Budget Musings

I heard a story with a meaning about a year ago. It goes like this:
A man started walking home from work and walked by a bunch of houses, each seeming to have a dog. As he walked by each dog would bark at him, except for one dog. One house had a dog that just whimpered and moans all the time, the kind of sound like it was in pain from something. He dismissed it and continued walking. The next day the same thing – all the dogs barked at him except this one dog who whimpered, howled and moaned. This continued for a week. Finally the man became very concerned and knocked on the door of the whimpering dog to find out what was wrong.
He asked the man who answered, “What’s wrong with your dog?”.
The man replied, “What do you mean?”.
“He keeps moaning and whimpering while all the other dogs are barking. Why doesn’t your dog bark like the others?”
“Oh, well he’s actually sitting on a nail.”
“What? You’re dog is sitting on a nail?! Why doesn’t he get off?”
“I guess it doesn’t hurt enough”.

How many of us are like that? Whining and complaining about things in our life, but not willing to do anything about it. How many of us complain about not enough money, but are unwilling to upgrade our skills, look for a new job, look for a part-time job, or otherwise?

I’m guilty of this too. I complained about my job for almost a year before it finally became so painful I got off the nail and started working for myself. My happiness has been MUCH improved since, even though I am currently earning less than I did before in Corporate America. Even now, I am sitting here, knowing that I should make an uncomfortable phone call to clear up some misunderstanding about some money deal I’m making, but putting it off until the last moment… while I could just make the call, clear things up and deal with the outcome rather than stressing about it.

In fact, I think I’ll cut this blog entry short and make that phone call – sitting on a nail is stupid.

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