If you've ever wondered whether you could shovel U.S. currency into an open fire faster than a teenager can burn through all the money you will ever have, the answer is probably yes. But you'd have to work fast and stick to large bills.
Cash Flow Management ("CFM") throughout the teenage years is a tricky proposition on almost any income. For families working in the Communication-Education-Humor sector, it is largely an exercise in delusional budgeting practices. Like buying Pop-Tarts in bulk.
Still, any budget, even one as fanciful as one that attempts to put a price on the teenage years, is something you can laugh at later when you are spending your retirement in a cardboard box underneath the overpass. And you can't really put a price on that.
In the meantime, perspective is everything. Go in expecting Total Financial Ruin ("TFR") and a couple of broken iPhones start to seem like "Small Change." It's the data charges where they really get you.
In a related development, we recently welcomed Boy, Esq. home from the University of All Our Money & Then Some, where a last-minute switch in his housing plan will cost us less than $900 in non-refundable deposits. We really got off easy there!
Thank god for frequent flyer miles, which very nearly saved us the cost of his flight home, until he realized at the last minute that he actually needed to leave campus two entire days earlier. Oop$! The important thing is that we ALMOST managed to reduce our costs.
And that is the sort of financial savvy that very nearly keeps this family afloat.
And here I was feeling sorry for myself because my HS senior asked me to pay a $60 unrefundable fee for a physics "field trip" to an amusement park, then skipped it so he could take a couple of finals.
Posted by: Meg | May 20, 2014 at 09:20 AM
Please! That is practically like finding money on the sidewalk.
SK
Posted by: Suburban Kamikaze | May 20, 2014 at 09:22 AM