Bad news on the budget frontier

Turns out my Salvation Army shirt-and-scarf combo I wore to work yesterday, while comfy and, in my eyes, at least, attractive, isn’t likely to become my copy editor’s version of a ballplayer’s “lucky underwear.” We found out some part-timers’ jobs are disappearing. Maybe mine. Not exactly surprising, given the state of the newspaper industry. But no, not lucky. Not lucky at all.

Under the circumstances, we decided not to hit the Chinese buffet this weekend, though we’ve “earned” the money by beating our grocery budget by $53.17 over the last few weeks. We’ll probably go out for a family Valentine’s Day dinner next weekend instead.

Some people might think that saving money on your grocery budget just to turn around and spend it in a restaurant is defeating the purpose of saving money.

I disagree. What defeats the purpose of saving money is letting those saved dollars wander unsupervised back into your own private budget wilderness, where they’re likely to vanish without a trace. As long as you account for it, you can put that money in whatever holding cell you think makes the most sense. That’s what a budget’s for. Establishing control. Developing the wilderness in a way that makes you feel safe, protected and happy, however you happen to define those things.

We’ve subdivided our budget wilderness over the years so that we’ve got one cul-de-sac devoted to our next used vehicle, another devoted to property taxes and insurance, another for gas, and so on. My paycheck, though limited, helps build our crisis fund, our charity fund and a long-term investment fund.

We never set up a dining fund, though. To me, it makes more sense to let the dining fund grow or wither based on our grocery-and-kitchen smarts rather than letting it siphon off part of our primary stream of income. It’s a reward, not an entitlement.

Besides, we only drop $15 per person per week into our grocery fund to begin with. Last week, when we beat our grocery budget by 17.33, we spent less than $10 per person on groceries. When we do that -- an effort that involves all six of us, especially the younger kids, who could derail our efforts with not very much whining -- I say, what the heck, we deserve to go out to eat.