Naoshima, Japan (Photo: Mike Dang)

Sometimes the spaces you need don’t already exist, so you create them for yourself. The Billfold was created because we needed a space to truly, honestly talk about money — not just the smart and sensible things we do to remain financially solvent, but the things that we hide from the world because they feel shameful or embarrassing. These were the most difficult things to talk about, but they were also honest and real, and we needed to have candid conversations about them if we ever really wanted to learn the truth about ourselves and the way we live.

My friends and I could share many deeply personal things with each other: the most humiliating moments of our adolescence; the awful, tragic things we’ve lived through and how they’ve shaped the people we’ve become; our dreams for the future and our fears that we’d never achieve anything worthwhile. But when it came to money, I knew very little of their circumstances. How much money were they earning? Had they, like me, accepted job offers without negotiating because the thought of doing so felt daunting and brazen? Did they have any debt, and did that debt keep them up at night? Were they secretly rich and annoyed I wouldn’t go out sometimes because I didn’t want to spend any money? Or were they helping their parents out with their bills like I was and a little bit ashamed because they wish they didn’t have to?

Logan was the exception. We both fell into the personal finance world by accident because we both needed jobs, working as writers and editors for one of those financial startups that quickly came and went. I had spent years before covering politics and working on documentary shows for various television programs. When Logan and I found each other we talked about money in a way that I had never encountered. We told each other how much we were making. Logan told me how many credit cards she had and the debt balance she carried on each card. I told her about all of the financial obligations I had with my family and how much it weighed on me. She told me how bad she felt whenever she bought drinks after work because she knew she should be trying to pay down her balance instead. I listed off my student loan balances. We told each other that everything would work out somehow. In a way, it was like financial therapy.

We also found the vast majority of the personal finance world boring and unrelatable. Many offered standard, how-to advice with no heart or personality. Others were written in the aspirational “I Retired Before 40 and So Can You” style that’s geared toward a small, specific readership but unattainable for the vast majority of people out there. I never came across anything and thought, “Yes, here are my people! I’ve found them!” Logan and I decided to create the space we needed to find our people. We called it The Billfold. And our people came.

Our people came from all kinds of financial backgrounds and opened up our worldview. Some of our people understood how to navigate our financial system and come out on top, while some of our people told us stories of regret to show us that we all make mistakes and that’s okay. Remember that 28-year-old banker who showed me a chart of how much he earned every year for seven years? Remember the divorced, 42-year-old single mom whose good-for-nothing ex left her with his $48,000 student loan debt? They each led completely different lives but they came to the Billfold because they were our people.

I knew The Billfold was helping to change the conversation when I started getting emails from strangers telling me that they never read any personal finance sites until they found us. An agent reached out to me and asked me if I was interested in writing a book of advice for young people about how to have a healthier relationship with money. I had a few meetings, and then sheepishly told her the site and the supportive community we had built was better than any book I’d ever write.

I have always been super skeptical about finance books and advice from so-called financial gurus because they seem to strategically ignore so much of the actual world we live in (see: class, structural racism, the Horatio Alger myth). Part of this skepticism is because I am a huge believer in the idea that there is no right way to do money, that we all go on our own journeys to figure out what makes sense for us and the lives we want to live. The life I want is probably different than the life that you want, so there’s no reason for the two of us to be approaching money the same way. So many finance books want to tell you that there is actually a right way to be with money, and if you’re not doing it the right way, you are bad with money and need to see the light. I reject this kind of moral superiority!

The thing about money is that there are just a handful of common sense rules we all should be following:

1. Don’t spend more than you earn.
2. Don’t carry a credit card balance.
3. Save for emergencies, or have an emergency plan in case you ever lose your main source of income.
4. Save for retirement and if you work for a company that offers a 401(k), contribute at least up to the company match. And go with index funds.

I mean … that’s basically it! Number one is pretty much key. You figure everything else out as you figure out who you are and the kind of life you want to live. No book can tell you what those things are.

I recently took a 10-day trip to Japan with a close group of friends. I was able to use credit card points I had saved up to cover the cost of my flight but still spent about $2,500 on various excursions across the country. Most books about money would probably describe this trip as a frivolous expense, or suggest I do it on a much smaller budget. Suze Orman probably would have told me I couldn’t afford to go to Japan, most likely because (as you are all aware because I show you my balance every month) I still owe about $20,000 in student loans. But guess what, I went anyway! Sure, I could have thrown that $2,500 at my student loan balance and made a dent, but I am 35, I am healthy, and I have the privilege of time to see the world and be changed by it. This trip ended up being one of the best experiences of my life. That’s invaluable, and I have no regrets about spending the money to do it.

I am not the kind of extreme saver who forgoes vacations and washes tin foil for reuse. Those people exist and I do not fault them for wanting to live their lives that way if they find that lifestyle fulfilling! It’s here that I’ll also say that I’ve talked to people who have read books that they’ve found super helpful because it resonated with them and fit the lives they want to have. I’ve met people who love Suze Orman and have attended Dave Ramsey seminars and have genuinely had their lives changed by Vicki Robin.

The Billfold showed us an incredible spectrum of how we each do money — the wide range of our struggles and successes. It was this incredible place where people who figured out how to make things work shared stories alongside those who were having trouble keeping it together. And we were here for all of them (and politely endured the handful of mansplainers and “you should have studied STEM” comments).

