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| Movers carrying boxes. Image source. |
A few years ago, when my husband and I were moving to a new apartment, we heard about a moving service that said they would do everything for you. You don't have to do anything at all. You don't have to pack or do anything. They do it.
My first thought was "that's not possible."
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| Sticker that says "VOTE". Image source. |
I grew up in a conservative Christian environment, so I implicitly understood that it was "right" to vote Republican. But I was always skeptical of political parties in general, and when I was old enough to vote, I believed that I needed to research every candidate for myself, and make an informed decision on each one, rather than just voting Republican or just voting Democrat. I figured that in general, doing this research would result in me voting for Republican candidates, because my views fit with the Republican party- but I should do the research anyway and not follow a political party.
At one point, I was listening to what different candidates said about climate change. And it seemed that the evidence very clearly supported one side. Scientists were all saying that climate change is real and is caused by big industries putting carbon into the atmosphere, and we need to take action to limit this, or else the earth will become warmer, sea levels will rise, and it will be a disaster. The Democratic party agrees with the scientists on this. The Republican party, on the other hand... seemed to think everything was fine? All the scientists were pointing to the evidence, and Republican politicians just kind of ... said it wasn't true, but didn't go into any detail beyond that. They didn't seem to be making much of an effort to actually respond to what the scientists were saying.
I felt like... I wanted to be on the Republican side of this issue, but I saw the evidence and I didn't have an answer for it. But, I thought, Republican leaders think climate change isn't real, and they're responsible adults who surely must be well-informed about this, because their actual job is to know about the issues and make good decisions about them. Right? So even though *I* don't have an answer to argue against all the scientists who are warning us about climate change, I can be reassured by the fact that Republican politicians think it's not real, and surely they have good reasons for that.
So my Republican role models let me go along with what I wanted to believe, without me doing the work of thinking through what the reality was and what kind of policies would be best to address it. It was just... I don't want to believe this, and the existence of supposedly "responsible adults" who don't believe it means that it's reasonable for me to do so too.
(I think my mistake was believing that it was their job to be well-informed and make decisions that benefit society as a whole.)
Similar thing with minimum wage laws. What I had heard from Republican role models was, Democrats are saying "oh we feel so bad for these people who work minimum wage jobs and are trying to raise a family on that, oh it's so saddddd, we want to help them, we should raise the minimum wage" and they want to be nice and help people, but it's so short-sighted and will be bad in the long run. If you raise the minimum wage, it's going to mess up the whole economy. Republicans were the ones being realistic and making sure the economy would continue to work correctly. Democrats were just making decisions based on feeling sad for those people who made bad decisions. You can't run a country that way! Besides, you're not supposed to be able to earn a living wage at a minimum-wage job. Minimum wage jobs are just for students working part-time before they start their real career.
That's what I had always heard. Then, one day when I was in college, I happened upon an article about a city which had increased its minimum wage and their economy was basically fine. All those doom-and-gloom predictions about how it would mess up the whole economy didn't happen at all. And I thought, wow, this is great news! This is awesome! So we totally should raise the minimum wage, because it helps people and it doesn't ruin the economy!
Surely when my Republican role models hear about that, they'll want to raise the minimum wage too. Right?
Eventually I started to realize... these sophisticated-sounding talking points about how climate change isn't real, and raising the minimum wage would be horrible for the economy, and so on- are these just flimsy justifications for doing what we selfishly want to do? Voters and politicians who personally benefit from certain policies, even though those policies are not fair to everyone, and don't help society. Is it really just "business owners want to make more money, and don't want to pay their employees a living wage, and so they're going to go ahead and do that because they have enough power to make policies that say they can"? Is that what's really going on, this preschool-level morality of just doing things that benefit yourself, and not caring about how it's unfair to other people?
I really thought that responsible adults don't do that. Or, sure, some adults do, but it's very obvious to everyone that that's "corruption" and it's wrong.
And I don't necessarily think that believing "we can't raise the minimum wage because it would ruin the whole economy" makes someone a bad person. Maybe they heard that Republican talking point, and didn't think much about it, didn't think to challenge it because emotionally they just didn't like the idea of raising the minimum wage. They're scared of change, and so they feel relieved when they hear some analyst saying "well this is just the way the math works, it would mess up the whole economy." I can relate to that.
You should still be held accountable for your lack of awareness of how your fear is driving you to support a policy that harms people- but you're not a bad person.
Or maybe they really wish that society could raise the minimum wage, maybe they hear about families who are struggling because their income is low, and they really have compassion for them and wish something could be done- but they believe that a government policy to raise the minimum wage wouldn't actually help, because Republicans said so. Yeah, I mean, I understand that- I understand being in an environment where all you hear is one viewpoint, and you have no idea that other arguments even exist.
