One of my goals for this year was to stay on budget.
Yeah… Did you see my cello?
Needless to say, that goal hasn’t been going well. My budget is very tight. I can pay all my bills, but once all the fixed expenses are taken care of I’m left with $40 a week to cover groceries, shopping, gifts, and any fun I want to have. Essentially, if I want to go to a concert, I don’t get to eat.
For the past few months I’ve been thinking about getting a second job (and by “few” I mean “eighteen”). I haven’t put much effort into looking because I’m not sure if the stress of being broke is any better or worse than the stress of being exhausted. I’m too ambitious for my own good and have a knack for running myself into the ground. Carving another dozen hours out of my week has always struck me as vaguely masochistic.
However…
Last weekend I went to a job fair at a local outdoor concert venue. For the next four or five months I’ll be ripping tickets for 16,000 people (well, a portion of them anyway). On the downside I’ll be losing that dozen hours and will probably get sunburns on my sunburns, but on the upside I’ll get a few more notches in my Concert Belt and an extra couple hundred dollars in my pocket every month.
Plus, since it’s a seasonal job, if I do start to burn out I’ll be able to take comfort in the fact that there’s a finish line in the not-too-distant future.
I’m a big fan of living within your means. I hate the debt I’m already carrying and want to pay it down ASAP, but I’m also still young and independent and there’s a great deal of fun I want to have while I’ve got the freedom and energy to enjoy it. If I’m not willing to curb the money going out, I need to boost the money coming in.
And hey, Plan B is still a plan.
by 
