broke

If I want to think of myself as an artist, even in the writerly sort of sense, I suppose it follows that I must sometimes be broke. It's just a bit discouraging when that day's the same day as payday.

I'm good at budgeting my money, and it's particularly simple when I haven't got any. My dad taught me how to budget when I was eight years old and started getting an allowance, as well as a steady stream of $1s from the Tooth Fairy. I had four peanut butter jars and could divide my money out however I liked as long as I had a minimum of 10% going to Church, 10% to Savings, 10% to Gifts for Others and 10% to Whatever. Seeing as I had no bills and food, clothing and rent were all non-issues, it worked wonderfully, and I was even able to save copious amounts of money, if by copious you mean well over $100.

Seriously, though, it is a good system and it taught me a lot about managing my money successfully, even if I did only get 4th place in the ensuing 4-H competition. (4-H competitions, for the uninitiated, are entities unto themselves. They are educational activities designed to teach teenagers important life skills, like raising aquatic fish. In this particular instance, it consisted of phoning various banks to compare mortgage rates or joint checking accounts or something equally inapplicable and undecipherable to a 14-year-old, followed by making a poster with a Monopoly theme, followed by an interview with a judge wherein a years' worth of balanced checking was explained ad infinitium. How I didn't win still remains a mystery.)

Since then things have gone along relatively smoothly, and, while the peanut butter jars are buried away in my closet (I'm unfortunately a bit of a pack rat), I'm generally quite adept at finding cash for, say, my internet connection and friends' birthdays. (New favorite gift: anything that can be written in the inside of a card. As in, IOU one fabulous birthday outing! Sometime before your next birthday! Or certainly your next decade!)

Knee-high black boots and dragonfly portraits notwithstanding, I can be rather frugal at the best of times. I get slightly annoyed with group bills at a restaurant split up evenly when I didn't have any alcohol, or when friends insist on putting me in a cab at midnight on Oxford Street, or when my favorite cafe ups its prices on raisin toast. I refuse to be cheated by strangers who offer me $20 for my unused ferry ticket when I could mail it in and get $28 or by Australian hairdressers, who think nothing of charging $90 a haircut. I insist on buying contact fluid and 5-packs of pantyhose in America, and have been known to stalk out of convenience stores upon hearing they intend to charge $1 to use a debit card.

Despite all this, I've recently found myself encumbered by a plethora of expenses I'd rather not have had. I won't bore you with the costs of an artist's life, but suffice it to say they've been a bit more dramatic than necessary, even in artistic terms. (Don't you hate it when people say they won't bore you with details, when really there's nothing you're suddenly more curious about? I know. Me, too.)

For this reason, the ATM has become my new best friend.

Why are ATMs so wonderful? Surely it's obvious: besides not requiring birthday gifts, they are extremely discreet. You can sally up to one, put in a request for the amount you'd like and, after it's had a private little laugh, it will inform you, regretfully, that the requested funds are not available. Would you like to make another transaction, though, it asks courteously.

Seeing as the first try was really just for giggles anyway, you play gamely along and put in request number two, which, as long as it's modest enough, the ATM usually sees fit to grant, along with a receipt showing a ghastly shocking figure of Available Balance left at the bottom. But the beauty, you see, is that no one else knows! The machine, aside from its minor fit of hysterics at the first request, trumpets your news to no one. It stifles its cries of "Extra, Extra!" and remains composedly disinterested. Many mothers could take lessons from the lowly ATM.

Then you mosey happily on your way, adding as much water to your shampoo as possible to stretch it a bit longer, finding old tubes of lipstick that weren't quite to the very end yet and skipping dinner unless you're socially obligated to eat it.

You go along just fine for some time, paying rent, buying bus tickets and the like, and suddenly it's payday again. At which point you realize there is still no cash left and you're slightly starved and craving broccoli -- but chin up! You've truly become an artist.