Got Any Cash?

Quinton and I carry around very little cash. With debit cards being so widely accepted, there's really no need. At any given time, I will have between $10 and $30 in my purse...just enough to feed my smoothie addiction for several days. And Q carries even less than that. In fact, he usually gets what he needs--just enough to buy a sandwich for lunch--from my wallet.

And for the most part, this has worked out alright. Until the last week or so.

We are just three weeks into summer vacation and the boys have each been invited to attend several last minute outings and events with their friends' families. And each time, they have needed a little bit of money for snacks.

Last weekend, Lucas got a phone call from a school friend. His family was going to the Diamondbacks-Red Sox game that day. They had an extra ticket, and wanted to know if Luke would like to go along, which he did. In this case, it was a good thing Luke had a few dollars socked away because Q didn't have any cash on him and I wasn't home at the time.

Then last night, Kyle was invited to go to the water park with a friend, whose older brother works there. Kyle just needed to bring $15 for the park admission. That $15 turned out to be every bit of cash I had in my purse. I wasn't even able to give him a few extra dollars for a trip to the snack bar.

For this reason, I have decided to start keeping a small cache of house money available just for these purposes. It won't be a huge amount. Just enough to pay for movie tickets and snacks for two. On second though, it will probably have to equal the per capita income of Guinea-Bissau.

Both boys are always being invited somewhere. And there are times where the other kid's parents pay for everything. This was the case a few months ago when Kyle attended a hockey game with the neighbors. But I still gave him $10 because I didn't want him to go there empty handed. He ended up bringing most of it back.

On the flip side, there are times when the boys' friends come places with us and we pay for their movie ticket, video game tokens, admission fee, snack, or restaurant meal. So (hopefully) it all evens out in the end. One time, I offered to repay another mom for buying Kyle's McDonald's lunch. But she declined, and gave me this analogy: "Years from now, when we're all gone, God will tally up the final numbers, and we'll all be within 10 cents of each other".

I hope she's right.