Everything I Know About Budgeting I Learned From My iPod
Filed in The Lovely, Globetrotting Mrs. Blogs is currently out of the country. For security reasons I will not disclose the latitude nor longitude at which she now trots. I would not want to offer added incentive for any lunatic nation to lob piles of enriched uranium over in her general direction.
When she returns from her gallup, this modern-day Carmen San Diego, the lady of the house and I need to put together a coherent budget for our monthly expenses. It is part of a new and necessary discipline we are undertaking. I had originally been counting on the good will of Secretary Paulson, CitiGroup, or the Big 3 automakers, to send a little money discipline mojo our way, but now I think we will stick to throwing darts at bills taped to a cork board for our financial prognostication.
What we know about money can fit inside a thimble and still have enough room left over to protect your thumb. As we bravely march toward what will either be our monetary rebirth or financial Armageddon, I accidentally stumbled upon a core value of budgeting—something I had heretofore never realized or had simply been averting my eyes because of the blinding truth:
My iPod is a budgeting genius.
I own a 5th generation video iPod which holds over 10,000 songs (all legally purchased --so don't even bother you blood-sucking RIAA), twenty or so TV shows, several movies, about 75 audiobooks, 500 podcasts, family pictures, and a little five acre time share in Button Willow I escape to every now and then. It has a LOT of room.
It is advertised to hold 80 GB of digital product. As it is, I can only access 74.40 GB of storage space. The balance, I am told, is lost to the bitter ironies of formatting. I have no idea what this means, but I'm sure there is a parallel dimension residing on that 5.60 GB of prime Apple real estate. And someday we will be reunited, my Shangri-La and I.
In the meantime, after I ply MyPod™ with a recharge, download, and shampoo I look at the capacity bar that designates how much of what is stored where. (Forgive me for the techno-babble. I do get full of myself when I break out the geek speak). It looked like this:
And I had an epiphany the size of Snoopy in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade:
If I have a little over 900 MB left, I can't very well add a high def version of Gone With The Wind @1.42 GB. 
It simply won't fit.
If I want GWTW--if I need GWTW—I'm going to have to first give up my precious Marie Osmond: The Definitive Collection at a mere 750 MB to make the math work. (Sorry, Marie. We had a thang once, but you are simply no longer the globetrotting babe of my homebody heart ).
It's like a sports salary cap except with Gigabytes. The only way you can fit 250 GB on and 80 GB iPod is if you are the New York Yankees.
So, to extend this already elongated metaphor, if you think of your budget like an iPod, you won't be able to spend more than you make. You may have to give up that Baskin-Robbins double dip cone if you crave a Whopper today. You'll need to sacrifice that trip to Disneyland with the kids if you want to install that Dish Network Satellite with all the bells and whistles. You will, in short, have to jettison your Bay City Rollers 25 CD Boxed Set if you at all having second thoughts about that Marie Osmond opus.
Otherwise, as our President might warn, you are going to have huge defitcial problems.
I provide this small insight into the burgeoning world of finance with no thought of remuneration. I am only too glad to dip my cup into my bounty of newfound monetary acumen and allow you to drink from the goblet.
Cheers!
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