One of the best conversations I had about money was with Helaine Olen after reading her book, Pound Foolish in 2013. I think it helped provide some empathy for so many of us who have had such a difficult time getting ahead after the financial crisis — that we can’t just fix our lives by giving up lattes at Starbucks. Wage stagnation is real. The student debt crisis is real. The health care crisis is real. The number one reason families go bankrupt in the U.S. is not because they’re spendthrifts who’ve spent all of their money — the number one reason is unpaid medical bills. No amount of giving up lattes is going to keep a family out of bankruptcy if their health insurance doesn’t cover a medical emergency. And don’t even get me started on avocado toast.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that the Billfold was originally brought up on the premise that I was good at money, Logan was bad at money, and people would learn a lot by listening to how I do things and relating to, like, Logan spending too much at the bar. But the reality is that Logan was never bad at money. Or more precisely, her poor spending habits was not due to the fact that she was inherently bad at money. Logan, as we came to learn as we talked about it more and more, was depressed. She spent money to make herself feel better. But then she’d feel depressed about spending money she didn’t have and having to ask her parents for help. And it became difficult to break free from that cycle. Once she began addressing her depression, she began addressing all these other things: her job, her money, her relationships, and got to a better place. No book was ever going to tell her that depression was her issue. They would have just told her to stop spending so much at the bar.

Logan and I are a little bit older and wiser now. I asked her if she could give a little update and she wrote: “I have a good job that I like. I don’t drink anymore. I am in an excellent relationship. I’m happy. Financially, I’m in a good place: Through a combination of the generosity of my parents, the structure of a payment plan, increasingly better-paying jobs, and the influence of my very financially-responsible boyfriend, I’m making my last debt payment this month, am building an emergency fund, and am contributing to retirement funds.”

As for me, give me another two years and those student loans will be gone and I’ll be debt-free. I have a healthy six figures in my retirement account. My career in journalism is going strong and I get to regularly work with some of the most talented journalists in the world — some of whom have written for this very site. I still help out my parents with their bills, and they still go out dancing late at night.

Remember all those years ago when Logan and I met and we told each other that everything would work out somehow?

And now the Billfold has come to an end, but it’s leaving an incredible legacy in all of you. If I were to ever write a book, it would basically be called something like, Don’t Spend More Than You Earn, Figure Out What Your Best Life Is, and Then LIVE IT. I’ll be rooting for you, always.

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for my final financial question.

Earlier today I shared what I learned from five years of writing and editing for The Billfold. Now I want to know what you learned, from the articles we shared or the community we created.

Discuss — or ask your own questions — in the comments.

Photo credit: Scott McLeod, CC BY 2.0.

I started this process knowing very little about personal finance.

I mean, I knew the basics. I’ve told the story about graduating college and reading Your Money and Your Life and tracking every penny I’ve earned and spent ever since. I’ve also told the story about how, six years ago, I began publicly sharing my freelance income on my Tumblr, with the simple goal of earning more money every week.

(In many ways I got this gig because I was a good storyteller.)

But I didn’t know what to do with my money, beyond “spend less than you earn and get out of debt.” I kept everything in a savings account. I didn’t know what a mutual fund was, beyond “a thing people invest in,” and although I knew that people needed to invest money for retirement (and had done so myself), I didn’t know why anyone would invest beyond that — unless they wanted to play the stock market, which at the time I thought was like gambling.

I had a vague idea that I should put my retirement money in a Roth IRA because it was “better,” but I didn’t know that putting money in traditional and SEP IRAs could help reduce both my freelance tax burden and my ACA health insurance premiums.

I learned that — along with so many other aspects of personal finance — from you.

I also learned by doing a lot of reading: articles, books, research papers. Before working for The Billfold I’d already read a bunch of personal finance books, of course, but they were the “Suze Orman says don’t buy a boat” types of books. I knew how not to buy a boat! I didn’t know why closing an old credit card could hurt your credit score, or the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit, or why index funds were so highly recommended. I didn’t know that people could build their own wealth through investments, or that the 401(k) had only been around for a generation and we were still crossing our fingers that it worked.

So I gave myself a crash course in both finance and economics, both because I wanted to educate myself and because I wanted to have something new to share with you — although it turned out many of you already knew it.

But not everyone, so we all learned together.

That was the important part.

The other important part, at least for me, was the chance to get to help other writers. Freelancing is about the gigs you get and the gigs you can give to others — and The Billfold gave me the opportunity to both grow my career and help other freelancers grow theirs.

I loved going through the pitch inbox and reading your stories. I loved getting an absolutely perfect draft that I could run without any edits, and I also loved getting the kind of draft where I could send the writer a sentence or two about strengthening the narrative and then they’d come back with four new paragraphs that transformed the entire piece.

I especially loved working with the same writers year over year and watching their work get better and better. That’s the kind of experience that you don’t realize you’ll get, at the beginning of a career. It was a joy.

Lastly, I loved making a space for all of you to build a community. Some of that community was in place before I arrived, but I worked hard to make sure every piece I posted included something that could be discussed. Sometimes it was as simple as ending a post with “what do you think?” (Please don’t go back to count how many pieces ended with that particular phrase, or with “read and discuss, y’all.”) Sometimes I deliberately chose pieces that could be seen from multiple points of view.

On that note: in my early days as a Billfold writer I’d occasionally post hate-bloggy stuff that I knew would get people riled up, but I stopped doing those kinds of posts about three years ago. They didn’t feel right. So much of online outrage involves speculating about other people’s lives. Reading your comments — and I read nearly all of them — reminded me that we approach the world from so many different perspectives. Or, as I’ve often said (and written): we’re all doing the best we can with what we have.

And that’s not even my idea — or not just my idea. Jenn said the exact same thing at the end of this morning’s Doing Money interview. Did you learn it from me, did I learn it from you, did we all build our community around the dual ideas of having honest conversations about money and doing the best we can with what we have?

