Morning all. I hope you are having a good morning. We have early voting in TN this week so I as soon as the polls open I am heading over, after all as my dad liked to say, you can’t complain about the government not taking your advice if you don’t give them your input. And let me tell you, that man was not giving up his right to complain. Whatever your opinion, if you have a chance to vote I suggest taking the time to do so. But before then, we have the morning prompt. So let’s leave civics behind and set the timers for fifteen minutes.
Not sure quite where this is going to go, but I suspect she is going to find something hidden in their finances that she doesn’t expect.
Tuesday, July 28th: The dryer thumped as the clothes spun.
The dryer thumped as the clothes spun. She could tell that a clump of clothing melded together by centrifugal force but also knew by the time she went to the dryer to break apart the mass it would have broken up naturally. Still the thump bothered her. It sounded like she accidentally chucked a tennis shoe in with her jeans. He let it go a few times then sighed and stood. She got two steps away from the kitchen table when the mass broke up and the thumping toned down. No longer did she fear a shoe was included.
It helped that when she stood she could see her back yard shoes placed by the back door, both of them.
“Knew it,” she told herself. Instead of sitting back down she poured herself another mug of coffee. She didn’t need another cup, but it was there. She was certain her stomach would be acidy later, but tried to balance by adding extra creamer to the cup. She then took the cup back to the table and sat down.
The laptop was placed on the table and the numbers hadn’t changed in the short time she stepped away. She sipped the coffee slowly. Numbers were a reality that she couldn’t ignore. She was certain there was a way to bend them, a way to reshape them to make them look like what you wanted. The reality was at the end of the day there was only so much money coming in and only so far it would stretch.
It was something she understood from her bones outward. During her childhood there were many stretches where everything had to be pared back to the basics. Even when they didn’t need to pare back as sharply some years the memory of the sparse times stayed with them and they tended to restrict spending and save so the lean times wouldn’t be quite so lean.
Saving was part habit and part in anticipation.
Her husband referred to it as her eternal pessimism.
It was not a trait he shared. Trevor grew up in a family where there was always more than enough. There were never any short falls. He assumed that there would always be money to do whatever he wanted. However, she knew that to give him and his siblings everything, his parents racked up a sizable amount of debt.
When they married, Trevor refused to combine finances. They each kept their separate bank accounts, and each paid into a family fund to cover household expenses. The reason was because he didn’t want to have to listen to her pessimism. He didn’t want to be told no when he wanted to buy things. He wanted to do what he wanted without criticism.
For her part, she tried not to mention things but whenever his pricy spends came up, she found herself putting more and more into savings, going short on a few things herself to balance things out.
They both paid the same amount into the bills, splitting them evenly. She monitored them though and tracked any increases. Trevor hated the increases and complained bitterly when he was forced to kick even an extra dollar into the general budget.
They had a fight the night before over it. She suggested that if he didn’t want to add more to the family fund then they would have to cut back on things. He suggested that some of the bills weren’t his. So she spent the morning splitting out streaming fees for services based on who used them. It wasn’t looking pretty.
Ten til Midnight 