What is Cash on the Barrelhead?

Let’s be honest. Before everything went to hell at the end of 2008, you didn’t save, or budget. You didn’t know anyone who talked about it, and wouldn’t hang out with those who did.

We were those people. And then kids happened. And then food and gas prices went to the moon. And you know the rest.

I started this blog in the summer of ’08 as a way to learn about saving money, getting out of debt, and getting to positive cash flow so my family can stop living in miserly misery.

I thought it would take a year. I can see now that this trip is open-ended, each step freighted not only with complex, conflicting, or useless advice, but also with personal and societal baggage. What does it mean to be wealthy? Or rich? Or frugal? Or cheap? What it meant six months ago is not necessarily what it means now, or will mean tomorrow.

Then there are the practical day to day struggles: Is it really possible to save money? To make smarter financial decisions? To do this at the end of a long-ass day?

Have you come to the right place? If somewhere in the middle of becoming a parent you realized that you were going to have to rethink everything you ever thought about money, then I hope this blog is for you. I’d appreciate hearing your own thoughts, questions, struggles, and advice.

Ultimately, I hope to entertain, inform, provoke, and occasionally make sense (avoiding the pun) of what makes the world go round.

Who’s Writing This?

I am not a financial planner or expert of any kind. I am a part-time, professional journalist (a WAHM, if you will). Eventually, I’ll build out some more pages here. My husband, also a writer, also posts here occasionally, although he prefers to remain anonymous. I also won’t name our two kids, a preschooler and toddler, although I can’t help but mention them. For the record, if my husband ever appears “like a jerk” here, as he likes to point out from time to time, know that he is the farthest possible thing from that. I’m just trying to accurately portray the curmudgeon I know and love.

Why ‘Barrelhead’?

The phrase, “cash on the barrelhead” was used a couple of times in a sci-fi movie, Dark City (1998).

I’d never heard it before and liked the sound of it. (Yes, it is also a country standard; I like this version by Dolly Parton.)

Dark City is pretty terrible, although culturally noteworthy in that Kiefer Sutherland’s wretched diction there may singlehandedly explain his reticence as agent Jack Bauer on 24.