Yesterday I dumped all my dress
slacks and long-sleeve oxfords into several plastic bags and deposited the
bounty to The Salvation Army. Then I went on eBay and bought several pairs of
cargo pants, gray, olive, stone, clay, khaki, you name it. I bought some desert
boots by Timberland and Skechers to go along with the cargos. To add to my
arsenal of manly watches, I bought an oversized military watch with a leather
strap, a Rebosus RS005, which set me back $380.
I felt I had to make this move to
stave off old age. At 48, I’m no spring chicken. Luckily my car, a 2007
Precision Gray Nissan Maxima with black leather and a spoiler, doesn’t age me
too much. I’d prefer to own a 2010 Infiniti FX35, but even used, the Infiniti
would set me back 38K or so.
At forty-eight years of age I am
entering a very vulnerable stage. Self-doubt often sets in. Morbidity. Anxiety.
I need to spend some money on myself, keep up with my power yoga, maintain my
physique, hone my image, keep my blog going, you know, take care of Number One,
but let’s not go overboard on the spending. Five weeks ago my wife Carrie gave
birth to twin girls, Julia and Natalie. Formula is costing me $200 a month.
Diapers are costing me another $150. Lucky for us, family and friends inundated
us with baby clothes, toys, cribs, diaper changing stations and whatnot. But
still, I need to be financially prudent. With the twins on my medical plan, my
paycheck just got $200 a month smaller and it would have been more like $400,
but I had my medical costs pre-taxed. That was a smart move.
But let’s face it. There are all
sorts of little expenses that keep adding up. My wife had to get a life
insurance policy, so that in the case that something happens, God forbid, I can
afford to still work and hire a full-time nanny. I already have a life
insurance policy so that if I croak during a workout or something Carrie will
have a half million to pay-off the house and hire a nanny. Then there’s the
college fund I started for the twins. It’s not much, just $500 to start and
$200 a month automatically taken out of my checking account.
When the girls start eating, I
imagine we’ll have to spend more on groceries. I don’t feel like going into the
costs right now. My point is this. Ever since having my twin girls, I started
doing a lot of number-crunching, making sure my finances were a “good fit” for
the two new additions to my family. I’ve been doing so much number-crunching
lately that I realize I have an unhealthy dependence on money as a source of
comfort and soothe. It really makes me sick to say this, but my dependence on
money reminds me of a character from The Beverly Hillbillies, a show I watched as a kid. The character in
question is this greedy banker named Milburn Drysdale. Often he would have a
fainting spell when Jed Clampett threatened to take his millions out of
Drysdale’s bank. Drysdale’s sycophantic assistant Jane Hathaway would kneel
over her boss and revive him by tickling his nostrils with a thick wad of cash
($1,000 bills I believe), the equivalent of smelling salts.
So what do we have here? A
forty-eight-year-old new father whose machismo veneer of manly watches and
safari wear thinly veils his spiritual link to an avaricious cartoonish character from The
Beverly Hillbillies.
My girls don’t care about my money
obsession or my self-comparisons to Drysdale. I hear them crying in the baby
room. They are in a state of rage, for their diapers need changing and they are
screaming for food. This life is not mine anymore. It’s theirs. So the battle
begins as I try to nurture my Inner Father and put a choke hold on my inner
Milburn Drysdale.
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