. In my opinion, married life generally is the main impetus for getting rid of the junk and bringing in nicer replacements in part as an upgrade but also most definitely as a bonding exercise with your mate. When my wife and I picked our dining room furniture together (a set we stained ourselves), it was a momentous occasion and we still love what we chose. It was a lot better than the folding table I had in college!

But now I’m in my early/mid 30′s and so are most of our friends. And some of those friends are just getting married now (I’m not even going to bring up gifts for 2nd/3rd marriages!). They’re ecstatic about getting married and expect to go through the same process as many of us did 5-10 years ago. However, they’re in a much different place in their lives and I think they should have different expectations.

Should “older adults” register for wedding gifts?

Granted, some of you had your lives in order when you were 15, but from what I’ve observed, you don’t start hitting your stride in the professional world until around age 25-27. That’s when you start getting better tastes for design, electronics, appliances, and in general want to “nest” and make a place your own. Again, just my observation and your experience WILL vary.

But when you hit 30, society thinks you should start settling down in your career because you’ve had almost a decade out of college to figure out what the heck you should be doing with your life. You’ve had a decade+ to find a soulmate, and a decade to get situated where you live to the point of having a support network of friends and colleagues. Some of us are late bloomers and don’t find “the one” until long after our “prime” (aka our 20s), but regardless, the norm in society expects young adults (those in their 30s) to be stable and situated in life…and be married and probably have a few kids.

So, when a couple, both in their 30s, announces their engagement, then sends out the wedding invitations, replete with a list of cheap or expensive registry locations, are you obligated to buy them an expensive gift?

In all of the cases we’ve experienced over the last few years, the registries were just full of “fluff” meaning stuff you would never buy yourself, probably never use, but feel obligated to register for because you think your guests would feel obligated to buy you a gift. This is the one chance most people take to get a complete china set they’ll never use, or that matching towel set that will be thrown in the closet with all the others.

But ultimately, what do you get for someone who already has what they need? You can get them money, but when they make a good living wage, it just seems tacky. Same goes for a gift card, but at least you can give them a Home Depot, Lowes or Bed Bath & Beyond card because they’ll most likely use it and it’s more specific than cash.

Your thoughts? Should “professional” couples be registering for gifts for their wedding? Should they expect to be given much? Where do you draw the line? Or am I just being cheap?

I expect those who are younger won’t have experienced this situation, but those of you in your 30s and older most likely will have been invited to at least one “professional couple” wedding, so I’d like your feedback (especially since I have a feeling we’ll have a few more of these coming).

On a phone call this week, I was talking with another family member about why this must be, because one side of the family has college degrees and stable jobs, while the other side has barely been scraping by for decades, and now their kids are pregnant teens or high school dropouts (with a child). What the heck happened to this other half of my family?

Dreamers

Well, what we agreed upon was that throughout their lives, these relatives have been dreamers. They’ve only ever looked at the future, not concerning themselves with the messes they were making in the present. While we can’t see into the thoughts of any of these individuals, we know what the outcome of those thoughts were, visibly, emotionally and mentally. It’s not a home you would want to grow up in, but it could always have been worse.

So, what’s wrong with dreaming? Well, it gives you hope and hope is a good thing. It gives you ideas for the future, and that’s a good thing. But how does dreaming help you now?

That’s when I rambled off something I thought was relatively insightful:

You can DREAM, but you need AMBITIONS to make your dreams a reality

For example, I dream of being in the auto industry in some way, whether selling cars, reviewing cars or driving cars, but no matter what, it has to directly involve the vehicles, not piles of paper ABOUT vehicles. I lay awake at night driving at full speed through imaginary curves on an imaginary race track, but have I ever done anything about it?

That’s where you need ambitions. An ambition is defined as “an eager or strong desire to achieve something” (reference). You can dream of helping the poor in Africa, winning the lotto, being a race car driver, or being a world traveler, but you need the motivation and drive to make that dream a reality.

Thinking of my extended family, they dream of a utopian lifestyle decades in the future when their kids (who they adopted by choice) are gone and they get to do whatever they want. They’re complainers about everything in their life and think everything will be relieved when all the nuisances are gone…but we know that’s not a reality.

