A Cautionary Tale

Saturday night

I was going over a printed copy of our family's monthly budget, which was color-coded. The white lines were bills and regular expenses; the orange and darker red lines were items that we used to buy with our discretionary income, but which we've stopped buying, due to a renewed focus on saving money. Scrolling down the list of the discretionary items, I focused on one of them, and said, "You know, maybe we could still buy this..." and I began to erase the color from the line. As soon as I did so, I shrank and fell through the line in the report, into flames below.

*****

Yikes.

We haven't done away with all discretionary spending, but after I was laid off my wife spearheaded the drawing up of a tight family budget, so we could see where every penny was going. Before we did that, I said, "I don't know where my money went." It was pretty shocking how much was spent on dining out -- particularly when I ate lunch out during the week. Nowadays I bag my lunch every day. We pay all of the bills, sock some money toward the savings plans, and we each get an equal allowance that we can spend in any way that we choose. I know everything that I want at all times and keep lists of CDs and DVDs at the ready, so my allowance doesn't seem to last very long, but it's a good situation. All the bases are covered, and we get to have some fun, too.