Charlotte’s Financial Web:
Untangling after Sudden Disaster

Charlotte Jones, 46, was in her late20s when her first marriage ended abruptly. “Getting on top of my finances was the most frightening and painful thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Jones recalls, even more so than the divorce and the bout of thyroid cancer during it.

“We started out in debt. We bought a house but didn’t have enough money to buy the garden hose to water the lawn. We ended with $20,000 in equity and the same in debt. He took both, and I started over,” Jones says.

The first thing Jones did was assess her situation. “Frankly this was very simple. More money was going out than coming in. So I bought one of those budget books that was categorized for phone, entertainment, gas, etc., and kept a detailed diary of every penny I spent.”

Jones was stunned at the dry cleaning bill, the restaurant charges, “and the frivolous things I bought and did not need.” Hand-washing soon took the place of dry-cleaning.

“In two weeks, I figured out that I had to eat Ramen Noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I had to cut up my credit cards.” Three months later she was out of debt, but still needed months of saving her lunch money to afford a move to a better apartment.

She then rewarded herself and created a credit history at the same time “by buying a set of silver that required, of course, monthly payments.”

When she remarried some years later, she and her husband were both making bigger salaries and were both post-graduate-degreed professionals, “who could just as easily slip back into bad habits and live beyond our means,” Jones says.

“We lived with the ‘cookie jar’ for a long time and gave ourselves a monthly allowance. That was what we used for dinners out and daily things we thought we needed. When the cash was gone, that was it.”

Neither one of them has ever bounced a check.

Jones recommends:

Know what purchases one another is making.
Take turns paying the bills and balancing the checkbook.
Know your credit history and your spouse’s. They are inextricably tied.
If disaster strikes, go to your banker and explain the situation. “A line of credit can be established to help you get credit in the first place, and to take the bite out of your new poverty. But you must be committed to making those payments.”
“We can all spend everything we make, no matter how much or how little. Decide what you need versus what you want.”
Revel in the empowerment of becoming independent, grown-up and solvent.

UPDATED: 4-21-2003

Health Tip:

Fireworks
Don’t lose your independence
on Independence Day!

They’re beautiful, hypnotic, inspiring and dangerous. Each year, thousands of injuries occur from fireworks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cite

In 2006, 11 dead and an estimated 9,200 treated in emergency departments for fireworks-related injuries in the United States.
An estimated 5 percent of fireworks-related injuries treated in emergency departments required hospitalization.

Most injuries involved:

Hands (2,300 injuries), eyes (1,500 injuries), and the head, face, and ear (1,400 injuries).
Burns were the most common injury type to all body parts except the eyes and head areas, where contusions, lacerations and foreign bodies in the eye occurred more frequently.

Most common fireworks involved:

Firecrackers, associated with the greatest number of estimated injuries at 1,300. There were 1,000 injuries associated with sparklers and 800 associated with bottle rockets.
Sparklers, accounting for one-third of the injuries to children younger than 5.

Between 2000-05, more than one-third of the fireworks-related deaths involved professional devices that were illegally sold to consumers.

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, if you are going to light firecrackers:

Use a specially designed stick, or "punk," rather than a match to light fireworks.
Have a bucket of water ready.
Always follow manufacturers' directions and dispose of used fireworks properly.
Never give a firecracker or sparkler to a child.
Never use a bottle rocket.
Do not light firecrackers bigger than your pinkie, do not light them indoors, and avoid relighting duds.
Never put fireworks in your pocket, throw them while lit, or make homemade firecrackers.
In case of eye injury, do not touch the eye. Tape a clean paper cup over the eye to prevent contamination or further injury. Immediately seek medical attention from an ophthalmologist (eye MD).

What is banned nationwide: Any firecracker with more than 50 milligrams of explosive powder and any aerial firework with more than 130 milligrams of flash powder is banned under federal law, as are mail order kits and components designed to build these fireworks.

Charlotte’s Financial Web: Untangling after Sudden Disaster

Health Tip:

Charlotte’s Financial Web:
Untangling after Sudden Disaster