The Hodgepodge’s don’t wear holey underwear

Say What?

Now that I have your attention, let me explain myself a bit. I’ve often discussed how I am not a frugal person. I’ve written how we are “spendy savers.” But, while not frugal, I can be QUITE cheap.

I don’t mind spending money on things I want to buy (duh), I don’t even mind spending money on bills (I actually really enjoy it), but I HATE spending money on “needs.” Examples of needs that I HATE spending money on: work shoes, light bulbs, eye glasses, laundry detergent, car maintenance, house maintenance and underwear.

About two years into our marriage Mr. Hodgepodge and I were putting laundry away when he discovered that half of my undies had holes in them. He was nonplussed about that and thus the phrase “we don’t wear holey underwear” came into fruition. It has now become a house hold motto and pretty much expands to anytime I’m being cheap. Mr.Hodgepodge puts up with A LOT of my crazy ideas to further ourselves financially. He basically allows me to take complete control of our finances, even when sometimes the things I do might be a bit nutty, but he definitely cuts me off when I cross the line from saving to being a cheapskate.

There was a “we don’t wear holey underwear” moment earlier today. We were putting dishes in the dishwasher when Mr.Hodgepodge came across my Blender bottle, with packing tape wrapped around the lid. He looked at me quizzically and started taking the tape off the lid. I quickly tried to stop him, explaining that there was a hole in the lid and the tape was keeping the liquid from leaking out. Before I could even complete my sentence, he paused…looked at me and said “do I even need to say it?”

No…no Mr.Hodgepodge you don’t….”The Hodgepodges don’t wear holey underwear…..”

He then chucked my perfectly MacGyvered cup into the recycling bin! Knowing me well he also put it in the bottom of the recycling bin and then took it out to the garage. The nerve!

I’d like to say this story ends with me having a shiny new Blender bottle, but it does not.  I’d also like to end this story with some sage advice about being “penny wise but a pound foolish” but I won’t do that either. The reality of it is we did go out to purchase a new Blender bottle, but we also had to make a few other “need” purchases while out: Allergy Meds and Shampoo. After picking up those items I could not bring myself to spend the 8 dollars on a new Blender bottle…what can I say…a tiger can’t change their stripes.

Smoothies out of a Nalgene bottle for me! Happy Saturday everyone!

 

 

 

 

Goals

I still can’t quite bring myself to write my “About Me” section, so today I’m going to focus on what my and Mr.Hodgepodges goals are, which will somewhat cover the “who we are” aspect of this blog.

Mr.Hodgepodge and I are a bit different in how we view our financial future. We are both saver’s by nature, but neither of us are frugal….not in the slightest. We very much value time over money, which sometimes (more often than it should) leads to unnecessary spending. I’ll discuss that more in another post, but back to how we view finances and the future.

As I said, we are both saver’s by nature, so we’ve discussed our finances since very early on in our relationship and have always set financial goals and shared our bank accounts as soon as we were engaged. The difference between us is that I have fallen in LOVE with the idea of Early Retirement. Mr. Hodgepodge however is not sold on the idea. He very much enjoys working and often talks about how he cannot imagine ever retiring. Myself on the other hand, I enjoy my job (quite a bit actually) but I would be perfectly content volunteering, snuggling puppies and visiting wineries. So we’ve decided to just focus on “Financial Independence”…I have a few (8) more years to wear him down and convince him how awesome retiring in our 40’s would be!

So at this point we have two financial goals. One short and one long.

Short Term: XYZ amount of cash. We expect that we can reasonably hit our target amount in 2- 3 years. We plan to use that money in one of two ways. 1: Move to New England where the cost of living is much higher than where we live now or 2: Pay down our Mortgage significantly if we decided to stay put.

I’ll discuss the “whys” and “hows” of New England in an upcoming blog post. Basically our goals are part of the reason  I’m calling us “Hodgepodge Finances.” We don’t have a specific end point in mind, also because I tend to be long winded and rambly 🙂

Long Term Goal: Have the amount of money in our portfolio at age 40 that we would need if we DID decide to retire early and follow the 4% rule. This would make us financially independent and give Mr. Hodgepodge the opportunity to start his own business (if I haven’t worn him down yet on retiring early.) It gives me the opportunity to jump ship from my current career and explore other opportunities.

I haven’t decided yet if I am going to share our number’s on this blog. I don’t mind the blogging community knowing, but it does make me uncomfortable if a co-worker or friend stumbled upon our net worth, which isn’t much to write home about yet. If I’m completely honest the ONL’s have also made me slightly paranoid 🙂