It’s been four years since I sold all and moved to Italy and there is a semi-famous festival nearby that I have managed to consistently miss every year for one reason or another. The Corteo Storico at Quattro Castella, which is very similar to our Renaissance festivals, is an annual festival to celebrate the 1,000 year old cash cow known as Matilde of Canossa. Part of what makes it so well known is the promise of two beautiful celebrities who come to town to play the parts of Matilde and Heinrich IV, King of Germany to reenact his famed trip from Germany to Canossa to grovel at the feet of Matilde and to return to the good graces of the Church. A story that spawned the phrase, “The Walk to Canossa,” used as both a battle cry of the Ottoman Empire to not cow-tow to any outside force and a metaphor for doing penance.

I don’t want to sound sour, but this is one of the very few times I’ve had to buy a ticket to get into a festival, let alone pay for parking outside of one. A Springsteen concert, no problem. A small medieval festival in a town I’ve been in countless times with a “Dancing with the Stars” runner up as the main attraction, my enthusiasm wanes. Do I sound sour?

Arriving about 9pm, most everything in the lower part of the town was closed up, the stage from earlier events broken down and all of the food carts covered over. This was the last day of the three day festival and the main action was was in the field beneath Castello di Bianello. The locals were dressed in period clothing, some as soldiers with weapons and others with the tools of their trades for their characters. The stadium where games of soccer are usually played was overflowing from end to end with spectators watching sword fights and fire dancers in front of a stage constructed for the final scenes with Matilde and Heinrich.

I wandered the mercato in the street below the stadium whose vendors peddled handmade goods of the period such as armor for knights, swords, handmade clothing, pottery, toys and beer. Well, no, the beer wasn’t handmade but it was the only thing I bought. Having explored the streets, I walked back up into the stadium just as the “Parade of 1,000” began, which was a procession of around a thousand locals dressed in costume walking out onto the field grouped by their individual communities. It’s not uncommon for summer festivals to run late, and this was no exception. Already after midnight the reenactment of Matilde and Heinrich wouldn’t begin for another half hour.

Eventually Matilde and Heinrich walked onto the stage and sat in their wooden thrones while the famous European story was recited by a faceless actor with a deep booming voice. And he recited. And he recited some more. My Italian has improved, but long periods of passato remoto make my eyes cross so I unfortunately missed a lot of the story, but Wikipedia saved me in the end. Apparently after Heinrich begged for forgiveness and his excommunication from the church was lifted, he returned to Germany only to lose his throne to evil Saxon warlord, David Hasselhoff. Oh Wikipedia, ever the source of accurate information.

But my solution was simple: I’ve just stopped worrying about it.

The realization that I’d be spending the same amount, if not more, living in New York or Los Angeles makes it a little easier to digest. It could even be rationalized as being a premium on living in a far away country and experiencing a new culture.

But that didn’t change the fact that I was still hemorrhaging money and needed to plug up my financial situation before I wound up a zingaro on the streets. Here’s a quick rundown of what I changed to help cope with the falling Dollar.

1. Dump the Greedy Banks

   Wells Fargo, in their fee-induced insanity, was charging me $5 per ATM withdrawal for the first two years that I was here. Every time I used my Wells Fargo credit card in Italy, I was charged a 1% foreign transaction fee no matter what I purchased. These fees added up over time to where I was spending in the neighborhood of $800 a year in nothing but fees. It was absurd!

   So I switched to a Capital One Rewards MMDA at the end of last year, and not only have I not paid a single penny in fees, they pay me to use the account (not to sound like a commercial). The interest rate on the account has fallen from 4.55% to under 3%, which is below the level of inflation, but far better than having my money sitting in a normal checking account losing a full 4% a year. It’s FDIC insured so there’s no risk and I even have a higher daily ATM limit than Wells Fargo would allow me, which means I no longer have to make two trips over two days to get enough money for rent. The only downside compared to a checking account is that I can only write 6 checks a month, but seeing as I’ve written only one check in the past three years, I think I’ll survive.

2. Pay Off the Credit Cards

   They say that paying off a $2,000 credit card balance at the monthly minimum at 16% interest will take around 14 years! If that doesn’t scare you into paying off those credit card balances ASAP, nothing will. From the money I’ve been saving by budgeting better, I’ve been making large monthly payments towards my sole credit card trying to knock that balance down to 0.

   What’s most surprising of all is not only is it easy to throw money at my credit card, I actually like doing it! Instead of feeling, “Oh no, there goes my new PS3!” I instead feel a sense of accomplishment watching my credit card balance drop like a rock and knowing that the faster I pay that off, the less of my money those bloodsuckers will get. And the money I save in interest payments will more than afford me the creature comforts I’ve been lusting over.

3. Make a Budget

   Not knowing where your money is going is the fastest way to end up completely broke. I couldn’t figure out where all my money was going every month or why I had very little to show for what I spent, and that’s a scary feeling. I began keeping all of my receipts and using Quicken to keep track of what money goes where. You can’t write a budget if you don’t know how much you’re spending.

   I then created a budget based on what I was currently spending and found ways to tighten up my outgoing budget. I’ve also begun setting aside a certain amount of money each month for the inevitable biannual insurance, heat payments, and annual events like Christmas. Instead of fretting the month before that money’s due, I slowly pay for it throughout the year by setting aside that money month by month. Paying those big biannual bills doesn’t seem so daunting anymore.

