That's Not What it's For

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Sometimes my wife rolls her eyes at me. Okay. She actually does this often. I think it's somewhere in the vows. "I promise to roll my eyes any time my husband thinks he is stating something profound, sensical, or brilliant." We have had some expected and unexpected expenses of late. Nothing new. A lot of them are just "summer stuff" like pool supplies which are always expensive and camping trips. We spent $200 filling the pool back up. The blown tire on the rider cost me $126. We paid out $400 to fix the drive belt on the rider as well. The pool pump died and that ran us out of $225. We're buying mom's car which will likely set us back around $500 or so in taxes and whatever else goes along with that. I'm actually budgeting $700. Wifey wants a new robot vacuum for the pool and that'll set us back another $200 at least. Plus, we've ramped up camping a bit, and that runs about $500 a pop and so far, we've done two extra ones—or it will be two extra after next week. I keep the Tuesday Challenge envelope handy, and it has around $2,800 in it to date. Whenever a lot of money goes out all at once, I get a little agitated. It's just my way. It's not like any of it breaks the bank. I just don't like it when it feels like it's just pouring out of me. All said, since April, outflows have been around $6,050 and we're scheduled out for various more expenses through October. For example, my wife has a trip in October which will kill about $800, and we have a wedding to attend in September in Holland, Michigan. We'll probably budget close to $1,000 for that, depending. I think, conservatively, by the time we get to the end of this summer we'll part with close to $10,000. "Why don't you just take the money from the Tuesday Challenge to help out with some of it?" my wife has suggested. "What? Are you crazy? That's not what it's for!" My wife may never get it. She may never understand me, and that's fine. But there's a reason we have any of this money to be able to put it out without too much consequence, even if it still causes me headaches. There's a reason I handle the money. It may not make sense to her. But it makes perfect sense to me. On top of that our dent will be around $10k, but when I get done doing my "magic tricks," it will likely only cost us around $3k out of pocket. Roll your eyes, babe, all you want. It's working.