Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Ten points to anyone who catches the title reference.

My cousin is getting married on July 5th which is great.  She’s three years older than me and we get along very well when we see each other, which isn’t often since we have our own lives and she lives about an hour from me.  Her bachelorette party will be this Saturday night in DC and I’m sort of ambivalent about going.

I WANT to hang out with her for sure.  Her younger sister, three years younger than me, is her maid of honor and planning this thing.  She and I are less close.  And since she wasn’t at the bride’s Christmas party in December, I haven’t seen her since…gosh, for 2-3 years.

Anyway, this bachelorette party.  The plan is to meet at a hotel at 6pm and get on a Girls’ Night Out bus at 8:30.  Then we’ll go out to clubs and things and get back to the hotel at 3am.  The snag in these plans for me (besides that I can barely keep my eyes open at 12, nevertheless 3am!) is at 7pm there will be a “male dancer”.  Seriously?  Do women really still do this?  Why?  What is hot or sexy about a man who is willing to share his wares with a bunch of strangers?  Does he enjoy doing this?  Does he respect himself?  Does he brag about his awesome job to his parents, grandparents, etc.?

Anyway, I would be furious with B if he attended something where there’d be a female dancer because I do consider it to be a form of cheating, so I’m not going to attend that part of the “entertainment”.  Even if I didn’t mind a g-stringed guy shaking his thing in my face, it is absoluting revolting to me to stick my hard-earned dollars down his underwear.  I’m already going to be shelling out my share for the night AND probably having drinks in DC (expensive!!!) and I don’t have any to spare for…that.

To end, I’ll say that I have no problem with strippers in general.  If people make a choice to do it, that’s their business and up to them.  I do think it’s sad when men and women in committed relationships think it’s fun to stick their hands in another person’s underwear (best case scenario), but if the significant other is fine with it, so am I.  B and I talked long ago about how much it would upset me if he went to a strip club or a bachelor party with something like that and he confirmed that he wouldn’t really like it if I was the one seeing the entertainment, so I think that we’re good there.

He’s also insisted that he will meet me in DC when I’m ready to go home so that I won’t have to ride the Metro alone.  Part of me wants to insist right back that I’ll be fine, but the bigger part of me recognizes that this is much safer, if inconvenient to him, and I love him for looking out for me.

This morning was not the first that I saw a Loudoun County Transit bus on my way to work, but it was the first that led me to actually looking it up online and then looking up Metro fares and things to determine if it would be more cost effective for me to bus/Metro/bus into work than to drive.  Here’s what I figured out:

First, I have averaged my gas+tolls expenses per week to be $107.50.  This includes commuting five days a week, one trip to my best friend’s place, and one trip either to my parents’ house or my boyfriend’s.  Also about ten miles leeway for shopping, if necessary.

Round-trip Loudoun bus will be $4/day.
West Falls Church Metro to Pentagon will be $6/day.
Bus from Pentagon to my work is FREE!
Weekly gas ($40)+tolls($5)

Hypothetical Weekly total:  $95

Weekly difference:  $12.50

Now, $12.50/week or $50/month would be nice.  But I’ve heard that you should take your payrate per hour and compare the money you’re saving versus the time that you’re losing.

I’m estimating that I will add two hours a day to my commute in this scenario, based on scheduled times, average wait times, and the times I arrive at and leave work in the morning.  Dividing $12.50 by ten hours a week comes out to $1.25/an hour.  Since I make (before taxes and all) over $20/hour, I have to determine that this isn’t worth it for me.

Back to the drawing board.