Stress Allowance

[liralen]

Around April, I made myself an allowance for each month. Like an old-fashioned kid allowance it's the money I get to spend on the things that I, alone, wish to have. Health items (including massage therapy), food for home meals (excluding my coffee bean and tea leaf addictions), etc. don't count. Scrapbooking ate up nearly all of my August allowance, and it's been worth it. The allowance has been good because it's money I can spend without feeling guilty about it and it's a low enough allowance I have no business feeling guilty about giving it to myself each month. I've even had some folks peer at me for limiting myself this way, but, before this I was spending things either guiltily or through being angry that nothing we were getting was for me. I much prefer knowing and having complete control over something I can't be guilty about.

Two major projects have been stressing me a lot this month. One was a series of interviews that most folks didn't want to do, but agreed should be done. The other was a presentation I had to give today to my boss' boss's staff.

I have figured out that I don't want to get promoted again if it means working, politically, at that level. What's really scary is that after I did the presentation, my boss offered to let me manage Yet Another Group. Aieee...

Folks seemed to appreciate it even at that level. My boss has said that I did a great job, even under fire I kept my cool and was helpful and knowledgeable and did what was next. I still feel wrung out, though. Enough so that I might just add another $25 to my allowance for the month, simply for getting it done and it was "harder than the average bear" things I do. Yes, $25 is a significant enough increase I'd feel good about it. It's nice to have a way to reward myself for hard stuff, and I can get a lot of my digital photos printed with that. :-)

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Ooo, Allowance. That's clever, actually.

Go for the extra bonus.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I did! Yay!

[diony.livejournal.com]

The allowance makes such perfect sense to me. It's interesting that some people don't understand that having limits can be very freeing.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I'm glad you get it, and that it makes sense. I came up with it when I realized that I resented that John was spending money on books, tools, etc. and realized that it wasn't really him, it was me. I didn't feel free to do what he was doing and they were such small things. I put most of my gardening supplies in my allowance as well, and it's gratifying seeing the amount of produce we don't have to buy now because of my small investment.

It's amazing.

[diony.livejournal.com]

How did you decide how big to make the allowance? I think I mentioned earlier that I'm planning to do this for music, so I can shop on iTunes without feeling guilty -- but I'm having an awful time coming up with an amount.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I think it had to do with the "No Guilt" clause. It turned out that it's actually about my old quarterly bonus divided by a half and by the three quarters, so a sixth of my normal profit sharing bonus. But now that I got a promotion, it's likely to be something more like a fifteenth of that. Yeesh.

I ended up deciding that my amount per month was good because I spend about three times that on groceries per month, I usually run through about twice my allowance in just cash for meals, things we have to get to live, etc.

Maybe the real questions are "What would you be comfortable spending and know, even in your most niggardly of hearts, that it wasn't going to impact the 'more necessary' parts of your life?"