I have a copy of the program for Lisa’s funeral tacked to the bulletin board in our kitchen/dining area.  A version of this photo is on the cover:

I touch it every time I walk by, much like the Irish football players jump up and touch the “Play Like a Champion Today” sign on their way out to the tunnel at Notre Dame Stadium.

I miss her.

She would want you to know that this photo was taken before her life-changing fitness obsession kicked in.

Decades into my study of football in all of its forms, I confess.  I still don’t understand the game.

I was born into football country.

My father was a senior at Notre Dame – we lived in South Bend, Indiana for the first year of my life.  I grew up in an Irish-Catholic town in Connecticut. Fealty to the Giants and/or Patriots came with the territory.

Falls and winters were a haze of Saturday afternoon shouting matches with the television. I remember once saying to my dad “Why do you care so much? You don’t even go to school there anymore!”

That joke, as they say, was on me.

In high school I had a crush on the boy next door. He was the quarterback of the local high school’s football team, so naturally I went to every game. He taught me how to throw a football in the middle of our dead-end street. That memory is a heady flashback of his closeness, the scent of the laundry soap in his clothes and the sweat on his skin as he stood behind me, holding my arms and moving my hands over the ball, demonstrating how to put my fingers on the laces. Over the football season I learned to track his stats; yardage and completions started making sense to me.

Later, when I attended Notre Dame myself, I was a student manager for the football team for two years. Knowing what was going on in the game was essential to my job. And yes, after I graduated and even now 100 years later, I understand why my father yelled at the television so much. In fact, a few years ago when the “Bush Push” happened, so many ND grads were gathered in a living room in Los Angeles screaming in front of a large screen TV that we nearly started an earthquake. At the very least, we made all of our babies cry.

Now my own child is playing football. Granted, it’s flag football, and he’s only six years old, but it’s football nonetheless.  Stewart coaches his team, and he’s really into it.  Tonight as we were discussing today’s game, he asked me “Did you see how organized the defense was today?”  Um, I thought.  No.  Decades into my study of football in all of its forms, I confess.  I still don’t understand the game.

It doesn’t matter if it’s flag football played by 6-year-olds, high school, college, or pro.  When the ball is snapped, I follow the ball.  I get faked out by a fake.  I don’t know how to predict whether the play will be a pass or a rush or a carry.  Or whatever.  I don’t know what the tight end’s job is, or what the safety is supposed to do, or when to be outraged that the middle linebacker missed a block.

(Side note:  I do, however, know that “roughing the snapper” is a bogus call.)

I ignore professional football for the most part because, as with all professional sports, it’s all about the money.  Team loyalty is fiction in that arena.  Why bother feeling anything for a specific group of paid players who are only playing for that team because that’s where they got the best deal?  That kind of back-room negotiation happens in college sports, too, but at least there you still find the concept of school spirit.  When I was a student at Notre Dame I took classes with the players, ran into them on campus, and drank beer with them at parties.  They were friends.  Who can say that about Ben Roethslesaoiueoubberger?

And so it is that like much of the world, I tune in to the Super Bowl with mild amusement, curious about the too-hyped commercials, the halftime show, and the winner of the party’s betting pool.  We attend a friend’s Super Bowl party every year.  It’s the only time we ever see them.  And this year they are hosting a chili cook-off.  That’s my kind of competition.

This was an original post for LA Moms Blog in March, 2010.  I publish my archives on the occasional Friday, and since money is on my mind, I picked this one for today.

“I knew I was dumb, everyone I knew thought I was dumb.” –Suze Orman, Women and Money

When Suze Orman was a child, she had a speech impediment, which made people think she couldn’t read or score well on tests. She grew up not expecting much of herself, yet had a core of self esteem that blossomed and took over during her young adulthood. Working as a waitress, she was saving to start her own restaurant when she discovered that a shady broker had taken advantage of her, recommending risky investments that caused her to lose all of her money. By reading up on investing and studying the markets closely, Suze figured it all out on her own, and marched into Merrill Lynch to apply for a job.

And here we are today, when I cannot imagine a world without the Suze Smackdown. If you’re not familiar with her work, Suze Orman is a noted author, television personality, and public speaker whose specialty is personal finance. More specifically, women’s personal finance. Decades ago, as a successful financial advisor, she never imagined that she’d become the industry she is today.

Last month Suze was in town to shoot a set of videos that help explain her Save
Yourself Retirement Program with TD Ameritrade. The latest product in her Save Yourself line, the retirement program is designed to coach the average investor into choosing the right retirement account and funding options for him or her. The program promises to be a simple and effective way to get you off your butt and into the market, because by God, as she often lectures callers on The Suze Orman Show about saving for retirement, if you don’t prepare for the future you are in big trouble.

Liz Peterson and I visited the set of Suze’s shoot to watch a bit of the filming and ask those burning questions we’ve always shouted out loud to the television but never had the patience or guts to call in to the show and ask. (That last part is probably just me.) I’ve been reading and watching Suze’s work for years, deferring to her website and her weekly MSNBC advice show to glean hints about what decisions I should make. Lately I’ve also been communicating with her on Twitter, which she uses with surprising regularity and actually replies to people (she DM’ed me a few times to tell me she loves my cowboy hat).

