Be afraid...be very afraid

Can you imagine how easy it would be for a giraffe to sit in a rocking chair?  a baby to spell its own name?  a shooting star to play baseball?

That's how easy it is for me to work on a budget---and that's just the part where you make the spending choices, not where you actually achieve synchronicity between choices and resources.

I've been reading budgeting tips and calculating, and researching appropriate percentages and calculating, and screaming and calculating and I can't get it right. 

There was a time when our budget was easy.  Dave and I lived with my brother and we put our names on the receipts for things we'd agreed to share and got to use the rest of the money, if there was any, for improving our lifestyle.   It was an up and down  existence but very simple.

Generally though, as we matured, Dave worked on the budget, shared it with us all and sweetly reminded us of the consequences if we overspent.  Some of us always did, and I am obviously using the royal "we".  

It really got messed up if I got vacation pay or a union boost because I had already spent that money several times over by the time it actually hit my bank account, and then there was our incompatibility about the wonder of credit.....only I thought it was wonderful, and worth the high interest rate.  We chugged along though, mostly because I only thought of budgets and money responsibility twice a year---just before Christmas and just after, and because David is the most forgiving and generous of men. 

We're now at a place where we really have to live on our pensions though, so it's start from scratch.  And because I am the person who seems to spend the most outside of what we consider our necessities, it seemed like a good idea for me to work on the budget and get to undestand our new realities.

I'll have to stop buying books, but we've got a great library system. I'll have to choose between cosmetics and skin care and I know where that takes me.  We'll have to actually look at the price of groceries and I might have to cut back on my wine intake.  Maybe I can grow my hair, get involved in a shoe exchange, learn to make soap and candles or remember how I used to make clothes.  

Or maybe we'll give up the condo and just rotate amongst the kids. We promise to buy the beer.