The Joys of Budgeting

I'm pretty sure no one likes budgets, and certainly no one who is married likes budgets. When you're single, it's a fairly simple thing to look at your paycheck, decide not to leave your house aside from commuting to work, and emerge from your fortress of solvency when you feel better about the balance on your checking account. When living with my parents, making a decent salary and having almost no expenses, I did enjoy opening Quicken and seeing how much I was saving. It felt a bit like playing a video game and I was leveling up. Of course, I was saving this money for when we got married and moved to Portland -- the very thing that would make me dread my formerly beloved hobby of opening Quicken on a daily basis.

When you're married, re-evaluating a budget feels like telling your spouse you don't want them to have any happiness, ever. Phrases like "if you want to play soccer this fall, we probably shouldn't see your favorite band this month" start to come up. You feel like the Auschwitz doctor who made Sophie choose between her children. Not that your spouse is telling you that you should feel that way, it's just an entirely different thing to ask the one you love to give something up.

So, we just finished outlining our monthly budget. There's a good chance it will completely change on Tuesday as we hope for a positive outcome from Mike's job interview, but in the meantime we have a plan for the rest of the month. We're doing fine, but this stuff is never fun.