The real test is this: If someone thinks "we can't raise the minimum wage because it would mess up the whole economy" and then you show them an article about a city which raised the minimum wage and nothing disastrous happened (like this one for example), how do they respond? Do they leap on to it- "What?! Oh my goodness, tell me more! This is great news! Was there anything unique about this situation, which prevented those predicted economic disasters from happening? Let's think about how to replicate this in other places! HUGE IF TRUE!" Or do they ignore it, or even act like they don't *want* it to be true?
Another example: I received my absentee ballot for an election one year, and it included a proposal that I could vote "yes" or "no" on. The proposal was something like this: "Equal Rights Amendment: This proposal will make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender or pregnancy status."
So, that sounds good, the way it's written there, but you should always do your research to see what it's actually about. Maybe the way they wrote it on the ballot doesn't give the whole picture. So I looked it up online, and found a Democrat statement on it, which went something like this: "We support this proposal because we think it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender or pregnancy status." Very straightforward, very "duh"- equal rights are obviously a good thing, so that's why we should support this.
And the Republican statement on it: "We don't support this proposal because the way it is written is too vague, and we think it could maybe be used to allow late-term abortion." I read that and I was like "???" What do they mean, it's too vague? What do they mean, it "could" allow late-term abortion? Is there any substance to this, or do they just feel uncomfortable with the term "equal rights" and are casting about for an excuse to vote against it?
Imagine a young person coming from a conservative background, who has internalized the idea that it's suspect when Democrats put forward a policy about "equal rights", though they can't necessarily explain why they feel that way. This young person can't put together a coherent argument for why something called "equal rights amendment" would be bad, but it just kind of... feels like the kind of thing they shouldn't support. It feels liberal. And so they look to their Republican role models, to offer an argument about why it's reasonable to not support an "equal rights amendment." And the Republican role models give this statement, about how "oh it's kinda vague and something something abortion"- is that supposed to convince anybody? Or is it just, like... "oh good, I didn't want to support this, but I didn't have a good reason, but at least I know there is a good reason out there (even though the Republican side hasn't articulated it in a way that makes sense to me), so I can be assured that it's okay for me to vote against this."
Another example: One day, years ago, as I was walking around on my college campus, I happened across a protest about the Darfur genocide. The protesters were trying to get people to sign a petition about it. I recognized one of them; she was in one of my classes, and so she started talking to me about the Darfur genocide, and asking me to sign the petition.
I felt like... if it's true that this is happening, then of course I oppose it. Of course genocide is bad. But taking a stand on this feels like the kind of thing that my Republican role models wouldn't do. I can't explain why, but it feels liberal, and so I don't want to get involved. Maybe if I talked to some well-informed Republicans, they would be able to explain why the situation was much more complicated than "it's a genocide, obviously that's terrible, let's protest against it."
I didn't want to sign her petition, but I didn't have a good answer when she asked why not, so eventually I just scribbled something and kinda pretended I was signing my name. Honestly, my worry was that I was going to find out later that the protesters had completely misrepresented the situation, and that I had actually signed my name to something bad. Like, of course if there really is a genocide, I want to oppose it- but I felt that my Republican role models might know what the real truth was, and that it wasn't actually what the protesters were saying.
I mean, thinking about it now, it would have been reasonable for me to say "this is the first I'm hearing about this, I want to take some time to read more about it before I have an opinion." Always a good idea to fact-check! At the same time, I understand why a protester wouldn't like that answer, and would see it as an excuse made by people who don't care about others.
It depends on whether you're actually going to go off and read about it on your own, and then take action, or if you just feel like "this protest makes me uncomfortable, I want to get away from it" and then you don't think about it again after that.
Outsourcing your thinking to "Republican role models." Feeling like you can't really explain the reasons you support certain political ideas, but there are serious adults who hold these positions, and surely they have good reasons because that's their job.
To some extent, though, don't I do the same thing now? Now I follow a lot of progressive/liberal/feminist/queer people online, and sometimes there are situations where it seems like everyone dislikes something, but I don't understand why, but I just kind of go along with them and vaguely dislike it too.
I guess the key is, don't go along with other people's opinions on an issue if they don't give you a reason that actually makes sense to you. If it's about something that's not that important, then it's fine if you don't really have an opinion. No one has time to form an opinion on everything. But definitely avoid situations where you're like "I support this position, even though I don't understand why, but I have to in order to be a good feminist." Instead, ask more questions.
But, at the same time, yeah there will definitely be people on the internet reacting badly to someone "asking questions" rather than just holding the "correct" opinion they're supposed to hold. (I remember seeing an internet thread one time, where someone was asking "does 'trans woman' means they were a woman and changed to a man, or they were a man and changed to a woman?" just genuinely trying to understand the terminology, and someone else kept angrily replying "Trans women are women!" Not helpful! Btw the answer is, a trans woman is "a man who changed to a woman" but you shouldn't phrase it that way because it's oversimplified to the point of being offensive.) But they react this way because there really are people "asking questions" in bad faith, trying to argue rather than really understand. So, uh, that's a problem.
