I’ve been chronicling my personal finance journey here for over four years, and frankly, there aren’t that many firsts left for me and my finances. Or so I thought.
For the first time ever, I have a serious, painful, nauseating case of spending fatigue.
Now, I’ve had a lot of other weird feelings surround money in the past: I’ve had the money “icks” and the money “uggs” and I’ve even experienced some pretty fierce frugal fatigue (where I was so tired of penny pinching). But never before have I gone through a bout of spending so extreme that it’s left me with the feeling that if I spend another dime I’ll scream.
Partially, the spending I’ve been doing recently is a result of happenstance. It just so happens that I a lot of expenses all piled on at one time, expenses like:
- A $550 car repair
- A $500 class that I have to take to maintain my teaching credential
- Earnest money for the purchase of the condo ($1,700)
- Zillions of other condo expenses that have added up
- Throwing a baby shower for my work BFF ($350ish)
So yeah, it’s been a huge outlay of cash recently, just because that’s the way it worked out. But part of this spending has also been the result of really shitty luck and poor planning. For example, I didn’t actually have to spend $500 on the class. I could have taken the $150 version of the same class, offered by my school district, but in the frenzy that was purchasing the condo, I missed the registration deadline for the cheaper class. Ultimately, the $500 class is more convenient (online!) and it will be reimbursed, but still – $500 is a lot to shell out right now.
Also, I’m having a bit of bad luck with my health. It turns out I have mononucleosis. So, I feel like trash, which sucks, but seems unrelated to the spending, right? Wrong. See, I was planning to do all the cooking and baking for the baby shower, but in the past week I have barely been able to peel myself off the couch. Also, even though the doctor ran a special blood test which shows I’m not contagious, I really didn’t want to take any chances. So, I ended up having the party catered. It was expensive, but I felt like I didn’t have any other choice.
The upshot to all of this is that I am really, really sick of spending money. All I want to do is throw a huge chunk of money into savings, which, as a spendthrift, is really saying a lot. Alas, I don’t think my spending fatigue will be abated in the next month; between moving, a few repairs that need to be done to the condo, and a few travels, I probably won’t be back to financial normalcy until the middle of August.
Sigh. At least I probably won’t be spending a lot of money on socializing, what with the mono and all. Right? Right?!
