I went through our budget this week. With Steve’s paycheck, after we pay the mortgage, student loans, car payment/tags/insurance, gas/electricity, water, trash, cell phones, cable/internet, groceries and gas, there is only $150 leftover for everything else. Everything else includes home maintenance, car maintenance, Target/Walmart (dish soap & toothpaste), clothing, gifts, entertainment, dining out, knitting, beer (not a part of the grocery budget), and plane tickets or gas to go visit family. To say nothing of things like home improvement or new furniture or anything like that. And savings? What’s that?
So it is no wonder that I feel constantly compelled to work. When the boys are asleep, I feel like I should be working. When they are awake and behaving, I feel like I should be working. When they are awake and behaving badly, I am pulling my hair out. And I am tired. Tired all the time.
Recently I saw a list online of one hundred things you can do to save money. The only thing on that list that we don’t do? We have cable. Basic cable. No Tivo. No digital box. Steve and I haven’t gone to a movie together since we were dating. We don’t go to concerts. We hardly ever eat out. There is all sorts of stuff we don’t do. But we do enjoy watching a little tv. Sports. Discovery and History channels. Fox News. Our cable and internet are a package deal, so we would only save $30 a month if we dropped cable. I never have the tv on during the day, but I do feel like I get my money’s worth on the weekends and evenings when I do watch a show or two. We may drop it after football season, though. But that’s beside the point.
I’ve really been struggling with how much work I get done (and how much money I make) and how much of a life I have outside of work. We just finished up an issue of the magazine. [I do technical editing for a knitting magazine from home.] Technical editing is fairly intense work, but the last week or two before we finish an issue reminds me of dead week and finals in college. By the time it’s over, you are so tired you can hardly think. But you still have to write a coherent essay (or find errors in a pattern) while working under time constraints. [I don’t do well with deadlines. They just get me in a tizzy and my productivity goes south.]
I try so hard to manage my time well and make the most of every dollar we have. But sometimes it seems that I have nothing to show for it but fatigue and an empty checking account.
I was complaining about this to my parents the other night, and my mother told me, “But you have a quality of life that you get to enjoy.” Yes. As I write this, I am listening to children marching around the house singing Jingle Bells at the top of their lungs. Well, Joey’s only doing the stomping part. But still. Quality of life. Indeed.
Sometimes, what I wouldn’t give to have the privilege every day of working without being interrupted by small children (or trying to tune them out while keeping them from tearing down the house). My husband complains about getting a phone call while he’s walking through a corn field. My bleeding heart.
Then again, I do get to be here when Joey’s walking around the house in his big brother’s slippers. After my parent’s visit in July, Ben informed me that Grandma says she wears house slippers. “But I wear car slippers,” he told me. Yes. Of course.
And did you know that there are two kinds of cows? Grass cows and milk cows. The grass cows are brown and eat grass. And the milk cows are black. Ben informed me of this the other day. The things you learn…
I really do somehow need to get a grip, though. Our editor is on vacation for two weeks, and I chose to go on vacation along with her. There are so many things around the house that have just been neglected. I need to figure out how to set boundaries and guard them better. How to work and get things done and make money without losing my sanity.
Easier said than done.
going to work every day does have a few advantages, but I feel like I missed out on ALOT by not being home with the kids. Of course, now they’re in school, so I wouldn’t see them all day anyway, but given a choice I’d still choose to be a SAHM. The biggest problem is that our budget looks alot like yours…except Andy and I are putting 2 paychecks into it instead of one. We paid on medical bills for YEARS after Andy’s accident, and while I have always been fairly responsible with $$/credit cards, when I married Andy I married a fairly significant chunk of credit card debt. Add to that 3 different periods of unemployment/unpaid leave for Andy, and you can see why we might not have much money. We get by fine, as long as we’re not frivolous in our spending, but we’re sure not making any headway on our savings.
I haven’t done any work for pay since I got pregnant again this spring. Sometimes I wonder if I am getting my priorities straight, especially when I have to do the monthly re-arrange the debt to keep all the creditors contentedly deceived into thinking they are getting paid off. But I can’t neglect my little one (and a half). And the garden must be put up when the harvest is ripe or there was no point in planting it and there will be nothing to eat next winter. So the jobs-for-pay still wait on my desk month after month. I wish I could do them. But worrying about what isn’t getting done will only keep me from enjoying what is getting done–diaper changes and washes, peach canning, napping with baby . . . . So focus on the best and leave the rest. 🙂