I’ve often thought of Suze as a role model for grown-ups: not just for women, although she is very motherly and protective of women and champions the idea that women should and must take control of their financial lives. Suze’s work applies to all people, and you often hear men calling into her show to ask serious questions. She’s genuinely interested in people and also protective – when Liz and I introduced ourselves as the visiting “mommy bloggers” she instantly said “And are you making any money with your blogging?” and gave us that all-knowing look with her piercing blue eyes.

As a woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an employee, and a philanthropist, I look up to Suze’s “People first, then money, then things” approach to life. I was eager and fascinated to hear what she had to say. Luckily, I caught most of it on camera, and since my editing tools and my free time are short, I present more of the interview in simple Q&A fashion:

Should married women, especially stay-at-home moms, focus on saving in their husbands’ 401(k)s if they have them, or set aside money in their own IRAs?

Married women have retirement savings options from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

What special advice do you have for Los Angeles moms?

CA Moms Must Get Will and Trust! from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

Your knowledge of the financial industry is encyclopedic! How do you keep up with it?

Suze fascinated by financial news and info from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

Back when you were a financial advisor, did you ever imagine this incredible success for yourself?

Suze never planned this career for herself from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

Your success really took off later in your career. What advice do you have for women who still have their success in front of them?

Women Come Into Their Own In Their 40′s from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

You keep a tireless schedule. Why is it so important to you to work so hard to help people?

People First! from Kim Prince on Vimeo.

At the end of 2011 it came to my attention that I was no longer paying close enough attention to our checking account.  We do not have debt other than our mortgage and the occasional low balance on the American Express card I use to buy groceries in bulk from Costco because we drink our metric weight in Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi once a week and the kids have to be supplied with juice boxes and granola bars on a daily basis.  However, somehow the padding in our checking account disappeared.  It just went away, and one night I went to get cash from the ATM and the ATM told me there were…

…insufficient funds.

??

That has never happened to me.  I haven’t had insufficient funds in my checking account since before I married my sugar daddy Stewart, and even then I knew exactly how much money was in there – or not in there – at any given moment.  I do the bills once or twice a month, and I have a general sense of the balances of all of our accounts, the way a mother has an invisible tracking beam that goes from her brain to the body of her child when they are in a crowded place.  Every so often she must make visual contact, but for the most part it’s like a bat’s radar.

Again, I blame the entropy that Lisa’s death left in her wake.  The sudden disappearance – forever and ever, amen – of such a big person in my life was like an eruption that made the ground underneath me buckle and shift.  I cared about nothing aside from the closeness of my family members, the most basic of necessities, and simply getting from one hour to the next.  Bills and money were but pesky issues that could wait until later.

Months later, as I started to resume control over the parts of my life over which I have always enjoyed control – and I will post about this later, this idea that grief has a shelf-life, or a minimum level of tolerance that the rest of the world will show to the one who is grieving – I realized that our family really needed to adhere to a budget.  By “family” I mean mostly Stewart and myself, but the boys, who are still so young, will have to adjust to it, too.

As a long time fan of Suze Orman, Jean Chatzky, Dave Ramsey, and various “mother on a budget” bloggers over the years, I already knew how I wanted our budget to go.  Stewart was on board too.  It would not be possible without his agreement.  We resolved to start this budget near the end of December, and as that time approached, he reminded me.  And reminded me.  And…reminded me.

So finally I set aside an evening and spent several hours poring over our financial data.  I have kept our books in Quicken since 1997  when I was single and it was just my little checkbook to balance.  My rent was $309.22.  I have kept very detailed records.  I’m geekily proud of the fact that I was able to look up the cost of furniture that we bought shortly after our wedding in 2002.  (Yes, it will be 10 years in June.)

Because of this meticulous record-keeping, I was able to survey our expenditures from 2011 and make a list of averages for every category, from groceries to gas to “recreation” and “subscriptions” and “computer hardware” and “postage and shipping.”  In Quicken you can be as detailed as you’d like.

Quicken has a budget planning function – I am running the 2011 Deluxe version – but I have never found it to be as user-friendly and versatile as a good old Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.  Call me old school, but I can manipulate a spreadsheet and its formulas like it’s 1994.  And I like it.  So my next step was to find an Excel version of Dave Ramsey’s general budget philosophy.  He advises listeners to sit down every month, just before the month and “give  every dollar a name.”  You predict how much is coming in that month, and then decide how you’re going to spend it – before the month begins.  I found this great spreadsheet that someone created that quantifies the worksheets found in his book “Total Money Makeover.”  (The one I found most useful is complete.xls)

Then Stewart and I sat down together to review how much we were spending last year in each category, and to decide how much we would devote to those categories – if any – in the months ahead.  I must confess, this was the hardest part.  I’ve been handling the household accounting for the entire time we’ve been married – even before we were married I started assuming family bookkeeping when I moved in with him once we were engaged.  Every now and then he asks about some expense, but for the most part I operate with autonomy and absolute rule.

