Part 3 Parnassah (or How am I Going to Pay for That?)

And now, the answer to the $64,000 question: How am I going to pay for that? (How many of you even remember the $64,000 Question? That goes back quite some time.)

The intelligent way to pay for the extra expenses associated with holidays like Purim and Pesach (fill in your own holidays folks, you all have them) would be to divide up what you typically spend and put away 1/12 of it every month. Then, when the time came, the money would be sitting there in the bank. No nail-biting. No juggling. No running up credit cards.

Well, I am intelligent, the test results all say so; I just don't seem to be very smart. I haven't put away money for expenses in advance for years now. Guess what? I'm 6 and a half weeks away from Pesach and I have no money saved up. So what am I going to do, especially when you consider that the only 2 credit cards we have that allow you to charge things like food are maxed?

For starters I've already arranged to start paying for Dog in advance, so that I'll have made 2 payments before he ever goes away. Plus, I'm counting on the fact that I'm getting 3 paycheques in the month of April and I have a little extra coming in for some other work I've done recently (and some more that I will be doing over the next month or two).

The other thing is that I always overbuy for Pesach. I'm not going to stop that. We don't buy anything once Pesach starts. That means if I don't buy enough we have some seriously grumpy, hungry individuals roaming the house (me included!). I'd much rather buy too much and then incorporate what's left into my menus over the next week or two after Pesach than run short. The fact is, I do always have some food left over. Plus, there's always some food that gets boxed up and sold with the everyday dishes, etc. for the duration of Pesach. Afterwards, I can use it up too.

We eat a lot during Passover, far too much in fact. That means we'll probably welcome an austere week immediately after. All in all, after spending huge amounts of money on food from mid March to early April, we'll probably spend a little less than normal for the rest of the month.

I also hope that I can start to put away even a portion of what we need on a monthly basis in preparation for next year. To really cover it I'd have to save a little over $100 per month and I don't see that happening at the moment until I have all the bills under control and make some serious progress on one or both credit cards. But if I even saved half of that it would cover half our expenses next year and it would be a real help.