materialism, money, raw silk, dovetail joints

Lately I've been carrying around a lot of anxiety regarding money.

The money concern I am dealing with now is the opposite of the money concern I had a year ago. In 2005 I went through a real drought with my freelancing work, and my bank accounts pretty much bottomed out. I was able to scrape by, but that's about it.

Last year I set aside freelancing, got a steady job and started saving. I replaced my wheezy 13-year-old car, opened a Roth, established a money market account, started a relationship with a financial planner, and started maxing out my contributions in my new company's 401(k) plan.

It was a good year, financially speaking.

Now I'm feeling flush and would like to buy some Stuff® for my apartment. Ah, the lure of the big box retail store! I would like some grown-up furniture. Most of the furniture I own was given to me when I graduated from college, or secondhand stuff I bought over the years. It has a certain "vintage Holly Hobbie" quality. The bed is particularly troubling. In addition to the vestiges of old marriage juju still clinging to it, it's squeaky, too small, and prone to collapse at inopportune moments, as on Saturday when my boyfriend made the grave error of sitting on it. I'd like a new couch, too. (I'm currently fixated on this one.)

However, when I begin to think about separating myself from a decent amount of money, I am hit with a wave of anxiety over my parents' financial situation.

To put it mildly, they are not so great with money. I know that it's easy for a child to criticize her parents when she doesn't really know anything about their financial reality, but I have a few clues. First, they just started saving about five years ago for retirement -- and they're in their early 60s. Second, they still owe a tremendous amount of money on their house -- which they bought with a lot of assistance from my grandfather back in the 80s. They just don't make a lot of money. What they do make, they seem to spend pretty quickly.

My brothers are also concerned about my parents' finances, but they have money issues of their own. One works part-time as a schoolteacher, and one works in the restaurant industry and lives in an expensive city. We are a solvent bunch, but we aren't exactly rolling around in big piles of Benjamins.

As I languidly leaf through this Pottery Barn catalog, I'm wondering: What is the best response to my parents' financial situation? Do I need to be saving for their retirement as well as my own? If so, what do I need to save -- where do I draw the line?

For some reason this issue feels hopelessly thorny. And really irritating. I would like to arrive at some point of rest with this question, because I've been struggling with it for a couple of years now. I feel like I'm being slowly eaten to death by a pack of crows. The genuine pleasure of enjoying my money is pecked away by these worries.

I crave your advice, if you have any to offer. In the meantime, I shall be selecting the finish of my choice on my Farmhouse Collection Canopy Bed, and perhaps picking out a cute little throw rug to tie the room together.