Exactly!

Plus, I often measure at least my own financial progress by “How big of a debit that I forgot about can hit my account and it’s just inconvenient rather than panic inducing?”

I’ve been in situations where even a single unaccounted for dollar would cause a panic. But as things became more stable and we got ahead, where an unplanned $20 would be a hassle, but unplanned $100 would be a panic. Then, thankfully, getting to the point where an unplanned $100 is an annoyance and it’s the $300 check I thought the school cashed 2 months ago that causes panic.

Don’t know if I’ll ever get the point where I no longer need to pay such close attention, so the occasional annoyance and panic will still happen. None of it is easy, but it’s definitely an issue of degrees. It does feel good to at least move past the point where I make sure to go to the gas station that only authorizes $1 and doesn’t process the full charge for several days in order to stretch that little bit more to payday (or even worse, when I’d have to save that dollar to help buy a box of cereal to feed the kids for a couple more days and walk to work instead).