Global Climate Change appears to have struck our spending freeze

THUD. Ouch. That wagon you see rolling away? It is our spending freeze and we appear to have fallen off.

I mean, not entirely. But we ran a tight ship there for two months and what with how awful I’ve been feeling recently and how awful it feels to not spend any money ever, we’ve just been losing our grip a little bit.

Here’s a look back at the month of August.

Just so you have a little background, Chris and I do not have a joint account. Not because we split finances or anything, but because we just never got around to it. We both have our paychecks deposited into our separate accounts. He is responsible for daycare and most of the bills, I am responsible for mortgage. That’s just kind of the way it works our around here.

So, I spent a total of 435 dollars (not including mortgage) in August, which is a significant decrease from the average of $1100 a month I had been spending. But still, not exactly a “freeze.”

The biggest chunk of that was my yearly $240 premium for life insurance. Of the roughly $200 left, $141 is groceries and diapers. Now, that could have been less, but I am dying here with the sickness and I’m buying whatever it is I think I can get my body to accept. Other than that we have a $28 expenditure for a doctor’s visit and antibiotics for Owen, a $5 movie ticket for me, a $13 bill for lunch out with coworkers (see, because they don’t know about the spending freeze I still have to do things like that) and $8 for parking for jury duty.

Yes, there are some things that could have been cut there, but we’re not trying to be weirdos that grow our own food and raise our own chickens and medicate our children with prayer. But man that insurance payment was killer, wasn’t it?

That statement doesn’t even reflect the beginning of September, which includes the trip to Dunkin Doughnuts ($9), Sam’s emergency dental visit ($25, $30 including the trip to McDonald's that came after), or whatever the heck Chris has been doing because lord know that man can fall off a wagon harder than anybody else I know.

I’m sure we’ll regroup. And in the plus column, we have subjected our children to a vaccine study which should net us about $400. Sweet! And all I have to do is risk the health of my children on an unproven vaccine! I’m kidding people. It was a phase 3, open-label study with no blood-draws . . . I believe in vaccines, especially since this one is supposed to help protect against some of the new antibiotic-resistant super bugs. So I probably would have done the study anyway, but now we can justify buying the children new shoes.