Holiday Hard Times: Crushing the Grinch

I’ve been “unemployed” for two years. I left the land of regular income and jumped feet first into a sales career whereby I only make income when I actually close the sale. The reason I didn’t dive head-first was because the switch was completely blind and entirely a leap of faith, and I would say I probably didn’t calculate the risk as much as one could. I’d prefer not to break my neck on the first go, especially since the water was not clear at all. I haven’t broken anything at this point, short of my Christmas spirit.

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m writing with the Today show in the background, Tweetdeck periodically announcing the activities of those I know in all corners of the world, thinking of what Christmas looks like this year, what it looked like last year, and what a 100% sales commission job combined with debt has done to my outlook on the Holiday Season.

The debt is a direct result of poor or absent planning techniques. The word Budget has taken on as much of a “shame-based” tone as “diet” has in consideration of caloric income and expense. But a Budget is simply a plan for your money, of which I have had none until I met Dave Ramsey, and even now, it’s difficult because of my self-employment.

Last Christmas it was pretty clear that there would be no money to spend on gifts as there was barely money for survival. The talk of the recession was at its height, and everyone was beginning to see how tough the coming year would be.

In my first year in real estate, my sales volume landed at a smidge over 1 Million. No, I didn’t make a million dollars. I sold a million dollars worth of homes. Not bad for my first go, but still a meager income for someone with big plans to get completely out of debt.

I owe somewhere around $225,000 to the bank in the form of one credit card, one car, and one house with a 1st and a 2nd mortgage. All of this debt costs me approximately $865 in monthly interest. Good grief! I haven’t added that up before. That’s disgusting. Anyway, back to the point. In 2009 my sales volume increased by 145%. I sold more than twice as much as I did in 2008 and all but one of those properties were sold to prevent foreclosure. They were short sales, which means the owner owed more on their mortgage than their house was worth.

So, with 145% more in sales, that means more income. I essentially gave myself, through hard work and determination, a 145% raise in one year. Not bad.

It doesn’t solve the problem however, and the problem is that even though I’ve done fairly well in 2009, I’m still pissing away $865.00 every month to the bank, and that makes for a very difficult struggle to justify giving based on our culture’s way of giving during Christmas.

The gap between childhood and now was filled with unhealthy spending to fulfill my giving “quota.” Now that I’ve woken up to the real world, and I know that giving my time and my energy to others is far more valuable than buying stuff, I am struck with the reality that I haven’t been doing that long enough to have gotten really bad at doing that. In my teen years I can recall being very creative, making gifts and cards, and spending time with lots of people.

Now that I’m buried in debt, it has quenched the desire and killed the spirit, and it has become very difficult to be excited about the Holidays. Marketers with their fancy slogans, incredible deals, low low rates, and same as cash crap fill my brain and distract my peace, infusing my emotional mechanism with feelings of anger and disgust. I watch people around me who haven’t yet figured out how money works making the same decisions that I made for years, not knowing what they’re actually sacrificing long term, for a quick fix now.

I want to be able to give. I want to be able to re-pay those who have been so good to me over the years. It’s hard to break free from the expectation that our culture thrives emotionally off of buying each others respect and happiness. I want to buy you something. I want to spend my money on you. However, I don’t have that extra cash. I don’t have the “offerings” that I anticipate in my future.

I see a clearing ahead of me and that clearing is filled with financial freedom. Not riches like our world would know, but riches beyond what we know. I see a time in my life when I can help someone else without it hurting me. I can see a future where giving a gift will truly be a gift because it will bless both of us. When you’re buried in debt, giving above and beyond isn’t really mathematically possible without putting off the very necessary process of healing your financial situation.

Would you give blood while you’re sick? Why then offer more than you have? I take the position that if you have debt, and you have money, and you have income, take the money, pay off the debt, eliminate the interest burden, and then start saving your income. Once you have traction, and your money isn’t going backwards, that portion which was interest can now work for you instead of against you. I would love to be able to give away $865 every month to someone who needs it rather than the bank.

All of this to say, the time is coming when I will be able to crush this feeling that I am the Grinch by making smarter decisions every day, living like no-one else, so later I can give like no-one else.

Merry Christmas everyone!

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Holiday Hard Times: Crushing the Grinch

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