Before I got the news yesterday about my coworker�s illness, I�d been planning to do an entry about money. I�ve been spending a shitload of it lately, and I was planning to challenge myself to see if I could go 30 days�maybe even six weeks�without doing any unplanned spending.

Some of what I�ve spent recently has been necessary� the Evil Childe did need summer clothes after all. Other spending has been justifiable, though sometimes the justification can be a bit of a stretch, as when we have takeout four nights a week because I�m �too tired� or busy to cook.

I know there are some major problems with my spending habits. First, my initial reaction to any problem I encounter is to throw money at it. Even though I realize that this is not always wise, it is still difficult to decide, on a case by case basis, which of these sorts of purchases are justified and which are not. For example, a couple of years ago we spent around a hundred bucks to buy a cordless phone with a headset� I hate talking on the phone anyway, and since I always feel so pressed for time I found myself avoiding �wasting� time talking to my family�a bad thing since my entire family lives out of state and my grandparents, father and brothers get to feeling pretty neglected when I don�t call and don�t pick up when they call here. The headset phone was a big step in the direction of solving that problem as it allowed me to move around and get other things done while I talked. Conversations with the family stopped seeming like such time-wasting intrusions when I could work on fixing dinner or getting the dishes done while chatting. A couple of months ago, however, the Evil Childe dropped the phone in a sink full of water and it stopped working. What with school and the horrible life-energy-sucking job making me feel pressed again, the family was back on �ignore� and I was feeling extremely guilty about that until we finally went out last weekend and bought another cordless phone. This particular purchase also solved a problem we�ve been having with Evil Childe unplugging the main phone and keeping it in her room� the new cordless phone came with two handsets.

Good purchase? I think so. But how about the couple hundred or so I spent on art supplies in the past few weeks? Yes, I did NEED much of what I bought, such as pens and paper, but others of it I might have gotten by without� it�s just that I was so worried I wouldn�t be able to do a good job on the project that I kept purchasing stencils, different pens, different art board, more stencils, etc. in the hopes I could pull off some semblance of a decent looking project. And the final thing I bought, a flexible curve to replace the horrible hateful French curves that were giving me so much grief, turned out to make all the difference in the success of my project. An expenditure of ten bucks saved me HOURS of frustration. Yet twelve dollars worth of stencils went unused, for this project anyway, as did the six-dollar compass I�m too uncoordinated to use effectively.

I�m thinking that with a little forethought and planning, I might have been able to do without a lot of the crap I bought. And I�m thinking that little bit of wisdom might also be applied to many of the problems I encounter in life.

Sometimes spending money does solve the problem, as in the above examples. But other times I�m wasting my dollars trying to buy things that really aren�t sold at Wal-Mart or Borders or the Container Store. When am I going to learn that spending $60 on makeup I probably won�t even wear is not going to make me feel less fat or less frumpy? Or that spending $10 on little plastic containers is not going to magically make me more organized (or that I could be just as organized using the shoeboxes I got for free?) Shouldn�t I know by now that reading a self-help book, even a good one, does not equal solving my problem if I don�t actually do anything else about it? Shouldn�t it have sunk in by now that restaurant food is rarely as pleasurable as I anticipate and often just makes me feel kind of crappy?

If I could only get out of that mindset that Spending Money = Changing My Life For The Better! The problem is that sometimes it DOES work, and it�s easy. It�s addictive in the same way gambling is. (The periodic payoff has been found in behavioral experiments to be much more effective in causing someone to repeat a behavior than a consistent, every-time payoff.)

What to do, what to do? Well, let�s see� maybe I should go buy a book on spending addiction? (Or maybe I could actually read the one I have! That might work too.)

There�s another twist to my money musings at the moment. With my work making me nuts and considering I�m probably going to be out of a job anyway at the end of the summer with no realistic hope of replacing it with anything that would work any better with my life and schedule, I�m thinking seriously about taking a year off to concentrate on school. I�m LOVING my classes and I can see myself being happy working in any one of several different graphic arts-related jobs.

A lot of what I�m earning on the job is going towards paying for school, and it�s nice to think I could do this without incurring any new debt. BUT� I�m stressed and unhappy with other aspects of my life and I don�t see any solution to that. The Evil Childe is already pitching in as much as she can be expected to, and the Prince doesn�t have TIME to help out around here� between his actual work day and his lengthy commute, he�s gone eleven hours a day and comes home exhausted. But somebody has to cook, or go fetch the takeout� somebody has to spend the time to do the budget and pay the bills, plan menus and get groceries, clean the dead food out of the refrigerator, clean the litter boxes and take out the trash, pick up hairballs and scrub pee stains out of the carpet, load and unload the dishwasher, do laundry, run errands, make phone calls� that�s already hours and hours worth of work every week and that�s not even counting any actual housecleaning!

Other than paying for school, I spend most of the rest of my paycheck on crap, restaurant food and lots and lots of groceries that go unused and ultimately rot and get thrown away. Being able to spend less discriminately is kind of nice and keeps the stress of feeling overly deprived at bay, but it�s costly in terms of time pressure and general aggravation.

Our budget works out ok on paper without me working. In actual practice it�s a little harder but has been doable in the past�

I�ve started the process of applying for financial aid. Though I won�t qualify for any actual aid, it is the first step to getting school loans. And I�m tentatively thinking about gritting my teeth at the life-sucking job through the summer and then quitting and starting fall quarter as a full-time student. Maybe having that light at the end of the tunnel will make the job situation seem more bearable.

Oh, did I mention that my currently-sick coworker has plans to go out of the country for two weeks in May? Guess whose problem THAT�s going to be. But when said coworker moves out of state at the end of summer? Guess whose problem that�s NOT going to be.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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