I think everyone has one. That month where it seems like every day someone is having a birthday. Our month is September. Both my children were born within a week of both their grandmothers. While we could manage doing only one party, it still meant a lot of purchasing in the kids’ early days.

Now birthday month also includes Thurston, his son and about a dozen of our closest friends. At this age, you would think we would want to ignore birthdays, but our friend group seems to take birthdays to a new level. A September birthday party for the group as a whole and then several birthday celebration suppers out. Based on the bathroom scale, a few too many of them.

After a lifetime of helping people budget, you’d think I’d have birthdays figured out by now. You’d be wrong.

Thurston’s easy. He doesn’t need more stuff. We already had to buy a cottage to house our extra stuff. If we buy each other anything, it’s usually dinner or a concert. Showing our age, this year we went to the Blue Gate Theatre in Shipshewana to see Wilson Fairchild, sons of members of The Statler Brothers.

Before we even had grands, we decided that we weren’t going to spend ridiculous amounts of money buying things for them. Instead, we started “Adulting Funds” for them. Someday, when they need money for college, a car, a house or whatever other expensive surprise adulthood has waiting for them, they’ll have a little help from Papa and Grandma.

This plan worked beautifully when they were babies.

The grown kids get money. We all know that whatever we buy, they already have three of them, or we’ll find it unused—still sitting in the box the next time we visit.

Babies don’t ask for Elsa dolls or princess dresses. They didn’t have Amazon wish lists. It wouldn’t hurt to at least look at the list, would it?

Surely putting money into the Adulting Fund and buying one or two little birthday presents wouldn’t destroy our financial plans. And a princess dress barely counts. It’s mostly fabric. Besides, if we want to keep the accounts a secret until they’re adults, we have to give them something. Otherwise, we’re the grandparents jetting around the world on vacations but too cheap to buy their grandchildren birthday presents.

That would be disgraceful!

Fortunately, I spent a lifetime working with budgets.

I know exactly how to revise one.

We’re all aging. Let’s do it out loud.
— Nora

*As printed in The County Journal on October 10, 2026.