94 Cents

I have a great job - 3 great jobs, in fact. Variety, flexibility, a chance to travel, lots of really great people to work with. My "main" job has quite a bizarre arrangement - we are paid by the hour for 41 weeks of the year, and laid off for all the school breaks - Christmas, spring break, and summer. So as you may guess, the level of income varies with the season. The time off, when I can manage it, is wonderful.

I have learned to plan, and have enough connections to pick up extra employment when the "planning" won't quite cover the summer bills. Nevertheless, the paycheques come at varying times, and in varying sizes.

I like my overdraft, the credit card with a low interest rate, and the credit card that lets me collect aeroplan points. These are my dancing partners in the great game of staying ahead.

This summer, things (financially speaking) all went according to plan. The cash flow was getting a bit thin by September, but this is all normal. I did a work trip in the dying days of August/early September, and was feeling quite happy about money flowing into the account once again. So paid various things and worked it down to being only 94 cents from the end of my overdraft limit.

No problem.

Being paid Friday. Thursday night, actually.

Friday came, and my bank balance remained the same. Called the employer. Oops. We'll fix that right away and it should be in your account early next week.

Oh. Okay.

Salvation came in the form of a cheque from someone who owed me money. Lovely. Put it in said bank account. Tried to make a withdrawal.

Money not available for 5 working days.

Oh.

That Saturday was the Pembina Valley Artist's Studio tour. The plan was to spend the day flitting from one studio to the next with a few friends, finding somewhere nifty to eat lunch, buying sausage in Winkler, checking out the pottery buys at a wonderful place we discovered last year near Plum Coulee.

94 cents. Hmmmmmm. Forget Tim Horton's. Actually, I didn't even have the 94 cents, because you can't withdraw anything less than twenty dollars.

The brilliant plan was to pay for everyone's lunch, then take their cash and have milk-money. It really feels wierd and helpless to have absolutely no access to any cash at all.

My friends, the kind souls they are, refused to let me pay for a thing all day. One even tried to sneak some cash into my bag when she thought I wasn't looking.

I forgot all about this incident until this morning. I paid for a friend's coffee. She thanked me, and laughingly said "I was having one of your 94-cent days."

94 cents. It'll take you a long way, in the right company.