Our spending had started to resemble the pooling of pasty flesh over too-tight ultra-low-rise jeans.  There was just too much of it, and our very real constraints of income and “waistline” could no longer contain it. Thus, we have limited ourselves to *gasp* only spend what we make, less a few dollars put aside for the ubiquitous rainy day.  This was our first month.

We have one week to go and an empty fridge. But, money left over in the gas budget and an extra 20 in  the “discretionary” (formerly known as “nice to haves” and now thought of as “in your dreams”) fund gives us hope that we’ll be able to adjust both our estimates and our spending in order to ensure a good future and if fortune smiles blindly in our direction like Ray Charles to the camera, we’ll even get to have a vacation one of these days.

There is a strange sort of pride that comes as a result of self-imposed frugality. Some puritan strand that tells us to brag about our suffering as we go to Tim Hortons to purchase, no, not a donut, but  a single jelly-filled timbit (because they cost $0.35!!!). Oh, the sacrifice of it all!

Of course there is always a fatal flaw in these things. I had already committed to go camping this coming week (prior to the drunken conversation almost 30 days ago that led to this transformation), so I must be inventive. And find a way to pay back my campmate for spotting me the dollars for this one! (oh well, at least she doesn’t charge interest like our friends at Visa do.