Balancing the Budget

Bruce and I, because of our (his) advanced ages, are really starting to sweat about retiring. Like a real retirement because you have lots of money and are self-actualizing, not a forced retirement because you are old and have had one too many meetings with HR. Conveniently, his work has finally begun matching retirement contributions so Bruce decided to contribute the maximum- 10% of his gross pay.

Oh, man, those first couple of paychecks really hurt. I sucked it up for 2 pay cycles with no complaining, but it sure seemed like a lot of money was missing. So I asked Bruce about it, and he told me that he was contributing 10% of his gross, but since he chose the Roth IRA the money was actually deducted after taxes, so it was more like a 13% or 14% reduction in his paycheck. And I kept sucking it up, and mind you, this all started during Christmastime.

Then, I started complaining. Bruce was super-empathetic. He said things like, "What? You can't afford organic milk anymore?" and "Guess you'll have to turn the heat down to 70." and "It must be hard to not buy clothes every single week." Clearly, he thinks I'm a little over-pampered and have gone soft. Finally, though, he did some investigating, and sure enough, there had been a paperwork error. He was having 10% drawn out for the Roth IRA, just like he said, but then he was having ANOTHER 10% taken out for a regular IRA. THEN, he suggested that since we'd been living with a 24% reduction in our gross pay for a few months that we might try just getting used to it.

He came around after I clubbed him with a store-brand triscuit.