In My House, Money is a Four Letter Word...And So Is Budget.

First, apologies for the unscheduled break in posting. Turns out, writing this post was really difficult and made a break from all things Mother Chick necessary. Strange, considering the incident which was the topic of said post happened 8 years ago, but I reserve the right to feel crappy about the fact that my daughter almost died. So anyway, sorry for the break and love and kisses and all that jazz.

A while back, there was a rather interesting discussion on Twitter on what qualities and traits everyone felt were necessary in order to finally consider yourself a grown up. Someone, I think it may have been Miss Britt, said that it was necessary to be able to make and also stick to a household budget. If that's the case, I'm totally not a grown up, at all. (Disclaimer - this post has nothing to do with Miss Britt's opinion, but is really about how I'm a slacker when it comes to all things finance related).

The thing is, I hate thinking about money, paying bills, savings accounts, 401k, IRA, CDs, the stock market...blah blah blah. Seriously...HATE. Online bill paying has been one of the best things to ever happen to me because I can just set everything up to be paid automatically and I am required to put zero thought into the process. We are fortunate enough to be in a situation where we always have the money to pay our bills, with plenty of discretionary income left over. And, we have a savings account that sometimes has a lot of money in it and sometimes has a little. We save for retirement through various options with our employers, although we could both be doing more in that area, I'm sure.

I just hate dealing with it all and I also hate feeling deprived of the things I want. When I think about putting together an actual household budget, I get all antsy because what if I budget a certain amount for say, going out to eat, and then I want to go out to eat and it's not in the budget? That would piss me off. I know, spoiled bitch, right? Whatever, I own being a spoiled bitch. Even so, the truth of the matter is, I like doing things and doing things costs money. I don't foresee myself ever being the type of person who is like 'Oooh, sitting here at home and playing a game together was SOOO much better than taking the kids to Busch Gardens.' Yes, I know that playing a game together can be fun and economical but is it better than Busch Gardens? No, I don't think it is.

Lately though, Mr. Chick and I have been discussing the fact that we really do need to budget and come up with some financial goals. I've done some research though and the whole thing just seems so damn complicated and like a lot of hard work. While reviewing the advice of some personal finance gurus it seems that everyone recommends that you have a million separate accounts for things like an emergency fund, and a savings fund, and a vacation fund, and a car fund, and this fund and that fund. Thinking about the work involved with actually setting all that up and then separating money into those accounts makes me want to open a 'Just Kill Me Now' fund.

So the other day, I was perusing some personal finance blogs and one PF blogger with a fairly significant following wrote an entire post that was probably 500+ words, complete with charts and cost breakdown analysis on the virtues of using dried beans as opposed to canned beans to save what amounted to like, a dollar. To each his own and all that, and bless that blogger's little heart for having the strength to write 500+ words about beans. That said, if I ever find myself in a position where I'm writing a long meandering post about beans just...kill me now. Seriously.

I really need to get started on that fund.

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