Okay, so we’re not broke. Far from it. But we drew up a new budget the other night and there really isn’t as much wiggle room as we were expecting, on a week-to-week basis. Hubs and I have been looking forward to this year for over 2 years (since I stopped working) as we would be, as we called it, “raking it in.” Turns out it’s not so much “raking” as it is slowly collecting in small amounts and seeing the money leave as fast as it’s coming in.

I think we were kind of kidding ourselves and it is finally hitting home that the next few years are really going to be (slow) building years. We are only on one salary, and a starting salary at that. People kept suggesting we were getting ahead of ourselves with all the excitement, but we couldn’t help it.

I know it’s really counterproductive, but I keep having thoughts of “if we were in Wang things would be so much better.” I happen to be fairly certain that if we had stayed in Wang, our thoughts would have been “we really should have moved somewhere different this year.” Well, maybe I would have thought that. But we would have been heaps better off financially (without having to move, and paying substantially less rent); I feel I would have been happier around my friends in Wang and closer to our Melbourne “family”; we wouldn’t be being harassed by our real estate agent (they are getting rude and nasty and we are fed up); Hubs wouldn’t have shingles; (oh yeah, Hubs has shingles and has had to stay home all week) and Hubs would have gotten more favourable rotations.

And maybe I wouldn’t be biting my nails again. Dammit.

But Wang was never offered, so there’s no point dwelling. I know that in a few years time, with some self-control and sticking to the budget, we can meet our financial goals. We just expected to be more comfortable earlier than that. But it will happen. Now that we have the budget I feel better about things already. I function much better when I have boundaries with spending, and we haven’t had that the last few months.

Sorry for the big whine. I guess I’m not quite over it just yet…