Monday, October 15, 2007

Fun now or later? Living like no one else stinks sometimes

I'm particularly eager to be debt free right now.
Saturday night was a downer for me. Hegazelle and I went out with some friends basically to just hang out. There were some that were going to participate in a seasonal activity that cost money, and the rest of us were just going to hang out. I am referring to it as a seasonal activity because I'm embarrassed for you to know what it was we wouldn't spend money on, and how much money the activity actually involved. Anyway, hegazelle had decided he did not want to spend the entire contents of his blow envelope on this activity so he would fall in the hanging out category. I had a little more (not much) in my blow envelope and would have liked to participate, but not if it meant leaving hegazelle to be bored without me. When we arrived at the place where the seasonal activities were taking place, it turns out that you can't just sit around and wait- you have to pay a small fee to sit at their tables and wait. I didn't particularly want to pay to sit around, so we left to go find a restroom. We couldn't go home because others were depending on us for a ride and were participating in the activity. Those who were hanging out gave me the impression that they were only doing so reluctantly for our sake- which made me feel like a HUGE heel. Long story short, I got a little sick on some extra sweet, free hot chocolate, and got someone to give our friends a ride back to their cars. We went home feeling like big broke losers.
Then I started thinking about how this "telling your money where to go" thing is painful sometimes. Our blow envelopes are seriously underfunded due to our current need to replentish our emergency fund and begin paying rapidly on our car debt again. Ok, I'll scrap my pride- we skipped something that would have cost us a total of $20 not because we had no money, but because we had decided ahead of time what was most important to do with our money. For instance, we have enough money in our vacation envelope right now that we could have had the fun our friends had on Sat MANY times over. I spent the evening a little blue because blow was low, all while having in my purse a food envelope with money, a car wash envelope with money, a household good envelope with money, and a clothing envelope with money; not to mention money tucked away in various other places. But we made our decisions and stuck by them, no matter how trivial it may have seemed to others. Ah yes, how wonderful and noble- no, those were not my thoughts on Saturday. My thoughts on Saturday were, it stinks paying attention to where every dollar goes. It stinks having debt. It stinks not being rich. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
It's a couple days later now, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. The next check will be a blow envelope booster. I may not have had the fun they had on Saturday night, but I've got a plan that's fixin' to make my life REALLY fun. No payments. Now THAT'S fun.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's funny, I've been feeling the same way. I had not allowed myself a blow envelope for a while due to extra expenses in September. But this month when invested in my new PC game I did so with a clear conscience. Feels great! Hang in there Shegazelle. We know the plan works and those fun time will be all the sweeter when we're debt free!

SheGazelle said...

We should start our own support group on here called "The first half of living like no one else STINKS!"
Glad you got a new game though. I plan to reward myself a little this weekend too!

Katie Booker said...

WOW...that is all I can say...WOW!!! I'm very impressed! You guys are doing awesome and soon we will all be feeling a whole lot better about the "First part!"
I'm feeling your pain...