Honey No. 7
Feat. overcoming one fear and discovering another, shifting perspective on personal finances, and current January faves
When I was young, I was deeply afraid of sleepovers. When I try to peel back the layers of this fear in adulthood- and in therapy- I’m still not exactly sure why. I mean sure, I loved to be alone, I loved my bed, I loved my house. These things remain true for me to this day! And from a logical perspective I didn’t understand the point of a sleepover- after the hanging out is done, don’t we all just go to bed anyway? What difference does it make if we experience REM cycles next to each other, with shallower sleep than if we were alone, I might add! But for all my precociousness, it was clear that I was guided by fear rather than choice, and by the time I was 14 something simply had to change.
Overcoming this anxiety turned out to be a full family affair. I was lucky enough to grow up in the same town in New York as three of my cousins- my mom’s older brother and his family lived 10 minutes away from us and we were constantly seeing them for dinners, parties, and other formative occasions. My aunt and uncle’s house was different than my own in several key ways: they had t.v., they had older kids, and they had rules. My house had guidelines, of course, but in general there was a lot of space for my various sensitivities. Meanwhile, just down the road my aunt was running a tight ship. At their house, kids had a full glass of milk with dinner (my lactose intolerance and I are suing!). This dinner also had to be finished before you could have dessert, which meant that I left their house more than once with pockets full of stewed tomatoes. When my cousins got in trouble, they would have to serve their timeout on the stairs, so I often spent long stretches of these visits sitting by my weeping, stair-bound cousins in solidarity, even though I hadn’t broken any rules thank jesus fucking christ. I loved and respected my aunt and uncle, and was also deeply afraid that when my parents inevitably died and I became a brave little orphan (I had seen movies, obviously), I would be adopted by them and forced into a life of milk-drinking and stair-sitting. Like Cinderella, but just exposed to a hint of discipline.
One of the beautiful things about being raised in a community is that you’re exposed to more influences than two parents can provide. My aunt and uncle showed me new music, movies, the unfortunate experience of milk, and the summer after I was in eighth grade, my aunt also shared the brilliant idea that I should probably go into high school free from the crippling fear of sleeping far away from my parents. Since I was too afraid to go to sleepaway camp (duh!!!), she proposed that I come stay at their summer house in Rhode Island (sleeping….away……) and attend a two-week YMCA day camp with my cousin Annabel (…..camp?!?!?). On some level I probably wanted to liberate myself from the burden of my terror, and on another I probably wanted to avoid getting in trouble with her at all costs. Either way, I agreed to a 14-day venture in faraway Rhode Island, which was how I didn’t but also didn’t-not end up going to sleepaway camp.
The YMCA camp was based at the edge of a body of water (perhaps a bay, but no one knows what that is for sure), and every day I joined a group of ragtag New Englanders for hours of sailing, swimming, and having crushes on each other at lunch. On our first day, we all participated in a diagnostic swim test to determine our level of ability so we could be separated into levels like how nature does with animals, starting with Minnows, then Guppies, then up and up into Great Whites and Whales who are fast and harder to kill. I went into this test with no notion of my abilities- my summer was about getting good at sleepovers, everything else was gravy- and was shocked when I was immediately and irreversibly diagnosed as a Guppy. This level had only three participants: a girl who had Down syndrome, a girl who didn’t want to put her face underwater because she had just learned how to wear eyeliner, and me who was honestly just trying my best.
My memories of this summer are sweet and simple: I had a crush on a very sunburnt boy with pierced ears from Massachusetts. I didn’t get any better at swimming. At the end of two weeks I threw myself a going-away party at a Friendly’s (!), and when my mom came to pick me up she saw my hugging my sunburnt crush goodbye and popping one foot up behind me because in The Princess Diaries they said, “you know, in the old movies, whenever a girl would get seriously kissed, her foot would just kind of… pop.” Per my mom’s retelling of this moment, she almost died laughing alone in her car. But then I’d be prepared for that, wouldn’t I? A lactose-intolerant, stair-sitting orphan, who would drown in a bay but could finally sleep through the night.
The Moneypot
In the 10+ years I have known Sarah Dunnavant, she has held approximately one million jobs. She has been a teacher, she has toured the country performing Shakespeare, she has led customized museum tours that she’s designed herself, she’s done it all! Now she’s here to share the wisdom she’s learned going undercover in the world of “accounting.”
During my twenties, opening my bank account basically gave me diarrhea. Now I am simply not scared to check it. My confidence in my financial decisions has increased to a greater degree than my income. How did I get here?
When I started working at a worker-owned co-op two years ago, I went through a business finance orientation where the facilitator mentioned financial reports like Profit and Loss Statements and Balance Sheets. I thought, what the f are those?
Fast forward to now: a big part of my job is producing these reports and organizing the financial data that goes into them, and I am a studious squirrel taking accounting classes at my local community college. I never ever thought I would work in “business,” much less know anything about “accounting,” but now I spend so much time staring at business bank statements, which has completely transformed the way I see my own finances. There are two basic accounting equations that have eliminated my fear of my checking account. Stick with me now!
A Profit and Loss Report (AKA “How Much Chonkier Did My Bank Account Get?”) uses the equation “Income = Revenue - Expenses.” Simple enough. Add up your paychecks. Add up your expenses. Subtract your expenses from your paychecks and you get your bottom line: the amount of money you made or lost. Think of this report as tracking the flow of money in and out of your checking account.
