Every Saturday morning, Lunchmoney Lewis’s “Bills” starts playing in my head, because it’s time to sit down and face reality.

My late husband and I once went to a financial advisor in the early 80s, expecting to be taught how to budget. We were living in a bleak and racially divided city neighborhood, in a house that had cost us a tenth of what houses usually cost, and we were eating sparely and wearing thrift shop clothes.

Somehow,  the expenses kept getting away from us anyway. 

The advisor told us to send him documentation of all our regular outlays and our incomes. We arrived and sat down across from his desk and waited expectantly for wisdom.

He said, “Your problem is you don’t make enough money.”

When you get down to it, yeah, that was the problem. That was real.

It continued to be real. My life after that continued to play out across a background of financial fear. Some years, we didn’t have enough to pay the income tax, and had to negotiate a payment plan. Some years, we had scary and unexpected expenses. I never felt as if we had enough savings. I was constantly paying things off and putting money into savings, and it was never enough.

When I was 65, I met with another financial advisor. She too told me I didn’t have enough money to retire.

And now? 

All those years of worry and fear have resulted in a curiously placid little valley of life where I have enough. I live very lightly on the earth. Sometimes it feels as if I’m floating in space. Apparently, I did have enough money to retire, mostly because I don’t have any debt any more.

I don’t know what to do with all that financial worry, though, because it hasn’t really gone away. Every Saturday, when I sit down to pay the bills, it takes me no time at all and doesn’t involve much outlay, but I often sit there for a while afterwards saying, “That’s it?” and humming “Bills” to myself.

I once said to a coworker, “It doesn’t do any good to worry,” and she said, “Yes it does! You have to worry! Otherwise nothing would ever get done!”

I guess I must have taken that advice to heart.