onestepwiser

[onestepwiser]

Recipe for being a human:

1. Shower every other day

2. Go outside everyday and look at the sky

3. Whenever you eat, include a fruit or vegetable or nut or seed

4. Talk to people you love and hug them if you can

5. Remember the immensity of the universe and consider the existence of God

6. Feel gratitude for all the privileges and opportunities you have to make your own choices that your foremothers and women everywhere didn't and don't have

[onestepwiser]

I’m learning so much about eating and about myself.

This morning I keep wanting chocolate and sweet things to graze on. And I had some prepared portions available and I had them and it was pretty satisfying, though there is that lingering edge to wish for more, more, more.

But now that thought has ripples it never had before. If I have more chocolate, at 50 calories a piece, it’ll add up in the blink of an eye. I would have thought of the whole bar as a serving, but it would be over a third of the calories I would need to maintain a healthy weight. So if I kept snacking on that bar until it was finished, thinking it was just a snack, and then went on to eat healthy full meals for the rest of the day...it’s not an equation my body could really afford.

And there’s such a difference between eating for fuel and eating for feelings. If I eat for my feelings, there’s no connection between what I put in my mouth and what my body needs to work right. By eating my feelings I just mean eating impulsively, choosing to eat whatever pops to mind or whatever’s in front of me. By eating for fuel, I don’t mean approaching food as some joyless mechanistic thing that must be merely imbibed for survival.

Oh there’s so much more I want to jot down. The thoughts feel so beautiful coherent but are fleeting. Another time!

[onestepwiser]

Financial favours from my parents

I should probably treat this as a to-be-added-as-I-remember post rather than a one time list, lol.

Here are two things that are top of mind:

1. When I needed my first cell phone as a student, I was a month shy of turning 18 so my dad created the account in his name. I still paid the bills but the responsibility - and the credit record impact - were technically his. He’s never been on top of his credit as far as I know so I don’t think he ever really cared, but in retrospect I’m appalled that that account stayed in his name for like 6 years during which I did not have a perfect payment history because I was a student and my income was variable. It may not have been a significant drag on his credit but it wouldn’t have been good for my score or history so I’m really appreciative that he took that on for me. Basically, I got to start with a cleaner slate than I deserve, and when I look at the account history on my credit report now I’m amazed and grateful that those early years aren’t part of it. 

2. My parents saved about $9-10k for my 1st year university costs through monthly contributions over 12+years an RESP, which then generated an additional $9-12k of earnings which were paid directly to me through my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year of studies. That’s basically in the range of $20k that they provided for me, no strings attached. They never guilted me about my study choices or grades based on the concept that they had saved for my education - I mean if they did, I don’t even remember ever hearing it, so to me that’s the same as them not doing it! $20k no questions asked. The main reason I feel grateful for this is because of comparisons with what I’ve heard about other people’s parents. They couldn’t afford to me help in any other way in terms of paying for tuition or living expenses in real time while I was in school, their only majorly identifiable financial contribution was the RESP. So I ended up $50k in student loan debt and probably spent an additional maybe $6k of earnings while I was in school, and the question of whether my education was a wise use of $75k+ or not is a different question entirely. If I had made other choices, that $20k from my parents may have had a lot more impact than it did. But nonetheless the fact remains that $20k is a hefty chunk of cash I got to use towards this major experience in my life and it came purely because my parents put the arrangements in place for it (and more specifically because my mom paid all of the monthly premiums despite having a very modest income, apparently the CCTB she used to get for me basically went straight to the RESP whereas she could have used that money on other stuff for us). If I didn’t use it in the best fashion that’s on me and on just life circumstances but I really can’t say enough about how grateful I feel on the realization of just how much that actually was! I’ve been out of school for several years now, and it’s been even longer than that that I received my last RESP installment, so it’s a rather delayed realization. At the time, I was only aware that the amount from the RESP only paid a small portion of my costs for any given year so it always seemed paltry and I was never fully appreciative at the time. Now when I can look at it in aggregate, and with the perspective of a few years distance to understand what life would have looked like if I didn’t have it..ouff, yeah. Grateful all around :)

3. Oh yeah thought of a 3rd one...they started a bank account for me when I was like 10 years old. I didn’t accumulate much there in the way of savings but it meant I was ready to go by the time I was an adult, like already having an anchor in the world of personal finance...and as noted in my previous post, my bank then did me a number of favours over the years that leads me to still be happy with their services all this time later. 

