The amount of expenses a married couple faces to due mortgages, tuitions and household necessities is enough to make a person wish they had spent more money on themselves when they were single. Commitment to one’s family often requires having to cut corners, trim budgets and pinch pennies. Clearly each family makes their own decisions regarding the areas in which they will cut back, ranging from reducing the amount of times they eat out, limiting non-essential purchases or eliminating a family vacation. Despite a well-intentioned plan, there are areas of financial obligation that don’t reveal themselves on any financial aid form, tax return or guide to managing your budget. Such areas can often lead to tough decisions.
New parents often brace themselves for the one-time cost of “outfitting” their newborn. These costs, which areoften generously underwritten by contributions from adoring grandparents, allow the parents to breathe a temporary sigh of relief as the last piece of baby furniture is assembled. Due to this false sense of relief, parents are often caught off guard around three o’clock in the morning when, despite having car seats that are removable, portable and adorable, strollers that can practically raise the child themselves and diaper bags in every shape and size,there is no pacifier to be found for their adorable, shrieking child. Now, this is not to imply that there are no pacifiers in the house. Rather, there are none to be found by the bleary-eyed, parents who are stumbling around the house in a panic. After experiencing this waking nightmare on more than one occasion, many parents adjust their budgets and their priorities to ensure that there are passies a’ plenty in every nook and cranny of the household. Some organizations have even go so far as setting up a “Go Fund Me” account to assist those on a stringent budget.
Another financial decision parents find themselves faced with around the time their child turns four years of age, can summarized by the following question “Literacy or bankruptcy?” Now, being the Jewish nation is often referred as “The People of the Book” you might find this question not just shocking, but even possibly heretical. However, give me a chance to explain this unexpected conundrum. It seems that whoever coined the term “People of the Book” did not mean “People of the library book.” I am quite sure that anyone who is privy to the exorbitant amountsof money paid toward library fines every year can attest to this. Unfortunately as time passes and your children become more literate, you find there is almost a snowball effect occurring. What used to be an occasional fine for a library book has now turned into a competition with the national deficit. At some point you might have to turn to your children and say, “We can’t afford to go to the library anymore. But the next time we win the lottery that’ll be the first trip we take.”
Another entirely different arena in which a family often meets with financial loss is in the utensil area. To make a connection to the aforementioned cause of financial ruin, it is safe to say that there is a negative correlation between the amount of library fines and spoons. In other words, as fines go up, spoons go down (into the garbage can.) Now, as a statistics teacher, it is important to point out that correlation does not imply causation. However, I don’t think it would be overstepping my bounds to point out that the linking variable here are all the cute children with sticky faces who are being taught (or so we thought) to clear off their places.
Much to our chagrin it takes a well-rested mother to realize that these cutie pies take this directive quite literally. This is a nice way of saying we don’t realize our children are throwing away all the spoons in the house. Fortunately, by the time we’ve figured out what’s going on most children have learned to eat with a fork. Now, this is not to say that the forks don’t also disappear over time (I can attest to the dearth of forks in our house since I personally got to eat with the “bunny fork” last Shabbos). It’s just that by this time you might be able to combat the situation in a proactive manner. What comes to mind is a statement made by the famed Major League Baseball personality, Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” By amending the words “in the road” to “on the table” you might temporarily alleviate this problem. Of course, if you overstep your bounds and apply this outside of your home, you might notice, that while the number of forks you own increases, the number of Shabbos invitations you receive decreases.