well we in in in our family have been pretty remiss in trying to uh you know keep track of uh daily finances uh the uh way way back
what twelve years ago or something when i got my first computer
i did what everybody else does which is to put the whole family budget on the machine and
put checks and you know checkbooks and all those kind of thing and we kept that going for about a month and it became so onerous that we gave up on it
um-hum that sounds about right
you know so uh the only thing we're you know that we do now is uh i keep a a little spreadsheet of uh what i call the net worth calculation which is just the
the present value of various kinds of investments and so forth uh and i only update that
oh i don't know maybe once every quarter or so every three months just basically when the statements come in
um-hum
you know just to see whether or not we're falling you know getting ahead falling behind or staying staying even or what
right
um that's really about you know the extent of uh of the kind of uh
financial score keeping that we're doing
uh
well it's kind of difficult for me because right now um like most teachers i'm laid off
hm oh dear that's terrible
and so um
i spend most you know i substitute a lot
uh-huh
so it's a lot it's very hard on a nonfixed income because i don't know how many days i'm going to be called in and whether i am or not to try to keep track of finances
uh-huh
and but i know uh how much i have to bring in a month and that's about it that's about as far as we go and then anything extra is
you know more or less split up between all of us
uh-huh
and just thrown in the kitty more or less for a rainy day
oh i see are you are you married are you living with a bunch of with with people you're sharing expenses
um no i'm a single mother i have three children
oh i see uh-huh
so uh right now we're on we get from you know aid from the state
at this point because there's no other way to do it and my ex-husband just sort of took off and doesn't pay child support
oh dear
so right now i know what i'm getting from the state and um i have to balance more or less
what i get from the state with my bills and um you know try to work as many days as possible
um-hum
any time they call me in but i still have to figure out if i work too many days then i lose all my state aid
and if i don't work enough days then i don't get enough to meet the bills and it's like a juggling act every single month
um-hum
like this week i've been just holding my breath and hoping they'll call me in but they probably won't because next week the kids have school vacation
i see
so you know the four days before they only have a four day week and they usually don't need subs because everybody's pretty good about coming in
uh-huh
i oh i see
they don't like to be absent before a vacation
oh sure
but we're shopping around as far as well i'm shopping around as far as trying to get uh that's why i'm doing this to get some extra money
uh-huh
and um getting pledge sheets for the Boy Scouts my kids are in Boy Scouts so trying to get pledge sheets for the Boy Scouts because every penny i bring in is ten percent to me
so it sort of helps defray the costs a little bit but you know we do a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul
i guess we're in the situation that a lot of Americans you know middle class Americans are in
uh-huh
yeah you're the first you know uh
my next door neighbor just lost his job in a you know one of these uh his company went broke
oh my Lord
i mean went you know bankrupt actually it was a subsidiary of a
of an outfit called US Shoe or something it was a computer subsidiary i don't know what a shoe company's doing running a computer company
really
but uh you know they just they just folded it up and um um told him to that they took the top management and gave them jobs
um-hum
with the with the corporate uh at the corporate front office and everybody else was sent packing
ah
uh hang on one second i've got
sure
um somebody somebody was knocking on my door here um
it sounds like in a certain sense at least at the present stage i mean it sounds sounds terrible to say but at the present stage you probably are
even more in the market for a a budgetary thing than than than most people probably are might be terms of keeping keeping score of input and output
right
um-hum definitely
do you have a computer do you have a computer at home or
uh yes we do and we try to you know i keep track of every penny and more or less enter it in you know every single day i'm at the computer
uh-huh
uh-huh
i see
and it's like okay what do we have left what do we have to pay what have we paid this month what hasn't come in yet you know
um-hum
yeah have you do you use a standard uh
a standard spreadsheet or i mean
