Teach A Man To Fish

I try to stay away from naming names [and kicking butt] in this blog, but we'll break some rules and see how it feels.

I've been trying to train my sister about budgeting for the last 3 or 4 months. This is in response to her getting laid off, which caused her to learn - for the first time - that she actually had some retirement assets. Now, her reaction upon learning this information was that she would use her retirement to "retire" her credit card debts. An altogether reasonable, yet slightly insane, response.

Not that I didn't do that when things were dire. But my dire situation involved potential trouble with the Feds. But I digress.

So I've been auditing her spending, putting together spreadsheets, lining up resources for her, giving her exercises to do. In other words, spending a lot of time on her with regard to this topic. And she is semi-interested.

But I think ... gee ... why don't I spend this kind of time on projects to improve my life?

That's always the way it is. You know, I'm just too altruistic.

So after this project, I have pledged to spend more time on me, getting in shape, investing better, going on dates. I have to be more me-centric.

I have the soul of Mr. Novak.

But thinking about it for 10 seconds, I did undertake this project for some non-altruistic reasons:

• I wanted to foreclose the possibility that she'll move in with me when she retires
• I wanted to quell the stupid speculation [she blows all her money on good times and lottery tickets ... yada yada] about how she is leading her life [after doing this, I know exactly how she is leading her life. Maybe too much.]

So I'm not exactly ready to be worshipped just yet.