This phenomenon of not looking into issues yourself (either because it's impossible to have time to have an opinion on everything, or because emotionally you just want to believe something) and just going along with what other people say because they seem like "reasonable adults"- this is related to the Overton window. The Overton window is the range of ideas that are seen as okay for a reasonable person to hold. People talk about "shifting the Overton window"- this means taking an idea that is seen by society as so "out there" that it's not even considered as a real possibility, and talking about it a lot, so that eventually people will think of it as an idea that is normal for people to hold (even though most people may not agree with it), and then from there it can progress to convincing more people and being an actual policy.
Whatever's in the Democrat and Republican party platforms, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, you recognize that those policy positions are held by many "normal people." And this was not a good thing for me when I was younger and trying to figure out my own views, because I believed that if there were "Republican role models" who held some opinion, then there must be good reasons behind it. For example, denying the reality of climate change. Yes, there are *reasons*- politicians getting donations from the oil industry, for example- but not *good reasons*, not reasons along the lines of "here's why this position benefits society."
News shows would bring in 2 "experts" to discuss climate change. 1 of them would be a scientist who said climate change was real. The other would be a climate change denier. And it communicates the idea that- how should I put this- that it's okay to be a climate change denier. Regardless of how their "debate" goes, it sends the message that there are normal and reasonable people who don't believe climate change is real.
The thing is, though... there are "normal and reasonable people who don't believe climate change is real." There are people who are normal people, good people, who generally vote Republican and so they tend to believe the typical Republican talking points, about climate change and other issues. Or at least, back when I was in college and voting for the first time, that was the status of the Republican party. Now it's a personality cult around Trump, and I just cannot fathom why anyone would vote for him... I can't bring myself to believe "there are normal and reasonable people" voting for him.
Is it bad that I'm viewing 60-ish million Americans as so "out there" that it's impossible for me to relate to them?
Is it bad that I'm viewing 81% of the white American evangelical church- which is literally the subculture I come from- as so "out there" it's impossible for me to relate to them?
Is it better to use a strategy of "these ideas are so ridiculous, we shouldn't even legitimize them by talking about them" or "the only way we can reach these people is if we really understand the reasons why they believe this"? Well, it depends who you're talking to, and what your goal is.
I remember there were people I followed on the internet in 2016, who made it a point to continually note that what Trump was doing was "not normal." This wasn't just typical politician behavior- he is something different, and we should be appalled over and over at how wrong and how offensive his behavior is. Over and over, every time he did something that just a few years before would have been seen as so over-the-top, offensive, career-ending... and his supporters and the media just kinda went along with it, as if it was just normal politician behavior. Some people I followed on the internet would remind us all, "this is not normal."
The thing is now, 8 years later, it basically is normal now.
I did something similar back then- I refused to use his name; I called him the orange antichrist, because it was so shocking how evangelicals were getting in line behind a man who broke all the moral principles they supposedly cared about. And I didn't want to say his name because I viewed him as so beyond-the-pale that we shouldn't even be talking about him.
I still think it's beyond-the-pale to support him. But I've stopped doing the thing where I don't say his name. Kinda wish I could go back to doing that, actually... but now he feels like a normal part of politics, rather than something that will soon go away if we all just stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it.
Anyway, what was I saying? The Overton window. So you don't want to legitimize bad ideas by setting up a discussion about them. But at the same time, if those bad ideas are never addressed, their followers will literally not know that there exist good arguments against them. I used to be a young-earth creationist, and I always saw people treating young-earth creationism like it was so ridiculous they shouldn't even bother responding to it- and that gave me the impression that creationist arguments were so good that those evolutionists couldn't respond to us at all, and the only way for evolutionists to fight back against us was to cover up our evidence and say nothing about it.
I'm not a creationist any more. And it was a while after I stopped being a creationist that I found this site- An Index to Creationist Claims - and I was astounded. Whoever put this site together really knows what they're doing. They truly understand creationism, and they wrote good responses to all the common creationist talking points. Wow. I had no idea anybody had answers like this. This would have been life-changing if I had had access to something like this back then.
My point is, you avoid talking about some "extreme" ideas because you don't want to give legitimacy to them in the eyes of the public, but for people who already hold those ideas, that strategy just makes them even more certain that they're right and you have no counterarguments at all.
