Day 1: Broke aint no joke!

I think my "Coexist" bumper sticker is causing road rage. At first I said to myself, "Nah! That's impossible!" But every stinkin' day, at least one car will decide to go around me just to then brake and make a turn. I can't for the life of me understand why they are having trouble driving behind me. Yesterday afternoon some huge red SUV, like a Yukon or something went FLYING around my car and cut in front of me narrowly missing my front bumper. They were obviously in a hurry and luckily they caught up to the police cruiser two cars up, or at least I'm assuming that's where they wanted to be since that is precisely when they slowed down and went the speed limit with the rest of us. Maybe they had something important to tell that police person. Who knows?

Either way, I don't really want to live in a world where a message about living together peacefully believing in different gods or not believing in any gods, could possibly be considered a negative message. I draw the line at that depth of ignorance for my tolerance quota for the week, thank you very much.

As you know, today is the first day that I have limited my weekly spending to $200. (Average for working class family of four, who may or may not qualify for government assistance.)

Now, I have already run into a minor problem. You see, I pay a small amount to my two savings accounts automatically every week. So, when I limited my income to $200 this week, I didn't want to be tempted to spend more, so I dumbed the rest onto a credit card payment. Now, having only $200, my savings just absorbed $70. I'm already down to $130 and it's only the first day.

The good news is that the only other areas where I NEED to spend money are on gasoline and food. I'm not sure that I can get a weeks worth of groceries for less than $130, but my gas tank is 3/4 full. So, I'm going to try to limit my driving this weekend and hope that the gas we have now takes us through to next friday.

Next week, I'm going to need to fill my tank ($45) and half my husbands tank ($20) which means that if I still want to buy food, I'm going to need to cancel the payments to my savings accounts. How sad is it that a working class family can't afford to keep a savings account? How do they pay for vacation?

Things the American Working Class Family of Four Can't afford:

College Education

Putting money into Savings