Now I'm Forced to do the Math!

About two weeks ago I had to take the day off to go to the doctor. On the same day I decided to go to the DMV to renew my license. Fun day, right? Why not schedule a root canal for the afternoon and call it a party? Anyway, my husband had no work that day either so he came along - plus he needed to renew his license soon too and decided to just get it over with.

On the long drive to the DMV, we were discussing our finances (or lack thereof) and he made a comment to me about my Disney trip and if I hadn't gone on it, we'd be in better shape financially now.

???

Excuse me? Are you kidding me? I mean, when I booked the trip, was I aware of the spiraling economy? Um, no. Did my sister pay for part of that trip? Um, yes. Did my mom pay for my airfare? Um, that would be a yes, too. So we discussed all of this and he felt bad that he just could not get over his attitude towards my trip. Well, two weeks later, I am not over his comment. So I broke out the notebook and calculator and did a little math of my own! Ha, Ha! Okay, so I spent $800 total on this trip - that included my room, meals, park tickets, souvenirs, scrapbooking afterwards and any other incidentals that went along with the trip. I go on a trip like this only every two to three years. Okay, so mark that down - $800 every, we'll say two years, which equals out to $400 a year spent selfishly on myself.

My darling one is a smoker. A pack a day, every day. Now, I can promise you that I do not benefit from this habit of his. No one in the family does. As a matter of fact, it makes us all sick. He does not want to quit. We do not try and force him to quit. His habit cost us $3.79 day/or $26.53 a week/or a whopping $1379.56 a year! A YEAR!!!!! That sweet man also plays in a band. On average, the band costs him $20 a month (and I am being VERY generous with that amount because usually the other guys forget to pay and we end up paying so sometimes the amount is more like $60-$80 a month). He has to buy new sticks approximately every other month at $25 a pop. So for just the band space rental we are looking at $240 a year (and again, I'm being generous) and the sticks cost about $150 a year (seriously, for STICKS!) so that gives us a total of $390 a year for his band hobby. Which, coincidentally, is almost the SAME amount as my Disney hobby.

Do I throw this at him when times are tough? No. Am I going to bring this up to him now? Yes. Why? Because the air needs to be cleared. He is clearly feeling put upon by my "me" time, and I think I need to share with him that he is no different than I am - Oh, no, wait a minute, YES HE IS!!! Because HIS stuff is costing us almost $1800 a year as opposed to my little $400.

See, Cathleen, I can do the math!