Same thing with being "pro-life." In the environment where I grew up, everybody was "pro-life." I never heard any pro-choice arguments that meaningfully addressed my "pro-life" ideology. Sure, I knew pro-choice people were saying "my body my choice"- but that didn't do anything for me because hey it's not about your body, it's about your unborn baby's body. And pro-choice people were saying this was about women's rights, but that didn't mean anything to me either, because I felt abortion was only relevant to those "bad" women who had unmarried sex, not women in general. I totally could not imagine how anyone could be pro-choice.
And then I went to college, and it seemed that everyone was pro-choice. And some of them had very strong opinions about it. And I was so confused, I could not understand how anyone could be pro-choice, but I didn't feel like I could ask anyone about it, because they viewed "pro-life" people as so incredibly wrong- they would probably get angry rather than put together an argument that actually connected with ideas I could understand.
(I have written some blog posts which explain my own pro-choice beliefs: What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice and Why I Am Pro-Choice.)
So I would say, on the question of whether to treat other people's opinions like they're so ridiculous they're not even worth discussing: It depends what your goal is. If your goal is to convince people, then you do need to learn the actual reasons for their beliefs. You need to understand how someone could believe those things. But, you're not required to do that. Maybe you have a different goal- like supporting people who are hurt by those bad beliefs.
And one more thing I want to say about voting: Voting is kind of a unique thing in that you can just vote for whoever you want, without needing to explain yourself or give a good reason for it. You have the right, and your vote counts, regardless of whether you articulate a "good reason." And in the past I sort of saw it as... "here are the candidates, I'm confused about how to choose one, but I thought about it a long time and really thought about what's important to me, and I picked one, and maybe I don't even know exactly why I feel one candidate is better than the other, and I'd be too embarrassed to stand up and try to explain my vote to other people, but there it is, it's my right." A personal thing, a confidential thing... a thing where your voice still counts even if you don't know what you'd say to people who would hate your voting choices.
Maybe that's how it is for people who aren't well-informed about politics? I don't feel that way now at all; I'm very confident about voting for Kamala Harris. My #1 issue is I support American democracy, and the Republican party just, uh, doesn't anymore??? Never thought that would be something a major political candidate would oppose. We all remember January 6. Why are people still voting for this guy?
The phenomenon of just going along with what other people ("role models") believe... to some extent it's unavoidable, because nobody has the time to research every issue. But it's a problem if it allows you to feel justified in your positions which are motivated by your own selfishness/fears/biases. I think all of us are susceptible to this; it's not related to being a Republican or being a Democrat.
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Related:
I'm just wondering what happened to the Republican party
"This Doesn't Make Sense, But It Must Be Right"
That Time I Voted For Obama ... Plus a Bunch of Republicans
I'm concerned that there's still an argument to be made for "pro-life" policies where women die
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| An envelope with US dollars in it. Image source. |
So, I had always heard people give advice that "you should have a budget." And I've tried to do that, using various strategies, which had a lot of flaws- until I finally found a strategy that actually makes sense for us. So in this post I basically want to write about things I've tried before, why they didn't work well, and what my husband and I do now for our budget strategy.
In the past, there were times I attempted to make a "monthly budget" for myself. I wrote down all the categories that I spend money in, looked at some data from the previous few months, to estimate what numbers would be reasonable for each category, and set a limit for each of the categories. The intent being, in every category, I have to keep my spending under that limit every month. That's how budgets work, right?
There were a lot of problems with this.
For example, suppose I need to go somewhere, and I'm trying to decide if I want to take a taxi or take the subway. The taxi would be more expensive, and would mean I'm going over budget in my "transportation" category. But, if I take the subway, it takes more time and I'll be late. When I'm in that situation, I feel that it's worth it to me to spend the extra money in order to not be late. But, I can't suddenly change the budget, right? Isn't the entire point of a budget that you have to stick with it, even if it's hard? Otherwise it doesn't actually help you, right?
Also, the previous day, I had bought myself a piece of cake, which cost more than the taxi would cost, but that was in the "eating out" category where I'm not anywhere close to going over the limit, so that was fine. Uh, doesn't something seem kind of off here? Thinking about the "money to happiness" ratio, spending the money for the taxi would give me more happiness than spending the money for cake, but since they're in different categories, I can't trade them off like that. I already set the limits in each category, I can't change them- that's the whole point of having a budget, right? But something seems incredibly illogical about this.
I was giving myself more stress, over small amounts of money which didn't really matter.And, here's another example, maybe there's some grocery item that I could buy in bulk- but if I do that, I would go over budget in the "grocery" category that month. But, uh, but doesn't buying in bulk result in more savings over the long term? Then why is my budget system telling me that's bad? There's too much focus on each month individually- the system doesn't have any built-in connection between this month and the next month. I mean, *I* can tell myself "oh actually it's a good idea to buy in bulk, even though my budget system says it's breaking a rule"- but I wasn't actually quantifying that in any way. It was just an intuition that I never gathered any data to actually evaluate, because my system wasn't designed to give me that kind of data.