That night in December when we hashed out our budget, I bristled when he showed surprise at certain expenditures.  I stood fast when he brought up the dollars I spend on things like waxing and hairdo’s.  (I mean, come on.  A girl’s gotta look good.  Even if I spend most of my days in yoga pants.)  We haggled over costs like the kids’ sports programs, restaurant meals, travel.  And the one extravagance both of us would not give up?  The country club pool.  In a land where it gets up to 105 degrees on a hot summer day, that relief is not a luxury, not unless both of us lose our jobs.

Eventually we agreed on a good dollar limit for each category that we deemed necessary, including savings.  I saved the spreadsheet as “2012 Budget,” and as January progressed, I’ve taken great pleasure in entering every cent we spend.  Stewart and I communicate about our daily expenditures – more or less.  I check our bank account balance online every day.  It’s a little obsessive, but as Ramsey says, it should take us 2 or 3 months to develop a comfortable routine.  I’ve listened to his show for a few years now, and I have heard many couples call in to tell their stories of using a household budget to pay off thousands – even hundreds of thousands – of dollars in debt.  If we are even half that successful, we’ll be back on track.

One of the mostly unexpected benefits of budget planning is that Stewart and I really communicated about our spending, and in doing so we reconnected about our goals for our family.  We strengthened our commitment to me working at home and being available for our children.  We compromised in the right places.  It was nice to reaffirm the values that drew us together in the first place.

The downside of this paradigm shift is that I have to decline invitations to go out to lunch and drinks.  I had expected that, but at the time I had no desire to go out to lunch or drinks.  I didn’t even want to shower or wash my hair, let alone leave the house and socialize with people.  But slowly, oh so slowly, I have been intrigued by invitations and thought I might want to attend.  The free events are more attractive now, although an intimate sit-down with a girlfriend over a bottle of wine sounds heavenly to me after an unintentional 2 month exile.

I did build in a paltry sum for dining out, just for emergencies.  And I included a few bucks for a babysitter in case the stars align and Stewart and I manage to get out for a date night.  But for now the luxury of wanton spending at Baskin Robbins or the country club bar are history.  Being more cognizant of our spending is awesome, and it sucks.  The jury’s still out though.  January is a long month.  Tune in later to see if we hit any of our marks!

My long and troubled relationship with my body and its fitness level is no secret.  Last year I struggled through the summer and early fall to get my back problems straightened out.  With the help of a wonderful physical therapist, a groovy new-agey massage therapist, and lots of money, I managed to loosen up the seven years of tension that were locked up in my muscles and take advantage of the strength I already had.  Now I stretch (almost) every morning just to maintain a minimum level of mobility.  When I am regularly exercising, such as during the school year when Kyle and I walk to school in the morning, I am a much happier person than when I’m just sitting here at my desk and ignoring exercise, which I would much rather do.

And then you all know what happened last fall.

And then it was Christmas.

And then it was New Year’s Day.  Despite my loathing of resolutions this year, I still used the turn of the calendar page to renew my commitment to my physical health.  I did this mentally at first, knowing that school would be starting again soon and we would go back to regular walks.  But then this fitness cheerleader friend and colleague of mine started popping up in my Twitter and Facebook streams announcing a fitness challenge.

Mamavation 2 Week Challenge

Despite my general aversion to things with a variation of the word “Mom” as a replacement for a syllable in their titles,  I signed up.  It seemed easy enough:  you sign up with your Twitter handle, publicly committing yourself to the program.  You follow a daily workout schedule in which the exercises are simple enough to do at home with minimal equipment, tweeting when you complete each session.  You also have to move a lot more, aiming to clock 10,000 steps a day.  You have the option to watch what you eat and tweet photos of your meals “to keep yourself accountable.”

For me the hardest part was fitting the workouts into my schedule.  Since I had made a commitment, I was more motivated to do this, and so I started making the boys’ lunches at night, getting up at 6AM to stretch, loosen my neck, drink a cup of coffee, change, then do the workout.  Only then would I eat if I had time, then walk Kyle to school.  By 8:30 I was done with my workout and morning obligations and ready to start my desk job.

It went like this most days, but sometimes I would split the workouts, which consisted of three circuits, into two chunks.  I got an Omron pedometer from Leah, who conveniently lives just 2 towns northeast of me.  I averaged about 8,000 steps a day.  I blame my desk job.  On the two special challenge days, I did 100 situps (broken out into sets of 20 because I was too out of shape to tackle them all at once) and ran/walked 1.5 miles using a Couch-To-5K podcast.  The second challenge day asked for 2.0 miles, but I couldn’t do it.  Too winded and in pain all over.

I wasn’t so great about watching what I ate.  I think I drank less alcohol than usual, but right at the end of the two weeks a friend came to visit from out of town and all she wanted to eat was Mexican food because you can’t get it where she lives.  There was a lot of guacamole and tequila involved.

In the end I lost 2 pounds and 2.5 inches from various parts of my body.  That’s not such a big deal.  But those numbers and the sense of accomplishment and physical well-being I felt after working out consistently are enough to keep me thinking about exercising more often.  This morning I pulled out the Wii Fit Plus after 402 days of it sitting in the closet.  I know how many days because the darned thing remembers.