I know one of the kids dreamed of being a baseball player and even had the ambition to do so, but without the next step of the formula, thus ruining other chances he had to succeed. The daughter, well, perhaps she did have dreams of being a mother, given the abandonment issues adopted children often face. She wanted someone to love her unconditionally, and she had the ambition to do so. But again, she didn’t think ahead and at age 16, she got pregnant and the father has no dreams, ambitions or even a jobby job.

You can have AMBITIONS, but they don’t become reality without GOALS

Years before I started CleverDude.com, I was in so much debt I couldn’t see daylight. I dreamed and dreamed of how to get rid of my debt, all while getting into more debt. When I got married, my wife, who is quite frugal and slow to act, helped me to get revved up about getting out of debt. We didn’t have a plan, but we both had the ambition to be debt free, or at least not live paycheck to paycheck.

We needed GOALS. A goal is defined as “The purpose toward which an endeavor is directed; an objective” (reference). Our goal was to get out of debt, but with a new home, car loans, credit cards, and student loans, we were over $500,000 in debt! For a young couple in their mid-20s, that’s one heck of a debt load when you’re only make a small fraction of that total.

But we had to refine our goal, or else it would just remain a dream or an ambition. Our immediate goal was to get rid of the consumer debt, mainly because the mortgage was such a huge chunk and at least we had our home as collateral against it.

But what about my relatives? I mentioned the boy had the dream and ambition to be a baseball player. He ignored his schoolwork and job (the short few that he held) and focused only on getting to practice. But then he didn’t apply himself, and he also realized too late that those who were succeeding weren’t just decent athletes but also well-rounded, intelligent guys who applied themselves in school and everywhere else in their lives. You don’t get to be a star like A-Rod, Jordan, Tiger or Nadal just by swinging a bat hard, dribbling well, smacking the heck out of a golf ball or looking good in little white tennis shorts.

You become a good promoter and business person; you learn how to network, to branch out into other related endeavors, and most of all, to learn how to be better and accept criticism and learn from it. My relative couldn’t take criticism and got discouraged far too early. By that time, his schoolwork, home life and job had all crumbled down around him and he had no idea how to pick up the pieces. And it didn’t help that the same thing was happening to his mom, dad and sister.

You can have GOALS, but you need a PLAN to finally make it a reality

Ok, so you have a dream. You get pumped up about it through ambition. You then start developing goals to translate your dreams into reality, but how do you make your goals actionable and achievable?

You need a PLAN.

While I’ll admit that our plan to get out of debt changed monthly and sometimes weekly, at least we had a plan. We tracked our income and expenses, saw where we could cut down, and made job moves that helped increase our income (including, however accidentally, this website). Over the course of a little over 4 years, we went from $500,000 in debt to $300,000 in debt (only 1 mortgage). If we had just started throwing money at loans, while still buying stuff needlessly on credit, we would probably have missed some payments, overdrawn accounts and just kept digging ourselves into a hole. Instead, we had a plan we both (mostly) agreed upon, however painful it was for me (no new cars? AWWWW DANGIT!), and now we’re living month-to-month (if that even), not day-to-day when it comes to income.

After talking for a few hours with my male relative (the baseball kid) who is now 21, no high school diploma or GED, a job being paid less than minimum wage (don’t ask) and in the process of being evicted from home by his mother, it was clear he knows he screwed up, but he has no ambition, goals or plans. He just dreams of getting away from his mother. Everything in that call was “my mom”, and nothing that indicated he is thinking like an independent, responsible and accountable adult.

He has a dream, but nothing else, but now he is getting help, after swallowing his pride and anger, from other members of our family, but we’re all being cautious as he has let us down in the past when he’s had an opportunity to get his degree, GED or into an excellent education and job placement program. We all now want to know that he has the ambition to change…the proper goal(s) in sight…and the beginnings of a plan to accomplish that dream and make it a reality. Then we’ll put more of ourselves on the line to help him get on his feet and do something with his life.

I recognize the difficulty he’s had in his life, from the day he was born and given to different parents, through being put down every day by his mother, to the decisions he’s made in his late teens to drop out, but I expect more from people. I don’t want people to give me excuses; I want a plan. I want reality, not fluff. I don’t want to hear you blaming someone else for your problems. Accept responsibility and accountability for your own life and move on.

Now, how will I achieve my automotive dreams? I think it’s time to buy a Porsche. Don’t you? (evil grin).

But how has my writing helped YOU? And furthermore, what really is my role in YOUR finances?

