The Coffee Shop Around the Corner

Last weekend, my husband and I got into a fight. It was a big fight. It happened in the car. Neither of us raised our voices. It was about money.

Money is in the top three reasons why couples split up, but "money" is a very broad term. What does that mean, exactly? Do couples split up because they make too little money for their lifestyle, or too much? What about the decisions on what to do with the money?

Our fight was not, in the literal sense, about money. It was about my dream of owning a small business, which costs money, which puts *our* money at risk, and which I can't talk about in front of my husband without him starting to wheeze a little around the edges.

To his benefit, I have to admit something here: I am a dreamer. There's a reason why I decided to stay home, and it's not the Y chromosome. It's because the 8-5 workweek -- and the mentality that comes with it -- makes me feel like a hamster at a wheel. It makes me feel small and insignificant and tired. I am a creative type, really. I write and take photographs and design another website, which I publicly claim (for better or for worse). I'm not a great artist, or a great writer, or a great anything. It is, however, what I enjoy doing. I keep hoping I'll make money at it, but I don't, and I just keep doing it anyway.

My husband is a very prosaic sort of person, the kind who would never take a vacation because he would just forget it was an option. I work in order for vacations to happen, and it never fails to amaze me when I eagerly inquire how much vacation time he has and he says, "I don't know." I have never not known. How can you not know? How can you not look, every two weeks, and say (to yourself) "Another .6 days! Woo Hoo!" Or whatever your vacation rate is.

Anyway, I am a dreamer, and among my dreams of publishing a book, or making money writing anything at all, I also like science and would like to go back to school for a science-related degree. I like to travel, and periodically try for a job with the foreign service. Or, when I'm feeling really wild, I cruise Dave's ESL Cafe, looking for jobs teaching English, and wonder how I can trick my husband into going along with me.

All the while he plods along, getting up every morning and going to work, putting a small amount of money in savings every week, paying bills and looking for better jobs and better work. Here's the rub, though; I don't look for "better" jobs, I look for "more interesting" jobs.

It would seem that a slow mover like my husband should really be the author of a personal finance blog instead of me, but I look at money the way I look at a job; it can be the vehicle to attain certain freedoms, like nicer vacations, early retirement, and a decent car. I would sell this house and everything in it, cancel my debt, buy a van and travel through Mexico for a year in a heartbeat, but I do have a practical side that feels responsible for my student loans and my children's education. I get it. I may not be good at it, but I get it.

So one of my dreams is to own a coffee shop (or a youth hostel, but I think the coffee shop would be easier). Of course, I came to this dream about 15 years too late; if I had started a shop when I graduated high school (1994) instead of now, I would probably already be financially free to a certain degree. But at 18, I was terrified of starting my own business, and everyone said "college!" and so off to college I went. I lost a lot of money, but I had a good experience. And experience is what living is all about, right? (I keep telling myself this as I write the loan checks)

Anyway, so my DH and I took the kids up to Mt. Lemmon, which is just north of Tucson, to play in the snow. We always go to Summerhaven, the little town at the top, and walk around and buy overpriced hot chocolates. It's just a weekend treat that we do every couple months, and I don't feel guilty about our $2.50 hot chocolates at all. We tend to stop at a little shop called The Living Rainbow, and we go in and goggle all the cool stuff.

The Living Rainbow is one of those quirky little shops where you can find things you just don't see anywhere else. For example, I can buy a t-shirt that says, "This generation plants the seeds; the next generation gets the shade," and by purchasing it, I ensure that one tree is planted. There are also fighting nun action figures, beads that melted in the Mt. Lemmon fire five years ago, and "unicorn" tarot cards. I love it.

The owner always remembers us -- my first child weighed nearly 10 pounds, and so did hers -- and this time, I stopped to chat with her, which I hadn't done in a very long time. I asked her how long she had owned the shop, and she said, 29 years. I was surprised! She looks very young. So I asked her how she had started it, and she explained that, 30 years previous, her husband had walked out on her and her two sons, aged three and one. She had no money, so she started the shop with just a few items, and everytime she sold one thing, she would use the profit to buy two more. She was so embarrassed by the fact that the shop was practically empty, that she put up a sign for "information," and would talk to and try to answer tourists' questions. When I asked her about her boys, she said that they stayed in the shop with her most of the time, although the town had a babysitting co-op that she participated in as well. I murmured my admiration for what she had done, and said that I sometimes thought of starting up a business but had always been too afraid, and at that she looked me in the eye and said, "Anyone can start a business. You could too."

To be continued in the next post.