Cavier & PBR
I have been giving a lot of thought to class lately as well as money. Mostly how the two relate after a conversation I had last month sometime. The context and content of the conversation are ultimately unimportant, really all they would serve to do is paint me to be an insensitive jackass for talking about somebodies situation. So instead I am going to talk about the realizations I have made recently. Here is the big one: Class is a lot more than the money that you actually have physically in your pocket. Its why those lotto winners always seem to end up bankrupt 5 years down the line (although I am sure they enjoyed their monster truck or whatever). They might suddenly have upper class money but not have the tools to understand how money actually works. Its also why you can be earning sub 50k and still be solidly ‘middle-class.’ What does all of this really mean in true day to day life? Almost nothing at all. But its something for me to keep in my back pocket and use to my advantage somewhere along the way. And yes, I do consider myself solidly middle-class.
House hunting is progressing. In terrify lurches and stumbles. It’s difficult to contemplate spending this sort of scratch simply because it is so opposite from how I generally live my life. I spent some time today going over my current budget with a much finer toothed comb than I normally use and realized just how much money I have wasted over the years simply by virtue of not having a budget. To say nothing of other money that I have wasted in various ways over the years but whatever. Whats more important is making sure to actually stick with the budget now as well as redo the budget when I do purchase something. Don’t get me wrong, its obvious that I have done ok so far. If you have the money to even consider putting a down payment out there you have obviously done ok. But I am realizing that I have champagne taste and beer budget. Or perhaps caviar & PBR.
I will also admit that looking at my budget recently has made me realize just how many opportunities I have had available simply due to my better half. Its making me look at things in a variety of new and exciting and sometimes vaguely uncomfortable ways. Not sure what, if anything, I am going to do about all that.
The trip to Oktoberfest is coming together. Or it will if I can ever manage to book a room for my time in Munich. That one item is the big sticker that i want to have taken care of before I book plane tickets. Thank god for AirBnB in many ways as it is has allowed me to get shot down by 4 or so people already! More importantly though is that if I can’t find a place soonish I might have to scrap the trip. Hotels for that time period are already in the grand+ range for a shitty place far from the actual fest. No thank you!
Otherwise things are pretty good. 8feet is generally still keeping up with what my expectations were when I started that side project. I seem to have abandoned the beer review site however. My heart isn’t really in trying to break into a saturated market and I am getting back into my better habits regarding alcohol anyway so it just doesn’t add up well. As much as I love beer and craft beer and local beer it doesn’t seem like a great use of my energy to try and spread the gospel in that manner. Instead I will probably just do the drink and be social and be merry thing. So… if you want to be an oddly specific URL let me know!
The weather is starting to get better here. We are breaking freezing, we are staying above 0 even at night… its a big long list of things that point towards a nice spring. Soggy but nice. Makes me look forward to getting the front fork taken care of on my bike and then get out there. Additionally however I am trying to stick with the whole ‘go to the gym’ thing (5 for the past 6 days. notbad.jpg) and that will be much nicer when the weather is better.
Other than that… not much doing I suppose.
March 15th, 2014 at 7:24 am
You know I have had a budget since I first came here in ’06, (man, that was a long time ago, huh? Craziness.) Anyway, I’m not bragging or anything, I just wanted to be able to save some money as well as pay the rent, and at the time I was still making a college student’s salary, so it was kind of necessary.
Now I’m doing OK, but my wife and I both stick to a relatively strict, relatively detailed budget. I still remember back in college blowing $20 on pizza and then feeling guilty about it later, but now I now that I’ve got enough pocket money to buy a pizza a week and still have money left over. No need to worry about spending on gaming or beer or t-shirts or whatever: if it’s within my pocket money then I’m good to go. If it’s not, then I wait ’til the next month.
I guess what I’m saying is that I think it’s awesome that you’ve got a budget now, and I think you’ll really like it once you get used to it. Seriously! I think some people think that a budget is like a self-induced punishment, but I really like knowing that I’m free to spend the money I’ve allotted for such fun stuff, and that I’m still putting a little into savings at the same time…now I just need to convince my wife to stop buying so many boots.
March 15th, 2014 at 8:08 am
You didn’t go to Korea in 06. You came back from France in 06 and then did you masters before leaving for Korea in 07. Time still flies, no doubt about that but not quite as quickly as you think.
Here is the thing, I always kept to a very very loose budget and the months were I came out behind were few and far between. It always involved the purchase of some sort of big ticket item (motorcycle, car, computer whatever) or was part of some sort of major expense.
BUT I wasn’t saving as much as I wanted. I mean sure, I have a decent 401k (that is growing faster now) and a pretty decent nest egg that is going to cover at least part of a house and so forth but at the same time… I pissed away a lot of money over the years. So really the budget is just to staunch the dribble rather than the flow and find out where I have been dribbling.
And now it sounds like I have bladder control issues.