I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

When I have more money I can spend more money

The reason I started seriously working on getting out of debt expediently in the first place was because we always felt broke. After bills and incidentals it felt like there was never any money left to save or to do anything with.

So, basically, the prime motivator we had for reducing and someday eliminating our debt was the idea that if we had more money we could spend more money. Save some, too, but the big idea was being able to spend more money. We suffer from the concept of lifestyle inflation just as many other people do. When my spouse got a raise earlier this year, instead of immediately dedicating ourselves to further debt reduction and snowballing with that money, we signed up for dental insurance. Now, that was a necessary thing and I don’t regret doing it, but the underlying pattern in my brain is when there is more money available, figure out how to spend it as fast as possible on whatever I have been wanting to do but haven’t had the cash available for. That’s why before the budget I never ever seemed to have any surplus left over at the end of the month (it remains to be seen if the budget helps with that this month). My brain would just ratchet up our spending a tad when we had “good” months and we’d “stock up” on things we’d been putting off or get things we’d been denying ourselves.

I don’t know how to battle that instinct. I don’t know how to rewire my brain so that I’m happier living a more spartan lifestyle and don’t want more than I already have. We are not extravagant, by any means, but there is always something out there that I “want”, be it another round of swim lessons for the kids, new floors for our entryway, more weekends of yard sale shopping, something.

But what about saving? If I started (after eliminating debt) *seriously* saving for our retirement and for the kids’ educations at the recommended levels to have enough money for all of that, it would completely eat up the money that we are using for debt repayment and then some. It is disappointing for me to think about. I do want to save more money for the future… but I also want to have a (slightly) more comfortable life in the here and now. I’d like to be able to take my family out to eat once in a while. Maybe even take a vacation.

Gosh, I am such a whiner. I need to find that elusive balance of the here and now and the future and learn to be happy within it. I’m such a consumer by nature.

The dental insurance we enrolled in did not eat up the entire raise (and hasn’t taken effect yet so we won’t feel that pinch for another week or two) and I am still not sure where the rest of it actually went. The $150 per month raise somehow got absorbed into our current spending. I’d like to say some of it is going towards debt repayment but I’m not quite sure that is true. We were surviving before the raise basically at the same level we are now so I don’t know how it so effortlessly got absorbed into the monthly spending. The fallacy of living without a true budget, I suppose. That’s not happening with the next raise, I guarantee it. If only we didn’t have to wait a year (hopefully not more!) to get it.
~J

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