Squeaking By on $300K

I first saw the headline in the WaPost (above the fold) for this story earlier today when I took my sister and her two boys to breakfast. My sister is a nurse and works her ass off. She's married to a wonderful guy who works hard too, selling real estate and also selling wine. Had I walked past the vending machine without her this morning, I would have looked at the story and shook my head. I would have thought "can't wait to read that one, could wind up in the blog". But today when I saw the headline--I got mad. Really mad.

Obviously, I hadn't read the story yet--but the insanity associated with bitching about making it on $300K is simply astounding.

So now I've read the story, and what do I see? I see the same kind of spectacular stupidity that helped get us into the financial mess we're in now. Ms. Steins bought out her husband's share of their multi-million dollar house....one that costs $9000 a month to "keep up". She pays a gardener and a full-time nanny. Presumably, the "this was supposed to be a two-income family" line is supposed to get us to be more sympathetic to her plight, but I was unmoved. Divorce has consequences, sometimes serious ones. Ms. Steins did not plan well for a dramatic decrease in her family's monthly inflows.

Bad decisions are not sufficient grounds for sympathy. In 2006, Ms. Steins and her husband should have sold their luxe manse and its coiffured grounds, split the proceeds and then SIMPLIFIED. Instead, she figured she could swing it--and now we read where she's beginning to think she might not now. There's still time, Ms. Steins. Simplify. Your problem is monthly cash flow. Solve that problem and buy a grocery store dye job instead of paying $200 an hour.