I don’t know. I’d like to think so.

I’d also like to think that we’ll carry these ideas with us, and they’ll become just as important as tracking every penny we earn and spend.

That’s what I’ve learned from five years of writing and editing for The Billfold. It’s also what I hope I’ve taught you in return. ❤︎

Jenn is a 38-year old program assistant in San Francisco.

So, Jenn, how much are you making?

I had to look this up because gross pay is not something I really think about. At the end of last year, I was making $59.5K gross with about $43K take-home.

How does your income compare to your expenses? Where is your money going?

Some months I think I’m doing okay and some, not so much. My biggest expense is rent — I pay $1,571.50 a month. I’m very lucky to have a rent-controlled apartment in SF (I think the max increase can be 2 percent a year) and I’ve been there for almost eight years. Under the old system of paychecks at my work, my second paycheck of the month was totally savings/rent, so I basically lived on just half my monthly pay at a time.

My cable bill also just too high, but Comcast isn’t known for just given you better pricing (yes, I know I could call, but I think they’ll know I’m not really going to leave cable, so it’s an empty threat!).

Oh, Comcast.

I don’t really budget the rest after my fixed expenses (PG&E, water, savings, cell phone, cable), I just keep an eye on my end of the month total as I go. So I’m sure some months I spend “too much” on groceries and some months, it’s clothes (okay, it’s usually clothes!). In my defense, the weather here is the same year-round, so I feel like I get sick of my clothes more easily/frequently than if I had a summer/winter wardrobe.

I think it’s going to get more interesting with our new paycheck system, though, so I’m cautiously spending as I get used to it.

So tell us about this new paycheck system! What’s going on?

For the previous eight years, I’ve been paid on the 1st and the 15th and (unbeknownst to me) our paychecks were basically the salaried version of our hourly rate. So we got paid a standard amount in every paycheck (variable by a few cents due taxes or commuter check, etc).

In 2019, the company has switched to a new HR system, so we get paid on the 7th and the 22nd and our paychecks are straight hourly, so how much you get in a paycheck is determined by how many days are in the previous pay period.

So our first check (in the new system) in January was for 82.5 hours, but our second check last week was for 90 hours. It’ll get fun in March because there are so few days in the second half of February, but I’m used to just living off the first check of the month, so I’ve got to save from this month to make up for it next month.

Got it. You’ll earn the same amount of money overall, just given to you at different times. Which means you have to plan your finances differently.

Exactly! I’ve been paid my whole month on the 1st of the month and also a standard every-two-weeks model at previous jobs, but this is new to me. I know I’m a creature of habit, but having to re-think my relationship to my paycheck is really throwing me for a loop. I guess this is where I need to actually budget for groceries and going out, etc., so I know that I WILL have enough money in small paycheck weeks.

Do you have a budgeting system (Mint, YNAB, spreadsheet) that you use?

I’ve been using Quicken since the early 2000s. My boyfriend at the time was using it (and I ended up doing his checkbook for him most of the time), I liked that it did the math for me. I can schedule a lot of transactions, so I have a good idea of where the money will be at the end of the month. I can also pull up graphs to see how much I’ve spent on any particular thing (which was good when I was trying to get my handle on my credit card debt and seeing a lot of frivolous purchases!). I’ve not used the budgeting feature, but it’s there if I wanted to. I manually enter transactions, even though I could link my accounts because it forces me to confront my spending daily and I think helps keep me in check.

That’s smart. I check my YNAB every morning.

I’m curious, though — prior to the new paycheck system, how did you know whether you were spending too much money? It would seem like the method you were using then would still work now, since you’re still earning the same amount of money overall. Your cashflow might be different, but a lot of people handle that with savings or credit cards (and if it’s the latter, they pay off the balance in full when the big paycheck arrives).

Basically, if it got to the last week of the month and I had money left, then I was doing okay. But most of the time, I’d have like $7 for a week or I just wouldn’t be paying my credit card off until after I got the paycheck on the 1st, so I was floating myself a loan from the next month.

Though I’ve been debt-free for about eight months, I think I’m nervous that my old habits of spending more than I have in my checking account on my credit card (I put all transactions possible on there for the REWARDS) will return. I pay off my credit card every day or two right now, which might not be possible if it’s a small paycheck week. Also since we’ve only gotten two checks (which were different) so far with the new system, so I don’t how small the checks might get, so it’s hard to budget against an unknown. I’m a planner and uncertainty is NOT my friend!

For sure. I get it. I’d be interested to see if your attitude shifts after a few months of this new paycheck system, once you learn more about how it works.

In addition to dealing with this new paycheck thing, what are your other financial goals? Are you saving for retirement? Homeownership? Etc.?

Homeownership LOL! I gave up on that dream when I moved back to California this time. I do have friends who have used SF’s Below Market Rate Program to purchase a condo, but I haven’t explored that option yet.

Mostly, I’m just in savings mode. I’ve got five different Barclays accounts allocating to different goals (emergency, travel, etc). I recently started saving for all the little annual fees (Amazon Prime, podcasts, back up/anti-virus subscription, etc) and that has been a game changer for me. I’m no longer raiding the emergency fund for $60 that’s not really an emergency!

I’m saving for retirement, but do NOT have enough. All together, I’ve got about $86K, which is about half what Fidelity recommends that a 40-year-old have. This job is the first one when I’ve really been saving for retirement, so I’m pretty behind. I made some dumb mistakes in my first grown up job and then didn’t stay at previous jobs long enough to qualify for much savings at all, so I didn’t start until I was almost 30. I’m VERY lucky though because my company saves 10 percent of my salary in an account for me and after 3 years, I was vested, so I can take that with me when I leave. That’s the bulk of my retirement savings right now. I don’t know where I’d be without that!

