Spending Money

Probably the worst time in the world to be thinking about spending money for things that you don't need is right after you've transferred money into your checking account to pay bills related to both taxes and vacations....and found that you didn't transfer enough.

Its not a major deal -- our theory is that while taxes are considered routine expenses (and therefore have to be paid out of routine income; failure to be able to do so means that we need to rethink how much money is going into savings versus checking), vacations are capital expenses which can be paid for out of savings -- money fund, savings accounts, things like that.

You can't do that all the time, of course, which realization has given me a very small appreciation of the mental gymnastics that professionals go through when they decide if corporate expenses can legitimately be charged to available funds, or if they have to be met through recurring earnings (its one of the places, I bet, where the jiggery-pokery happens when the CEO wants earnings to look good). But it makes doing the transfer a little more soothing, emotionally.

Still an unsettling experience, though.