Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Financial Times, late edition

I've spent the better part of the afternoon working on a budget. While I have most of the amenities in order to pass as someone who appears to be making ends meet, it's hardly that simple. I'm terrible with money. Rather, when I had a reasonable income, I was terrible with money. Now, I just don't have any. I hardly make any, relatively speaking. Chalk it up to lack of discipline or forgetfulness or malice or capitalism or whatever - in the end, the result is still going to be the same, and I'm still going to be broke. Combined - the lack of reliable income and my persistent habit to "waste" money - I'm essentially stuck in the shit. Always.

In previous periods of my life, I'd most likely say my undisciplined spending ways were why I was always living paycheck to paycheck. Fun came first; at least, it came ahead of financial planning.

Christ, that phrase. "Financial planning." As two words, they're fine, but it's that phrase that conceals an institutional construct that exists to index people's failure or success as, well, people based on how well they plan their finances. By this regard, I suck at being somebody. My credit score is so low it can be found stuck to the bottom of Satan's spittoon. I barely scrape by (I always run out of money at the end of the month). I have a whopping $0.05 in my savings account. Even plotting out my expenses per month against my monthly income is a ghastly contrast to how mired in semi-poverty I currently am.

The whole idea for comparing income and costs, and for making the budget in the first place, is because I'm going to begin saving money toward a pricey purchase this year. It's not even for any tangible product that would make me a better owner and, therefore, a better American. It's simply to go on a trip, to reunite with my love, and do and see some things I'd like to do and see.

Based on my cost of living, however meager, and how much I'll need to save before September, I'd essentially have to be surviving on a Gulag diet. I'd probably have to reel back and rely on Gulag-quality sources of entertainment, too, for what it's worth.

But if that's going to be the quality of my life for the next four months (sometimes that sounds like forever, sometimes it seems like no time at all), what toll will those living conditions take on my mental health, which is already sensitive and prone to life-ending depression? Again with the cost-benefit analysis.

To undertake this kind of budget and actually have it work, I now will have to actively cope with my depression and keep myself from sinking too far down that hole. I've never demonstrated the will power required for that, but I suppose there's no time like the present to try and muster it. Additionally, the incentive of my trip may prove to be a potent motivator to summon the will power required to maintain a moderately healthy affect.

Knowing this and enacting on this are hardly the same, though. They're not comparable. Knowing earth has a moon doesn't necessarily mean that I'll go visit it one day if I really want to. The consideration and coping applied to my mental health during this time will likely be the more difficult item in my life to budget. So I guess there's that.

I'm tired, though, of the financial dilemmas. And while I don't desire to have some kind economic comfort that would buttress a care-free spending spree throughout my life, it would be nice to have a little more flexibility when it comes to the options I'd like to have. It's maddening that I may not have enough money to go to Peru simply because I neglected once or twice to buy the store-brand meat that was on sale (and it was only on sale because it would be rancid in another day or two).

Sitting down today to plot out a budget for the next four months also produced a troubling realization: making a budget is only possible if you have enough money to redistribute and, in some cases, save. "Budgeting," in my case, is a careful allocation of what little income I have just so I don't starve. There is little room for rearranging my money, and even less for saving. I also can't "cut out" things from my spending. I spend my money on rent and food, and on the occasional bit of alcohol - the latter expense I justify as necessary to help me sometimes escape the misery over how broke I am. I can only roll back the amounts I'm already spending on those items. Since I predict - and reliably at that - my landlord won't be so agreeable to me spending less on my rent per month, that leaves food and entertainment on the chopping block. That's it. Goddamn dreary.

I do realize that, above all of this, I do have the option of picking up a second job in order to add to my income, even if it is a job that I plan to drop in September like a burner mob phone. And I probably will do that, but still. That doesn't make it any less frustrating. I'm always aware that my situation could be much, much worse.

I have no problem making sacrifices, or even forgoing one thing in order to work towards a more desired goal. I just wish the options weren't so goddamn extreme.

~

Walking home today, I saw a dead squirrel in the middle of the road, presumably killed by a passing car. It's brains had spurted out of the top of its head, near its ear.

A block further down, I saw some starch-collared religious youths going door to door. I crossed the street and kept my head down to avoid them, but I did manage to hear how they knocked upon the door of the house across the street. The boy knocked the way a pediatrician would knock on the patient's door before entering the room in order to administer a child's first suppository.

Somehow, both of these are held as proof of god's work.

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