I've haven't been this broke in a long time.
My work check got eaten by rent, and an unexpected necessary payment. Typically, it's not such a hard deal, or a surprise, to not have much left over after paying the bills. But following a rather expensive (for me) holiday, we didn't have much left in the house in the way of food and drink. Earlier, we had a housing review, that required a late spring cleaning. Subsequently, I tossed a lot of older stuff like dried pastas, beans, and unlabels canned goods, that we just may have eaten this week, if it was still around. Oh well. Better to be hungry than to be dead from questionable food.
I'm sick though, of telling my daughter that we don't have enough for this, or enough money for that. I'm surprised by how often the topic of money has come up since last Friday, and we still have more than a week and a half left to go. I haven't wanted to borrow money from anyone, or go to the foodbank, since, well, since we shouldn't have to do that. It's my fault for forgetting about a bill last week, and to be quite honest, I refuse to feel guilty for taking Kole to Toronto last week and spending money that would have come in handy for this one.
But yeah, we are always thisclose to poor. We've a roof over our heads but that's about it. (Things were made worse when our company downsized, my hours were cut and my account has yet to recover properly from it all.) For awhile there, we were ahead a bit, but with gas hikes, a still outstanding debt that cannot be ignored, and an empty food cupboard, it's going to be tough times for just awhile longer.
The bright news on this rather bleak tale is this: I get my second year bonus in about 30 days. My rent decreased for the next 12 months starting next month by more than 150 bucks. And by then I will have finally paid off a debt that was costing me more than 100.00 a month since last September. I'm not letting my breath out just yet... there's still a month left to go, but by then, I'll be able to breathe a bit easier.
Money. It's the root of all evil. But it makes things easier when I have more of it.