Midlife Equity

I'm really rusty on this writing thing but here goes.

It's been nearly 20 years since I started this blog. That feels strange. Twenty years has flashed by so fast. So much has happened. Kids have grown and flourished into their own adult lives. No grandchildren yet, but maybe in a few years. I've had heartbreaks and recoveries and times of feeling like I just didn't care about much anymore. But now at 56 I'm feeling that midlife urgency to get things done and taken care of while I'm still here and able. Not to be morbid but if I'm average I've only got another 20 or so years of life, and that 20 years will go ever faster than the last 20. Priorities are shifting. Focus is much less on the future. It is on right now. Time is even more precious than ever. No more wasting time waiting for things to get done or waiting for other people to get their shit together or whatever. 

I feel like I've built up a bit of life equity. I'm talking about the value accumulated over time based on the difference between liabilities spent vs. assets gained. I'm been the bookkeeper for our business for the last 26 years so I just think of things in those kinds of terms. I'm not talking about the current use of the term equity as some social concept to justify discrimination against high achievers because it's not "fair" that some people do better in life than others. That's just life, people. I always wished I could be a rock star or super model but I don't have the talent or physical beauty for required. Painful as that realization was, it was what I had to accept. Anyway, life is not "fair" and everyone just needs to do their own best without trying to bring others down to their level just to feel better about it. 

My own equity I'm talking about does have social aspect but it is much more personal and intertwined with my marriage/partnership. All the years that I didn't spend money on things like getting my nails done all the time, designer clothes, or whatever other shopping/spending habits that others choose has created a type of savings account with this equity. (No judgment on those who do spend their "capital" on that stuff - it just hasn't been a priority for me.) I know this might sound "transactional" to some. That's another current buzzword to criticize certain ways of thinking. Well, at its most fundamental level life is purely transactional - input/output and exchange are the process of life itself. The sun gives the energy it got from its creation to all the plants and organisms on earth that then use that energy to grow themselves and then we use them to grow ourselves and we all convert that energy into other products that other things use to grow themselves and on and on and on. It's a cycle of exchange. Long term partnerships naturally involved lots of sharing and exchanging. Certainly, there are some things like emotions that don't necessarily work best under a transactional structure. I might get into that later. Sorry, I tend to go off on these tangents. 

Back to relationship equity. Over the 33 years of my marriage I've accumulated a bit of savings where I wasn't spending everything all the time. Now I'm looking at things that need attention. As things age they need repairs and maintenance. A lot of people my age decide to spend their equity on fixing their bodies with plastic surgeries or other procedures to look younger or whatever. And again, no judgment on that, but it's not my concern. Well, yeah, sometimes I think about having some "work" done on myself for appearance's sake, but not too seriously because that just hasn't been a thing for me ever so why start now? There's a lot of life baggage (similar to equity but undesired accumulation) connected to physical appearance. Growing up I was never told I was attractive. My appearance just wasn't important except that I was never thin enough. I was either invisible or too big. This probably explains my lack of desire to maintain appearances over my life. What's to maintain if you never had it? Sorry, another tangent. 

So instead of spending my equity on myself I am beginning to spend it on some big home maintenance projects. As a homemaker (along with the bookkeeping as my "career") home is super important. The state of our homes is often a reflection of the conditions of other aspects of our lives. This isn't necessarily a direct correlation. Sometimes people with the most immaculate homes have the most fucked up lives and relationships. And sometimes the most modest and ordinary homes have the happiest families. Clutter and mess isn't always a sign of dysfunction. It's often a sign of people living full lives. My house is generally clean but it is a working home. We work here and from here and it's all functional and lived in. I do like some nice things but it's just not all for show. (Just like my personal appearance.) But over time things wear out and need work to repair and maintain them. This year I've had the exterior painted professionally for the first time since we built the house in 2001. The cedar siding had been cleaned and sealed a few times over the years but it was always DIY and not necessarily done that well. Cedar is beautiful when it's new and newly pressure washed to remove the natural tannin stains that turn it gray-to-black. But it never keeps that fresh-cut look. It wants to be black. So I said "paint it black." Well, it's not pure black, which I would have liked just fine. It's a very dark gray, kind of charcoal color - the darkest that Sherwin-Williams makes - Black Alder - I think is the name. It looks awesome. I love it. It was a big job and cost a pretty penny but I had that equity and used it. 

Another big job that has needed to be done for over a decade is having the wrought iron pool fence painted. We put in the pool and fence 16 years ago and it's all held up pretty well, but as iron will do it had some rust and other issues. Last year I had a couple of posts and a gate replaced and there are a few more posts that will need replaced next year. But for so many years I've had getting it painted on the to-do list. That never was a real DIY option. So I finally just made the call and found the absolute best people to get that done. I am so happy with it! It's almost like having a brand new fence. It wasn't cheap. Getting it painted the right way was almost as much as getting it originally installed. But with Bidenflation it was really probably about a third (or even a quarter maybe) of what it would cost to install new now.

Having these things taken care of have energized me. Spending that equity on my home and surroundings has made me feel like the state of our home better reflects the state of our lives. There are several other projects that need to be done in the next year or so. The equity isn't all used up yet but I don't want to deplete it completely. There's another big painting job that I want done professional this year, and then the other projects are more DIY friendly. Spending on home maintenance seems like a much better investment than plastic surgery or whatever because barring some major natural disaster or something like that, this house will be here a lot longer than I will. It is an asset for my children. My body is not meant to be a legacy. It has already done its creating.