Soooo, I did some record keeping stuff today, and it completely makes me live up to my Jewish Accountant name, but it does always make me feel better. Even if the money-news is BAD, it makes me feel better, because at least I know what the durn tootin is going on. Thankfully, the financial news is good news. I’ve been blessed with health and time these past few weeks, and the hard work has completely paid off. Literally. Like, I got paid. So that’s reassuring. I believe I am still behind where I *should* be with my savings, and I’m not entirely sure why that is yet, but I’ll either find out, or just take it for what it is and keep an eye on it moving forward.
Budgeting…it’s definitely a skill we all should learn. I don’t pretend to be all that good at it, but I have done it before, and I’m starting to be better at it again. It really doesn’t take all that much time, really, just sitting down and figuring out your bills – I have to pay a certain amount of those every month – and then looking at the more variable stuff like food, and miscellaneous, figuring out how much I should be spending on those, and how much I am…and then you just do your best to spend closer to that amount that you should be spending on that stuff. Invariably, I seem to go over my budget each month by about $50 to $100 or so, but I do know that it would be far worse if I weren’t trying to keep myself within my budget. Then, the rest goes to savings.
That’s the theory, anyway. It’s hard to do in practice, let me tell you, but coming up with the budget part of it is pretty damn easy.
I think my first budget was when I was 13 with a paper route – I wanted to know how long I would have to work in order to save up enough to get my hands on an entire box of Star Trek Customizable Card Game cards. Do any of you remember those? It was like Magic: The Gathering, when that *first* came out en masse, but they were all Star Trek stuff. I tried to play the game once with my brothers, and we all decided it was boring. But, I was a collector, and I loved collecting the cards. Apparently, there was a limited edition black-bordered release of these cards that I never ever got my hands on, I only ever had access to purchase the white-bordered ones and I bet those were produced in such large quantities that the cards I still have, now 16 or 17 years old, aren’t worth shit. I know that my baseball card collection will never be worth anything. EVERYONE was buying baseball cards in the early ’90s. I read a whole article on how they’ll literally never be worth anything. In fact, the only time that they might have been worth anything was if you sold them in the early 1990s, when people still thought that they’d be worth even more in the far future.
It seems silly, thinking back on that now. That there was this whole industry of baseball card collectors, and shops to sell them all across the country. I mean, even up in Humboldt, at one time I know there were literally 8 or 9 shops selling baseball cards. It was crazy. There’s nothing like that now. Sure, you can say comic book stores are pretty much the same, but I’d argue that COMICS have far more intrinsic value to them than baseball cards. You’re paying for artwork and story-telling. There’s original stuff to read and look at. Baseball cards have a picture and some statistics. That’s it.
Anyway, it’s off to bed with me, I have a full work day tomorrow and I wish to get up early. Have a good full day back at work. Get some writing done. And finish all that with enough time to hang with the Ho at night. So, till tomorrow collectors!
Tonight’s artwork is a screenshot of the Russian film Solaris, which I highly recommend, believe it or not. It’s a trip, don’t get me wrong, and it’s not your typical studio-type plot, but it is damn interesting, and sooooo far superior to the Clooney/Soderberg remake it’s not even funny.