   Another advantage of keeping a close eye on my finances is that it helped me realize how much I was blowing on useless crap that I didn’t really need, which brings me to my next point.

   
   
4. Cancel Useless Subscriptions

   I brought a Vonage VOIP phone with me when I moved here that cost me $25 a month. The plan was that it would act as a cheap alternative to make and receive calls to the US once I had found a place to live and had DSL hooked up. The problem, however, was that I was stuck on dialup for the first 2 years that I was here, which made my shiny new VOIP phone completely useless. Even though I couldn’t use it, I didn’t cancel my Vonage subscription until after about 18 months of wishful thinking that DSL would arrive someday. By the time I decided to accept reality, I threw away $450 for something I never used once.

   To jab some salt to the wound, after I finally got DSL and called to reactivate my service with Vonage, they politely informed me that my equipment is so old that I’ll have to spend more money for new equipment before I could sign up again!

   Even the smaller subscriptions for various services that only cost a few Dollars a month add up over time. I reviewed everything that was sucking money out of my bank account on a recurring basis and canceled nearly everything, leaving only the bare necessities. And to be honest, I don’t miss any of it. If it’s not something you can’t live without, dump it. I gained an extra $100 a month doing this.

5. Telecom Italia Wants to Screw You Over

   I’ve gone from spending upwards of €600 every two months for phone and electricity to just under €90. One way I managed to do that was because I discovered that Telecom Italia offers the same products in a couple of different ways and will sell you, or automatically sign you up for the most expensive version if you don’t specify which one you want. For instance I was using pay-per-minute dialup for nearly 2 years, spending between €450-500 every billing cycle before I discovered that they offered an unadvertised dial-up service called Teleconomy that costs only €12 a month. I instantly started saving over €400 per billing cycle with a single phone call.

   To save on my electricity bill, I stopped running the electric heater when it gets a little too cold and instead learned to put on more clothes. I also try to run my laundry early in the morning or late at night during off-peak hours and have been a little more vigilant about turning off the lights when I leave a room. My most recent electricity bill for two months was only €56.31. My phone bill, a whopping €31.00.

6. Dave Ramsey is Smarter Than You

   I discovered Dave Ramsey through a well-known guy in a forum I frequent who described in detail how he got out of $40k in credit card debt in a little over two years after listening to Dave Ramsey’s CDs. Dave Ramsey is a financial guru who has a radio show on AM that I’d heard of, but never listened to. That testimonial changed all of that and I got my hands on his 14-CD Financial Peace University program and listened to it back to back over the course of a few days. The value of the knowledge I gained from the CDs is incalculable and listening to them was one of the best decisions I had made all year.

   He talks about budgeting, planning for financial emergencies, what types of investments are good, which ones you should avoid and all around strategies for not finding yourself on the corner begging for change. He shows how to budget if your monthly income fluctuates each month and solid planning tips for saving up for a new car or even a house. The CDs aren’t about how to make millions through shiesty scams, but instead talks about managing the money you have and discovering just how far you can stretch it. This is a highly recommended series to listen to and I wish I could’ve handed it out to everyone during Christmas. Listen to this man, he will save your sanity.

By doing those six things, I’ve become much more financially secure and the Dollar isn’t hitting nearly as hard as it could be. In fact, the pinch isn’t much harder than it was 3 years ago when I was fresh off the boat because I’ve found ways to stretch what I already have even further than I ever thought possible.

If I were to think of a single word to describe me, “scholar” wouldn’t be it. Throughout my school years, studying mathematics or writing a long thesis would require a level of focus that, at the time, I never believed I possessed. Lectures would waff in through one ear and rocket out of the other like oxygen being sucked out through a hole in the space station. My classroom notes contained more drawings than words and I had so many zeros in the grade books that it was presumed that I was partially comatose.

Somehow, I managed to graduate.

I wasn’t completely brain dead, though. By the age of 15 I had discovered that subjects such as architecture, astronomy, computers, and business lit a fire inside of me. I started a web design business at 15, a software company at 18, and now do web development full time, which allowed me to move over here. I finished a book on LLC/Corporate law in a day and it was one of the best reads I’d had in a while. Who knew lawyers could be funny? I just had to find what interested me and go after it.

But nothing has prepared me for the level of hell I’ve stumbled into now. What could be another canto in the Divine Comedy if it hadn’t given Dante such nightmares that it couldn’t be scribbled to paper is now my vacation spot within the inferno. You guessed it, I’m studying for my Italian driver’s license.

DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUUM

Not since sitting in Ol’ Lauderdale’s Algebra II class on exam day have I felt like such a moron. A foolish assumption that after having driven for a decade that learning the road laws over here would be a piece of cake, but I have been proven wrong. Compared to the US equivalent, the driving test here reads more like an entrance exam for MIT.

Allow me to elaborate with some examples of the more choice questions:

1) What might a sign mean? Not what does it mean, there is a huge difference.
2) What sign might be accompanied with another sign?
3) Does one sign appear before or after another sign? For instance, does a yield sign appear before or after a railroad crossing sign at a track crossing?

And then there are the infamous intersection questions:

Who goes first?

What’s on second?

I don’t know’s on third.

Pray for me.

I also learned that Italian politicians do the same thing, except here they have a name: “pianists.”