It was so unexpected and felt so odd that I just had to share.
Last Friday, a Friday the Thirteenth no less, I took my ninth vacation day of the year.
If you want to get super technical and split hairs, it was really only my sixth vacation day of the year, three of the off days having been labeled “personal days.” At my employer, every employee is granted four personal days per year regardless of tenure. When it comes to vacation, you accumulate more as you gain more tenure. Upon completing my tenth year there a bit over three years ago, I went from three weeks of vacation per year to four.
Thus, I now earn twenty vacation days per year, or 6.1538 hours per pay period. We are automatically granted four personal days every May 1st when our community’s fiscal year starts. So if you want to get technical, I earn twenty vacation days and four personal days per year for a total of twenty-four days off. Every employee earns one sick day per month, but I have been blessed and have not had to use many sick days at all over the years and have over a hundred on the books despite cashing out many at half pay over the years.
Anyway, let’s just say that I was off work taking what I considered my ninth vacation day of the year. Incidentally, I will be taking three later this week having rented a farmhouse out in rural Wisconsin not too far from the Wisconsin Dells for four days.
So I was in a pretty good mood Friday morning with plans to take my daughter and her BFF to the Evanston beach after having gone to the beach on the Fourth. My sister was in town with her husband and daughters, and I was going to meet her and her two girls at the beach, as well.
As a long-time municipal government economic development official, I am by no means making it rich. But unlike working class folks or those who subsist in the gig economy, I certainly get paid for a day’s work whether I am taking a vacation day to go to the beach or whether I work a ten hour day, as I have done periodically of late.
I realize that many folks work more hours, but I also know that many of those same folks make more money for working more hours. As a salaried employee, I do not. I earn about $416 per day for my efforts, about $310 of which I keep after taxes, insurance and social security.
With the sun shining and having had some coffee with my wife and a nice breakfast, I was happy to be heading to the beach instead of my stressful place of work.
As I was grabbing some folding chairs from the back of our garage that we have been using quite a bit lately, I saw a bunch of papers in a brown milk crate nearby. On a whim, I decided to check out what was in it.
Lo and behold, what I found were a pile of papers that I hastily took out of my old rusty and trusty Subaru before it got towed away to the scrapyard forever. There were dozens of menus that I had accumulated, several notebooks filled with my kids’ schoolwork from school years long completed, a few books (because I have books absolutely everywhere) and the original papers from when my parents purchased the 1998 Subaru Legacy twenty long years ago.
I do not know of anybody else who would flip through the papers in the original instruction manual, but I did just for shits and giggles. I found cards from State Farm insurance, warranty information for tires that had been replaced over a decade ago, State of Illinois registration documents for several years in the late nineties and the first decade of the 2000s.
I also found, in a neat stack, six twenties, six tens, eight fives and one single dollar bill for a total of $191.
Jackpot!
I should share if you have not read previous posts of mine that my family typically spends about eight grand per month for our living expenses, and I Pay Ourselves First another $1,500 or more in a typical month.
In months like this one when property taxes are due, or the ten months per year that I make installment payments on our son’s college, ten or twelve grand leaves our account. Thus, the amount of $191 is hardly a game changer.
Of course, I realize that my mother or late father, who passed away in August of 2012, stashed the cash in there in case of emergency. I even recall one of my parents telling me that they always stash some cash somewhere in the glove compartment “in case of emergency.”
I just did not expect to find it while flipping through twenty-year-old automobile documents from a car that I donated a while ago.
Also, I should mention that I was laughing fairly hard while flipping through the bills, both at the absurdity of finding it in the instruction manual for a car that I sold to Victory Auto Wreckers for an amount less than that, and also at my parents for stashing that amount in those papers all those years ago for my use today.
Besides having waken up in a good mood and with some measure of excitement about going to the beach, I had another feeling that was difficult to identify and describe.
I thought about it a while, and then understood that I was feeling a sense of abundance like I have not felt for quite some time.
This was only a few minutes after I gave my wife a good chunk of change from my wallet for her to go to the local Farmer’s Market. Oh well, I thought to myself as I handed her my cash, I will just have to hit the cash station with the girls on the way to the beach.
The previous day, I had given a five spot to a father begging for money in the Jewel parking lot. Call me an asshole if you want, but I typically forego giving money to men who appear to be able-bodied, but I will always hand a few bucks to a woman begging for money so long as I have it.
I suppose that could be another blog topic; how I have changed from never giving anything to beggars to trying to give as many as I can as much as I can.
