It’s back to work for me tomorrow. The 80+-year-old secretary asked me to cover for her. Working for her on Fridays has become a bit of a norm, and I’m thankful for the hours. I think she enjoys having a three day weekend and she has more than enough vacation time on the books to take time off every week. Sadly, she says she can’t afford to retire. Based on how often her grown son comes into the office to “borrow” money from her, this could be partly true. If there was ever a case for needing to set boundaries, this is it! I wonder what her grown son will do when his mother is no longer around to sponge off.
I managed to (mostly) dig my way out to the road. The sun came out in the afternoon which helped with melting. I think I should be able to get through what I didn’t shovel but do plan on checking out the driveway later this afternoon. I haven’t been anywhere since Saturday, so I’m also curious about the condition of our dirt road. I talked to one of my neighbors who said it was in rough shape. Spring breakup is often challenging. In some areas of the road, you almost feel like you are doing some mud bogging. Eventually, it will dry up.
On a somewhat unrelated subject, does anyone know what happened to Absolutely Sweet Chaos? I know some bloggers get to know each other in real life and I’m hoping someone might know. She is also battling a lot of debt, so I found her journey interesting to follow. If anyone does have contact with her, please let her know she is missed.
I heard an interesting podcast regarding blow/fun money today. The wife wanted to budget $100/month towards this, but the husband felt it should all go towards paying down debt. Dave agreed with the wife. Hubs and I don’t have an official line item for this category. Should we decide to do something (which is extremely rare), we would take it from our grocery envelope (if eating out) or our miscellaneous envelope if there was something else we really wanted to do. Other than that, Hubs has been saving part of his monthly budget towards building a dock this summer. With him being away so much, we found it much easier (for budgeting purposes) for him to have a set amount each month. His spending has dramatically decreased knowing he can use his leftover funds for his dock! For those of you following a strict budget, do you budget for blow/fun money? If so, how did you decide on the amount?
I best check on the snow situation at the end of my driveway. If it is anything like our hill, I should be just fine.
See, the driveway really does exist!
Oh, THERE’s you driveway.:-)
I don’t know what happened to Absolute Sweet Chaos except that she’s probably still recovering from being sick. First there’s the 10 days of being SICK, then the catching up on all the chores phase. I bet she’ll be back soon.
We have two separate fun money categories, one for Dear Husband, and one for me. Keeps us from fussing over it. For example, if I want to go out to eat and he doesn’t, then the money would come out of my fun money. And vice versa. Usually, it’s just stuff like he’ll save a couple of months for a new pair of running shoes he wants and doesn’t have to check with me about it, or I’ll buy a new mystery book by my fave author and don’t have to check with him about it. He gets 80 dollars in his fun money, and I get 16. I just can’t think of enough stuff to buy to make it more than that for me.
I feel sorry for your older friend. I have a friend who is rescuing an older relative from a mooching son. My friend is turning her basement into a legal apartment so the relative can move in and move AWAY from the moocher. Yes, there will be rent, but it’ll be low. The apartment will be small but safe and independent. If you know your friend well, maybe you can suggest Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend, the book itself not the workbook. A lot of libraries have it, and it really helped me.
I hope she will be back. I know she is one busy lady.
As for fun money, I’m the same way. There is very little that I want/need. Keeps it simple!
I wish this lady could get away from her mooching son. Sad. Not sure that she’d read the book, but it would certainly do her some good if she would.
Hubby and I each have our own Blow Money. We each get $25. We both had a very large surplus so we haven’t taken it this year. Our birthday money goes into each persons envelope. I have used mine to go out to eat with friends. He used his to go to a car show once. If he wants something for his bike then he has used it. It’s no questions/judgements when it comes to the blow money. If I want to use it all for ice cream then I can.
That is what I think is important…no questions or judgments. I’m fairly certain I’d have a surplus too as there really isn’t anything I want!
Well you know we do $100 each per month for WAM/Blow $(Blow $ just sounds so 1980’s to me lol). It’s working good so far in retirement. Of course, we don’t have debt to ditch so there is that.
That is one heck of a driveway!!lol
Hey, the 80’s were good times! Don’t knock ’em. Lol I cannot begin to imagine what I’d do with $100 each month! I know my frugal self would have a hard time spending it.
The driveway, tell me about it…and the picture only shows a small part of it. I definitely got my exercise in the past two days.
We also do $100 apiece a month. That has to cover everything though – if there is something we run out of (soda, coffee, etc.) and the grocery budget is empty, that comes out of personal $$. We picked that # because it was the least DH would do to stay on board with so…not a battle I was going to fight, especially since I certainly use mine.
I completely get the whole keeping the DH on board thing. It is exactly why my Hubs gets what he gets. It’s okay with me because at the end of the journey we will be so much better off for having done so. Yep, you pick your battles.
We each get a certain amount. Clothes, food on the run, impulse purchases and anything else we want comes from that budget. Needs come from our joint budget.
I had a similar situation with deciding the amount. My husband requires a certain amount, so I get the same. I have managed to save what feels like a huge amount of money from that over the last few years, lol.
Since we don’t have consumer debt, just a mortgage at a very low interest rate, I consider it a long-term emergency fund. It gives great peace of mind.
I look forward to being able to do something similar. RIght now it would kill our snowball, so for the time being, I’m willing to go without.
I can’t imagine working at 80 years old! I hope Jennifer is okay, i do love her blog too and her pictures of her new home.
I know. The crazy thing is she can run circles around the rest of us! I sure hope Jennifer keeps posting. I’d miss her.
We haven’t had a certain budget for pocket money, but I often think we should. We both just buy if we feellie it, but are generally thrifty people so I don’t know if it woudl atter much.
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That is where I’m at. Right now my eye is on a much bigger prize (getting out of debt) so not much entices me.
Gosh I hope I don’t have to be working at 80 years old! A lot of the older folks in this small town work too Guess that’s what keeps them young
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I so agree!
We have a line item in our budget for fun money. We get $120 per month each. It lets him do his coffee some days and dinner with a friend once a month and I save mine and do lunch with friends once a month and maybe a pedicure or some good candy. Usually we both have a little extra at the end of each month. its just nice to have some money that we can treat ourselves with and not have the budget priorities derailed. Less guilt and record keeping for both of us.
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