Also, I was thinking about each category in percentages. Like, oh, I only spent 20% of the "clothes" budget this month, wow, only 20%, I'm doing such a great job, I'm saving so much money! And then in the "groceries" category of the budget, I went over by 10%, ah, well, that's not good, but at least 10% is a small-ish amount. I remember at one point I had an app which had a horizontal bar for each category, to show what percentage of that category's limit you spent each month- and every horizontal bar was the same length. This makes no sense. It makes no sense to feel good about saving such a "high" percentage in a small category- because the actual dollar amount is so low it doesn't matter.
And I couldn't understand what people meant when they gave advice like "you should save 10%." So... if this month I spend 90% of my salary, and save 10%, but then next month I use that 10% to buy a new computer or something... that seems like that shouldn't count as "saving 10%." The only reason I'm calling it "saving" instead of "spending" is because of the arbitrariness of where one month ends and the next month begins- that seems kind of illogical.
And there was definitely no way to accumulate long-term savings. Yeah, in theory, I put limits on all the categories, and the limits add up to *less than* my salary, so if I stay within the limits every month, then the extra will keep adding up every month, and that's my long-term savings. But there was no mechanism to ensure that this would actually happen. No way to tell if, when I go over budget in some category, is it fine, or am I spending all my "long-term savings" accidentally?
But the biggest problem with this "monthly budget" system was that it was not cumulative. Every month was treated like a completely separate event, which had no mathematical relation to any other month.
I remember saying at one point "every month I'm only spending 40% of my income" and someone was like "wow that's pretty good!" but it turns out what I actually meant was "in a normal month I'm only spending 40% of my income, and then twice a year I spend THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on international plane tickets." Yeah, every so often the "travel" category of the budget would just be so completely overwhelmed, when I bought plane tickets which were many times higher than the monthly budget limit for "travel"- but I told myself, "it's fine, it's not like I'm doing that every month." But I wasn't actually *measuring* if it was "fine" or not. It was just... most months I spend very little for "travel", and then occasionally I spend A TON, so, overall that's probably fine, right? Well, uh, you don't know if it's "fine" if you don't do the math with the actual numbers.
Sometimes I would scroll back through several months of data, and observe "oh this month I went over budget in this category, in this month I was under budget in that category", etc, but there was never any sense of ... like... adding up the actual numbers to see if a several-month-long period was over or under budget. I mean, sometimes I sort of added them in my head, but the results depended on what month I used as the cutoff point (ie, am I adding up over the past 3 months? 6 months?) so I didn't feel like that was a well-defined and concrete measure.
Sometimes I would go over budget in some category, and I would kind of feel bad about it... like a little bit of fear that if I continue like that, I'll have financial disaster in my future. Like I'm supposed to be sticking to my budget, and some months I am and some months I'm not, and ... am I deceiving myself by pretending that's fine?
It was just emotions, which didn't have concrete data to say if those emotions were reasonable or not. I was giving myself a lot of stress over small dollar amounts which didn't really matter. (Or rather, small RMB amounts, because I'm in China.)
(And maybe a lot of the emotional aspects of budgeting are my own weird quirks- this is sort of what I saw from my parents- like saying "oh maybe we spent too much money on that" or "we can't buy that because it's too expensive" but not actually having a literal budget to specify what "too much" or "too expensive" would mean, just vaguely feeling guilty about it. And also having a high enough salary that there weren't really any practical consequences from spending amounts that felt like "too much"- just guilt, never "holy crap we can't afford rent, what are we going to do?")
Eventually I came up with a new budgeting system, which doesn't have these problems. Here are the 2 key elements:
This happened when my husband and I moved from a 1-bedroom to a 2-bedroom apartment, just before our son was born. The reason we had to develop a new budget strategy at that time was that the rent was much higher, and we had to have a way to guarantee that the money for rent would always be there and ready to be paid at the right time. In China, typically you pay rent once every 3 months- so yeah, every 3 months, it's a HUGE amount of money you suddenly need to come up with. My husband is the one who handles the actual transaction, and when we were in a 1-bedroom apartment it was less money so it was less of a big deal- every 3 months he'd just ask me to transfer my half of the rent to him, and then he'd pay it. But the 2-bedroom apartment was so much more expensive- what if the time comes to pay rent, and we realize one of us doesn't actually have the money for our half?
We needed to both be transferring money, every month, into a dedicated savings account that my husband has access to. So that when it's time to pay rent, the money is already there, no issue.
So basically that was my inspiration for coming up with a new budget system for us. It was about large things we needed to pay for, but not every month. So the strategy was to calculate an average cost per month, and every month we'd transfer that amount to a savings account, and then when it was time to pay it, the money would be ready.
