ok so check it out. i love this shit.
last week, i was planning to pay half my rent from last week's paycheck and half from this week.
and then i was all, no, i can't do that, maybe i can just pay SOME from this week and half from next week and some from the week after that, and it'll be fine because the check will get there/deposited after i get paid even tho that's like two days after i have to pay the rent.
and then i was all, oh, i can just pay half from both of those two weeks and nothing from this one!
but then this week, i decided to pay the whole thing from this paycheck so that i can pay it on time, even though that's a lot of money to pay for something all at once and i didn't think that i would have enough left for food/gas/catfood. i figured i would come up with it somehow.
and then i was like, oh right, netflix charged me, so that's $16.30 less money for food/gas/catfood. ooh. but i'll get easter money, (yes, we still get easter money. but my mom finally got pardoned from having to create an easter egg hunt for us this year.) and leftovers from easter, too.
so i sat down to figure out exactly how much i had and exactly what had gone through already and so on. i got out the notebook where i keep track of every cent that comes in and goes out. i checked my pockets for receipts and caught the list up on the deposits i made yesterday. i checked everything in my bank account and marked off what had cleared. i went back a couple of weeks because i had noticed that i might have entered a cat food purchase twice, and checked that. i figured out exactly how much i had for food and so on, and made my meal plan so i could know how much i would be spending on food. and this is what happens when i mercilessly go through every single thing i need to do to get clarity:
1. i realized that i had $16.30 more than i thought cause i totally deducted the netflix money ahead of time already, because i knew that they would be taking that money out of my checking account this week! and i made room to pay it on time, not out of this next week's check!
2. i realized that yes i did write the catfood purchase down twice, so that was another $19.37 extra that i had. which i knew about cause i was checking off everything that cleared and going back to make sure!
3. i also realized that i spent $25 on gas and didn't write it down. but that wasn't the huge hit it would have been because i had this other money making up the balance because i had been over-compensating by writing things down twice and ahead of time. and i got to find out about the $25 the easy way instead of going "oops" when something bounced!
4. after that, i found out that with the cash i have plus what is in my bank account, i actually have $80.03 left over after i pay rent, and that is exactly three cents more than I usually budget for cat food, human food, and car food for a week! (and more than i actually spend, usually)
5. i found the list i made of bills to pay and only one of them is left for this week, and i checked and found that it isn't due until next friday which is after i get paid again so i could just pay with the next paycheck. and it's only $32.09, AND it's actually thirteen-something less than that because i overpaid last time!
6. i realized that i had been trying to figure out how i would spend less than usual on food for the week and now i didn't have to cause it turned out i totally had my full grocery budget available to me!
plus i was watching food network while i did this and i saw a really awesome recipe where giada de laurentiis makes her own fig-hazelnut jam real fast and then puts it on crostini with a slice of pecorino cheese and a slice of apple and i was like HELL YEAH. and another one where some other cook made mushroom turnovers that were super-easy and now look what i can eat for a week for about US$34:
mushroom turnovers with that really good puff pastry; fig/apple/cheese crostini; seared pate on lentils; egg/sausage/polenta fryups. plus easter brunch at my mom's house, plus leftovers from that, plus a free barbecue at the new big Farmer Joe's grocery store tonight to thank their customers for being so awesome.
and that's partly cause i already have flour to make the bread, and i have the cheese, and i have the lentils and the eggs and the polenta. cause stuff builds up.
all of this is about abundance building up! i love it! when i keep doing this work over and over it pays off and it pays ME!
i had no idea what being solvent in DA would be like. i have, what, um, like, 37 days of sobriety in debtors anonymous and it's like, hey! you can afford to pay all your bills and start paying your debts off and go on vacations and eat pate and have fun! all at one time! plus, i don't have to work with dysfunctional mean people to do it! when i do this work now the story doesn't end with "and then i realized that i had been overspending and not paying attention to the point that i couldn't afford anything after all and i had to scramble to fix it somehow," it ends with "and i thought i wouldn't have enough but then the universe showed me how i had exactly enough and even a little to spare!" whee!