I would not have mentioned giving the money to the guy, but he was setting up on the edge of the parking lot, where it feeds into a fairly busy road. He had two of his children with him, which made it seem even more pitiful. Although some may consider it merely a ploy to have pitiful looking children with him while he was begging, it worked on me and I am sure it did on many others. I’m sure that he would rather make a good living doing something better than begging for money in front of his children.
Also, I do not actually consider the money that I gave my wife for the Farmer’s Market “giving her money.” We have had a shared checking account since we got married and she changed her name to mine. She could just as easily withdraw a hundred bucks from the Cash Station as I could, it just so happens that she rarely does and I often do.
After giving much of my money away, the thought did cross my mind from the large amount of financial self-help reading that I have done, that whatever you give away comes back to you.
That is the third reason why I was laughing while flipping through my find after giving my wife most of my cash. Just ten minutes later, four times as much came to me as I handed over to her.
So this feeling…
I thought to myself, I still had about forty bucks left in my wallet before finding the hidden cash, so now I had over two hundred on me. Plus, I could always charge things along the way like I always do, so it was not as if I had to pay for everything that day with the cash. But if I did have to, I would have it.
Despite my old minivan not having air conditioning, my daughter, her BFF and I were in high spirits as we blasted a Twenty One Pilots CD and headed toward Evanston on Friday the Thirteenth with over two hundred bucks in my wallet.
We stopped at Walgreens because I wanted to purchase some water bottles (we had run out) to put in the cooler that I was bringing to the beach. Because I am such a soft touch, and because I had a feeling of abundance, I let them pick out cold drinks (a root beer for my daughter, a Coke for her BFF) and I agreed to buy them a package of Oreo cookies.
I remarked that I was buying my girls “some health food” to the cashier, who chuckled a bit.
We continued on to a good and extremely popular lunch spot, the Pita Inn on Dempster in Skokie. I paid for our lunch with some of my new found cash and sense of abundance.
We made it to the beach, where I gladly paid the $24 in entrance fees for us, also with a sense of abundance. What’s a mere $24 to enjoy hours at a clean and well-guarded beach?
We were there for a total of five hours, during which time my sister and two nieces hung out with us for about two hours before heading to a friend’s home for Sabbath dinner. My own best friend showed up around 6:00 when we were getting ready to leave, but we stayed for another forty minutes or so with him.
I utilized another skill that I have been working on improving upon, listening to what he had to say more than talking a lot like I usually do.
The only dilemma came when my wife called to inquire about dinner. We were just leaving around 7:00 and she had been holding up dinner for us without knowing when we were going to return. She had purchased some gourmet organic chicken for us and was going to grill it, along with some fresh veggies from the Farmer’s Market.
I apologized for the lack of communication, but also explained that I was so chill, I hardly noticed the passage of time. I should mention that I spent several hours reading a true beach read, Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam. I purchased an advance uncorrected proof copy the week before at a book sale, which is definitely one of my greatest weaknesses.
Despite having ordered pizzas the previous Tuesday when my sister and her girls came by our house for dinner, I told my wife that we should just call Domino’s again and grill the chicken the next night. She was very agreeable, and I had the girls put in their order to my wife.
I told my wife that we should pay with cash, but Domino’s requires credit card payment if you exceed some low amount like $20.
Well, no worries about the rest of the cash lasting too long.
My sense of abundance took a bit of a hit when I gave my daughter $47 to go to Six Flags the next day. I realize that $47 is an odd amount, and also coincides with my age, but it was originally going to be $40, then I decided to give her another five and I only had two singles left, so I gave those to her as well.
I had mentioned finding the stash to my family, which was quite possibly a minor mistake, and my daughter just said that she was taking her fair share of my find.
After all, a Jewish money mensch cannot allow his daughter to spend a day at Six Flags without a few dollars in her purse. My main regret is not giving her more.
I ordered and picked up lunch for my wife, my son and I the next day, which ate up another $25 or so. My wife insisted that I take her to our favorite spot, Dairy Queen, after dropping our son off at his orchestra pit rehearsal tonight.
I have a hard time recalling where the rest of it went, but I now have about $60 left of the $230 or so that I had in my wallet this past Friday, and intend on spending it tomorrow on a combination of coffee, perhaps a sandwich for lunch, and gasoline for my old van.
