the arithmetic of the old year

For many, many decades, I have taken a day out the last week of a calendar year to review my budget for the year gone by. I count up endless columns of good and bad spending choices. (I do the counting in my head. Perhaps because my sums have never been that large, I have never used spreadsheets or calculators in budget exercises.) I make sure that what is in the budget book matches what is in the bank account. Usually I find a lovely little bonus of extra cash, because I round up what I write into the books. Ed always shakes his head in disbelief: what's the point of deceiving yourself all year long? Just write it down like it is! Clearly he has never appreciated the joy of finding 200 unspent dollars at the end of the year.

Today is my chosen day for this budget marathon. I could not have had better weather for it! Rain. A drippy, uninviting rain that matches well my drippy, uninviting nose. (Sure enough, I did not escape the sharing of the family cold!)

But first, there is breakfast.






When the rains take a brief pause, I give the cheepers some Christmas treats.






(They're an appreciative bunch!)






And then I lose myself in my papers, my tissues and cups of warm tea.


Of course, one reason for all this counting and recounting is that it allows me to set goals for the year ahead. So many of us love the idea of a clean slate. Me too!  Well, if you structure your accounting to coincide with the calendar, you can do it! And so long as your accounting books let you turn the page and put behind you your follies and misdeeds of 2018, well then, why not just turn the bigger page and start with a fresh one in any number of domains? Perhaps we can introduce a bit more wisdom and forgiveness into our days going forward. Or how about something that surely can't be terribly hard for most of us -- how about allowing that inner joy to have a good run of it in 2019?

Musings on a soppy wet day full of scribbles, erasures and finally, a balanced budget!


When I'm done, I put away the pencils and note book, take out a delicious stinky cheese, pour a bit of white burgundy, and raise a toast to a new year of budgeting adventures. Ed snitches some of that delicious cheese, then retreats to lock the cheepers in the coop for the night.