Hooray! It's bill-paying time! At least I can pay the recurring utility and house-payment bills; the days of deciding who gets a wave-off until the disconnect notices arrive are behind me, at least for now. You never forget those times if you've been through them, and not having to play Stupid Deadline Tricks is a relief.
My Poetic License is up for renewal, too, and I let a good magazine subscription slide that I shouldn't.
I remember when I first went to work for the company I work for now, back in the mid 1990's, and we got paid once a month. Living in DC, where a 1BR apartment in a lousy neighborhood was nearly $1K/month (as opposed to the 2BR I rented in a significantly better neighborhood when I came home the next year, for $520/month), and everything else was at least 25% more expensive than in Indy, I usually ran out of money by about the 25th. A couple of months it was a few days earlier. So I learned very quickly to pay rent and electric immediately (they paid gas and water, but they paid gas because heat was electric (heat pump) and the only thing that was gas was the kitchen stove), and to go to the grocery immediately after to stock up on what I needed to eat for the next month. I took the Metro whenever I went into the District, because I couldn't afford to park down there. After about six months, the company switched to twice-monthly payroll, and things got a little easier -- I only ran out of money about a day or two before payday :)
ReplyDeleteI took a $6K pay cut to come home and telecommute, but even at that, back in Indy I had money to spare at month's end. And the $6K was reinstated about four months later :)
To this day, I don't pay much more on two mortgages together than I did for rent on an apartment in DC.
Yes, I can remember a few scary days between the early '90's and now. It's said that such things "build character." I prefer to learn by observing others.
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