I’ve gotten many emails over the years from complete strangers (you!) telling me how I’ve been an inspiration to them to get out of debt, create a budget or save for a goal. I’ve also gotten comments and emails telling me I’m an idiot for some of my ideas, but honestly, I brush it off because I know that what works for one usually doesn’t work for another.

You see, each of us has our own unique circumstances. We have our own jobs, skills, debt, family, religious and political ideas, and general life experiences. I’m a white collar worker in Washington D.C., make a decent income, own a home with only 1 mortgage as our debt and have no kids. We have no family within 2.5 hours of us, so we’ve had to start “a new family” of friends around us, although no one can substitute for real kin. My parents have never owned their own home, and we all grew up in my Grandma’s house since I was about age 5. My family was mostly blue collar workers, and times had been tough quite often growing up, but my parents helped shelter us from the worst of it and we got through it intact.

But your life story is going to be different. Even if you grew up in the same town as I did, went to the same schools, got your masters, and work in the same field in the same city, you wouldn’t have my life experiences, and thus my views and perceptions on life, and the same goes for me to you. I have cousins who have dropped out of high school just 2 months shy of graduation, or got pregnant at age 16 (on purpose) with no future lined up for themselves. I have extended family who game the welfare system, others who won’t go farther than 10 miles out of town, and others who are, well, racist and close-minded. I grew up with all these influences around me, but somehow still grew up to be a fairly well-rounded (I mean my mind, not my belly), educated man who is very open to new experiences, new cultures, and especially new foods!

But again, your life is different. When I give a tip to save money by doing something “weird”, you may quickly agree or you may cry foul and say I’m completely insane (Example: if it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down). Your priorities are different than mine. Your goals are different. And your resources are different. When you make a good income, have little debt (although a $300k mortgage is quite considerable to some), and have no kids, you have much more “room to wiggle” in your finances than if you were maxed out on credit cards, have poor credit so you can’t buy (or even rent well), or you’re a single parent of one or more children.

Many of the frugal tips I gave over the years helped US get through some tough financial times, but “tough” to us is nowhere near what some, or many, of you are going through. We’ve never worried whether we’re getting our next paycheck, or if our bank account has enough to cover all our bills. And that’s not because we’re rich; it’s because we always felt accountable for our debts and bills and always made sure we took care of our responsibilities first. So now that we’re much less in debt (over $200k less!), have continued to increase our paychecks and have grown our savings accounts, we’re easing back on the frugal living a bit.

I have 3 big pleasures in life:

1. Food
2. Cars
3. Travel

We get our food kicks from dining out much more often than before. We’ve more than doubled our dining out expenses, but we’ve done so because we spend that time hanging out with our friends rather than because we’re lazy and don’t want to cook at home. I love food, and, like Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods, nothing is too strange for me to try at least once. We’ve also been spending a bit more on better groceries rather than Ramen Noodles and cereal for dinner. I love food, and that’s a priority that I won’t give up, but it’s probably a very low priority for some of you. You may just care about getting sustenance and that’s all, while I want flavor and variety.

As for cars, well as I said back in May, I have to “resist automotive fever” with great difficulty. I love cars. I love driving cars. I’ve even applied to work part-time at CarMax only so I can help others find the perfect car for them, while not being locked into selling a single brand. But for many of you, and many of our friends, a car is a way to get from A to B, and is more of an inconvenience and pain than a joy. I love cars, I love thinking about cars, I love looking and driving cars and that’s not going to change.

As for travel, we’ve done a road trip through 10 states in 10 days from MD to TX and back last year, and then again to Disney this year (all in my trusty Honda Ridgeline). My wife loves seeing the countryside, state capitols, and other sites, while I just love driving. We’ve also been to Ireland (twice for me) and Israel, and have plans in the works for another European and/or African trip to visit friends. When either of us travels for our job, we see if it’s possible to bring the other. We have jet-setting friends who recently told us they flew to Amsterdam just for a concert, but they’re multi-millionaires who we can only sit back and envy. However, they work hard and party hard, so if we were willing to put in the time, we could achieve their level of travel too, but we’re both happy with our weekend road trips, the rare longer trips across the country, and the even more rare overseas trips.

My theme is variety. I love something different for dinner, for driving and for seeing, but I also like the comforts of home and consistency sometimes. You’re going to be different, and your finances will reflect that. You have to set aside some means for enjoying yourself, whether it costs money or not.