Yay vesting! Not my favorite retirement policy, but I’m glad you’re vested now.

It’s the shortest vesting period I’ve experienced (once job you had to be there 10 YEARS!). Plus I’m able to save pre-tax an additional amount, so I’m trying to catch up, but it’s hard in a high COL city.

I also thought I was saving 5 percent in my 403(b) this whole time, but it turns out, I was only saving 3 percent. I’ve upped it to 4 percent for this year to see if I can stand to increase it more in coming years.

They say you won’t feel a 1 percent increase but I’ve totally felt it! That money is one pair of shoes you can’t buy, three restaurant meals you have to skip that month, etc. Did you feel it when you increased the percentage?

We had a calculator in our new retirement savings programs that I used at the beginning of the year when I realized the mistake and the difference between 3 percent withholding and 5 percent was stark! I backed off and picked 4 percent as a happy medium. I haven’t really felt it yet as my take-home the past couple checks has been similar or higher than before (due to aforementioned paycheck issues), but we’ll see going forward!

Two more questions, then: what do you think you do really well financially, and what do you wish you could do better?

I think I’m good at keeping track of my money on a micro level (my checkbook always balances; I haven’t bounced a check since the early 2000s; I’m debt-free). But I wish I could be better at seeing the big picture. Your financial runway metaphor has been bouncing around in my head for a few months now and while I’m not ready to switch to YNAB (I think we’ve seen how I like my ruts!), I do want to see what I do with my software or even the financial planner who comes to work monthly to see where I’m going. I don’t have a partner; I don’t have kids. For the foreseeable future, it’s just me, so I feel like I should have a better handle or what that future is going to look like.

There’s still time. And I’m sure you’ll get there.

So true! 40 is the new 30 and I’ve got a grandfather who is 99, so I could barely be a third of the way through my life.

Last question then: what advice do you have for Billfold readers?

Don’t be too hard on yourself! I think most of us are doing the best we can with what we have to work with (high COL, student debt, etc) and non-Billfold personal finance advice is usually aimed at all the things you’re doing wrong. Figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Make incremental changes and share your experiences. One of the things I love about The Billfold is that we just help each other feel less alone in that we don’t know everything. I try to be very open with my college students about financial positives and negatives so they can see that everyone struggles with these things.

Photo credit: Sandrine Néel, CC BY 2.0.

To celebrate The Billfold, we’re sharing some of our favorite posts. This piece originally published on March 14, 2016.

“I always knew I wanted to live out here,” my friend Tahiti told me from behind sunglasses as we sat outside a French bistro in Los Feliz.

It was mid-February, and I was spending the week in southern California, enjoying a break from Portland rain. I listened to her words and realized I’ve never felt that way about anywhere.

On that Friday afternoon in L.A., I’d been living in Portland for six months. I was on my third major U.S. city and while I’d loved Columbus, Chicago, and Portland, I had never felt a sense of destiny with any of them. Any move I’ve made as an adult has been made with confidence only because I could tell myself it was temporary.

“I’m moving to Chicago, but only for a year or two,” I told my loved ones in Ohio. “A year or two” turned into five, so I didn’t bother offering a timeframe when I announced I was leaving the Windy City for the Rose City. I remember thinking then that the lack of a deadline was exciting.

I moved to Portland last July, mostly because I’d had a very positive experience visiting Portland in 2014. I hadn’t planned on changing cities, but the timing made sense. The thing I had loved most about Chicago was a relationship I’d had with a boy there, and after it was over, I slowly soured on the city. Poor Chicago.

Portland was gorgeous, green, and very far away. When I returned to Chicago after my 2014 visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about how nice it had been to bike all around Portland. I was starting to play roller derby then, and I knew Portland had a huge scene for the sport.

“I could bike there year-round,” I thought, and as another Chicago winter arrived, so did my decision to leave, and I did.

Now it’s been a few months. I crashed my bike a month after I got to town, and while I skate here, it’s not the same as it was in Chicago when I had a bunch of teammates I knew really well. Part of that is on me not putting myself out there enough, and part of it is the fact that roller derby is more competitive in Portland, and therefore intimidating, than literally any other city.

As I sat across from Tahiti, also a former Chicagoan and Midwest native, I felt envious of her love for and confidence in Los Angeles. Seconds later, I found myself thinking, Maybe L.A. is the place where I’m supposed to be?

It could be that I’m just extremely susceptible to vacation highs.

I turn 30 on the first day of spring. I look forward to it because I hear your 30s are when you start caring less about what other people think and when you begin to feel in control of your life. However, this milestone has come with some discontent.

As my birthday approaches, my thoughts keep coming back to that famous quote from The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath describes a fig tree, full to the brim with ripening fruit, on which each fig is a different path she could choose for herself. She could choose a fig with a family and a house, or one where she’s an amazing editor, or one where she lives in Europe or Africa or South America.

“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

As I enter my 30s, it’s the where that gets me.

Thanks to some tumultuous 20s, I feel pretty confident now in who I am as a human being. I like myself a whole lot better than I did when I was 20 or 25, or even 27. The year I turned 28, I finally felt like I got my career on track and could at last see that everything I’d been doing up until then was working toward that career move. It hadn’t all been a waste like I worried it was.

So naturally, of course, with sense of self and purpose in order, I began to feel unsettled in another area: home.

I’ve found myself asking what I came here for, and it doesn’t feel great. It’s been winter, and while it isn’t snowing, it’s been raining almost every day. I never feel truly warm and I don’t go outside to enjoy the fact that the world here is still green and lush. Why did I leave my friends and family and the Midwest to move to Portland and sit in an apartment?

