Car maintenance, home affairs, Bitcoin and other acts of God.
I am in home affairs waiting to collect my kids’ passports as I write this. I have been here for an hour so far. I think I have at least another hour to go.
In this time I have been approached by an old man smelling of stale beer and cigarettes who wanted money, and who responded with an air of injured martyrdom when I did not immediately hand over all my cash. I have seen a woman (let’s call her Carol) ask if the systems were down as she gestured in dismay at the massive lines of people waiting to be served. I have watched the civil servant say “We are working! Can you not see us working?” as she gestured with spiky resentment at the people behind the desks. Both let out identical sighs as they retreated from the conversation. “Some People?!?”
Basically, I am in the middle of a very common Sarah (and possibly South African) experience — being totally surprised and slightly outraged at an entirely predictable event I could have avoided if I had planned properly. If I had arrived early in the morning — I would have been in and out in a few minutes.
I wish I could tell you that this logistical short-sightedness was isolated to my relationship with the government and its bureaucratic organs.
But it’s not.
The last few months have seen my budget blown by entirely predictable but utterly unexpected expenses. The most recent was my car’s brakes pads. I receive the quote in much the same way that you might a tree falling through your wall or a traffic jam on the N2. As an act of God, totally out of my control, random, unpredictable and UN-BLOODY-FAIR! ‘What have I done to deserve this treatment?’ ‘Why does this always happen to Meeeeee?’
The world — rather than immediately correcting itself to fit in with what I wanted — responded to my whining with a quizzical ‘umm…?’
Some perspective. My car is 2.5 years old and has done over 60 000kms. This was not ‘bad luck.’ It was just time.
And yet, there had been absolutely no accommodation in my budget. Not this month or any months into the future. And it’s not an expense that can be deferred to a more affordable month either. It’s a ‘make a plan Sarah!’ expense.
Luckily, as much as the car-maintenance gods (clearly) had it out for me, it appeared that I was in favour with the deities that govern Bitcoin. I was paid in Bitcoin in November last year. About, oh, 3 seconds after I was paid it was worth less than half. I sent a pissy voice note to my friend-client who had paid me along the lines of “Store of value, my foot!” and then decided to just cross my fingers and hope for the best.
It paid off. Literally. Bitcoin was in an inexplicable June surge just as I needed it. I sold some, paid for my brakes and still had some left in my Luno wallet. It felt like magic. Like the fairy tale coin that doubles every time you need it.
Then I had a moment of clarity about how I think about money. I considered my lack of car planning as ‘bad luck’ and my good luck with Bitcoin as ‘simply excellent decision making’. This kind of bias is why I keep finding myself back in these situations. It’s the same kind of thinking that has me arriving at Home Affairs at 12 on a Friday fully expecting to be out by 12:20 and still, as I write this, not having even one cent allocated to car maintenance in my budget.
There are acts of God in my life — many of them — but I don’t think car maintenance or government efficiency are on that list. So for now I am going to take a small step towards accommodating for these kinds of things. I am adding a row in the savings portion of my budget called Utterly random, unexpected and unpredictable acts of God. (I think the next act may be new tyres.)
Published at Tue, 23 Jul 2019 11:44:09 +0000
Bitcoin Pic Of The Moment
By btckeychain on 2014-02-08 11:38:25
