Running Balance is the story of how my family of four (two adults, one three-year-old, one eighteen-month-old) makes it on one income. It’s a work in progress, but if you have any thoughts, questions, or you just want to say hi, you can reply to this email.
Thursday
“Gah! Water is out,” my husband texted me on Thursday morning, I assume from under two toddlers. “Can you bring me a lunch?”
We rent a condo through a property management company which means things are always happening with no warning. The water is shut off without notice at least once a month. I didn’t think much of it.
$12.83, Chipotle
I’d left my debit card at home, so I told him to put in an order at Chipotle for me to pick up on my lunch hour. He asked if I wanted anything, and the thought of my turkey sandwich in the office fridge was more appealing to me than spending money—growth!—but I did ask for an iced tea.
Once I pulled into our parking lot, I texted and asked if he wanted a porch drop, UPS style. The kids hadn’t been happy to say goodbye to me earlier in the morning. “Ya,” he responded. “Emotions are high in the realm.” I left his order on the welcome mat and went back to work.
It wasn’t until later, when I went to a coworker’s desk to confirm some numbers, that I realized there had been a water main break. She was watching live coverage of people sitting on top of their submerged cars on the freeway, waiting for rescue.
I stayed at work until we got kicked out. The building was about to run out of water, making the sprinkler system useless, and the city was officially on a 24-hour boil notice.
Friday
For a long time, payday has meant paying bills and credit card minimums and then taking a grim looking at what remained. But! No more credit card payments. (At least in theory, since our bankruptcy lawyer has ghosted us!) So this week, we decided to make a budget for the first time in a long time.
After bills, I put $210 in savings, leaving us with $450.
We budgeted $125 for groceries for every Saturday that falls in the pay cycle, which we’re guessing is a little generous, but leaves room for more expensive occasional things like paper towels or baby wipes or diapers.
Even though I have deeply guilty feelings about spending money on eating out, we decided it makes sense to build in one meal a week out of the house as a steam releif valve. So that works out to $50 per paycheck.
On this paycheck, I need a haircut, which is about $25, and there are two social events at work that come to about $15.
My husband is going to play a game at a hobby store and might pick up a pot of paint and a soda for $10ish.
We’re putting aside $40 to charge the car.
Which leaves $55 for whatever unexpected nonsense pops up in the next two weeks.
When I dropped off my son at my mother-in-law’s for the day on Friday, she asked me if I was afraid of the corona virus. “No,” I said, keeping the not remotely part to myself. I’d read an article earlier in the week, You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus, about how the virus has evolved to sicken people just enough that it can continue to spread, and how it’s probably going to be part of flu season going forward. Another dumpster fire headline for 2020, such is life, what are you going to do, etc.
She spent the day at Costco buying coconut water and Pediasure and rice and beans in bulk, stocking up for the worst case scenario.
$30.77, Mediterranean buffet
I got another morning text from my husband, this time saying that he’d been locked out of our gate while on a walk and wanted to know if I could swing by and let him in. I decided to accomplish three things at once and we ended up having lunch together at a buffet by our early polling place. They had cans of soda in a tub in front of their soda fountain, which couldn’t be hooked up to the city line. The city announced that they would test the water at 7 a.m. on Saturday and notify everyone if the water was safe again.
Saturday
Here are some things you can’t do during a boil notice: Brush your teeth, use your dishwasher, wash fruit under the tap, fill up your hot water kettle, bathe any child wily enough to drink bathwater, do laundry if you have a crappy washer that doesn’t drain properly.
Less than twenty-four hours later after writing off cornoavirus panic, I was feeling like an under-prepared fool.
$142.67, Target
My husband woke up with no more safe water to make coffee. (We could have boiled some, but that would have involved boiling water to clean the pot we needed to boil water with.) Local news reported that the boil notice had been extended through the weekend, so we planned for our weekly shop accordingly, with things that didn’t require cooking or rinsing—prewashed baby carrots, packaged apple slices, turkey and tuna sandwiches, yogurt and muesli, paper towels, and disposable plates and silverware. And bath wipes for our filthy children. And water, of course, in gallon jugs for coffee and kitchen tasks, and individual bottles for brushing our teeth in the bathroom.
+$31.43, Target
We made it home, unloaded the kids and the perishable groceries, and made breakfast. I was a couple of bites into my yogurt when the city emailed saying the boil notice was off. Ha! We piled everyone back in the car and returned all the things we didn’t need anymore—plates, bowls, cups, silverware, individual bottles of water, and the baby bath wipes, which were shockingly expensive. Once we got home again, we ran all the faucets for three minutes to clear the pipes of the bad water and resumed our normal weekend plans.
I’m still not sure what level of disaster preparation makes sense for us. We have fever reducer and Benadryl for the kids. (The only real medicines they can take at this age.) We have cold medicine, cough medicine, pain killers, and a three-month supply of my anti-depressant that my pharmacy just filled. Whatever happens, we’ll probably be okay. Especially now that we have the financial flexibility to confront whatever obstacle life throws our way next.