This is completely different from my previous system- my previous system also had sort of an "average cost per month" for each category, but it was like, if I went over that amount in a particular month, that was "bad," and if I went under, that was "good." Judging myself on how many months I was "good" or "bad." The new system is different- in the new system, every month we transfer that "average cost per month" amount to a savings account, and then if we don't spend it that month, that money is still there, accumulating every month so that it's ready when we need it. Each month just rolls over into the next month, in a straightforward mathematical way. Not like my old systems, where I just vaguely felt bad about sometimes going over budget, but didn't have any sense of whether it was actually a problem.
So we figured out what the big categories are for us, the categories where some months we spend a lot and some months very little. Or categories where both my husband and I have to contribute, so it makes sense for it to be paid out of a savings account that we both are putting money into. Here are our categories:
For each category, I calculated an estimated cost per year, and then divided by 12 to get a cost per month, then decided what proportion should be paid by me and what proportion should be paid by my husband (you can decide this based on factors like: whoever's salary is higher should be paying more money into the savings account, or if I bought an international health insurance plan for myself then my husband wouldn't necessarily pay for that because it's not for him, if one person is always buying the groceries then you should make sure they have more remaining money than the partner who's not buying the groceries, etc).
So every month we both transfer money to the savings account, and then when we have to pay for something that falls under one of those categories, we pay it from the savings account.
[Or rather, that's how it works theoretically but actually in practical terms it's not exactly like that. See, the way I handle this is I have a big excel spreadsheet, and it says the amount of money in the Chinese savings account and the US savings account (see we have 2 different currencies so it's complicated for us), and how much of that money is allocated to each category. And we also have categories "Perfect Number's extra money" and "Hendrix's extra money"- ie, not everything in the savings accounts is allocated to those 6 savings categories I mentioned, some of the money is actually just mine or just my husband's. And in practical terms, when I pay for something that comes from one of those savings categories, I actually just pay from my own bank account, not our savings account, and then I just adjust the numbers in the excel sheet- ie, if I spend 200 RMB on something related to vacation, I spend it from my own personal bank account, and then on the excel sheet describing the contents of our savings accounts, I subtract 200 from "travel" and add 200 to "Perfect Number's extra money"- see actually joint bank accounts aren't a thing in China, so I actually can't spend money from the savings account, I don't have access. Actually I don't transfer the full "average monthly cost" for each category into the savings account every month, because when I pay for stuff from my own account, that mathematically functions the same as a transfer. As long as I write down all the amounts in the excel sheet correctly, it doesn't matter that I didn't literally transfer the entire amount. Okay those are just some details about the practical implementation of this.]
One really cool thing about this system is that, whatever is left over from your salary (after you transfer money into the correct categories) is totally yours and you can do whatever you want with it. You use it for whatever costs you have in your daily life- stuff like buying food, clothes, birthday gifts for family, donating to charity, etc. And your spouse can't judge you for any of that spending! Sometimes I feel like my husband spends money on things that he shouldn't, but, actually, as long as he's paying the right amount into the savings account every month, it's fine! Like mathematically it actually is fine. If I truly calculated the "average cost per month" in each category correctly, then he can do whatever he wants with his leftover money and I know it won't affect our family's financial stability. (I also spend money on things that he wouldn't...)
And the category that you use for your daily expenses and/or extra money isn't subdivided any further than that. It really doesn't matter if I spent a lot of money on clothes one month, and no money on clothes in a different month, or if I took a taxi or bought a piece of cake or whatever- all of that is just summed into one category, for my daily expenses (or, as I referred to it earlier, "Perfect Number's extra money"). You just look at the total in that category, and as long as it's always a positive number, then you're fine. (Or, if you're also conceptualizing that category as your own personal "emergency savings" then as long as it's always higher than whatever you think you need as your "emergency savings" then you're fine. Yes, you should have an "emergency savings"- whether you make that its own category or lumped in with another category is up to you.)
And another really great thing about this system is that, because it's cumulative, you can make corrections for things that happened in previous months. For example, suppose we spent more than we expected on vacation. Maybe this means the "travel" budget has a negative amount of money in it. (That is okay, temporarily, as long as it's in a bank account that is summing it up with other categories which are positive enough that the total is still positive.) So, there are a few different ways we could handle this:
See? When we go over budget in one category, that is reflected in the number that the excel sheet says is allocated to that category. And it will always be reflected in that number- that number is the cumulative sum of every month, and that "over budget" incident will always be reflected in the history that goes into calculating the current amount. It is mathematically completely quantified in the numbers- you know exactly what it is, you don't have to vaguely feel bad about it and vaguely fear that it's going to cause problems in your future. And then you make a decision afterward about how to correct for it, and then you do that- you correct for it, and you move on. No reason to feel guilty. If, for example, you spend $200 more than expected on travel, but $200 less than expected on utilities (which I also put in the "rent" category), you simply mark in the excel sheet that you're transferring $200 from "rent" to "travel", and then all is good. The problem has been solved. No need to vaguely feel bad about it, or to tell yourself "well we don't spend that much money every month, so it's okay" and wonder if you're just making excuses to fool yourself.
