The B Word

Not THAT word. “Budget”, reader. Dear Lord, this word makes me cringe. Mostly because it either makes me think of government appropriations time or massive numbers I can’t comprehend in my everyday life. But, God help us, they’re necessary.

In planning our move to Chicago, it’s become increasingly important to take a good, hard look at where our money goes. I think I’ve referenced this before, but we’re trying to keep ourselves to a budget to help us prepare for our drop from two salaries to one (M will be a full-time student at least for the first few quarters), but it’s certainly not easy and is actually a little embarrassing when you see where your money goes. While I’m sure you would all be enthralled for me to now pull out my checkbook and give you a line by line analysis of our finances, I’ll spare you. Instead, I’ll give you a little example of some of the things we’ve learned.

Food.

What happened to the $1 for a big helping of chicken biryani off the streets of Bangalore? (Granted, that might be why I got an intestinal worm. But, whatever.) A dinner out in DC rarely comes with a bill of less than $50. So let’s say you’re being really, really good and you go out to eat three times in one month (I don’t think we’ve ever actually done this, but we’ll pretend for a moment. By the way, DC has some really fantastic restaurants. Where you spend much more than $50 for dinner. Trust me.) That’s at least $150 spent on something that you can only have once and that is gone from your system in 24 hours. At the most. Then, of course, tack on to that the occasional work-day lunch at an average $8.50 per person. If you eat out every day in one work week because your wife doesn’t get up in time to make you a lunch (and you’re too busy sleeping)*, that’s $42.50, and double that if your wife does the same for herself. $85 a week for a crappy sandwich?! Say that happens a total of two weeks in a month, and that’s over $300 on eating out (adding together lunch and dinner). This doesn’t even begin to capture what you spend at your grocery store each week. Maybe we should look into weeks of fasting.

Alcohol.

Oh man, if only we were Southern Baptists who hated the firewater. Unfortunately, as our dear friend Matt says, we’re Whiskeypalians (or rather Bourbonicans) who appreciate the occasional drink with dinner, especially when eating out. But a glass of wine usually ranges from $7-$11 (more if you’re at a nice restaurant) and even a beer is pushing $7 these days. Maybe it’s just the types of restaurants we like. But dang, that’s a lot for a single drink. And it adds up, too. Say you go out three times in the month, as I proposed above, and you and your husband have two beers and two glasses of wine between the two of you. And your wife even decides to drink the cheap wine. That’s 28 EXTRA dollars per meal for alcohol alone. That’s over $80 a month for what amounts to six drinks (that aren’t even that big, anyway). If your husband EVER drinks bourbon out (cough, cough) that’s another $12- he doesn’t like the cheap stuff- to tack on. Sheesh.

Rent.

Gone are the days of living in a group house where you can pay $550. Actually, scratch that, because I don’t think my rent has EVER been that low. Sure, living in the city is cool and we wouldn’t have it any other way….but when I say what we pay in rent, most of our friends outside of Washington, DC (minus friends in New York) gasp and pass out. And we got a really good deal! Granted, we’ve heard gunshots outside, but that’s just part of life, right? Anyhow, add to that utilities (especially in the winter) and we’re talking about no small chunk of change.

And, reader, that’s just a few of our monthly expenses. Suddenly we’ve realized that our two salaries go much faster than we ever expected and living on just one, while also trying to not use all of the educational loans we’re offered, won’t exactly be as easy as we thought it would be. That said, I think it’s a lesson in priorities, and is teaching us that maybe we don’t need a lot of the things we thought we did. And at least it hasn’t killed us yet.


If I don’t post here for a few weeks, someone send out a search party.


* I should note that the husband in this story has been so amazing and has been making lunch for himself and his wife for the past two weeks because his wife is actually getting up early and going in to her office gym (yes, she has a gym in her office building) to work out. Pray this continues.