Working to live, living to work.

How do you live? Paycheck to paycheck and hoping each one will stretch to the next one or do you have a budget knowing where each dime goes?  Are you a thrifty spender somewhat like those coupon queens on television?  Are you independently wealthy, hmm?  Yeah, I hear you laughing.  One of my best girlfriends, I know, I know, I have several, she can't seem to ever dig herself out of this hole she has dug, time and time again.

How do you get into this so-called hole?  Yes, you put yourself there, but she just bought a new home, a few short months ago, is a single mom and has a car payment.  Your typical average working individual.  She works not one, but two full time jobs, for those of you thinking she isn't a hard worker, yes, she likes to have a little time to herself and enjoys time out every now and again.  She isn't the partying type, no Paris Hilton, not a smoker, thank goodness, that would have broke her for sure at $10 a pack and her kids and 17 and 19 and both have jobs.   I play the scenario through my head quite often, just wondering why she sits at home "saving" her gas for work.  No, not kidding.  Is it that you go to lunch a few days a week and spend five or ten dollars each week?  Maybe you hit the bar once or twice a month and spend a $20, I have no idea.  Ohhhh, maybe the mortgage company allowed you to overextend yourself, maybe that's it.  Wow!  Lightbulb ("Despicable Me movie voice"have to play the clip below to understand this one)

(I am laughing right now, one of my favorite movies.  Now I have to go watch it when I'm done, lol.)  

So the lightbulb goes off in my head on this one, seriously.  Did the mortgage company do some number jumbling to allow her to get into a mortgage that was too big for her?  Maybe not, maybe so, but what I am wondering is if they don't look into the fact that you have utilities to pay once you climb into that new mortgage.  It's not free.  Come on now.  She has always been a hard worker since I have known her, always.  There aren't too many women who are like that, well me :)  But besides us, I mean the two of us, there are the ones who go to work, come home and do the normal routine.  She and I always had more than one job and still came home and took care of our families, plus had a third job, we worked together and loved it.  It was never for the money before, but now for her it has to be.  What happened?  When did it all change? 

I don't know when it changed for her from living to work, to working to live.  All I know is that I feel deeply saddened by it, because I see a sad person, truly sad person, who has done nothing but try and work on a daily basis, never ending, not the whoa is me type and still seeming to go nowhere, except backwards some days.  I lend a hand when I can, which is always, but even still, I can only stretch myself so thin, before breaking down and not giving in to the same thing time after time.  One day you will realize that you have to step outside of yourself, look, analyze the situation and know that only you can make the change that you have needed so much for so long.