I will be stopping by the bank to withdraw about $500 for our little jaunt, although I intend on paying for most or all of our outings with credit. Who knows? Perhaps I will pay for a few restaurant outings in cash. But even with $500 in my wallet heading out of town for three days, it will not approach the feeling of abundance that I enjoyed this past Friday the Thirteenth after discovering a completely unexpected $191 for my ninth vacation day of the year and second beach day of the month.
I hope to have that feeling again soon.
Last Friday, a Friday the Thirteenth no less, I took my ninth vacation day of the year.
If you want to get super technical and split hairs, it was really only my sixth vacation day of the year, three of the off days having been labeled “personal days.” At my employer, every employee is granted four personal days per year regardless of tenure. When it comes to vacation, you accumulate more as you gain more tenure. Upon completing my tenth year there a bit over three years ago, I went from three weeks of vacation per year to four.
Thus, I now earn twenty vacation days per year, or 6.1538 hours per pay period. We are automatically granted four personal days every May 1st when our community’s fiscal year starts. So if you want to get technical, I earn twenty vacation days and four personal days per year for a total of twenty-four days off. Every employee earns one sick day per month, but I have been blessed and have not had to use many sick days at all over the years and have over a hundred on the books despite cashing out many at half pay over the years.
Anyway, let’s just say that I was off work taking what I considered my ninth vacation day of the year. Incidentally, I will be taking three later this week having rented a farmhouse out in rural Wisconsin not too far from the Wisconsin Dells for four days.
So I was in a pretty good mood Friday morning with plans to take my daughter and her BFF to the Evanston beach after having gone to the beach on the Fourth. My sister was in town with her husband and daughters, and I was going to meet her and her two girls at the beach, as well.
As a long-time municipal government economic development official, I am by no means making it rich. But unlike working class folks or those who subsist in the gig economy, I certainly get paid for a day’s work whether I am taking a vacation day to go to the beach or whether I work a ten hour day, as I have done periodically of late.
I realize that many folks work more hours, but I also know that many of those same folks make more money for working more hours. As a salaried employee, I do not. I earn about $416 per day for my efforts, about $310 of which I keep after taxes, insurance and social security.
With the sun shining and having had some coffee with my wife and a nice breakfast, I was happy to be heading to the beach instead of my stressful place of work.
As I was grabbing some folding chairs from the back of our garage that we have been using quite a bit lately, I saw a bunch of papers in a brown milk crate nearby. On a whim, I decided to check out what was in it.
Lo and behold, what I found were a pile of papers that I hastily took out of my old rusty and trusty Subaru before it got towed away to the scrapyard forever. There were dozens of menus that I had accumulated, several notebooks filled with my kids’ schoolwork from school years long completed, a few books (because I have books absolutely everywhere) and the original papers from when my parents purchased the 1998 Subaru Legacy twenty long years ago.
I do not know of anybody else who would flip through the papers in the original instruction manual, but I did just for shits and giggles. I found cards from State Farm insurance, warranty information for tires that had been replaced over a decade ago, State of Illinois registration documents for several years in the late nineties and the first decade of the 2000s.
Jackpot!
I should share if you have not read previous posts of mine that my family typically spends about eight grand per month for our living expenses, and I Pay Ourselves First another $1,500 or more in a typical month.
In months like this one when property taxes are due, or the ten months per year that I make installment payments on our son’s college, ten or twelve grand leaves our account. Thus, the amount of $191 is hardly a game changer.
Of course, I realize that my mother or late father, who passed away in August of 2012, stashed the cash in there in case of emergency. I even recall one of my parents telling me that they always stash some cash somewhere in the glove compartment “in case of emergency.”
I just did not expect to find it while flipping through twenty-year-old automobile documents from a car that I donated a while ago.
Also, I should mention that I was laughing fairly hard while flipping through the bills, both at the absurdity of finding it in the instruction manual for a car that I sold to Victory Auto Wreckers for an amount less than that, and also at my parents for stashing that amount in those papers all those years ago for my use today.
Besides having waken up in a good mood and with some measure of excitement about going to the beach, I had another feeling that was difficult to identify and describe.
I thought about it a while, and then understood that I was feeling a sense of abundance like I have not felt for quite some time.
The previous day, I had given a five spot to a father begging for money in the Jewel parking lot. Call me an asshole if you want, but I typically forego giving money to men who appear to be able-bodied, but I will always hand a few bucks to a woman begging for money so long as I have it.
I suppose that could be another blog topic; how I have changed from never giving anything to beggars to trying to give as many as I can as much as I can.
