The truth—the truth he didn’t want to tell me—was that he had no idea how much money he was going to make from one month to the next. Because his income varied wildly and because the terms of my employment varied from one semester to the next, we had no real way of planning for the next week, the next month, the next year. So we were trapped in a cycle of putting out fires, of throwing money at the most pressing problem at hand without any real long-term plan. It was an unsustainable lifestyle, one that was destined to come spiraling down around us. Lying
