no more please

Being a grown up is something you spend years working toward. When you are 15 and burdened with curfews and not enough allowance, you dream of the day when you will be free.

I’ve been here for almost 10 years now. And its not nearly as fun as I had hoped it would be.

There’s bills. Mortgage, two types of phone, internet, tv, water, gas, electric, student loans, car loans. Everybody wants a piece of your pie.

There’s more chores than your folks ever made you do. You have to do all the dishes. And all the garbage-taking out. And all the kitty poo scooping. And all the lawn mowing. And all the grocery shopping. And all the cooking. And all the cleaning. And all the laundry. And all the appointment making. And all the animal feeding. And all the car maintenance. And all the house maintenance. Even if you have other people take care of the actual work, you have to find said people. And pay them.

There’s retirement planning. With the demise of pensions and possibly social security, you have to be diligent with 401ks and IRAs. You have to start young and make up a guess as to how much you’ll need, how much the return on your investments will be, and how much your salary will increase over the years.

There’s money management. Emergency funds, vacation funds, house maintenance funds, family travel funds (if you live in Virginia and have family in Washington state and Texas, you need a family travel fund …) You have to pay attention to how you spend your money in order to make sure you get to do all the things you want to do. Otherwise you’ll end up with 80 movie ticket stubs. And another year of not seeing your mom.

I guess it’s not really all so bad, but it sure seems that when it rains, it pours. I really can’t wait for this month to be over. And from the way things are going, probably next month, too …