On Thriftiness

There is about half an hour of throwing-things-into-bags to go, and another few minutes of dropping off keys with landlords, but barring the unexpected,** ID will be on the road in an hour or so, to head to... well, I still need to think up a pseudonym for the town he's headed to, but it's his first TT job, and it will take him two days on the road (driving the moving truck) to get there from here.

As we were packing up his stuff, there was an odd assortment of dishes, plastic cups, grad school furniture, etc... and he was putting it all on the truck. This was very different from when I moved: About two years before finishing grad school, at age 31, I had had an "I'm an adult, dammit!" semi-breakdown, and gone out and bought $1,000 worth of "grown-up" furniture, dishes, etc. Additionally, I jettisoned a lot of what remained of my grad-school stuff when I moved, figuring that I would have a grown-up salary, and so would buy the new things that I'd always wanted. Taking a bunch of mismatched dishes would have never entered my mind.

All this is to say: this is why I have over $10K in consumer debt, and ID is going into his TT job completely debt-free. I'm envious.***


**Like the charity org. that wouldn't take the freakin' TV, and the fact that we can't leave it at the curb, and have to take it to a municipal recycling facility, but that facility won't take them without a sticker, but you can't buy the sticker at the facility, but have to do so at the city offices... ::sigh::

***But apparently not envious enough to do anything about it, as I still want a fancy new bike, and have convinced myself that "want" means "need." I apparently never learn.