I find myself daydreaming of being closer to my family, and minutes later, I’ll remember how great it felt to hike in Griffith Park with Tahiti. And then I’ll remember standing with my Portland friend Betsy at the base of a beautiful, natural waterfall last summer, feeling its cool spray on our faces. So many figs, each of them dangling before me. They rot as I write.

I’m not sorry I moved to Portland — I’ve met a ton of great friends, it doesn’t snow here, and it’s gorgeous. I still work for my awesome Chicago-based company, and I write for a local Portland paper on the side. I’ve established myself well here, but I know when it really comes down to it, I still don’t feel like I really live here. I feel like I’ve been on a months-long vacation during which I continue to do my day job from someone else’s strange apartment full of new furniture.

I don’t know what I thought would happen when I moved to Portland. I think I just thought this was the place where everything would fall in line, where I would magically become an adult. And in many ways, that is true — I live alone for the first time in my life, and I am able to support myself. My freelancing side career is healthier than ever. I take better care of myself here and make myself go to the gym and sometimes I eat vegetables.

I just thought I would finally feel settled. But it all still feels so temporary.

I find that at the same time, I miss my hometown, Columbus, and Chicago and I can’t pick whether I’d rather be in one of those over Portland or not. On a Friday night, I want to be eating cheesesteaks at the bar by my old Chicago apartment and getting after work drinks with my friend Stacey in Columbus. I want to be catching a movie with my brother in Cambridge and hanging with my best friend from high school in our hometown. I want to be in all of these spaces, simultaneously.

This isn’t Portland’s fault, and I’m not even totally sure it’s my fault, either. And maybe it’s not such a bad thing to want to test out other cities beyond where I’ve been, especially since now I’m fortunate enough to have a career that is portable.

Tahiti is lucky to know where she belongs, but I am lucky, too. I’ll never wonder what it would have been like to move to Chicago for a few years, or try out the west coast, because I did those things. No matter where I end up, I feel bolstered by the fact that I was brave enough to try.

Meryl Williams is a Portland writer who is chronicling her life as a roller derby girl via her awesome TinyLetter. She loves Rilo Kiley and most cheeses.

Photo credit: Stuart Seeger, CC BY 2.0.

The day before Mr. Biscuit died, I received an email from Logan Sachon, with whom I had not corresponded in many months. Logan’s email comprised a link to this Billfold post and a brief note ending with “lotta mr biscuit callouts :)”. Logan was among the people I had expected to notify after I found my way through the grief, but by way of The Billfold she heard the news in advance. Such is Mr. Biscuit’s loving gravity: many synchronicities and sea changes arrived in the orbit of his death.

I read the comments aloud to B, and even in the pain of his cancer he was flattered and heartened that people still remember him and find joy in the stories of his adventures. He asked me to convey his sincere love and warm wishes to everyone.

Mr. Biscuit died at peace in my arms, with the taste of buttery chicken still on his tongue.

Here lies Mr. Biscuit, April 13, 2001 – February 14, 2019

William Foster lives in Oregon City, Oregon.

My apartment currently contains six living plants.

However, I’ve also killed two plants over the past year — first I mercy-killed a succulent that had lost all of its petals, and then I did unlicensed plant surgery on a different succulent that had etiolated into this thing that no longer looked like a rosette, and even though the internet said I could trim off all of the stretched-out parts and put the top of the plant back into the pot and wait for new roots to take hold, I tried that and the plant died.

So I am not any kind of authority on plants!

But Billfolder Meg Renninger, who sponsored this post, is.

Meg developed Crazy Keiki Cloning Paste, a mysterious plant goo that you can put on an orchid to make more orchids.

Or, to borrow Meg’s more accurate description:

BRING A BABY ORCHID TO LIFE – Apply Crazy Keiki Cloning Paste to nodes along a flowering orchid stem to trick orchid into cloning itself. Special blend of natural plant growth hormones and vitamins help stimulate mother plant to reproduce while fertilizing baby orchid and protect plant from fungus and viruses. Simple application takes minutes and a tiny baby keiki plant clone will appear on flower spike within a few weeks to a month of applying paste.

Meg and I both applied Crazy Keiki Cloning Paste to orchids at roughly the same time — which just happened to be right before the polar vortex. It was so cold that my apartment’s heating system stopped working, but I managed to keep the space at around 65 degrees thanks to a trusty space heater. I also managed to keep my orchid (and all my other plants, which I pulled away from the windows so they could stay as warm as possible) alive. That is my accomplishment.

Meg’s orchid started growing a clone.

Crazy Keiki Cloning Paste gets results, though not during polar vortices and maybe not for notorious plant-murderers who have been known to tell their rubber plants “if you drop any more leaves, I will replace you with a pink cactus.” (My rubber plant almost immediately perked up and started putting out new growth, so it’s clear that threats work.)

But I wanted to end this Billfold Recommends column with a product created by a Billfolder — and I am so delighted to get to share Meg’s cloning paste with all of you.

If you’ve got orchids, give it a try. If you don’t have orchids, the paste also works on the cane nodes of Dendrobium and Cattleya and the basal nodes of Vandas (I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, ASK MEG). Plus, it helps stimulate growth on carnivorous plants and bonsai.

Crazy Keiki Cloning Paste. Because sometimes you can make more of the thing you love. Other times, you have to let it go and grow something new.

My armpits were sweating into the tight white jacket I had borrowed from a pile in the basement closet. It was the first weekend of June in downtown Manhattan and summer greeted concrete and glass with piercing UV rays. The air conditioning could barely condition the air. The windows could barely hold out the 90 degree heat.

