What My Grandmothers Taught Me About Money

I had two grandmothers. They are both gone now, the first when I was twenty, the second when I was twenty-seven. I think about them every Wednesday morning when I am writing checks for Mr. Miller and sometimes when I am pouring candles in the laundry room. I think most of what I know about money I learned from them, and almost none of it from a book.

Grandma June, my dad's mother, lived in a tiny ranch house in eastern Iowa with linoleum floors and a chest freezer in the garage that was always, always full. She kept an envelope in the kitchen drawer labeled CHRISTMAS and another one labeled CAR REPAIRS and another one labeled JUST IN CASE. Every Friday after Grandpa got paid she put a few bills in each envelope. She paid cash for almost everything. She died with no debt and a small surprise of a savings account that my dad still talks about.

Grandma Ruth, my mom's mother, lived in a slightly bigger house in town and worked at the bank for thirty-two years. She would not pay full price for anything. Anything. She bought our family Christmas presents at the after-Christmas sale and put them in the closet for the next year. She knew, to the dollar, what every utility cost every month for a decade, because she wrote it on the back of the bill before she paid it.

Between them they taught me three things.

One: name your money. Envelope, account, sticky note — it does not matter how. Money with a name on it stays. Money without a name on it wanders off.

Two: a sale price is not a saving if you wouldn't have bought it at full price. Grandma Ruth was iron about this. 'It's not free, Lucy,' she would say. 'It's just less.'

Three: have a 'just in case' for the small disasters. Not the giant ones. The small ones. The tire. The toaster. The vet bill when Biscuit eats something she shouldn't, which has happened, friends, twice. Grandma June's JUST IN CASE envelope is the reason my dad never had a panic about a flat tire growing up.

Mark and I have an account now we have nicknamed JUST IN CASE in the bank's stupid little renaming feature. There is two hundred and forty dollars in it as of this morning. There used to be eleven dollars. It is going up because every Friday I move twenty dollars into it from my Miller's check, and ten dollars from the Etsy shop when there's anything to move. Slowly. Boringly. The way my grandmothers did it.

Run today, big news: ten minutes of straight jogging, broken into two five-minute pieces. I have officially stopped measuring in mailboxes. I felt, briefly, like a runner. The word will sit awkwardly on my shoulders for a while. I will get used to it.

Worked Miller's. Picked up kids. Emma helped me label twelve candles for tomorrow's shipping. Noah ate two grilled cheeses, which is a record. Mark home at five-fifteen because he left the site early to fix the back gate, which Biscuit has been escaping from to visit Joanne's chickens, which Joanne does not have yet, which is a whole other story.

Almost six. Tea on. Envelopes named. Talk tomorrow. — Lucy