So getting back to my role in YOUR finances, I guess I can say that I’m here really just to show you how someone else lives life. I’ve given you a lot of my life story throughout the years and opened up our home, family and wallets to you to provide transparency into our lives. You’ve been both accepting and critical, but your feedback has also helped shape us as much, if not more than, we’ve shaped you. I’m not here to tell you what to do with your money. Rather, I’m here just to tell my story; to tell about how I’ve done stupid things and hope you learn from them. And sometimes I just want to get something off my chest or share something interesting I’ve learned.

That’s my role in your finances. Just to be some type of example, whether good or bad, from which to learn and adjust your own lifestyle or reconfirm how you’re living. And I’ll continue in that role as long as I can.

5 years later, I can say without any doubt that I cannot run with my wife It’s simply that she’s a talker and I focus solely on running. Running isn’t a social activity for me, although walking is, so we’ve decided that we will now run separately. I’m happy to say that after years of inactivity, we’ve joined some local friends for runs at least once a week, and I’ve even gone out on my own a few times and done quite well. We even, as a group, ran the local “Warrior’s Dash” 5k, which was pretty much knee-high mud for the first mile, then 12 obstacles including rope mazes, barbed wire, walls, cargo nets, tires, jumping fire, and crawling through muddy, gravel-filled water. Fun!

Anywho, happy belated birthday to Clever Dude!

Catching up on the last year

There’s a few things that have happened in the past year that I never wrote about:

1. We took a road trip with my grandma and great aunt to Texas in April 2010. It was a gift to my gram (we brought her sister for conversation) for all she’s done for me throughout my life and the end of the trip was for them to see their cousin in middle-of-nowhere Texas. We had sunny weather the whole trip, but in front of us, sometimes just a few hours, were the Gulf rig explosion, tornadoes in Arkansas and flooding in Tennessee. We almost ran out of gas in the city of Nashville, but luckily a local report knew where to get some before we had to sit for hours in traffic on flooded roads to get to Kentucky! We got to experience dining and lodging in the New Orleans French Quarter, saw 10 states in 10 days (that corner of Georgia counts!) and 4 state capitols, and just had an amazing time. I even got my great aunt to try gator! The beignets at Cafe Du Monde and the oysters at Wintzell’s Oyster House in Mobile, AL were the culinary highlights of the trip and we all recommend going there if you pass through!

2. We took a road trip to a Disney wedding in Orlando, FL this past April. My cousin (groom) got married in the Wedding Pavilion near the Grand Floridian and I was in the wedding party (only 18 guests), and I felt honored. It was my first trip (Stacie’s first since high school band) to Disney,and I thought it would be a stressful event. In reality, I was the most relaxed I’ve been in the last 10 years because we stayed on property (a Value resort, the All-Star Music Resort…recommended) and got shuttle service anywhere we wanted as a result. We got extra time in mornings and nights at the parks, and even though it was the 2nd busiest time of year (and costliest), I didn’t feel ripped off. I would definitely go back, although I would love to take my older nieces when we do. It’s not the same without having kids with you (but it’s nice when it’s just you and your wife!).

3. I’ve taken a lesser role in managing the site and really just write for it now. I have someone else managing all my emails (he filters appropriate ones to me) and fills in with guest posts when I don’t think I can write for a while. When I started the site over 5 years ago, it was a hobby which was fun and exciting. A year or so later, it turned into a business and got more stressful and less fun. After 4 years, I was almost ready to give up and let the site rot away like another blogger who I won’t name (but still collect ad dollars). Luckily a friend stepped in and talked me back into writing while he does the tough work. Thanks!

4. Late last year, I took a new job. I won’t say what or where, but it was a major change from what I’ve been doing the last 10 years, and it’s outside of my comfort zone. I wasn’t on the market, but some connections I built talked me into testing the waters with this new position and then I decided to dive in. Nothing was pushing me to leave the university except the promise of the new opportunity allowing me to gain much more knowledge much faster, make tons more connections in the industry and be able to advance further in my career. Where I was, I pretty much could only be a system administrator or a manager, and the manager wasn’t leaving anytime soon. I miss the old place, the old team, and being able to say exactly what I accomplished each day, but I keep telling myself how much I’m gaining in knowledge, experience, connections (and a bump in pay I guess).