I had just finished a Saturday brunch shift waiting tables at a small bistro in the TriBeCa neighborhood, a handful of blocks away from One World Trade Center. My boss, a scruffy six-foot man with a permanent scowl, had pulled me aside for a speech and sat me down at a tucked-away table. It was my first day as a server and my first day ever working for tips.

“Guests don’t like to make choices,” he said. “They don’t like to think about things, and they don’t know what they want. You need to take control of them and guide them through the experience.”

“Okay,” I chuckled.

“Why are you laughing? It isn’t funny.”

I laughed because I was nervous, but also because I didn’t expect him to tell me that. As someone who, like many others, has eaten in restaurants before, I had always believed the opposite: If I am the one who pays, picks the food, has the food brought to me, and watches someone else clean my mess, then aren’t I in control?  

Maybe not. Usually, the house believes it has power over the guests. Part of a server’s job is to steer the wheel and squeeze as much money as you can from a guest. You upsell the wine, saying things like, “the Chardonnay is nice if you want a good deal, but people really love the Falanghina.” You stretch the truth. A chef told me to say a sandwich had “aoili” and not “mayonnaise” (it was definitely mayonnaise). With both sides of the server-guest divide convinced of its own power, a conflict of egos ensues, and the battle unfolds at the table, where every interaction, big and small, has the shadow of the “tip” looming over it.

These days, I work at a gratuity-free restaurant. My boss factors employee pay into the menu prices and gives almost everyone about $20 an hour. (To avoid conflict with my former and current employer, I will not name names or provide identifying details.)

“Gratuity-free” changed my experience of waiting tables for the better, but at a cost. There was something pleasurable in the pain of working for tips. I traded the stress of being at the mercy of guests for stability and a peace of mind, but lost the flip-side of that stress: the thrill.

It is easy to lump restaurant customers into types. When interacting with up to a hundred people in the course of a few hours, you tend to notice trends in how people behave. The stay-at-home moms who lugged their toddlers to brunch, for example, would often commandeer their experience. They would insist on extra table space to keep toys, request non-dairy scrambled eggs and “gluten-free bread,” and instruct me to remove all of the knives. The suit-and-tie guys would often ignore the order of operations, seat themselves wherever they wanted, invite friends to join, and take chairs from other tables without asking. By my second week I was already judging customers, sizing them up, steeling myself for what they might ask of me.

You are aware throughout a shift of the constant evaluation: you see a brutal review of your performance, scrawled in sloppy handwriting next to the total, the minute a guest walks out the door. Tips can be a wellspring of positive reinforcement; endorphins fire off in your brain like you are on drugs. Yes! $30 again, I am killing it! They can also bog you down and prompt you to question yourself. After three 15 percent tips in a row, I tend to wonder if I am just perennially awkward and whether I am cut out for any job, at all. Why am I waiting tables again? I think to myself. Is this why I moved to New York? Of course, there are endless reasons why someone tips well or not, and many of them have nothing to do with me. When you look down and see the receipt, it can be tough to remind yourself such things.

Of all the customers I served in TriBeCa, one type was a favorite: the guests who would send me back to the kitchen asking for their green beans to be cooked more, who would complain about waiting over 20 minutes for food during rush hour, who would trash their tables with breadcrumbs and puddles of sauce, and then leave over 25 percent gratuity on their tab. I call them “charitable jerks.” I felt a surge of adrenaline every time I looked down at their receipts. Indignation would quickly turn to gratitude. While typing the tip into the servers’ iPad, I would conclude that a little degradation is worth the extra money. The unexpectedness made the good tips all the more satisfying.

I also dealt with a share of guests who left $5 tips on $50 checks, but it was easy for me to shrug them off. This type of guest was rare, and their often boorish mannerisms — like snapping fingers to grab my attention, acting out a Julius Caesar fantasy — usually gave themselves away as too privileged or spoiled to know any better. Guests were just as likely to be generous. On a day when the bistro was nearly empty, an old man eating alone handed me $60 in cash within minutes of sitting down at a table, and left $60 more after paying his tab.

You can’t quantify the generosity of strangers at a no-tip restaurant. This sweetens and sours the experience. On the plus side, I no longer judge guests on whether or not they’ll pay me. Knowing that I won’t be docked points for making mistakes, I can feel a sense of serenity during a shift. At the same time, I miss the instant gratification and the material evidence of how much they loved my service.

“That’s too bad I can’t tip. I want to make it rain on you!” said a woman one night, sloshed from sparkling rosé, as she pretended to shower dollar bills over my head with her hands. Her tab was around $250. Yes, it’s too bad, I thought. I want you to make it rain on me, too!

Which is better, tips or no tips? I made about the same on average at both restaurants. At the bistro, I would sometimes make $130 in five hours, sometimes $60. It depended on how busy it was, which in turn depended on factors like the weather. Today I know I will always make around $100 in a single night, no matter how many people are sitting down in my section. For me, a reliable, hourly wage brings a meditative quality to table service that was absent before. Now that the shadow of the tip is gone, I can focus completely on my immediate tasks and the person sitting in front of me.

The biggest upside is how the power struggle between the guests and the house is practically nonexistent. Random strangers no longer pay my rent, my boss does. Guests can sit, eat, and leave without feeling obliged to pay extra. As a server, this puts me at a much greater advantage: I’m not beholden to anyone but my employer. It puts guests at an advantage, too: I’m not compelled to upsell or be anything other than transparent.

