The Dentist Still Takes Cash

I had my wisdom teeth surgery about two weeks ago and I paid cash. I mean cold hard cash. In 20s. I probably could have either paid with 50s or 100 dollar bills, but I just wanted to be dramatic. So there I sat, counting out 20s. The office lady asked if I had exact change. I almost did. My bill came to $488.30 and I had $490.30 So she had to go across the street to get change for my ten.

It was pretty fabulous. I wonder when the last time was they had someone pay in cold hard cash.

There's just something satisfying about laying out those bills - maybe it was mostly the fact that it was budgeted, and this wisdom teeth wasn't going to come back in a credit card bill at the end of the month, and I didn't have to "finance" with the dr's office.

The borrower is servent to the lender, and I am not going to enslave myself!

an update

Baby Step 2 is in full swing. Well, as full as we can get it. We're still in the process of funding my wisdom teeth surgery. That and I made a $56.50 mistake in my checkbook balancing. That wouldn't be a big deal, except that $100 is about all we can squeeze out of our budget after bills and only $50 a month in blow money. I keep reading about people who budget $100-$200 for blow money each month and I laugh to myself. We really are barely are making ends meet. But by golly those ends are meeting!

It's a great feeling to have a working budget and to be able to pay CASH for things like wisdom teeth surgery. And on top of that, we should be getting our dislocation allowance soon (that's another $2500). We're going to use part of it to put up a fence in the backyard so the Little Guy can run around semi-unsupervised in the backyard. The rest we'll throw into our debt snowball, we'll probably knock out one small debt, and then throw the rest on the motorcycle loan. That will free up another $65 a month for the snowball. Hooah!

Once car registration and wisdom teeth surgery are paid for next month, I'll update again with how our budget is doing... Wish us luck.