I was sixteen, and had just gotten my first paycheck from a chain restaurant, where I was working as a hostess.  The excitement of this event was overshadowed by my stepfather’s admission into the hospital earlier that week for a perforated appendix.  He had been diagnosed, several years earlier, with an auto-immune disease that hinders his immune system’s ability to recover.  The appendix incident, as I recall, had kept him in the hospital for several weeks. 
 
After picking up my (first!) paycheck, I began my drive over to the hospital to spend some time with him and my mom.  She was spending each night with him, in a stiff hospital chair.  I called her on my way there to see if she wanted me to bring her anything from the house.  My stepfather, let’s call him D, wanted me to grab a black 3-ring binder for him that was sitting atop his desk, she said, and would I mind bringing her a change of clothes?
 
I quickly stopped at the house and grabbed everything I had been asked to, including the binder from D’s office.  When I arrived at the hospital, he was obviously in pain, but smiling right through it.  He asked me if I remembered the binder.  Of course, I said, reaching out to hand it to him.  He asked me if I picked up my paycheck.  I told him I had.  He asked me to find a pen and pull up a chair beside his bed.  So I did.  Handing the black binder back to me, he asked me to bring out my paycheck and open the binder.
 
Within that binder were several perfectly printed pages, all titled “Brainiac’s Budget.”  Each page contained a spreadsheet, one for each pay cycle, with various spending and saving categories.  He was very excited about this.  I groaned.  “Do we have to do this now?” I whined.  “Maybe you should be getting some rest.”  No go.  The next forty-five minutes of that night were spent carefully reviewing my budget, together, and filling in the spreadsheet as appropriate.  I will honestly say that I hated it.  
 
D recovered well, and was released from the hospital.  And the next time I was paid, he again sat me down for a budget review.  It eventually turned into a monthly meeting, just the two of us, to go over my budget.  Each meeting, he would remind me that, soon, I would be paying my own car insurance.  So maybe I better start saving.  Yep, still hated it.  
 
And then it got worse. 
stay tuned for part deux…