If you need me, I’ll be in my car

One of the occasional drawbacks of running a personal finance blog called Live Beneath Your Means is the scrutiny and commentary my purchases attract. Granted, I could easily avoid said scrutiny if I were to, say, stop posting my fabulous buys on facebook, but hey, sometimes I need inspiration for another post. And boy, did y’all deliver!

First, some background. Back in 2013, happily ensconced in our three-bedroom apartment in NYC, the hubs declared it was time to move back to his hometown. Given that he had mentioned such a move on our second date, the pronouncement didn’t come as a complete surprise. Still, we’d visited enough over the years that I knew there were likely to be some acclimation issues … mostly from the standpoint of a bunch of Midwestern Nice white people.

Being the ever agreeable wife that I am, I consented, but with one caveat—at some point, he was (we were) going to buy me my dream car. That would be the price of occasionally not saying exactly what I was thinking to the bunch of Midwestern Nice white people (everywhere!) around me.

Deal! (side note: those of you who don’t think married people negotiate such things … you are obviously single)

Six years later—did I mention how agreeable and patient I am?—I got my car! On the surface, the car—a white convertible roadster—does seem to fly in the face of LBYM. It is eminently impractical. Only I can drive her (a feature, not a bug), and then, for only six months out of the year. There are only two seats. Considered a collectible, she’s more expensive than our two Subarus to feed, maintain, and insure.

No matter! I love—nay—I adore Brunhilde (she’s German). A photo of her might be my new screensaver. And lest you judge me, I think buying her was just about the most LBYM thing I could’ve done, and not simply because that’s her license plate. If you’re surprised by the third car in our two-car-garage home, maybe you haven’t been reading the blog as closely as you should.

Here are three reasons why LBYM is sometimes spelled BMW:

#1 LBYM starts with L

People, didn’t we have this (one-sided) conversation already? Maybe because I’ve lost people recently or because I read obituaries on a regular basis, the living part of Live Beneath Your Means feels more imperative.

There are a lot of things that tug at my time, attention, and money in this particular season of my life—a lot of, say, small people, gobbling up a finite pool of resources, financial and otherwise. I know myself well enough that unless I’m one of those things that receives time, attention, and money, it’s not pretty. That’s why I’m a proponent of girls’ trips, micro-vacations, and, apparently, zipping around town with the top down for no good reason other than the sun is shining.

All the better, too, if …

#2 Doing so doesn’t hurt your Net Worth (much)

Let’s have a mildly technical discussion. LBYM, if you recall, is ultimately about growing our Net Worth, that wonderful store of value that frees us to do what we want, when and how we want to do it. My blog would’ve been called Grow Your Net Worth except #GYNW makes it sound like I’m a lady parts doctor. Also, the domain wasn’t available. At the end of the day, though, the two amount to the same thing. If you live beneath your means, you have no other choice but to grow your Net Worth. Yay, you!

And buying a car doesn’t negatively impact your Net Worth much, or at all, if you do it right. Imagine a very simple beginning Net Worth calculation:

Assets: Cash – $20,000

Liabilities: $0 (Word.)

Net Worth: $20,000

Now imagine you pay cash for a vehicle, i.e. you don’t take out any kind of loan to finance the purchase. This might be your Net Worth calculation immediately afterwards:

Assets: Cash – $10,000, Car – $10,000 (approximate cash value)

Liabilities: $0

Net Worth: $20,000

Of course, this is an overly simplistic illustration, and doesn’t take into account all the costs associated with purchasing a car and the cash value you lose over time as the car depreciates. That said, my point stands that impact on Net Worth remains one of the more useful lenses through which to view your choices, if not the most useful, and there’s not a lot of impact to that figure here. Brunhilde? Same.

Here’s a bunch of other big stuff we had to pay for this month—a new couch, our annual summer vacation, fixing a gas valve on our stove, tree removal, (five, ugh) plane tickets to my brother’s wedding, and a new kitchen pipe for a rental unit. Impact on Net Worth? All solidly, solidly negative. *sigh* I should’ve bought another roadster.

And, finally …

#3 Achieving your goals allows you to set new ones

I could try and rationalize Brunhilde as my new office (the home wi-fi does reach it) or a business expense (advertising?) or an investment (alas, it’s not that special a car … plus I want to actually drive it), but at the end of the day, I got my car because I wanted to and I could. Isn’t that why we set goals? So we’re inspired to plan for them and sometimes even reach them? And in doing so, in getting, literally, the car I wanted when I graduated from college—yup, same year, too—I  can turn my attention, time, and energies toward even bigger, more audacious goals. 

Turns out buying a car is easy peasy, at least compared to building a business. Let’s cross the former off the list—check—and start working on the latter. 

I’ll be in my new office in the garage.