In case I made anyone nauseated with that last post of how to spend my disposable income, let me tell you another story, a true one from my own life. Not as nice a story, but a funny one (in hindsite, from a large distance).
About nine years ago, when our second child was a newborn, we were in a terrible, ridiculous situation. I had been unemployed for about 8 months, and my husband was just starting his second career, as a teacher for the public school district, under the recent "Teacher Emergency Certification Program". This meant they could pay him next-to-nothing as a Teacher-in-training or some stupid title while he took classes at night to get a teaching certificate. We payed for his tuition on credit card. Despite living on a grocery budget of $60/wk (incl.diapers!) plus WIC checks, we were spending way beyond our means, could barely keep up with the minimal credit card bills, and for a couple months we would occasionally be stuck with no cash for hubby to take the bus to work / college / home. So we would take a baby present back to the store to exchange - generally if you return a gift, you can't get cash, only a store credit voucher; but if you exchange for something within $5 of the original item, they'll give you the leftover in cash (except the lousy Disney store, that gave me a Disney card with 90cents, lousy Disney store). So that's what we would do, go out to the mall, to get $4.80 in cash. Oh Gd, that was so awful.
