THIS WEEK IN REAL LIFE
Honest update: this week nearly got away from me.
Work has been genuinely crazy this week. The kind of week where you look up at 4pm and realize you haven't eaten lunch and there are 47 unread emails and somehow it's already Thursday.
Meanwhile four kids are home. The road trip to Montana, Minnesota, and the Grand Tetons is coming up fast and I haven't finished prepping for it. The dog needs a sitter. The Suburban needs an oil change. And this newsletter still needs to go out Sunday.
Managing but running on fumes. That's the honest answer to how this week has gone.
I'm telling you this because 92% of parents report experiencing burnout — and summer is consistently when it peaks. Not because summer is bad. Because summer removes all the structure that normally holds the week together, hands you four kids with no schedule, and asks you to simultaneously perform at full capacity at work while also being a present, engaged, financially responsible parent.
That's a lot to carry. And most dads carry it quietly.
"Summer doesn't create the stress. It reveals it. The financial pressure, the work pressure, the dad pressure — it was always there. Summer just takes away the routines that were quietly absorbing it."
THIS WEEK'S MONEY MOVE
The five things I do when work gets crazy to make sure the finances don't fall apart too
When work goes sideways the first thing most people stop doing is paying attention to money. Bills get missed. Subscriptions renew unnoticed. Spending gets sloppy because there's no mental bandwidth left for tracking it.
Here's the five-thing system I use to keep the financial side stable during a crazy work week — each one takes under five minutes:
Check the account balance once Monday morning. Not to stress about it. Just to know the number. One glance sets a mental anchor for the whole week. If something looks off you catch it early instead of at the end of the month.
Set one financial intention for the week. Not a full budget review — just one thing. This week mine was "don't add anything to the credit card that isn't the road trip." One guardrail, five seconds to set it.
Put the vacation transfer on autopilot. We talked about the summer budget system in issue #006 — the vacation fund bucket specifically. If you set up an automatic weekly transfer to a separate savings account you don't have to think about it during a crazy week. It just happens. That's the whole point of automation.
Defer the non-urgent financial decisions. Crazy work week is not the time to research refinance options or compare insurance quotes. Write it down for next week. The decision will still be there. Making it under stress costs more than waiting costs.
Do a five minute Friday reset. Friday afternoon before you close the laptop — open your bank app, scroll the week's transactions for 60 seconds, flag anything that looks wrong. Five minutes of attention prevents a month of mystery charges.
That's it. Five things. None of them take more than five minutes. Together they keep the financial side of family life from completely derailing during the weeks when work takes everything you've got.
"You don't need a perfect budget during a hard week. You need a system that keeps things from getting worse while you're not looking. Five minutes of attention beats an hour of cleanup every time."
Pick one of the five things above and do it right now before you close this email. Check your balance, set one financial intention, confirm your vacation transfer is set up, defer one decision you've been stressing about, or just open your bank app and scroll the last seven days. One thing. Right now. Takes less than five minutes.
ROAD TRIP UPDATE
We leave soon. Here's where the prep actually stands.
Last week I broke down our full road trip budget — Montana, Minnesota, Grand Tetons, roughly 4,000 miles in a Suburban with four kids. Total came to about $4,686 with family stays offsetting the hotel costs significantly.
This week I've been too buried at work to make much progress on the prep list. Which is exactly why I wrote down the prep list in the first place — so that when a week like this happens the list exists and I don't have to hold it all in my head.
Current status:
Oil change — not done yet, on the list for this weekend
America the Beautiful National Parks pass — ordered, arriving before we leave
Pet sitter for the dog — confirmed
Cooler strategy — wife is handling, which means it will actually happen
Souvenir conversation with the kids — not done, doing it this weekend
The list doesn't lie. Which is both helpful and slightly humbling.
DAD LIFE
On running on fumes and why it's actually okay sometimes
There's a version of summer where everything is Pinterest-perfect. Structured activities, fully funded vacation accounts, a dad who comes home energized and present every single night.
That's not this summer. This summer is a crazy work week colliding with road trip prep colliding with four kids home colliding with a dog who needs a sitter. It's managed chaos. It's running on fumes while trying to make sure the important things still happen.
And here's what I've learned after 18 years of doing this: the fumes are part of it. The dads who figure it out aren't the ones who never get overwhelmed. They're the ones who have a short enough list of non-negotiables that even on the worst week, the most important stuff still gets done.
For me that list is three things: show up for the kids, don't let the finances go sideways, and get the family to Montana.
Everything else can wait until next week.
COMING NEXT WEEK
What's in issue #010
We'll be on the road. Issue #010 comes to you live from somewhere between Oregon and Montana — real numbers, real expenses, real chaos. Plus the back to school spending breakdown that most families need before August hits.