5. Still no plans for kids. With all the talk over the years of adoption and kids, nothing has panned out and both my wife and I are relatively happy just being with each other and enjoying our siblings’ and friends’ kids. However, I would like a dog, but can’t talk the wife into getting one (it would be from a rescue shelter). You can say “You’re not getting any younger…you need to have kids ASAP”, but we’re both pretty decided we’d rather adopt if anything, but ultimately it’s what God wants.

6. I’ve been very active in our church, and have been managing and coordinating activities for nearly 100 men, their families and the parish, when called upon, for the last year, and I’m renewing that commitment for the next year starting on July 1. It takes a lot of my time, but I love to see the happiness on the faces of those we help in the community, parish or within our group.

Finances

We’re still in the same house, but only have 1 mortgage left. Over less than a decade (more like 6-7 years), we’ve paid down over $200,000 in debt from credit cards, 2nd mortgage, student loans, and car loans. Now we’re just saving up and spending wisely. It’s tough to write about money when it’s not on your mind 24/7, but it’s true that I don’t think about our finances nearly as much because I don’t have that day-to-day worry. We’re not living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore and we can relax, although stay vigilant that we don’t grow into our old ways. It took just a few years to change habits I’ve had for decades, and I want to keep and foster my good habits.

I’d like to thank all my readers, whether daily subscribers or one-timers, for all the comments (good and bad), loyalty and love over the years, and vow to keep on writing as long as I have something to say.

If you’re stuck deep in debt or you’re barely scraping by paycheck-to-paycheck, this may sound ridiculous, but hear me out.

In our marriage, I make more than double my wife’s income, enough to pay all of our bills and then some back when we were trying to get out of debt (remember, we paid off $200,000 in debt in about 6 years). While all our money goes into one account and we don’t assign each other responsibilities to pay specific bills, we did keep in mind who could and who couldn’t lose/quit their job if needed.

Discipline and Train Yourself

Our secret to paying down so much debt so quickly, other than starting a financial blog with a decent side-income (not planned when I started this site), was to pretend like we were only living on one salary. First, in case we had to live just on my wife’s salary, we built up our emergency fund. Then, assuming it was my salary we would live off, we made sure not to “grow our spending” to match our income increases. It would have been very easy to justify moving into a nicer house, buying a new car or going on a nice vacation, but we had a goal.

We had to discipline and train ourselves (me mostly) to spend within a budget and not splurge on needless luxuries. It sucked because we wanted the nice things in life, but we had to hunker down and stick to the task of getting out from under our pile of debt. It’s not always easy to have both partners working together on the same goal, but we were able to do it.

The Illusion of Rewarding Yourself

There are so many theories, methods and tricks proposed out there (and on this site too) on how to maintain a frugal lifestyle while still enjoying life, but for us what worked was not blowing our money because we “felt we needed a reward”. One of the reasons I got us into so much debt (much of it back in college) was because I felt I had the right to reward myself for various things I did or went through. For instance, maybe I worked really hard that week, so I would burn through a bunch of money on a night out with friends. Or maybe when I was studying for midterms or finals, I would treat myself out to lunch and/or dinner all week (it adds up!), or a new video game for after exams. Heck, I even rewarded myself for a tough semester of interviews for a post-college job with a brand new $20,000 car! And then I rewarded starting a new job with a brand new car…TWICE! In fact, I’m considering rewarding myself for finishing this article with a bottle of soda out of the vending machine

Back then I was definitely living well beyond my paycheck, or even 5 paychecks, so it was really tough to reign in my spending and focus on a singular goal. I had to stop this mental game of rewarding myself immediately and look to the long-term goals instead.

What about if you’re neck-deep in debt or expenses?

So getting back to the single-income/dual-income idea, what do you do if you’re barely getting by with your existing paychecks? Well, the idea still applies here to TRY to live like you only have one income, knowing that you’re in a slowly sinking boat. This idea is actually more beneficial to you than to someone like us with high income or low debt. Regardless of who “brings home the most bacon” (or tofu if you’re vegetarian), pick a paycheck and see how closely you can start spending within it. Start bailing the water out of your boat and try to get to dry land.

Start on paper just to see what your expenses are each month. Go through your checkbook, bank statements, and credit card statements to identify recurring bills and to identify categories such as groceries, dining out, entertainment, recreation and other categories outside of utilities and debt repayments. Try to go back at least 3 months so you can put together some spending trends. You’ll start to see where you can cut some fat out of your spending. See how close you can get down to spending just one paycheck as you can, and then earmark the other paycheck towards building up your savings and paying down debt (as well as charitable contributions and investing).

