Money doesn't make you happy.

Money cannot buy love.

But maybe it can buy peace of mind?

Money is one of those things you cannot quite live without, yet we are told we shouldn't be obsessed about having it.

Well, I am obsessed about NOT having it.

When the stay at home Dad experiment began, I had created a niffy little spreadsheet that showed how much money without my husband's pay check we'd have every month, after bills. It wasn't a lot, but it seemed reasonable.

I felt good about his decision to want to stay-home. The other part of our deal was that if he got to stay home, I got to try to get pregnant faster than he wanted. I swayed girl, we got the girl. Success.

But failure on the financial side.

It took me a few months to see how overburdened we were, when it came to money. How little money actually was between each pay check, and it hits us the hardest from the 1st-15th when that check is mostly dedicated to mortgage.

Money is slippery. It is insidious. It moves quickly, almost like water down a fast moving rapid. You think you have a handle on it, you tell yourself you'll be more careful with the next check, but something always pops up:

the power goes out for 3 days and you have no option but to eat out (even cheaply) for 3 days, and that adds up. Your washing machine floods your 3 rooms in your house and now you're looking at a deductible you cannot truly afford, that will require using a credit card whose balance is rising faster than the Nile.

You suddenly feel trapped by your decisions. You worry, you wonder. You hope that maybe you can make your dream come true and finish the book you've been working on since last September before the baby comes and maybe you'll sell it, and maybe you can sell it for enough money to pay down all the credit card companies you owe, and just to breathe for a minute.

Yeah, maybe that's as likely as winning 5 million from the lottery....