When You Need Money, It Becomes an Obsession

And I’m one of the lucky ones

I feel for stay-at-home moms who are forced to stay married because otherwise, they’re fucked financially. Don’t even try coming after me telling me they have a cushy gig, shoveling coal with fire on your nutsack is easier than running a household and managing the luxury that is your life so she can go insane lovingly raising your spawn.

Growing up in a traditional Muslim house, I used to say that my education didn’t matter since I was destined to marry a rich doctor anyway. My mother, a white woman who married into the brown people world, insisted being lazy with my education wasn’t an option. “What if something happens to your husband?” she’d ask, implying that if he dies then I’m screwed supporting myself and future kids.

I know now that it was so that I’d have an “out”. After all, if my future husband dies, I cash in on life insurance. The “out” allowed me the freedom to leave an unhappy marriage, the one thing my mom fantasized to the point of ruining her children’s mental health. There are only so many years of therapy I can do to compensate for my mother repeating that her life would be better without kids and she could leave my dad. What was I supposed to do…apologize and jump off a cliff?

Here I am, divorced but able to pay a mortgage on a home in southern California. I don’t receive alimony or child support because my income is almost the same as my ex-husband’s and my kids’ healthcare is free through work. I have emergency reserves and courtesy of a new job that I hate, I’m able to occasionally buy myself dinner as well when I take my kids to Chick Fil A.

I’m lucky. Very, very lucky. I know that.

But…this is my writing and my life, so I’m going to take the time to panic about money.

Divorcing and buying a home during the tail end of a pandemic sucked balls. With interest rates so low and a foreclosure moratorium, I couldn’t compete with homeowners who could afford to take out home equity loans to buy additional properties. I bought a fixer-upper thirty minutes away from my ex-husband’s house (aka, my old house, which he will never move out of because it’s massive and there’s no way either of us will get a house that big ever again for the kids to inherit). That means when my kids are missing a schoolbook, it’s a full hour to drop it off and come home.

My kids’ school is in the middle of my house and my ex-husband’s place. In two years, my son starts high school. Since their dad struggles to get them on time as it is, my kids will be collateral damage if we select the designated high school for my address. The one by his house is better and he won’t be in a state of panic on the days he drives them to school.

For me however, that’s a trek because I ensure my kids arrive at school early to give a buffer for the myriad of car accidents caused by the worst drivers on earth: Californians.

I can’t leave forty-five minutes early in the morning and then another forty-five minutes in the middle of the day to pick them up (with another ten minutes to get the kids in the car before even starting the trek back).

While my house has served me well, despite the endless repairs, I need to GTFO and get back to my former hometown. Do you know what that needs?

Money.

I need money.

Growing up frugal, my life revolved around money. I began working at thirteen. Thirteen. I’m fucking exhausted.

I’ve griped endlessly about money on this platform. Endlessly. Like for real…endlessly. The two main concerns during divorce are the children’s welfare and how the fuck am I going to pay for life in a two-income society?

It’s all I’ve thought of since growing the mental seed of divorce years ago.

Recently, I took a job that I knew I’d hate. Spoiler alert: I was right. This job is the worst. But the salary jump was significant, despite that technically my per-hour work rate has dropped (in my prior job, I averaged at most an hour a week of actual work). My goal with the income increase is to sock away as much as possible.

That’s great in theory but tough in execution because humans tend to increase spending as income increases. I blew a small fortune buying airfare for my kids to visit my parents over the holidays. I finally bought new tires a year after I was told that I’m cutting it close with the ones I had. I paid off re-piping my house because of a massive water leak.

I haven’t been spending to match my income. Instead, I’m finally paying for the things I held off. With each paycheck, I sock away increments of money into my savings account; sometimes $1000, sometimes $25. If there’s anything I know, it’s how to save and it’s not in one-time large money moves.

When I want to splurge, I find ways to make extra money. My measly little Etsy account selling digital files brings in enough for my monthly pedicure.

Despite all of this, I obsess. I panic. I anxiously open Redfin and look at real estate. I spoke with my home loan chick and had her tell me my options for the next two years, such as whether I should rent my house and rent elsewhere, or pull equity and buy a new home while renting out my current one. Selling isn’t an option; I scored with my crazy low-interest rate. I constantly look around my house for things I can sell or return.

My daughter needs an outfit for a one-time school event. I fucking hate anything that requires costumes and despite being crafty, it’ll be cheaper for me to buy than to make myself. But because I’m in Single Mom Mode buying a costume outside of Halloween months, I’m going to be the asshole who will return the outfit after eight hours of her wearing it.

I have one eye on the prize: get a home in my former neighborhood. In my more expensive, bigger-homed, more bougie, closer to my kids, former neighborhood.

On paper, my income looks great. Subtract the cost of living in my zip code, and my income looks pretty good. Subtract my single income factor and my income looks adequate. If I didn’t have the goal to move in the next two years to one of the most expensive counties in the US, I could justify taking my kids on a mini-vacation or a comforter to match my bedsheets.

Time isn’t on my side where paychecks are concerned. All I can do is refresh my bank account hourly like money will magically appear outside of my bi-weekly direct deposits. I have endless post-its and scrap papers with calculations of how much I can save with each upcoming paycheck.

I watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I’m fascinated with a life where one can say, “You had a $60,000 watch get stolen? That’s not so bad.” I want to know what it’s like to buy a Cartier Panthère necklace for $255,000. I want to know what it’s like when your daughter says she’s interested in two sports to tell her she can only pick one because you can’t afford both (I opted for the one that was only thirty bucks).

It’s a very weird feeling, sitting here crying out of financial exhaustion. It’s never enough. I feel like I’m on an endless hamster wheel. Maybe it feels worse because I had a reprieve in financial panic when married, despite my ex-husband being a shopaholic hoarder and my natural state to constantly save for his inevitable job loss. We never went on Hawaiian vacations but I could buy $79 Jessica Simpson shoes without a panic attack.

Sadly, I’ve factored my parents’ death and the value of their home into my estate planning. Neither of my parents are on their deathbeds but here we are, fantasizing about a future where I can get my hands on any significant amount of money to pay for a life I’ll never have.

Hopefully, I’m not the only one out there who is Gen X middle class with a quasi-good income but feels like they’ll forever struggle.

I’m in my late forties. When can I take a breather and enjoy life for more than a few weeks at a time?