I am not a spontaneous person. I like schedules. I like plans. I need predictability because when you’re living with major depression and anxiety, having a routine helps keep certain things in check. Knowing that I’m doing this on Saturday or that I have a work meeting on Monday allows me to create a schedule that attempts to thwart a little bit of the panic attacks and overwhelming anxiety that overtake my life whenever they have nothing else to do.
It works that way with my budget as well. As soon as I’m done paying bills for a month, I plan out the next month. I know exactly how much money I’m going to need every payday. This provides a certain comfort to me. Along the same lines, I make almost no unplanned purchases, even for frivolous items like nail polish and the occasional soda and peanut butter Twix at Wawa. Buying books from Amazon is an extra kind of special; I will keep a book in my cart for days before I actually pull the trigger and purchase it (because I’m insane and have to make sure that there is no way possible it will ever be in the library). I have to plan for spending the money in my head before I can actually make the purchase. I’m only slightly neurotic.
But sometimes I have to let up on my compulsive need to plan every single penny. This happened to me twice this week. The first time, I realized that FinCon is the same week that my daughter starts kindergarten. Fortunately, I won’t miss her first day (or dropping her off on her second) but I couldn’t bear the thought of missing any time the following week. I know that it won’t make a difference to her and my husband is fine with it, but for me, I couldn’t do it. So I spent $150 to change my return flight from Monday to Sunday. I figure the money is offset by the savings I’ll have for spending one less night at the hotel but it was still $150 I was totally unprepared to spend. It’s totally worth it though.
The second time I spent unplanned money was on Sunday. I’ve mentioned before that I was in a sorority in college. Even though I grew extremely disenchanted with the organization as a whole, I still maintained a level of love and respect for several of my chapter sisters. I lost track of most of them once I graduated but thanks to a little thing called blogging (and Facebook), I was able to reconnect with one of my favorite people from my chapter (you know who you are and I know you’re reading). She was actually my “adopted” little sister and is probably one the biggest reasons I don’t regret joining my sorority. I emailed her after she left a comment and, once we realized we live about 45 minutes away from each other, we decided to meet for brunch. It was the best 3 hours I spent all weekend and I would have gladly paid more than the $18 it cost for the food. And I didn’t twitch once when I took out the money.
It’s probably good for me to spend unplanned money every now and then. It’s a good reminder that there’s no possible way I can control every situation in my life. But it’s also a good reminder of why I save my money and don’t make too many unplanned frivolous purchases. Because when important, unexpected expenses arise, it’s nice to be able to afford them.