Two days in a row last week I caught myself buying coffee with the debit card. Though I usually make my own, I don’t begrudge myself an occasional caffeinated indulgence -- so long as I pay with my allowance money, which, like the song in the old “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoon, comes to “$7.50 once a week.”
I buy the same kind of stuff with my allowance as that kid did: a cheap burrito here, a cold soda there, a comic book or magazine from the library‘s secondhand sales rack. It doesn’t really matter, as long as I stay within my budgetary boundaries. Those few bucks are meant to be spent on frivolous crap, and if I‘ve got a dollar or two left at the end of the week, then I set it aside in case I want to buy more frivolous crap later. (Since I’m attempting to buy all my clothes secondhand this year, I’ve even thought about trying to fund my clothing budget with leftover allowance money.)
This is the nature of the budgetary universe I’ve constructed over the years, a complex yet simple system in which no part is so tiny as to be considered insignificant. My allowance belongs to the cash-based world, where it coexists with the grocery fund, the dining fund, the kid activity fund and other budgetary organisms, each playing its role.
When my childish impulses grab the debit card, they enter the digital world of our budgetary universe, populated by larger creatures with more complicated needs and relationships. Those coffee purchases may not seem like much, a little nibble here and there. But left unchecked, they can throw the whole ecosystem out of alignment.
No comments:
Post a Comment