Category: General

I’ve been getting really excited the last week or so, because I’ve been expecting a very nice gift from my work next paycheck. See, we get paid twice per month, which normally comes down to being paid every two weeks, but if you’ve ever counted the weeks in a calendar, you’ll notice that there are 52 weeks in a year, not 48. This means that, if you’re getting paid twice a month, there are four happy occasions when you get paid for three weeks of work instead of two. Just a few hundred extra dollars tossed into your lap. The 15th of this month is going to be just such a happy occasion.

Was, I should say.
Oh, the money’s going to be there, but it seems I’ve already spent it. Every last dime.

My car broke.
It was the oddest thing. I’m driving along merrily to work when suddenly the car loses power. I thought the gear had slipped into neutral. Except when I revved the engine, I couldn’t hear any difference. Which is when I realized that the engine had died. So I put it into neutral and turned the key.

Nothing happened.
Or at least, it didn’t turn over. It did that cute little Rr Rr Rr thing, like cars do when they’re out of gas. If only I had been out of gas. I was a whole 2 miles from work, so I pulled over to the shoulder and called in, and my team lead came out to get me.

That was the night before last. Yesterday morning I had a coworker drop me off at the car and called a tow truck. I got towed to my mechanic of choice and walked the rest of the way home. They called at around 2:00 to tell me the problem. My timing belt slipped. Oh. And my spark plugs are really really dirty.

I’m thinking it was the spark plugs.

Anyway, it’s going to cost around $400. Ok. It’s going to cost exactly $400, which is a darned sight close to the “extra” that I was expecting to be taking home in about a week.

You know, the Lord is good, and He always provides in time of need. It’s just that, this one time, I wish He had at least stalled the need until the provision got there. Just 24 hours with the pleasure of a spare half-grand in my account would have been a very happy feeling.

You go talk to Him. I’m going to go home and feel grateful now.

Of all the things I’ve been thinking of all week, this is the one I end up talking about…

OK. See, I have this great little budgeting system. I read up a while back on managing your finances, that the biggest budgeting mistake that most people make is that they budget every penny into a planned expense. Because people are human, we naturally have to splurge, even if what we’re saving up for is something really really good.

For instance, even if I’m saving up for a wedding ring, which I really want to get, if I throw all my money straight into the ring savings pile, then I’ll eventually blow it on a giant aquarium instead. You’ve gotta have that exhaust valve or you’ll never make it.

So what you do is you budget your splurging. If I’ve got $50 of play money every week, I won’t be tempted to buy a $300 fish tank at the end of the month. So, miraculously, by spending $50 a week, I end up saving $100 a month.

Ok. So that sounded like that classic line “I spent $1000 at the mall, but look how much I saved!” But I kid you not, it does work. If you don’t plan to blow $50, you will eventually blow $300. And then you’ll be looking at this gorgeous fish tank in your living room, meticulously bowing before it every evening and morning, as you feed the fish. And every time you do, you’ll be thinking, “this could have been a new bookshelf.”

Not that I have a giant fish tank in my living room or anything.

As I was saying, I’ve got this budgeting system. I’ve got two check cards, each attached to a separate “free checking” account. They both have stickers on them. One card has a sticker that says “house,” (short for household), and the other has a sticker on it that says “expense.” The expense card works just like an allowance. Every Monday (which is like my Friday, since my weekend comes in the middle of the week) my bank automatically transfers a set amount from the “house” account to the “expense” account. The money in my expense account is the total sum of what I can spend that week on “fun” stuff.

That includes eating out, movies, video games… every day to day expense, but groceries and gas. Gas is so high right now, that it would really mess up my numbers. Besides, I can go 2 weeks on a tank of gas, so why should I put it on a weekly allowance?

Anyway, when Valerie was in town, a lot of that money went to “us” things, like fancy restaurants and sappy movies. Valerie gets really cuddly after sappy movies… (um. You didn’t read that, okay?) But now that mine affianced has fled to Italy, I have nothing romantic to spend my money on. Dressing up and going out to a fancy restaurant by your self is just really lame. So now I get to blow my money on stupid guy stuff.

Last week I bought a siphon for changing water in my fish tank. (Except I uh… I don’t have a fish tank. Ha ha ha ha… ?)

So last week, it was getting to be around Saturday evening, and I was thinking to myself, what is there for me to spend my money on? Fish tank is pretty much taken care of until somebody dies. New socks and underwear? No, I can last a while there. Guitar stuff? No… what I want in that department costs more than the weekly budget. Maybe I could buy a CD… But what good would that do? My car doesn’t have a CD player.

And then it hit me. My car has this gosh-awful stereo. ’91 Ford factory release tape player. Only the tape part doesn’t work. This would not be so bad—I still have the radio. If only I really listened to the radio. There’s only so much Prairie Home Companion a guy can take in a week. I’ve already priced a new CD player. But if I’m going to buy a new CD player for the car, I really need to go ahead and get the speakers replaced as well. Which comes to a total of around $250. And if I’m spending $250 on car work, there are a lot more important things to do on my car than buy a stereo. Like fix the seat belt, for instance.

But.. what I could do is buy one of those mini radio transmitters you hook up to your walkman. That probably would fit in the $40 budget.

So this morning, soon as the radio shack popped open, I popped in and got me a little radio transmitter. $32.00. Then I popped over to the hardware store and bought me a set of AAA batteries: $6.00. My weekly budget: $40. I have successfully splurged within budget.

The cool part is, when I got everything set up and was actually playing a CD on my car for the first time in nearly a year, I discovered a little cubby in my driver-side door (closest to the car antenna) that is just exactly big enough to hold the CD player on it’s side, where it won’t slide around when I turn.

Life is very happy.