I loathe the idea of being “one of those people” who always complains about how little money they have. And yet, I’ve sort of become that person anyhow. I do talk about it more here than I do in real life around people I’m not comfortable with. Who wants to admit that they are living paycheck to paycheck? Worse yet, what if someone thought I was using that to get sympathy or attention? I assure you, that’s not the case. And I’m well aware there are people out there far worse off than we are. I also realize that we aren’t exactly financial geniuses either and could maybe do a better job managing things so we’re not always scraping together our pennies. We’re not the worst, we’re not the best. We’re actually pretty average. Still, it smarts when I see people around us who don’t seem to have the same pressures and worries that we do.
And I know that’s not 100% accurate either. And I do know that other people do manage their money a lot better than we do. And I do realize that a lot of people use credit cards whereas we NEVER do. And I mean NEVER. We learned from our college days that credit can really bite you in the ass when you’re not paying attention. Since we haven’t wanted to get caught like that again, we’ve avoided credit cards ever since. So when we go shopping, we have to have the money on hand (or rather, in the bank) to buy whatever it is we’re looking for. Same goes for going out to eat, for putting gas in the car, for buying groceries. We hardly have anything on credit anymore which is a good thing, yes. But it means we STILL have that nasty old mattress to sleep on and most of our furniture has been handed down to us. And it is also why we have an as yet unlandscaped backyard. After all, it isn’t always easy to just have several thousand dollars on hand to pour a concrete patio or put in a sprinkler system or put down sod.
Rarely do we ever purchase things for ourselves. It’s been over a year since I’ve had my hair cut at a proper salon. Just last week I bought a replacement pair of flip flops for the ones that broke in Chicago and paid the grand sum of $8 for them. And I still feel guilty about that. A lot of my clothes don’t fit me, the pants and shorts are so big that a lot of them require a belt in order to stay up. But I honestly don’t feel I can justify purchasing new clothes for myself when that money could go to better things. Like gas. And groceries. Or paying the power bill.
We do make sure our bills get paid, one way or another. It simply means that there isn’t a lot left over for the more frivolous things in life. Most of the time, that’s okay. It’s a fantastic luxury that allows me to stay at home with our children. There are bound to be sacrifices in order for me to have this luxury. I knew that going in. And every day, every hour, every minute, it’s worth it. In all actuality, we’re doing pretty good. All things considered. We have a nice house to live in, our bills are mostly paid (heh), we have two vehicles to ride around in and we make it work month after month.
Still. It sure would be nice to go out to eat or be able to buy some nice clothes from time to time. And it’d sure be nice not to have to worry how we’re going to buy the next gallon of milk or the next gallon of gas. All in good time, right?
