In this week’s Ten Money Questions, we speak with Mir Kamin of Woulda Coulda Shoulda. Mir is a writer, single mother and contributes to Mommy & Family here at BlogHer. In this interview she provides us with some amazing insights into what I’ll dub the “Money & Family” category. Kids cost money and often it takes a frugal whiz working some budget magic to hold it all together. I enjoyed her thoughts. I’m sure you will too!

1. I suspect that most BlogHer members know you for the Woulda Coulda Shoulda blog, but you also publish WantNot.net, a frugal blog about living with less. How do you define thriftiness?
To me, thriftiness is a state of mind where you live below your means as a matter of course. Just because you CAN pay full price for something doesn’t mean you SHOULD. If you can get it cheaper, and have that much more money to sock away in your savings (or spend on something you might not otherwise treat yourself to), why wouldn’t you? I also find that ferreting out deals (at least for me) 1) causes greater thoughtfulness about what I’m spending on and 2) causes more of an “attitude of gratitude” about my life.

2. What is your most significant memory about money?
I’m not sure how old I was... maybe 6 or 7... when my mother took my brother and me down to the bank to open savings accounts. We got the little printed passbooks that I think don’t exist anymore, and she explained about interest accruing and how our money would grow. I’m sure I didn’t grasp the details, but I remember being awed by the notion that my money would make more money if I was just patient. I’m not a patient person by nature. But it sounded like magic to me; mystical growing money! Thus began my love affair with having money in the bank.

3. What is your worst habit around finances?
Believe it or not, I’m lousy about balancing my checkbook (and I still do it on paper). I keep meaning to move to Quicken but I haven’t, yet. Now, on the one hand, I am so careful to watch my spending and keep a “buffer” amount in my checking account, it’s not a big deal because I never bounce a check or anything (in fact, the error is almost always in my favor, when I can’t reconcile). On the other hand, I’m preaching money habits and half the time my checkbook won't balance. Consider me duly ashamed.

4. When you gave up your career to stay at home with your children, what were some of the adjustments made in shifting to one income? How did this further change after your divorce?
My ex-husband always made more money than I did, so we started “living on his income” years before we had children. My income went into savings and we pretended it didn’t exist. So the actual arrival of the kids and my subsequent “retirement” didn't feel like much of a difference.

After my divorce, things got a little dicey. As I floundered for a new career I bounced between unemployment and what I refer to as my underemployment; neither made enough money to bring me even close to my prior standard of living. While unemployed I had to remove money from savings each month just to pay the bills, and that just killed me, even though I knew I was lucky (many people wouldn’t have the savings to draw on, and would’ve gone into debt). I made some changes, tightened the belt a bit more, and now that I’m back to making a decent living, I’m trying to strike a balance. I’m back to putting money in my savings, for example, but I’ll also get a fancy cup of coffee now and then without freaking out about it.

5. If you could buy one thing right now what would it be?
Is this like if I won the lottery, or just if I was buying something unnecessary that I could afford? If the former, I’d buy The Perfect House in Georgia, even though we still have two houses to sell. Heh. If the latter, would you believe I'm trying to work myself up to buying a Superhero necklace? It’s not that I can’t afford it, really, it’s that it seems like such a luxury to me and I’m not quite ready to drop that much money on something that I absolutely do not need. (I will buy one, eventually, and I will love it, and be both glad that I waited and glad that I finally did it.)

6. You once wrote, “Too many people live their lives as slaves to the almighty dollar, either because they’re sure they need more stuff or because they worry about affording the stuff they need.” Can you elaborate on your personal money philosophy?
Look, money is nice. I like money. And having stuff is nice. But neither money nor stuff are as important as most people (particularly here in America) make it out to be. I want to have enough money for the things I need and a few things I don’t, and I don’t want it to take on unnecessary importance in my life beyond that.

I believe in saving enough money to weather a crisis. I believe in donating generously (I tithe, and though I understand that’s not everyone’s bag, I firmly believe that giving away a significant portion of your earnings can only improve the quality of your life AND your finances). I believe most of all in paying attention to how you think about money -- and then changing your outlook if you’re obsessing over spending (either because you appear not to have enough or because you're anxious about it for some other reason).

7. You admit in one post that you go into “this sort of preparing-for-my-death mode” before taking a trip. Have you taken the same care with planning for retirement?
When I worked in an office as a salaried employee, I diverted the maximum allowed into my 401k and called it good. These last few years, my retirement planning had fallen by the wayside for a bit as I got back onto my feet and into a regular earning groove. Just this year I put my new strategy into place, although now that I’m getting married I’ll have to tweak it again. It’s always on my mind, though. I’d venture to say that retirement was the scariest part of the lean post-divorce years, knowing that I wasn’t putting away what I should, but hoping I could recover from it later.

8. Which is more important: how much money you make or how you spend it?
Definitely how you spend it. I’ve seen people living much richer lives (in every sense of the word) on smaller incomes and people who should be able to afford it all having nothing but debt and aggravation. It’s all about the mindset (and a little bit about the execution, thereafter).

9. Do you and Otto (the handsome and wonderful man you’re soon to marry) see eye-to-eye on money? How would you rank this in the “required compatibility” column for most successful relationships?
I think that couples who don’t see eye-to-eye on money are in for a lot of arguments. And that doesn’t mean agreeing on every penny, by the way, but more having a framework that works for both of you. (Say, you agree on a designated “play money” amount for each month and then don’t make each other accountable for that or hassle your spouse over their CD habit if it falls within the specified parameters.)

I’d say that Otto and I have had divergent philosophies in the past but that he has made a lot of changes in recent years on his own, as well as appreciating my philosophy as a good way to go. By the same token, he’s helping me to relax and better enjoy the occasional splurge. We often joke that I’ll be in charge of the budget, but he’ll be in charge of actually balancing the checkbook.

10. Before your children apply for their first credit card, what lesson do you hope they learn from you about money?
I already talk to my kids about money all the time, from the way their allowance is structured (with percentages set aside for savings and donation) to sharing my own reasoning process with them as I spend (“We don’t need this right now, let’s wait until it goes on sale”). I hope they’re learning all sorts of financial lessons in the process. But if we’re talking about credit cards, I hope they learn what I consider the Cardinal Rule of Plastic: Never buy anything you can’t afford to pay for in cash. Credit cards are convenient and I use mine all the time, but if you can’t use it with a same-as-cash mindset, you shouldn’t have one.

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Read other interviews in Nina’s Ten Money Questions series at Queercents.