What is your money for?

When I was 18, I went to South East Asia for 6 weeks with my mom, stepfather John, and friend Jenn. I left my boyfriend at home in Berkeley where he continued to live in his parent's basement and began smoking cigarettes (he still does, and it's one of the reasons I broke up with him, that and... um... he broke up with me at the same time.... No comments on this issue, please). Thailand is fantastic, but the trip was just so-so. Jenn was kind of a drag, and we were both, after all, just teenagers.

We traveled all around the sticks. The main cities we visited briefly were Bangkok and Singapore, and those were the only places where there were phones with international access. I don't remember, but I am sure I missed Julien a lot. Well, some things don't change much, and I don't think I really wanted to call him. However, my mother insisted (she's like that). So, I paid for like 5 minutes of phone time in Bangkok and called to wake him up. But he woke up slowly, and the conversation was virtually meaningless. (We had these sorts of stupid conversations all the time when I was in college in MA and he was still in that basement.) The 5 minutes ended and we were disconnected and I was kind of disappointed. My mother suggested (is suggested the right word? More like "insisted") I call again.
Me: I don't want to spend any more money on it.
Mom, screaming: What is your money for?
At this point, and I am guessing, I ran out in the swampy urban Thai darkness with tears streaming down my face. She meant, of course, that talking to my boyfriend should be more important to me than 25 fruit smoothies I would probably drink while there at equivelent cost.

Well, I am sure the issue is very complicated. Maybe I had fallen out of love with Julien already (we didn't finally break up for another 6 months after this event). Maybe I hate talking on the phone. Maybe I need(ed) to learn to be more independent of my mother. But I think about this question a lot: "What is your money for?"

It's actually a really personal question. And, of course, it has a lot to do with how much money you have in total and if it covers your basic needs. My sister Taylor and her family never have very much money, but they spend hundreds of dollars each month on fancy food from Trader Joe's, not the cheapest place to buy food by a long shot. I guess that's an important thing to them. I'm not judging. I spend at least $3 a day on baked goods.

What I wonder is if people are aware of the magnitude of each financial decision they make and the trade-offs implicit in those decisions. I choose to buy cookies every day, so I don't have money for a new bicycle. I choose to live alone in a really nice (but not expensive) studio, when I could pay half the price if I were lucky and lived with others. I choose to only work half the year. I chose to max out my retirement contributions every year that I had a regular job, and now I have only a little cushion/future down payment on an apartment. (Tax incentives encouraged that one....)

Yeah, I am procrastinating (when am I not?), but I'd like to pencil out how much money I spend on each thing relative to the minimum I could get by spending, and ask myself, are baked goods really that important to me? Is living alone in beautiful, centrally-located apartment that important to me? Is having a good haircut really that important to me? Come to think of it, the same goes for time. Is blogging really that important to me?

I should get back to work.