I have to admit, even thinking about this post’s topic makes me a little uncomfortable. So that tells me it’s something I need to face and to write to get some clarity for myself.
I’ve started listening to a lot of personal finance and simple living podcasts lately and one of them usually asks the guests what their relationship to money was, growing up. I definitely have an answer for that but it’s longer than just a one-word answer. Read more
This is a post I’ve been contemplating writing for the past two or so weeks, but for some reason, couldn’t bring myself to hit the “publish” button. I’m not sure why. I have just felt out of sorts when it comes to my financial situation because I still haven’t been able to look at a full month’s worth of expenses and salary, to see how it’s really setting itself up. Maybe that’s why. I’m pretty sure it is the reason, actually. Read more
Note – none of these photos relate to the title of the blog. That’s because student loans are ugly. And well, my surroundings are anything but. So, enjoy.
Some of you long time readers (I hope you’re still out there and I haven’t lost you with my dearth of posts over the last two months) might remember a series of posts I wrote about getting out of debt. I think I had gotten up to “Post # umpteen + 1.” Anyway. That was when I was going gangbusters on paying down one of my student loans. And then suddenly my focus shifted to saving. And saving. And saving. And saving. It’s good that I saved, because moving was not cheap. I had to buy a car, and an RV to live in, due to the lack of rental units in my town, and also just general moving costs that come along with a cross country road trip. Even a gas-sipping kind of car like mine took about $350 in gas for the entire trip.
So, as you know if you read my most recent post other than this one, I finally found out what my pay will be after taxes, at my new job. This is a good thing, because I wasn’t sure at what tax rate I would find myself with the new salary. It turns out to be just under 14% so for planning purposes, I’m just rounding up to 14%. A dramatic change from the 28-29% rate I used to find myself in.
Of course I’m not yet eligible for health insurance benefits at my new job, so the amount will change, but I can figure out by how much and do the calculations. I think that if I live frugally, I can make this work, and still put some extra money down every month to be applied to either my RV or my car payment and get those taken care of in the next few years. Or, the pesky LAL loan that I was annihilating there for about a year. That LAL loan, as some of you may remember, comes with a variable interest rate. Right now the rate is low, so I would like to take advantage of that and get as much of my payments applied to the principal as I can. If the LIBOR rate starts to go up, then I need to watch out, because then the rate of my loan can go up, up to as high as 9%. I don’t foresee that happening with this economy, but you never know.
And oh yes, the Big Daddy Loan. How can I forget that rat bastard? The one that totals up to something like $97K and which I have easily paid at least that much back over the years, yet the balance never seems to go down by any noticeable measure. Well, here’s the thing.
The Big Daddy Loan is actually two consolidated federal loans. With federal loans, there is a repayment plan that can be based on your income, and it’s called (yes, very originally), Income Based Repayment Plan (or IBR, for short.) With this plan, you have to keep reapplying for it every year. As your income goes up (or down), your payment can adjust accordingly. After 25 years, whatever the amount of your unpaid balance is, is forgiven. I believe it gets counted as income to you for that year, but have to double check on that. So, by switching to this payment plan, yes, I am signing up for another 25 years of payments, but at a HEAVILY reduced amount from what I had been paying with my job back east.
Remember how I used to pay $538/month and that was just interest? That was just to keep it from growing?? Well, now I will start to pay $91.31/month. Quite the difference. Yes, the loan will continue to grow. No, I don’t think I will ever make nearly the kind of money I used to make as a reference librarian back east. And yes, I am totally fine with that. I plan to treat it as a utility bill, in my mind, i.e. something that always sticks with you, no matter where you go. For the next 25 years, anyway.
This is not to say that it hasn’t been frustrating to get the payment amount adjusted. To apply for the new repayment plan, I had to send proof of my new salary, but they also asked for my AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) from last year. I knew that this would cause problems, because as some of you may remember, last year, I worked like a crazy person. On top of my full time job, I also worked at the gym part time, and then had the 1099 work doing research for that book. So all together, I actually made more money than I had ever made in my life. I had a feeling that the folks at Navient would not look at all the paperwork together, and “get” the whole situation, even though I had checked off the box saying that my financial circumstances had majorly changed. Yep, as you can imagine, they didn’t disappoint. They sent me paperwork saying “congratulations, your new payment plan will have you paying a total of $1,038/month!! YAY!!!!! (This is where I started to bang my head against the RV table, at least figuratively.)