When people sit in my section now, I meet them as peers, not as a source of income. In a way, it is like I’m meeting someone new at a party, someone who could be a friend, and I get to help them have as wonderful a time as possible. It makes running around in circles and taking orders from people worth it.

Charlie Innis is a freelance writer and server living in Brooklyn. He’s written about culture for Stereogum and Spin.

Photo by Michael Browning on Unsplash.

Sometime in January I received an email from Bank of America with the subject line “2018 spending statement.” I was about to delete it like all emails I receive from financial institutions because I’m fortunate not to carry debt and a financial statement (usually) carries no significance to me whatsoever. After a few days, I finally read my email and saw an accounting of my credit card spending. In my mind, I spent $5,000 for the year. Was I right? Absolutely not.

Here’s my 2018 credit card spending:

Like most Billfold readers and writers, I feel like I spend too much money on food and yes, I do spend most of my money on food. Last year, I spent $2,658.01 on four grocery chains: Fred Meyer, Seafood City, PCC, and Uwajimaya. Fred Meyer is our main grocery store and we supplement with Asian groceries such as Uwajimaya and Seafood City and the local PCC (a Seattle-based organic grocery chain). I have a level five dairy allergy and PCC has the most extensive allergen-free selection anywhere, in my opinion. It’s also the most expensive choice out of all four so I only buy products from them that I can’t find anywhere else.

The next big line is from retail spending. I spent a lot of money on Amazon ($416.52), Target ($797.42), a few bookstores, Patreon, skin care, and clothes. I’m very disappointed that I’ve spent more money than I thought on Amazon, note to self: do better at not making Jeff Bezos any richer than he already is. $1,659.91

I don’t know how this isn’t in the retail spending bucket but clothing merited a whole line on its own. Maybe because I spent so much on department stores that BofA felt like it deserved its own category? I spent $246.83 on Nordstrom’s, Sears and Macy’s. The mall is definitely alive and well in Western Washington, and I did my part keeping it breathin’. The truth is, I barely remember any of my purchases, the one that stands out is a floral top from Lucky Brand which I wanted to wear on my tropical vacation. I’m from Washington State, my wardrobe is all shades of gray and I wanted to wear something more festive and climate-appropriate.

BofA inexplicably placed my Patreon pledge and my TurboTax filing under Electronics for $83.99.

Travel and transportation was a big one last year. We bought a new Kia Soul and I was charged $277.97, for who knows what reason. I’m flying home to the Philippines and I bought plane tickets and a hotel room for me and my family — all for the low, low price of $2,185.73.

My sister, boyfriend, and me are on a T-Mobile family plan for $50 a person but the bill goes to me. Last year, I paid off my sister’s new cellphone because those are the things an older sister does for her younger sibling. $2,075.72

I don’t really spend much money on entertainment save for the occasional movie or pop-up dining events. BofA filed my gym membership under entertainment which also includes movie tickets (Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians come to mind), souvenir-shopping at the Museum of Flight and four tickets ($80 a pop but so worth it!) to Musang Seattle, a Filipino restaurant pop-up. $639.67

More often than not, I pay for meals out with cash so it’s pretty rare for me to use my credit card for food spending outside of grocery shopping which is reflected on the smallest line so far: $221.16 for Panera sammies and salads, the best vegan burger I’ve ever had at Third Place Café in Mount Vernon, Washington, and oil-soaked IHOP breakfasts for a co-worker’s last day.

Services seems to be the bucket where all miscellaneous spending falls under like charitable giving, allergy medication, massages, and skin care.

I have multiple environmental and food allergies and while I can cure the former, the latter is pretty much incurable, but who’s complaining? I grew up in a megalopolis with no green spaces and pets were banned at home, so at 34, I’m paying for the sins of my childhood. I spent $584.01 on allergy shots and when I told my boyfriend this exorbitant amount he shrugged and said, “some people have real problems.” Oof, $584.01 is a lot of money and I’m curious to find out next year how much my allergy is costing me.

I paid for massages, haircuts, Paula’s Choice skin care (I blame Liz Dueweke, Q13 news anchor, and her exquisite skin for my insatiable Paula’s Choice addiction), charitable donations, and a GoFundMe for a friend’s funeral expenses. He died last year from terminal cancer and I spent a few moments hoping that wherever he is, he’s truly in a better place. Lastly, a $10 payment to freeze my credit information. Oh hackers, what have you wrought? $779.02.

Total credit card spending of 2018: $11,412.02

I’m still experiencing shopper’s remorse but I would feel a lot worse if I paid interest in any of my purchases (I didn’t), or if I didn’t accomplish my 2018 financial goals (I did). Looking at my credit card spending inspired me to Kondo my purchases from now on. Does this spark joy? If not, I’ll keep my credit card where I can’t see it.  

Ruzielle Ganuelas is a writer, baker and PF nerd in Washington State.

Photo credit: Frankie Leon, CC BY 2.0.

To celebrate The Billfold, we’re sharing some of our favorite posts. This piece originally published on January 20, 2016.

You’re telling your own story: You graduated college and you’re a grown-ass woman now. Tina Fey is your hero; Beyoncé, your preacher.

You know how to take care of you. You’ve learned self-defense. If any man ever hit you, you’d rip his eyes out. You’ve seen Mad Men, and if anyone ever sexually harassed you at work, you’d tell him to fuck right off, throw your coffee in his face, and wave two middle fingers as you marched out the door.

You get your first internship. You get your first credit card. You get to walk into Nordstrom, where your mom would never take you, and congratulate yourself with one fabulous black leather skirt, and the heels to match.

Your car? It’s the car of a college student. You get a lease, graduate from the rusted Civic to last year’s Accord.

You get your first student loan bill, and look at all those numbers.

