I never realized how nice it was to have a regular paycheck rolling in every two weeks until I started back at graduate school and didn't have one. Sure, it's not that I'm exactly struggling, since my department takes care of me very well with my fellowship, but it's the fact that I always see the money in my bank account decreasing rather than increasing at a regular interval. I guess that I can't really complain all too much, since I do get those big big paydays about one week before each semester starts, but still, knowing that things are moving in a monetarily positive direction is good for the mind. And that's just it, it's all a mental thing. It's starts to grate on my mind when I check my checking account periodically throughout the month and start to think about how much I spent on each thing that I've purchased. Each visit to Starbucks for my daily venti iced vanilla latté, those evenings that I join the gang out for a drink after school and homework are done, and especially those days that I'm feeling too exhausted and lazy to stand in front of the stove and make myself something for dinner...those are the days where the amounts seem to add up, and the money starts to drain from the account.

I hadn't thought much about how much I missed having my regular paycheck, something that I had grown so accustomed to receiving during the two years or so that I took off from school. Only recently when I started working in one of my professor's labs part time, and therefore getting a paycheck every couple of weeks, did I realize how nice it is to have one. It's not that my paycheck from working part time is all that much, but it's enough to eat for the week and put gasoline in my car for those limited trips I need to make around town. It surely eases the steady decrease in my checking account.

My new little part time job has also been really good for me mentally, owing to what I mentioned a moment ago about seeing your money slowly decrease. I find myself thinking about how much I started with at the beginning of a given semester and then trying to figure out what I shouldn't have bought and teasing it away numerically from what I needed to actually spend for my month to month expenses. It always turns out that I don't ever really go crazy and spend way more than I had intended to, but being the slightly compulsive and anal retentive person I am, I always try to add up the expenses anyways and see what kind of percentages I'm working with. I think that that stems from my time spent as the cheif financial officer of a small business back when I lived in Florida. Numbers mean a totally different thing once you spend your entire day looking at them and getting paid to make sure they stay where they are supposed to be.

What about all of you out there? Do you feel the same way I do about making sure that a steady paycheck is rolling in? I guess that this question mainly goes out to those of you out there on this lovely Christian network, Biblekeeper, are students like me. We are often the ones who only see the balance in our checking accounts move in a positive direction a few times a year. Do you get the same paranoid feeling about spending that I do? If so, you've got my apologies and my sympathies, but it's definitely not a fun feeling to have. Those of you who aren't students probably don't have to worry about such things. Sure, everyone has to watch their spending, and everyone dreads seeing their checking and savings accounts balances moving in the negative direction, but you end up with that rebound by some set amount every week or so. At least you have the satisfaction of seeing that your hard work is paying off by seeing the dollar amounts growing on a regular basis.