Broke and proud

I’ve spent the past few days reviewing budgets- not by choice mind you, but work related.

And by reviewing I mean staring the screen hoping my computer will crash before I finish.

For the most part, I’ve been a little lost since the dollar figures I’ve been looking at were in the five, six, and seven digits, and I’m used to looking at figures in the low fours- if you include after the decimal point.

It got me thinking about my own home budget, or if I’m going to be honest, the lack of one.

For sometime now, I’ve been in the “if there’s money in my wallet we ain’t broke” mode, but with a little fella in the house and me a lot closer to 50 than 30, I figured it’s way past time to start saving for a future I may never see.

Last week the paper down the highway ran an article stating that to raise a child these days, the bare bones cost is about $250,000, so how far away am I?

Lets take a look at my assets:

First stop- ashtray in van:

$1.98- 3 quarters, 8 dimes, 5 nickels and 18 pennies. Also 4 buttons that do not appear to go on anything I currently own or have ever owned in the past.

Sofa:

$.63- 1- quarter, 2 dimes, 3 nickels, and 3 pennies. And a cracker. I think it’s a cracker anyway, if Ritz makes a “fuzzy” flavor.

Laundry:

I’m always forgetting to take things out of my pocket before I throw them in the wash, so I decided to do a little excavating on the washing machine-

1- guitar pick (I don’t play), 1- comb (haven’t used one in years), six pennies, 1 dime, and something that looks like a turtle and I really hope it is not.

That puts me at a grand total of $2.77 with only $249,997.23 to go.

Anybody hiring three year olds?

He knows the alphabet.