It’s a very worthwhile exercise to have in front of both of you, but you’ll have to both be honest in your spending, especially if you maintain separate bank accounts and credit cards. If someone is hiding some major spending problems or existing debt, this could be a nearly impossible task, so be sure to be up-front and honest, and be willing to accept criticism of your spending rather than attacking your partners in retaliation. I don’t want to hear “If I can’t spend on THIS, then you aren’t allowed spending on THAT!” because what matters in the end is bringing down spending, period. If one side isn’t willing to stop spending on what you consider a “luxury”, then you need some additional counseling because something is probably brewing and could cause major relationship problems eventually.

The True Reward

In the end, if you live like you only have one paycheck between the two of you, the true reward will be less risk in your lives in case someone really does lose their job, or needs to quit to take care of a child or aging family member. Sit back, close your eyes and picture your life with the feeling of security of knowing you could handle such an event. It isn’t tough at first, or maybe even for a few years like in our situation, but it works. Use the power of two paychecks to your advantage rather than living week-to-week. Get your spending under control so it doesn’t control you.

Believe me, not having the burden of overwhelming debt or risk of job loss is amazing!

Every month the Love Drop community will come together to raise as much support and awareness as they possibly can. It’ll start on their website – LoveDrop.us, get spread across their entire network of blogs, continue through their forums where all their members will be brainstorming, and finally land on the front steps of their recipients. Literally.

At the end of every month, Nate (co-founder) and J Money will show up in the town the recipient lives to deliver this pile of goodness to them. The money, the gifts, the services, everything! It’ll all be on film, and it’ll all end with an amazing outpour of love. And then it’ll start all over again the next day!

(Email all ideas/questions to team (at) lovedrop.us, we’ll make it happen)

That’s it guys. It really is that easy to help. Come join their mission and be a part of something COOL! It’ll be like Home Extreme Makeover, only different every month Love Drop starts NOW.

The first Love Drop was Jill, a single mom who lost her job, then lost her daughter. After she was homeless, she finally found housing, only to lose everything to a fire. The goal was to raise $2,500, but the team, Kona Grill and the members of Love Drop helped excel above and beyond the original goal with even more gifts.

Watch the Love Drop unfold below and read more over at J Money’s site. Oh, J Money is the dude with the ‘hawk if you can’t tell. And this is his first public appearance outside of us bloggers who have met him in person. You just learn to not judge a book by its look:

You may have to click through the RSS or email article to watch the video.

I’ll be writing about the next Love Drop very shortly, and it’s a big one so go over and join Love Drop now and help out!

Love Drop is a micro-giving network of people who unite as a community to help one person or family a month. By subscribing to the team for as low as $1, they make it easy for their members to change lives in a fun and tangible way. Each month Love Drop delivers a unique combination of unexpected financial gifts, personal encouragement and the support of local and online communities.

As you can see from Jill’s video above, there are SO MANY people out there that need our help. Every day people like you and me who are going through some tough times right now. It’s our mission to change the lives of 12 of these families for the next entire year.

Every month the Love Drop community will come together to raise as much support and awareness as they possibly can. It’ll start on their website – LoveDrop.us, get spread across their entire network of blogs, continue through their forums where all their members will be brainstorming, and finally land on the front steps of their recipients. Literally.

At the end of every month, Nate (co-founder) and J Money will show up in the town the recipient lives to deliver this pile of goodness to them. The money, the gifts, the services, everything! It’ll all be on film, and it’ll all end with an amazing outpour of love. And then it’ll start all over again the next day!

They’ve partnered up with some great companies to help get started (Groupon, Give Back, Hildebrand Creative), but the very first to truly believe was restaurant champs Kona Grill.

How you can help

This project is all about coming up with creative and fun ways to make a difference for someone. Here’s what you can do to make the first Love Drop special for Jill and her family:

• Join the team – Become a member by paying whatever you want. Even $1.00.
• Join the blogger network – Blog about their Love Drops once a month! It’s easy, it’s rewarding, and it REALLY helps spread the word (which in turn helps the families!). We’ll give you all the content you need.
• Give a gift – Gift cards, clothes, a homemade scarf, a bike, whatev.
• Provide a service – Web design, tax help, legal services, etc.