Your life turns into a stock photo tagged “young professionals”: you and your new work friends, hanging out at the bar across the street from the office. The cocktails cost twice as much as you paid when you still measured time by semesters and nights by cans of PBR.

The college boyfriend gets serious. You move into his place, spruce it up by buying your first coffee table together. Ikea lets you put half on your newest credit card.

Your internship ends before you find a permanent job. You pay minimum payments, then max out your cards again buying two days’ worth of groceries and filling your gas tank half way.

Your bank app upgrades to a new feature that combines all your balances — the shiny Nordstrom card with the Visa and the Chase Freedom you were only supposed to use for emergencies — and tells you that somehow you owe people seven thousand dollars.

Your boyfriend offers to cover the rent for a while. You get a job a few months later, but you’re that many loan payments behind. Your first paycheck feels like a breath of air that gets sucked right out of your lungs.

Your new boss, who seems nice, calls you in his office, shows you a picture of his kids. He jokes about his son, then as you’re laughing, he puts his hand on your arm, gives you a little squeeze. You smile it off.

You wait to pay the electric bill while you’re gathering up the half you owe, and the lights go out. On your phone you see the email about the $50 late fee. Your boyfriend asks how you could be so stupid. “I am not stupid,” you say. You would never be with someone who called you names, but you would never be able to make first, last, and deposit right now, either.

You say yes to payday P.F. Chang’s with your new co-workers, because you want to make friends, your turkey sandwich sounds boring, and what’s one more charge? You buy a halter dress you know you can’t afford, because it makes you look like the successful young woman you want everyone to think you are.

Your boss tells you that you look nice in that dress, asks you to do a spin. Just to get the moment over with, you do.

Your boyfriend asks you how much you paid for it, says it makes you look chubby. You lock yourself in the bathroom until he bangs on the door so hard you think he must have hurt himself. After he falls asleep, you search Craigslist for places, and can’t believe how expensive rent’s gotten around town. You erase your Internet history and go to sleep.

A few weeks later, your boss calls a one-on-one in his office, walks up behind you, and stands too close. His breath fogs your neck. His hand crawls up your new dress. You squirm away. He says, “Sorry, I thought…”

You know what to do. You’re just shocked to find you’re not doing it. You are not telling him to fuck off. You are not storming out. All you’re doing is math. You have $159 in the bank and your car payment and your maxed out credit cards and you’ll die before you ask your dad for a loan again and it all equals one thought: I need this job.

“It’s ok,” you hear your voice saying. “Just forget it.” You scurry out of the room, survey the office half full of women, and wonder how many of them have secrets like the one you’re about to keep.

At the apartment, your best guy friend calls. After you hang up, your boyfriend says you laugh too much with him, that you’re flirting with him, probably sleeping with him. You say it’s not like that. You yell, he yells. You try to leave, he blocks your way. When you struggle to get by, he grabs your wrist in the exact way they pretended to in self-defense class, and you know to go for the eyes, but you don’t know how to go for his eyes. He yanks you back until you fall and crack the coffee table.

He seems so sorry, cries, even, so that night you lie down in the same bed. You stare up at the dark and try to calculate how long it would take you to save up the cash to move out. Telling yourself that he’s sorry, convincing yourself it was an accident, discounting this one time because he didn’t hit you, exactly, seems much more feasible than finding the money, with what you owe every month. The next time you go out as a couple, his arm around your shoulders, you look at all the other girlfriends and imagine finger-sized bruises under their long sleeves.

Wait. This story sucks. If it were one of those Choose Your Own Adventures, here’s where you’d want to flip back, start over, rewrite what happens to you.

You graduated college and you’re a grown-ass woman now. Tina Fey is your hero. Beyoncé, your preacher.

If any man ever hit you, if anyone ever sexually harassed you, you’d tell him to fuck right off. You want to be, no, you will be the kind of woman who can tell anyone to fuck off if a fuck off is deserved, so naturally you start a Fuck Off Fund.

To build this account, you keep living like you lived as a broke student. Drive the decade-old Civic even after the fender falls off. Buy the thrift store clothes. You waitress on Saturdays, even though you work Monday through Friday. You make do with the garage sale coffee table. It’s hard, your loan payments suck, but you make girl’s night an at-home thing and do tacos potluck.

You save up a Fuck Off Fund of $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, then enough to live half a year without anyone else’s help. So when your boss tells you that you look nice, asks you to do a spin, you say, “Is there some way you need my assistance in the professional capacity or can I go back to my desk now?”

When your boyfriend calls you stupid, you say if he ever says that again, you’re out of there, and it’s not hard to imagine how you’ll accomplish your getaway.

When your boss attempts to grope you, you say, “Fuck off, you creep!” You wave two middle fingers in the air, and march over to HR. Whether the system protects you or fails you, you will be able to take care of yourself.

When your boyfriend pounds the door, grabs your wrist, you see it as the red flag it is, leave a post-it in the night that says, “Fuck off, lunatic douche!” You stay up in a fancy hotel drinking room service champagne, shopping for apartments, and swiping around on Tinder.

Once your Fuck Off Fund is built back up, with your new, better job, you pay cash for the most bad ass black leather skirt you can find, upgrade to the used but nicer convertible you’ve always wanted, and start saving to go to Thailand with your best friend the next summer.

Yes, that’s a better story.

It’s a story no one ever told me.

It’s the kind I’d hope for you.

Paulette Perhach has been published at Salon.com, The Journal, and various other newspapers and magazines. She collaborated with the Hugo House writing center to produce The Writer’s Welcome Kit, an online course that helps new writers figure out where to start. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook if you’d like.