last week our home received two paychecks for the first time in nine years. you'll never hear this household complaining about a teacher's salary being meager because it has catapulted us into a new and royal lifestyle. and it couldn't have come a moment too soon as in the last decade home repairs, car issues, and too-good-to-not-go travel opportunities have chipped our savings down from tens of thousands of dollars to tens of hundreds of dollars. fact is we've survived the last few weeks on money bella earned this summer dog-sitting. one of her early summer clients paid her in a pink envelope. bella would add money from subsequent clients to the envelope until it's glued seams were bursting with over four hundred dollars in small bills. if pinched for cash, and after asking her if we could borrow, say thirty dollars, from her envelope to, say buy the family dinner, we'd write on the pink envelope 'DAD - $30 - DINNER' and pull the bills. this is another reason it's good the double payday arrived as it was becoming challenging to find a spot to legibly add a line on the outside of this now tattered envelope.

additionally, my personal slush account (marty has one too) where i keep money i've made on my own was hurting as well. on my way to bella's dad day of horseback riding, i remembered the stables only took cash. i stopped at an ATM and withdrew $120 for our wrangler. what i didn't know until i tried to buy lunch a week later was that the withdraw left precisely one cent in my account.

there were many times during this one income decade that i told marty these would be our family's hardest financial years and it wouldn't always be like this. she always accepted this news reluctantly. in turn, she would tell me we couldn't shoulder this pace forever and the money would not last. i reluctantly took her opinion in. it turned out we were both right.

so here's to wise prognostication, two-paychecks, and the good dose of luck that allowed us to weather our one-income decade. we promise to never take our new-found fortune for granted or use it frivolously, well, right after i get the vespa scooter marty promised me before going back to work, but i'm sure we can all agree something that fun can't possibly be frivolous.