I know just about all of it has to do with the fact that I can be a cheap motherfucker from time to time. Often times I feel like I have to tell myself that it’s okay to spend money that I’ve saved up for the occasional splurge, vacation, emergency or rainy day. I’m pretty sure I get my reluctance to drop large sums of money from my own fairly financially conservative family, and it doesn’t help that given some of the circumstances of my parents’ divorce, there’s an expectation of my sister and I that we’re going to have to help financially support both of them at some point, when I’m struggling on a fairly consistent basis to keep my own head above water.
If I could deliberately side-track for a second, I have to kind of think that it sucks more to be in my kind of situation when dealing with divorcing parents as opposed to young children having their parents split up. At least with young kids, their parents are typically somewhat proportionately younger as well, and might not have given up on life yet and could realistically have a second shot at settling down, or at least getting their shit together since their kids are too young to support themselves. In my case, I’ve got two parents that have kind of begun winding down, don’t really have any aspirations as they feel that they are too old for any substantial aspirations, and really aren’t going to get their shit together considering they’ve been in United States for over 35 years and still haven’t got their shit together. They will eventually need financial support, and I don’t think I’m really ready to support anyone other than myself, let alone a future ex-wife and parents. My salary is okay, but let’s face it, when you factor in inflation and the shit value of today’s dollar, I feel as if I may as well be back earning sub-$30k salaries again sometimes.
But back to the original impetus of this post, using money always puts me in a funk, even when I know that it’s going towards something good, like a vacation or sometime I really wanted. I don’t really know why this is, other than the fact that I was brought up to be financially conservative, but it just does. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a situation where I’m taking the hit and other people are paying me portions, the fact that a massive sum is coming out of my resources, even if for just temporary, is capable of putting me in a funk.
It’s so stupid too, this constant concern about money. I kind of hate having it, but at the same time, I feel like if I didn’t have it, I’d put myself into a situation where I got into a massive pile of debt that would ultimately be worse off. But I really dislike the feeling of having to wait until the 15th and the ends of the month for paydays sometimes, and that my emotions are sometimes proportionate to what I’ve got in my bank accounts.
What sucks the most is that I’m completely aware of this stigma, but I can’t always help it. I can tell myself all the time that letting money dictate my emotions is stupid and pointless, but it’s not necessarily always something that can be controlled. I don’t really want to be perceived as a cheapskate, but at the same time, I don’t want to be driven broke from a desire to defy it.
I guess now would be a good time to re-watch some of those old episodes of Extreme Cheapskates I still have DVR’d, so I can feel better about myself.
The bright side to shelling out a lot of money in advance is when said paid-for events actually take place, I’m usually back on the stable side of my finances again, and then things feel really awesome when they’re already paid for and then you just go and enjoy the ride. I think I’ll hang my hat on that mentality to help alleviate the funk.
