I’m Jess and I lost my decent-paying, professional job in June of 2011. After I lost my job, I was utterly stressed about how I was going to make ends meet and as a result, I stopped going out and spending ‘fun’ money all together. If I did something fun, it was completely free due to my lack of moola. Rarely spending money any ‘fun’ money was getting to me because I felt like I was missing out. However, when I thought about spending money the way my employed friends did, I felt anxious and guilty. If I went out to lunch with a friend at a low-cost restaurant, I couldn’t stop calculating the number of Ramen Noodles packets I should have been buying with that money. Likewise, if I paid the entry fee for a park, I would use that fee to compute how those five dollars would have equated into a gallon and a half of gas and so forth. My feelings of spending money on anything other than basic, primal needs was racked with the guilt of a Catholic schoolgirl rolling the waistband of her skirt to make the hem shorter…
One day, my girlfriend and I were talking about our respective financial information. In that discussion, we talked a bit about our budgets and how expensive it is to go out. We realized that we usually have ten bucks a piece for a $20 date on any given week. From there, I wondered how on earth anyone could go on a date with just $20 for two people…so I kept musing on this topic.
And then, I had a turning point. I randomly remembered a class exercise I completed in one of my college courses for my degree in Social Work. In this class, we were often given a scenario of an individual or family with a social problem. This particular case study I remembered was one in which the family we were studying had limited funds, four children and so on. We were to develop a budget for this family and that budget had to meet all the family’s needs. Everyone in the class, myself included, completed the exercise and developed a budget. Our professor seems pleased because every student seemed to have completed the task. Then, as we spoke about how we were meeting our family’s needs for food, clothing, shelter and so forth, our professor pointed out that we had missed a huge need for this family. We had all missed the point. We had assumed that since the family had food and water and shelter, that our job was done. We were wrong.
Our professor pointed out that since those basic needs were met for the family, we should have budgeted some time and limited funds for the family to have fun. FUN?! I was baffled as were many of my classmates. Sure everyone needs to have some fun but if you’re struggling to survive shouldn’t survival come first? The answer was that, yes, survival should come first absolutely. But with most of our families, there was about $20 left in every classmate’s budget that the family could use for fun. That was an interesting thought in my opinion. I read in school that some people in poverty are stressed to the point of physical ailments and then, what my professor was saying made sense even in a roundabout kind of way. I mean, if a family or individual in poverty has an outlet for stress (i.e.: fun), then perhaps they would be healthier and happier and perhaps even better in their jobs due to overall health and so forth.
From the above events, this blog was born. The general idea/challenge for this blog is to have fun with a date or a friend for $20 combined. The
rules of the game are this:
-I may not spend more than $20 total for myself and my friend (gas money not included).
-I may not eat out without including the costs of the restaurant meal in this $20.
-Have fun without breaking my budget
-Every post for an outing must include at least one picture from said outing
-And, finally, every post must have a cost-analysis breakdown by item/dollar (i.e.: movie ticket deal- 8.50/piece, etc)