The Balance Sheet ( AKA “Seeing Everything You’re Worth At Once”) is a snapshot of your finances on a given day, and it uses the equation “Assets = Equity - Liability.” What the hell does this mean? It means that a business (or person) is worth (how much are their assets) all the money they have invested (equity) minus the money they owe (loans). From a personal finance perspective, this report can show you your Net Worth.
Once I started getting familiar with creating these reports for businesses, it got easier to create them for myself. I used to track all my income and expenses in Google Sheets but now I use a site called PocketSmith because I’m lazy and it has a lot of the same functions as a business accounting software but for personal finances. Every month, it tracks my income and expenses and I can see if I made or lost money during that period (“How Much Chonkier Did My Bank Account Get”). Next I look at my Net Worth, which reports my assets, which equals my bank and investment accounts minus my loans (“Everything$ Everywhere$ All at Once$”).
The most important takeaway is that now I focus less on “How Much Chonkier Did My Bank Account Get,” and instead focus on whether my “Everything$ Everywhere$ All at Once$” number is higher or lower than last month. I used to bemoan my student loan payments and retirement investing as losses to my income that I could be using for other things, but now I understand that even though those payments decrease my checking account, they increase my Net Worth. Seeing those payments as investments in myself and my future, instead of losses of income, has motivated me to more aggressively pay off my loans and save for retirement. Having a budget on my expenses gives me more confidence to make larger loan and investing payments because I know where my money is going each month (for the most part, a caveat is that life can be completely unpredictable of course).
Learning these accounting principles has given me so much more confidence in myself and helped me feel empowered in my financial decisions. Hopefully they can help you have less diarrhea in 2024 and beyond.
Things I’m Loving
-My Scandinavian Home is another design blog that I’ve been following for years and years that I absolutely LOVE. It’s run by a British woman who now lives in Sweden, and she features the most beauuuuutiful Scandinavian spaces! A few years ago my mom and I were day dreaming about a Scandinavian trip (Copenhagen perhaps!) for our big birthdays- 30 for me and 60 for her. We both love design so much and those guys do it RIGHT! But those birthdays happened in 2020 and between being unemployed for 1.5 years and washing all of our groceries, there simply wasn’t time. Poking around this blog just adds ideas to the vision board of a someday trip- I subscribe to her emails to get updates right in my inbox!
-This week I’ve been babysitting early and often off of York Street in Highland Park, so naturally the bébé and I have been making daily schleps to Kumquat Coffee to keep both of us alive (me literally and him as a result, sort of a host/parasite situation). It’s my favorite coffee in the neighborhood and sort of reasonably priced if that’s even a thing we can say anymore! Great drip, great espresso, great matcha, beauuuuuutiful expensive bags of coffee beans to longingly traipse your fingers over while you wait. A beautiful bag of coffee is a great gift, I’ll say it!
-I have absolutely NO clue how I came across Noihsaf Bazaar, but I’m here to say that I love the idea. This is a curated resale site that features tons of smaller, COOL designers, some vintage, and some big boy companies as well. After some aspirational browsing, it’s clear that their goods come at a higher price point in general, though you can definitely find some steals in there! But you can find some great deals on designers you might not want to fully shell out for otherwise. Have you heard of this website?? Can you tell me how I did??
-Hu Kitchen makes my favorite chocolate on the market and I’ve just gotta tell you about it! I think their stuff is delicious in general and BONUS, since it’s made with coconut sugar and simple ingredients it doesn’t make me feel sugar high, puffy and crazy as a #1 sensitive gal. You can get them a lil’ cheaper at Thrive Market, an online marketplace that offers tons of healthy, organic options at discounted prices. I think you pay like $60/year to be a member, and then you get access to all of their amazing wares! I’ve been a member for years now and j’adore. Here’s a code for 40% off your first offer-like Rao’s for 38% off? Come ahhhhhhhn.
-Have I mentioned Repair Café before? I can’t remember! It’s a monthly meetup that “links local handy people to folks in need of repair of all kinds: clothing, appliances, bikes, furniture, electronics, and more.” Isn’t that the sweetest and smartest idea? You bring in your broken treasures and then a sweet volunteer does their best to repair it! The next one is happening in Pasadena this Saturday, January 27 from 10-1. They clarify that, “the goal is to finish all repairs before 1pm. For tinker repairs (appliances, electronics, etc.) we likely will need to stop accepting repairs before noon, so make sure to arrive earlier to guarantee your item will be looked at.” I CAN’T WAIT!!!
-My dear friend Alison Banowsky is an endless spring of talent AND an absolute maniac, how lucky are we. I own one of her “The Perfect Woman” tote bags, and truly get stopped on the street whenever I trot it out. Sorry for perpetuating unrealistic beauty ideals for women, but I’m simply obsessed!! You can buy your own at the link above, and follow her art account @blarfnowsky to look for the next wild drop.
That’s all for this week, my friends! No Honeypot next week, but I’ll see you the week after that! It will be February then, can you even believe it? We are accepting submissions for Honeypot pieces, so please reach out if you feel so inspired! This could be
-something you’re obsessed with
-something you’re reflecting on
-a recommendation of a place, a person, a thing
-art that you’ve made
-media that you love
-a how-to of a useful or useless skill
-anything at all!
You can always respond directly to these emails with comments, questions, and concerns. I’m always happy to gab it out :)
Have a beautiful Sunday and I’ll see you soon!
xx Olivia
Hey, Olivia! Just wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying the life windows you create in your posts. (lol I'm finally caught up) For me at least, this is a delightful way to get to know you, and seeing Jesse through your eyes is also pretty cool! Already looking forward to your next post... Chuck