I would not have mentioned giving the money to the guy, but he was setting up on the edge of the parking lot, where it feeds into a fairly busy road. He had two of his children with him, which made it seem even more pitiful. Although some may consider it merely a ploy to have pitiful looking children with him while he was begging, it worked on me and I am sure it did on many others. I’m sure that he would rather make a good living doing something better than begging for money in front of his children.
Also, I do not actually consider the money that I gave my wife for the Farmer’s Market “giving her money.” We have had a shared checking account since we got married and she changed her name to mine. She could just as easily withdraw a hundred bucks from the Cash Station as I could, it just so happens that she rarely does and I often do.
After giving much of my money away, the thought did cross my mind from the large amount of financial self-help reading that I have done, that whatever you give away comes back to you.
That is the third reason why I was laughing while flipping through my find after giving my wife most of my cash. Just ten minutes later, four times as much came to me as I handed over to her.
So this feeling…
I thought to myself, I still had about forty bucks left in my wallet before finding the hidden cash, so now I had over two hundred on me. Plus, I could always charge things along the way like I always do, so it was not as if I had to pay for everything that day with the cash. But if I did have to, I would have it.
Despite my old minivan not having air conditioning, my daughter, her BFF and I were in high spirits as we blasted a Twenty One Pilots CD and headed toward Evanston on Friday the Thirteenth with over two hundred bucks in my wallet.
We stopped at Walgreens because I wanted to purchase some water bottles (we had run out) to put in the cooler that I was bringing to the beach. Because I am such a soft touch, and because I had a feeling of abundance, I let them pick out cold drinks (a root beer for my daughter, a Coke for her BFF) and I agreed to buy them a package of Oreo cookies.
 |
| We had a great lunch at the Pita Inn in Skokie. |
We continued on to a good and extremely popular lunch spot, the Pita Inn on Dempster in Skokie. I paid for our lunch with some of my new found cash and sense of abundance.
We made it to the beach, where I gladly paid the $24 in entrance fees for us, also with a sense of abundance. What’s a mere $24 to enjoy hours at a clean and well-guarded beach?
We were there for a total of five hours, during which time my sister and two nieces hung out with us for about two hours before heading to a friend’s home for Sabbath dinner. My own best friend showed up around 6:00 when we were getting ready to leave, but we stayed for another forty minutes or so with him.
I utilized another skill that I have been working on improving upon, listening to what he had to say more than talking a lot like I usually do.
The only dilemma came when my wife called to inquire about dinner. We were just leaving around 7:00 and she had been holding up dinner for us without knowing when we were going to return. She had purchased some gourmet organic chicken for us and was going to grill it, along with some fresh veggies from the Farmer’s Market.
I apologized for the lack of communication, but also explained that I was so chill, I hardly noticed the passage of time. I should mention that I spent several hours reading a true beach read, Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam. I purchased an advance uncorrected proof copy the week before at a book sale, which is definitely one of my greatest weaknesses.
I told my wife that we should pay with cash, but Domino’s requires credit card payment if you exceed some low amount like $20.
Well, no worries about the rest of the cash lasting too long.
My sense of abundance took a bit of a hit when I gave my daughter $47 to go to Six Flags the next day. I realize that $47 is an odd amount, and also coincides with my age, but it was originally going to be $40, then I decided to give her another five and I only had two singles left, so I gave those to her as well.
I had mentioned finding the stash to my family, which was quite possibly a minor mistake, and my daughter just said that she was taking her fair share of my find.
After all, a Jewish money mensch cannot allow his daughter to spend a day at Six Flags without a few dollars in her purse. My main regret is not giving her more.
I ordered and picked up lunch for my wife, my son and I the next day, which ate up another $25 or so. My wife insisted that I take her to our favorite spot, Dairy Queen, after dropping our son off at his orchestra pit rehearsal tonight.
I have a hard time recalling where the rest of it went, but I now have about $60 left of the $230 or so that I had in my wallet this past Friday, and intend on spending it tomorrow on a combination of coffee, perhaps a sandwich for lunch, and gasoline for my old van.
I will be stopping by the bank to withdraw about $500 for our little jaunt, although I intend on paying for most or all of our outings with credit. Who knows? Perhaps I will pay for a few restaurant outings in cash. But even with $500 in my wallet heading out of town for three days, it will not approach the feeling of abundance that I enjoyed this past Friday the Thirteenth after discovering a completely unexpected $191 for my ninth vacation day of the year and second beach day of the month.
I hope to have that feeling again soon.
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