(Email all ideas/questions to team (at) lovedrop.us, we’ll make it happen)

That’s it guys. It really is that easy to help. Come join their mission and be a part of something COOL! It’ll be like Home Extreme Makeover, only different every month Love Drop starts NOW.

What gives?

Well, we kind of got sucked into our careers. Stacie got a new job last year as an outpatient pediatric dietitian and she’s really into it. Not long after, I left federal contracting and began work in the IT department of an area university. We’ve both finally found jobs that we enjoy, and we’ve also decided to do a lot more with our church such as teaching kids and leading charity projects.

But any of you in your late 20′s/early 30′s know that there’s mainly 2 things happening in this time of our lives:

1. Having kids

2. Getting divorced

Unsurprisingly, we know many friends involved in either of these life events, and sometimes unfortunately in both. Of course, we also still have single friends and single-parent friends, but let’s focus on our “parent friends” for now.

How do we relate to our “parent friends”?

Well, this is an unanswered question for us as well that we’d like some help with. Assuming we’re not having kids anytime soon, how do we relate to our friends who are parents? These friends are from our childhood, college days and even in the last 10 or so years since moving to the D.C. area.

You would think that having friends is the same whether those friends have kids or not, but I’ll admit something changes when something as big as having a child happens in your life. As a parent, your main focus becomes your kid. You begin to find new friends who you can relate to more easily, and those are generally other parents. You talk about kid-raising stuff…your schedule changes to your kid’s schedule…your finances focus on your kid’s needs.

Some parents (rarely brand new parents though) are able to transition into parenthood while still maintaining their own “self”. There’s a balancing act, and some people are better suited to being an adult AND a parent, while others can only handle being a parent and are unable to even contemplate doing things without their kids. We have friends of both types, but I can get into a commentary on this so I’ll leave it for another time.

My Own Experience

Throughout my life, I’ve tended to only have 1-2 really close friends at any one time. I would focus on doing things with these friends and let them invite THEIR friends as “secondary friends”. My two best friends since college are now parents though, and I didn’t really plan on how this change would affect our friendship.

Perhaps my friends aren’t even aware of the change in my perspective and feel like I’m still the same friend. However, here’s the biggest challenge both Stacie and I face when relating to our “parent friends”:

We worry that our concerns, problems or life experiences are now inconveniences to our parent friends.

Think about it from our view please. When you become a parent, your life isn’t put on hold so you can figure out how to raise a child. You go through the same exact things that us “childless couples” go through, but now have one or more dependents to take care of.

Previously, when none of us didn’t have kids, we could complain about things in our life, and get counseled without feeling like our concerns were bothersome to our friends. We were all on “the same playing field”. But now, I know how much time my friends are spending with or on their kids, and how many issues they’re going through in their own lives, so I feel like the concerns of my life are minuscule compared to their concerns. I feel like I’m being a bother or a pain to my parent friends by asking for their help or advice.

For instance, something big happened in our lives over this past year. I alluded to it in an article a few weeks ago, but we’re working through it. I can’t comment on how Stacie is handling it with her friends because that’s for her to tell, but on my part, I basically withheld this problem from my best friends until the last couple weeks because I didn’t want to add yet another concern to their lives. Maybe it’s just me and a stupid way to think of life, but I didn’t want my friends to feel a burden and worry about me during all their other burdens in life.

I dealt with the problem by discussing it with a few of my coworkers (one is a friend of almost 10 years), but they’re both parents as well. However, one is in his 60′s and the other’s kids are pretty independent, so they seemingly have freed up mental and emotional time to listen to my issues and help counsel me. I basically went to my friends who were local because I could speak with them in person (at work) and know that I’m not interrupting their dinner time, play time or bed time with their kids.

But I felt I couldn’t do the same with my long-distance best friends because I would always worry I’m taking away from their few hours of special time they can get with their kids outside of work and other social obligations. I went through about 9 months of personal pain and suffering without telling my best friends because I needed someone daily to help me, and I didn’t want to burden my friends with my neediness.

How do you deal with these situations?

I’d like advice from both parents who have childless friends as well as those in our situation. How do you perceive friendships…and how do you REALLY treat these friendships in real life. It’s easy to comment that you treat your friends the same before and after kids, but I want your honest answer on how you parents feel about hearing from your childless friends. Feel free to answer anonymously because there’s little chance your friends will read this article, much less your comment. Am I being silly with worrying about being a burden on my friends? I don’t want to just hear “that’s what friends are for. If your friends aren’t willing to hear your problems, then they’re not good friends” because this is more about my perception as a childless friend, not on what really might be happening.