Anyway, like I said, I made an excel sheet myself to keep track of all this, because I didn't find a budgeting software that I liked. Our situation is, we have accounts in the US and China, and both my husband and I are paying in to the Chinese account monthly, and we have other accounts that are our own personal accounts and not related to these savings categories, and my other accounts are my own business and aren't part of the excel sheet- yeah the reason I wrote my own excel sheet is because it's complicated and I didn't find software that did exactly what I wanted. (I also have an app on my phone for all my personal accounts in China, where I record every single transaction but I don't do any higher-level budget stuff, and a different one on my computer for all my personal accounts in the US. Those apps are just very basic money tracking apps, nothing special, I just got them from the app store or wherever. I am one of those very organized people.)
But anyway, if you want to look for a budgeting software tool that does something like this, I'll tell you that this is basically the envelope system. Search for "envelope budget" or something along those lines- there are some software programs that you can get that do this.
I have also seen some banks which allow you to categorize the money in your account into different "savings buckets"- yeah, that's basically the same as the system I'm describing here.
Overall, my system is about categorizing your expenses, over the course of an average year, into a few big categories, and then making sure that you are putting enough money into those categories monthly. If not, then you need to make changes to your life, like going on less expensive vacations, or living in a less expensive apartment, etc. It's about those big things- I found that there's no benefit to subdividing everything into small categories and giving myself stress about the exact amounts.
The main function of my system is making sure that each big category is funded enough that I don't have to worry about it, and we can have the kind of lifestyle we want to have. Now, there are other benefits to budgeting, which my system doesn't really address- for example, comparing the amount spent on different everyday things and identifying places where the amount you spend doesn't really give you as much happiness as you should be getting for that amount of money (ie, if you regularly spend $X on something, but you find out that spending $X on something different brings you more happiness). My system doesn't really help with identifying those kinds of things, or small everyday things that add up to a big amount that could be reduced, etc. My system is just about the really big things, to answer big questions like "can we afford to go on an international vacation" or "can we afford to move to a more expensive apartment" etc. We are lucky to have a good enough income that we don't need to stress about the small everyday things.
(But also, you can totally use an envelope budget system for everyday things subdivided into smaller categories! Instead of updating an excel sheet once a month, and then making corrections afterward if you spent more than expected in some category, like I do, you could have an app on your phone so that in real time you can check how much you have available in a certain category, and if it's not enough for something you want to buy, then you make a decision right then about either not buying it, or transferring money from a different category before you buy the thing. That's also the envelope system, but being used for a different purpose than how I use it.)
Anyway, that's the overall idea we use for our family budget. I wanted to post it here on my blog because, like I said, I've tried other budget strategies in the past and they just caused me more stress without any real benefit. The current system we use, which is basically the envelope system, is designed mainly to make sure my husband and I are always prepared for large expenses that we can sort of predict but they don't happen every month. I found that the most important thing I need from a budgeting system is it needs to be cumulative- ie, we allocate money to a certain category this month, and then if we don't use it, that money continues to exist in that category and simply rolls over to the next month. This way, there's no need to wonder about "well sometimes we spend more and sometimes we spend less, so... I guess that's fine overall?" It's all right there in the math- you simply look at the numbers that say how much you currently have in each category.
No need to feel guilty or wonder if it's bad that sometimes you went over budget. It's all right there in the math. If the math says you're fine, then you're fine.
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Readers: Do you have any useful budgeting strategies?
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Related:
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| A mom holding a baby while trying to get things done. Image source. |
Remember when I was a teenage girl and people were like "don't be so sad about being single- don't focus on finding the right person, focus on being the right person!" This idea is present in society in general, but I also got the Christian version of it- "God wants to teach you to be a better person before He has you meet your future husband."
So basically, the reason I was single was because I didn't have all the right character traits- patient enough, compassionate enough, generous enough, trustworthy enough, etc. I should work on developing those and becoming a better person, and then Mr. Right will magically appear.
All of that had me believing that married people must have already achieved "good responsible devoted Christian" status, and that's how they got God to hand over a spouse for them. Surely married people must all be so kind and caring and trustworthy and all those good qualities- otherwise, God would have put their love life on hold so they could "focus on being the right person." Right?
Lol. LOL. Nope, turns out that's not true at all.
Turns out, in order to get married, all you need is a person who consents to marry you. It's literally that simple. Yeah, obviously you should put a lot of thought into the decision- just because you find someone willing doesn't mean you SHOULD marry them. But it DOES mean you CAN marry them.
