Since a certain person who will remain nameless recently took a significant bite out of financial crime, I find myself facing wholly different circumstances on that front to go with my different circumstances on every other front. While part of the plan is to try to get a job that can offset things until I move somewhere affordable like New Mexico, part of the plan must also account for the possibility that I will be unable to get a job that works with my schedule. And even if I do, I don’t want to be spending a lot of reserve cash on this year.
As a result, I’ve made it a goal to spend at an annual rate of $20,000 this year. Which would be fine in our old housing situation, or in Nuevo, but is pretty difficult when I splurged on rent to live in a nice place in Highland Park instead of the sketchier parts of New Brunswick. I’ve been trying to think of spending in terms of a daily rate, to really break down what a budget looks like day in and day out. It’s by no means the first time I’ve tried spending on a budget, but perhaps the first time in eight years that it’s mattered this much.
In a daily spectrum, $20k/year is $54.79 a day. So what does my daily expense chart look like?
$6.33 a day for everything else. Whew. Given that that includes food, this is looking like a tallish order. I managed to spend pretty cheaply in today’s trip to Stop-N-Shop, but the budget was blown by a necessary restocking of Emergen-C stockpiles brought on by the recent not-quite-so-miraculously-avoided illness. I’m already at the coughing (final) stage and the symptoms have been mild throughout, so I’m counting myself pretty lucky. At least I managed to find the latently elusive Lemon-Lime flavor. A whole new generation of debaters’ voices will be spared!
While the rent is obviously a mammoth share of that chart, it’s the insurance options in the 2 and 3 slots that make me the most bitter. Perhaps because it’s never done a bit of good to carry car insurance in my life, other than fulfilling a legal obligation to do so. Perhaps because my urologist is being pretty cavalier about my kidney stones (“I don’t know what’s causing them… maybe you’re eating too much dairy? Who knows? Fill this prescription and call me in six months.”) Perhaps because the whole concept of insurance as a bet against oneself can still send me into writhing anger if I sit in a room and think about it for ten minutes.
Emily would be quick to point out that the insurance is cut-rate because it’s still through her student plan. Which doesn’t make me feel any better about the onrushing mandate to purchase the insurance at market rates that’s waiting to swallow the country. Maybe rather than being thankful for being required to purchase insurance that defends against calamities, we should look at why there are so many precipitous financial calamities designed to befall people in our society.
Which reminds me that I really shouldn’t be whining about having $6.33 a day for food and extras (“extras” on top of cell phone, internet, and Netflix, mind you) in the context of the world at large. $6.33 a day is more than most people see for slave-labor style jobs that “free markets” are forcing them into. In the context of everything, I’m still awfully lucky.
Well, mostly. Even people in slave-labor style jobs probably feel capable of being loved.
Miles walked today: 1.2. Hey, I’m still a bit sick.
Follow-up: I of course just realized that I completely forgot about gas/electric, since I haven’t seen a bill from those guys yet. Yeah. Luckily heat’s included in the rent here (although it’s not on yet, so the space heater I’ve been running while sick isn’t included), but gas/electric for cooking and lighting is probably at least a couple bucks a day and maybe more at times. Maybe I should allot myself $25,000 a year? That seems like a lot. But it also has this ring of realism to it, given that I still need to buy a couch.