Help!

I was born in the Pennsylvania, then was moved to Texas for a couple years until moving back to my birthplace. The second time around, however, we moved in with my grandmother. Since I was only about 5, I don’t know any of the discussions or agreements that happened at the time, but we ended up living with my “Gram” through my college days, although I stopped living at home after my junior year.

Sharing a home with another wage-earner (my gram) definitely helped my parents be able to take care of my sister and I, but looking back, I know we definitely lived much more frugally than my wife and I do now. Although we could have gone to public school “for free” (paid via our required property taxes), my parents sent us to private Catholic school from kindergarten through high school and paid out of their pockets. As I said, it helped to have 3 adult incomes in the house, but we weren’t shopping at the fancy clothes stores; we got most of our clothes at Value City and Sears, and sometimes Goodwill and Salvation Army. It always could have been worse, I know.

But really, it was only when it came to clothing and maybe some toys that I felt less privileged than other kids, but what kid doesn’t want something he doesn’t have? I do, however, despise the polyester pants I had to wear because 1) I was a very fat kid and 2) polyester clung very unflatteringly to me. I think I even started a few “friction fires” in my day.

The bad things I learned growing up

There’s the ever-present argument of nature vs nurture, and it applies here in my own reflection of my younger days. From day one, my family would tell me “money burns a hole in your pocket” and it was true. I couldn’t save a penny to save my life, but as I’ve proven over the last 4 years of this site, habits (or genetics) can change, for the most part.

Now you know my weakness is cars. I almost lost my chance at marriage with my best friend over a car. But I’ll note both nature (my need to spend) and nurture (example of my family) in my challenge with spending on cars. I can remember back as far as 1984 when my parents got a Honda Civic WagoVan. It was the first of many new cars for my parents.

I clearly recall my parents telling me that they would intentionally buy (or lease, not sure) a new car every 4 years. In 1988, they traded in on a Honda Accord sedan. In 1992, they traded in for a Honda Civic coupe. In 1996, I totalled the Honda Civic, so I can’t entirely blame them on buying a new 1996 Nissan truck. Then the truck had engine or transmission problems so they traded it in for a 1998 Nissan Pathfinder. It wasn’t until both kids were off in college before they decided to just keep the cars for more than 4 years.

So, my parents had car payments every month for 18+ years! (you need to count the time to pay off the Pathfinder). You can figure out that I “learned” that it was ok to have a car payment; that it was even weird to drive an old car when you could easily have a shiny new one.

But let’s quickly jump to the good things I learned.

The good things I learned growing up

Ok, so I bashed on my parents a bit about their new car habit, which I carried into my first few years after college. However, there’s a flip-side.

My dad always bought an old “beater” car to drive to his job. The nice car was for the family, while my dad would have things like an old Toyota station wagon, or a giant hoopty wagon (with no floor on the passenger side), or a used Chevy Tracker. He would run them almost into the ground. However, I think I inherited the “new car bug” from him, and it was only through the power of my mom that he didn’t have a new car every year, or even more often (just like Stacie helped me stay off buying new cars). If it wasn’t a new car, it was a new gaming system, or lawn tool, or whatever. But by seeing the arguments about spending, credit card debt and car payments every month, it was easy for me to see how much I wanted to avoid them in my own adult life.

I didn’t learn quickly, but marrying someone like my wife most certainly was my saving grace. Unfortunately, she began talking to my mom and I think they have a secret pact against me…

I’d like to give my parents major props for changing their own spending patterns, well before I was able to get a handle on my bad spending habits. They held onto that ’98 Pathfinder for a decade before the body almost rusted off, as well as an old Geo Tracker (yes, Geo, not Chevy). They’re also well on their way to getting out of the debt that my sister and I helped cause and have a pretty good financial plan for the immediate future.

I like to think I had something to do with their becoming more thrifty, but they started back when I was buying new cars every year, and before I started this site. A child could always hope he can teach his parents something once, right?

So, mom and dad, even though I caught a few bad habits a few decades ago, I’d like to thank you for helping me become a frugal and financially savvy young man.

What one good and bad financial “thing” did you learn growing up?