You’d THINK That (But You’d Be Wrong)

I get paid every other Thursday, which means that a couple of times a year there are months in which I have three paydays.
You’d think that would be a good thing, but more often than not it doesn’t work out that way.
Often it’s the result of unexpected expenses that pop up – which seems to be like a financial variation on Parkinson’s law, which is to say that expenses will expand to consume the income available – but mostly it ends up being a scheduling problem, or almost as frequently, a combination of the two.
Basically, when it’s strictly a scheduling issue, the problem is the distribution of due dates for bills.
A three payday month will often mean, for example, that my mortgage, car payment, car insurance, electric bill, and a few other minor bills all come due within a two week period, with no payday bridging the gap, meaning that I have to pay all of them out of one paycheck, in addition to also doing things like buying groceries and keeping the car gassed up.  Or in other words, living.
It’s usually not a huge problem – it’s more a matter of it not ending up being a boon the way it ought to be, which makes it a minor annoyance more than anything else – as I don’t really live paycheck to paycheck, and it’s never catastrophic, but it can make for a bit of a lean period, particularly if I haven’t been paying attention and didn’t notice the three payday month awaiting me and didn’t shuffle money around accordingly in preparation for it.
The worst is when there’s also an unexpected expense thrown into the mix.
This month is a three payday month that brings with it the annoyance of the scheduling and unexpected expense variety.
Well, really, unexpected plus expected.
The unexpected one happened a while back when my home server died and I bought something to replace it.  That made for a lean week or so, but by the next payday I was mostly back on track.
Then Christmas happened.
So the past couple of weeks have found me being forced to be a little more thrifty than usual, and I hate it.
However, once this week’s payday rolls around it should – barring anything unexpected – be pretty smooth sailing from here on out, particularly given that tax refund, bonus, and “merit increase*” time are awaiting me in the near-future.
I will say, though, that given the way I’ve been living for the past two weeks I’m going to be hard-pressed to keep from giving in to the temptation to go hog fucking wild come Thursday…

*I wish we’d just call a spade a spade and say it’s a Cost of Living Adjustment and set aside all pretense about it actually being connected in any way, shape, or form to job performance, and dispense with the whole “performance review” exercise/pantomime.