[onestepwiser]

Reasons my bank has my loyalty

had my account there as a kid and didn’t pay fees of any kind as far as I knew or remember; possibly even earned tiny amounts of interest

had very generous student benefits in comparison to other packages I’ve since heard of - basically free and unlimited transactions, plus a small overdraft protection plan that I only had to pay for if I used (and even then it was only interest on the outstanding balance, no specific service fees)

extended my benefits a year after I graduated out of goodwill/to keep my business

this is hazy, but I think I actually got a call about a year after that and wound up getting another year extension no questions asked

when I no longer absolutely needed to continue my student fee waiver, I was still able to take advantage of a conditional fee waiver by parking a $1,000 balance; not a great offer on its own but it saved me about $50 that year and the offer has been discontinued so I’m grateful to have been able to use it

online and mobile banking platforms were both in good usable shape by the time I started to need each of them (online around the time I turned 18 and became a student and actually had finances to manage, mobile in the last year or so when I finally got a proper smartphone and shifted from using browser-based applications to mobile apps for a lot of things in my life)

physical infrastructure has always been widespread and easy to access - my home branch is around the corner from my house and across the street from my high school, both of my universities were close to branch locations and at least one had an on-campus ATM in a central location so it was never difficult for me to access cash (the other may have too but it’s so far back I don’t remember); once I became a working adult, the grocery store I most often frequent which is near my house and also houses my pharmacy also has my-bank ATMs (which are now going to be discontinued so again I’m grateful in retrospect)

customer service people in-person have always been polite, helpful, and almost universally friendly (I remember one slightly huffy teller in 15+ years of interacting with tellers and CSRs in three cities and many branches)

customer service reps on the phone have also been helpful and patient and the bank actually reached out to me by phone with offers at a few junctures at my life that turned out to be very well timed and weren’t high-pressure sales to get me involved in things I didn’t want

this might be more on my credit card company than my bank but the card is through them so I have a couple of really distinct experiences that stick out to me as reflections of a good relationship - once I got a warning call about possible fraud charges on my card even though it was actually just me making transactions somewhere outside my usual spending areas, and once I had to talk my way out of a credit card insurance program I didn’t need but it wasn’t really all that hard to get out of

So all in all, I really have a lot of affection for my bank, and while I’m aware there may always be better packages out there, the combination of past positive history and current affordable fees/conditions makes me happy to stay where I am. I can certainly see this changing if their fee structures change a lot or if my financial needs evolve beyond what makes sense for this institution, but...lol, I’m rooting for my bank to keep me around, all it needs to do is not be egregiously price gougey and rude ;)

[onestepwiser]

So I had the thought, I wish I had known when I was in university that my future self would be paying for my studies. I mean, I did know; it’s not like I expected someone else would be paying back my student loans. But at the same time, I didn’t know. I didn’t know, viscerally, what it’s like to sit down and make a budget and try to squeeze out a few extra pennies to put towards that loan debt. I didn’t know what it’s like to know that I don’t make anywhere near as much as I used to spend. I didn’t know that I would be accountable to me and find myself wanting. 

When I was a student, the concept of paying back my loans was so hazy. Of course I’d pay them back, someday when I had a job, and it would all be fine. And it will be fine. But looking back I feel like it would have made such a huge difference to feel like wait, someone is paying for this. When I received my loan money, I always knew I would be paying it back, but that was a holistic action to be completed someday by my future self. I never had a sense of what it would look like, paycheque to paycheque, year over year. I never felt like future me was anyone concrete, because there seemed to be endless possibility for what my future self’s capacity to pay would be - and I only ever registered the brightest end of the possibilities.

When I was a student, I wasn’t answerable to many expectations. My choices were so in the moment, about getting through things semester by semester. There was no awareness of present accountability, and future accountability was never a source of pressure. 

Look, I didn’t spend my student loan money in any egregious way I can regret. I didn’t buy expensive things or take crazy trips or get into gambling problems. I spent all my money on school. Tuition, sometimes books, that’s really all my loans covered. For the two short years I lived away from home, the loan money covered rent too. But nothing wild, nothing that student loans aren’t supposed to be for.

But I took them out thoughtlessly, semester after semester. It didn’t matter if I failed a class or three, I would just keep going until I finished my degree, and the government loans would keep paying for it. And I wasn’t failing classes on a whim either; I was sick, and things were hard, and it was all I could do just to keep going day by day.

I wasn’t thinking very clearly as a student, in large part due to health. Pressure about paying back my loans may not have helped. And yet at this distance I look back and marvel at how free of obligation I was when I made those decisions. If I had known what it would be like for future me, chipping away at an insane debt with a teeny tiny shovel of salary, I want to believe I would have felt obligated. To be more focused, to work harder, to be honest about my limitations and to take more help to get through school. I wouldn’t have taken it all so lightly - that’s what I’m trying to say.

But who knows really, what I would have done. The real insight here is that I would make different choices, today. If I were going to school for the first time now, with the perspective I have now, I would damn well be more focused and alert. But that’s the thing about perspective. You don’t have it until you’ve been through the thing you needed it for in the first place.

[onestepwiser]

Intro

Need a place to post some thinky thoughts :)