And the way it works in reality is, you find someone with about the same level of general responsible-ness as you, and you kind of settle in to living your lives together, with some amount of overlap but also keeping a lot of your own personal habits, which may or may not be "responsible adult" habits.
Hendrix and I, after we got married and continued going about our day-to-day lives together, we would leave dirty dishes in the sink for days, order takeout for dinner every night instead of cooking, stay up late on the computer every night, did not even own a mop, etc etc etc. Like if you both have "not very responsible" habits that are compatible with each other, you just continue on like that. Just because you're married doesn't mean that changes.
But having a baby, man. Having a baby is what changed that.
When you're taking care of a newborn baby, you do not even have a chance to do the bare minimum to get your own needs met, because the baby constantly needs something. You learn to get things done in a reliable, responsible, optimal way, because you never know when you'll be stuck holding a baby and need to grab something and you don't have any time or spare hand to deal with whatever mess was left in the way by your past self.
Like you get up in the morning, your sheets are strewn everywhere, and you're like "oh whatever, I'll make the bed later, I don't want to now" and then next thing you know, your baby has pooped all over his clothes and you need to lay him down to get him changed and you're trying to use your elbow to pull out the changing pad and spread it out on your bed among all the messed-up sheets.
Then when your baby finally takes a nap, you're like "OH THANK GOD" and you're thinking about all the things you need to get done while he's sleeping, but you say "let me sit down and take a break and check Twitter real quick" and then 20 minutes later, the baby wakes up and you are still scrolling through Twitter, have not gotten a single thing done, have not even had a chance to brush you hair the entire day.
You're sitting on the couch breastfeeding, sitting up with your back very very straight so that the baby will stay in exactly the right place, and your shoulders hurt and your back hurts, but you're like "eh whatever, I can tolerate this, it's not that bad, I don't feel like getting up to get a pillow for my back." And you end up sitting there for hours and hours over the course of the day, and your back hurts so bad, you feel like you can't take it any more, but GUESS WHAT, the baby is hungry again. You have to hold him again. And so you learn to set up all the pillows correctly every morning, so you can sit and breastfeed in a way that's sustainable for hours and hours. None of this "well I'll just tolerate it because I don't feel like getting up."
You get up in the morning (after being woken up over and over all night) and your whole shirt is wet, soaked with breast milk. And you say, "oh I won't bother to change my shirt yet, because I'm about to get a shower, so I'll just change it then." Honey, I'm sorry, I really hate to be the one to tell you this, but if you have a newborn baby, you are not "about to get a shower." Your baby is gonna need something, over and over and over, and by the time the stars align and you have a chance to go shower, it'll be the middle of the afternoon. So go put on a clean shirt right away.
I learned to get things done immediately, when I had a chance. When the baby goes to sleep, the first thing you need to do is rush around and clean up everything you didn't have a chance to clean up before. Then take 1 more lap around the apartment just to check again if there's anything else that needs to be cleaned up. AND THEN, when that's done, then you can sit down and take a break.
I also started appreciating my parents more. While I was on maternity leave, I traveled to the US with the baby (this was before the pandemic) and I was so grateful every time they helped change his diaper, entertain him, hold him, get him dressed, give him a bath, etc. I noticed the work that they did in ways I never had before.
All this is to say, taking care of a newborn forced me to change my whole approach to housework/ getting things done. My approach now is what I would think of as a "responsible adult" way to do things. And maybe that's not the right word to use, because I don't want to imply that being a parent is somehow a more "valid" way to be an adult, or some nonsense like that. Mainly I just want to say that "you're single because you need to focus on being the right person" is totally wrong. Married people are not more "the right person" than single people. There's nothing about being married that stops you from leaving dishes in the sink for days, if you've married a spouse that also has that habit. Having a baby, though, wow that will force you to change.
Becoming a mom changed me and made me "grow up" so much more than marriage did. Just shows more and more that what I learned in church about singleness and marriage was completely wrong.
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Don't worry, the baby will only be this extremely high-maintenance for the first 1-3 months. After that, you still have to work constantly to take care of the baby, but it's no longer true that "you do not even have a chance to do the bare minimum to get your own needs met." Good luck!
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Related:
"God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical.
What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus)
An Update on Whether or Not "Marriage is Hard" Now That We Have a Child
In Purity Land, a First Date is a Bigger Decision Than Marriage
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| Little kid's assignment where they've written "When I grow up I want to be a mailbox" and attempted to draw something. Image source. |
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| 2 disciples leaving their fish and nets to follow Jesus. Image source. |
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| Image text: "Interviewer: which of your skills do you think may be most valuable to our company? Me:..." and then an image of someone using their face to plug the top opening of a teapot, causing the tea to shoot out the spout, landing perfectly in a cup. Image source. |
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