Other People's Money

Lately I've become interested in learning how other people save and spend their money. My number one favorite thing is to listen to justifications. I totally understand justifications, I do it all the time for clothes. But, seriously, we wear clothes everyday and it's an expression of who we are so I think it's okay to spend some money on them (see, I'm doing it again!).

Quite honestly, though, I don't understand how people my age have as much expendable cash as they all seem to. I keep thinking what in the hell am I doing wrong? Because I don't have much expendable cash and if I buy expendable things then I'm usually expending that shit from savings. Not that I can't do anything, I can go out to dinner, buy clothes, go to movies. But, I'm talking about the big stuff. Like how can a 26-30 year old afford going on more than a couple of vacations a year? Especially when they have a house payment, car payment, kids and a dog. I don't have any of those things and I can't afford going on more than one vacation a year. Unless my mom is paying (thanks Mom!).

Recently I've stumbled across a woman who is around my age (28 for those that don't know) and is strapped for cash. In a bad way. She's always bitching about how she can't spend money on food or alcohol or buying herself new rags for work. But then all of a sudden she'll be all "I just bought tickets to the baseball game" or "I went out to this fancy dinner with friends and bought 2 bottles of wine" or "I'm going on this spa vacation". But the real kick in the fanny was when she all of a sudden declared that she had to have the new iPad. The iPad starts at $499, not to mention all of the apps that you will likely buy to put on it. I wanted to tell her that buying that iPad is the reason why you will never have money saved and will always be desperate for cash. Because you don't need an iPad. An iPad is something that you buy when you have an extra $500 lying around and can't figure out what to buy with it. Enter iPad.

Plus, Grace tells me the iPad isn't even compatible with Flash, so it's all goodbye YouTube. And if you can't watch YouTube, what's the point?

P.S. How much do you love the picture posted with this blog? I love it in an overly-aggressive way.