Always budget for a carousel ride
Posted
Dec 28 2007, 08:37 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Last week I rode the Holiday Carousel in downtown Seattle. For several minutes I was about 7 years old and reliving my favorite part of the Cumberland County Fair, except that we called it the "merry-go-round."
For a $2 donation, I got to be a kid again. I shook off the residual stress of my most recent university quarter. I was in a great mood for the rest of the day.
I even got a New Year's resolution out of it: that in 2008 I will create a budget category called "fun."
Mandatory splurges
I tend to deny myself many things that I feel I can't afford. They don't even have to be big things: You just spent $4 on a sandwich when you could have gone home and eaten. Never mind that this sandwich was consumed after seven hours of library work – I still should have saved the money.
And too often, my wishes and wants are riders attached to the legislation of other people's needs. (I suspect this is true of many middle-aged women.) For example, I'll sometimes take my daughter and her fiance to a movie. I don't treat myself to a movie – someone else has to be involved to justify the expense.
In an article on frugal burnout, Liz Pulliam Weston asked readers how they meet financial goals while still having a decent quality of life. One suggestion was to build a small splurge fund into the budget "to waste as (you) please." In fact, one reader makes it mandatory to spend that money each month.
"Even the tightest budget needs a little give," Weston notes, "or the whole thing is likely to go out the window."
A post from partner blog The Simple Dollar talked about the "spontaneous enjoyment" that can accompany a splurge. Normally, author Trent Hamm wouldn't have purchased a $3 candy bar. But doing so created not just a fun moment, but a lasting memory with the people he loves.
"The value was in the uniqueness of the moment," Hamm writes.
Desperate little economies
Thanks to a part-time writing job, my budget isn't as tight as it was when I wrote "Surviving and Thriving on $12,000 a Year." But I have trouble remembering that. I still fear being broke. I still seize on desperate little economies.
This week, for example, I'm going to see my grandmother and father. We're all getting older, and I'd rather go for a visit than a funeral. Such things are important, and I'm making the trip for under $500.
Yet while I'm there I'll hesitate to drop $5 or $6 for one of the region's famous cheesesteaks, because I could save a few bucks by getting a burger from McDonalds' dollar menu.
I can get a dollar menu item right here in Seattle. But I can't get a decent cheesesteak anywhere outside the Delaware Valley area. What good is a salary, even a part-time one, if I can't spend some of it?
Balance is what I'm seeking. If anyone out there has some advice on how to achieve balance, and to make it stick, I hope you'll post a comment.
I think the carousel was a good start. Incidentally, I was not the oldest kid on it -- not by a long shot. There were a couple other middle-aged and elderly women riding, without their grandchildren. And they were smiling as widely as I was.
