You Have a Right to Splurge... (NOT)

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I love love love Desperate housewives.  Marc Cherry wrote this episode especially for me. It's episode 3 of this new season called Truly Content. Teri Thatcher plays Susan, and last season ended with her finding out that her husband was $50,000 into debt. As a team they made the decision to rent out their house and move into a crummy apartment and live off of scraps in order to pay back his debt. At their apartment complex Susan's neighbor runs a cleaning business, but not the average kind. The maids in her business wear lingerie while they clean their own apartment as they are streamed live through a web cam. When Susan got a job offer she turned it down, but once she learned how much money it pays she was on board. As time goes by she is making a lot of money and getting really good at the job. Later on she wins a bonus for having the highest ratings out of all the girls. The Madam (business owner) tells her how hardworking she is and that she should treat herself to something nice, after all, she has the extra cash.
Coincidentally Susan and Mike's anniversary is that weekend and she asks him to take her to that really fancy place to celebrate and she assures him they have enough to pay for it.
Then in the laundry room she meets one of the other girls who works for the Madam. This competitive girl threatens Susan for winning the bonus and accuses her of stealing her signature move. Susan breaks into the woman's house to toy with her vacuum cleaner so that it will blow up in her face the next time she uses it. They get into a fight and the Madam makes them apologize. Once they apologize the competitive girl tells her she wanted the bonus so badly because she's trying to save up enough money to move back home to Virginia, (where I currently live) and she feels like she barely makes enough to get by. Then Susan said, "When I broke into your house I saw that you had a really nice things like a new flat screen t.v., a closet full of new clothes, it doesn't look like you're barely scraping by" the competitive girl replies, "I know, I just like to splurge every once in a while" and Susan says, "Yeah I get that" thinking of the plans she made to go to the fancy restaurant. Then they talked about their determination to save up enough for their goals by the end of the year and be finished with the lingerie cleaning business.
So then Susan asks the competition girl "How long have you been doing this" the girl thinks about it, and says she's going on 6 years and she didn't even realize. That's when it clicked for Susan. She doesn't want six years to go by and still be stuck in that scandalous cleaning business and not out of debt all because it's nice to splurge every once in a while.
When she gets home she tells her husband Mike that she prefers to order in Chinese for their anniversary rather than going out to the expensive French Restaurant.
Lately  I've lost my focus on our goals to save and getting to baby step #7 which is building wealth. I have to remember that once I reach Baby Step #7 then I can splurge every once in a while. I really liked this comment my most beautiful sister left that summed up my blog.
"We truly live in an entitled society when it is engrained in us that splurging every now and again is not only our reward but our RIGHT for working so hard. And what does it get us? It just puts us another step back into debt." -Irene Pacheco