The Stench of Accounting

Accounting stinks.

If I had my way in life, I'd give up the financial statements and pocket protector and start studying to become a teacher or a journalist. Bury all my accounting goods with the L.A. clippers is what I'd say (on second thought, let me keep the pocket protector). So why you ask have I chosen to follow the accounting lifestyle instead of perusing things I actually like?

The truth is sad, but I can’t avoid declaring it: I need money like a bear needs honey. Money. Money. Money. With it, I can do things I like (e.g. be a journalist); without it I have to do things I don’t like(e.g. shower with my roommate Nathan to save water costs).

Maybe if the economy were wearing a parachute I wouldn't be so worried about my financial future. But when the stock market is losing millions of dollars with regularity, and jobs are drying up like raisins, I become scared. So my only reasonable option was to exchange my potential happiness for financial security. Call it a sacrifice I guess. Or call it greed. I won't argue either way. I can't. Money commands my actions. Arguing, for example, requires energy. To have energy, I must eat, and to eat, I must pay. Being unable to pay, I am unable to argue. The hoarding of money determines my every decision.

Nobody knows this better than my former red-headed lover, Brooke Deem. Our relationship was five months of dating bliss; then I checked up on my finances. I calculated that during our time together I had spent over $35 on our relationship. When I realized that I was spending nearly $7 a month on happiness and joy, I knew our journey was at its end. It’s this same need to save money that has driven me to steal toilet paper from public bathrooms and lick rocks to gain sodium.

Maybe if I were living in the 1950's I could afford to be a journalist, a teacher, or a dater, but not in this day and age. I've always thought that I was born in the wrong era, and not just because the economy provided more hope back in the 'good old days'. My slow driving, my dislike for loud music, and my love for the newspaper make me a natural candidate to have been born circa 1950. Alas, 2008 and a future full of communism is to be my fate.

Things look grim. Some have even asked why save money if there is nothing worth investing in. Well, fortunately there remains one thing that gives a worthwhile rate of return. It was early September when I spent a paltry $10 to attend the BYU-UCLA game. On any given day I’d be willing to pay $10 just to enter LaVell Edwards Stadium, but on a day when BYU won 59-0 the joy received for the money spent was truly a worthy investment.

Thank you, BYU. At least I can afford to follow one of my loves.