So, the other night I found myself on the phone, talking to someone who was clearly not a native English speaker, and I was losing my patience. I was told that had looked at my AGI from last year and that’s how they arrived at the new number. He said the paperwork I had sent from my new employer was not sufficient to tell them the salary I would be making. (The letter gave them my hourly rate and told them how many hours per week I would work and I had been told previously it was enough.) I finally said to the guy, “I want to talk to a supervisor and I want to talk to someone based in the US. I am not sending paperwork a third time because someone can’t take the time to multiply my hourly rate times 40 hours times 52 weeks to get my gross salary.” I was then placed on hold for a long time, but everytime he would come back and apologize, saying they were manually processing my application, I just said, in a resigned voice, “I want it taken care of, I’ll hold.” And finally it was. Sigh…..
“Why, and how, Terri, would you do this to yourself?” is what you are probably thinking. I know. To many people, my choices sound insane. But to many others, they look at me, and go “wow. I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Well, I am. It’s a choice you make. Either stay in a city where you don’t want to be (although I have some awesome friends back there that I want to come visit me NOW!!!) and work at a job that pays well, but doesn’t lift your spirit the same way it used to. Or move to someplace where you can make a positive change in the world of animals, and the days go by quickly, and you get to meet new people every day and have an impact on their experience. You just don’t get paid as well. But, as a coworker of mine and I said to some visitors yesterday, you go into a line of work dealing with animals because you love it, not because you want to get rich. And that’s what I have decided to do.
Life is short, people, really short. You never know what tomorrow will bring. For all I know, I could get hit by a tractor trailer tomorrow and then I would have lived my life and not lived out my dreams. If you have even the slightest inkling that you are not where you want to be in life, then start working with that inkling. Take baby steps, every day, to work with it and not against it. Trust me, your gut and heart will both thank you.
So, here are my three big debts I want to concentrate on, in no special order.
LAL Loan = $12,802.84 (2.665% interest rate)
Car Loan = roughly $7000
RV loan = roughly $7300
Both the car loan and RV loan have very low interest rates- the exact numbers just escape me at the moment. I’ll write a post on my budget later.
Wow. I had my surgery one week ago today. I remember waking up in the recovery room and being like “yep, this is what I remember the pain to be from the last time.” They gave me one of those handheld control things where you can click on the button to give yourself a dose of pain medication when you want it. Seeing as I was in pain, every time it lit up, I pressed it. Later on, they told me “we couldn’t believe how much morphine you gave yourself. How are you awake right now?” and the best line from one of the nurses (and I think she was serious) was “do you do street drugs?” (I think my answer was obvious when it was clear I had no idea what she was asking. I was like “um, I’m a runner?!” once another nurse clarified the question for me. I admit, I was a bit insulted. It was taking everything I had to just stay awake and answer her questions, and now she’s insulting me for it? I got the impression she was very bothered at having to take care of me. (Luckily she was only there for one shift, of which most of it, I slept, due to the effects of the aforesaid morphine.) Everyone else was much nicer.
After a week of percocet (yay, I love percocet, and no, it doesn’t bother my stomach at all, as many people have asked), and ibuprofen, I’m almost out of the percocet but definitely feeling more like myself. I want to get out there and run and I look at the runners around the reservoir with envy, but i know i have to take it easy. Not walking up stairs seems to be key. When I do, it seems like my incision tightens up or something, and I’m reminded “um, you just had surgery last week, you know.” Anywho, it does appear that the swelling in my stomach is starting to go down. I’m still hoping for that flat tummy, and I will have it, only a matter of time. (Yes, I am determined.) I am utterly convinced that my being in shape BEFORE the surgery is totally helping with my recovery AFTER the surgery. As long as I don’t sneeze (as I did the other day and burst a blood vessel in my leg, wow, that hurt!) or laugh too much, the healing will continue.
My mom has been visiting since last Thursday and has been a huge help. She gets bored just sitting around so she already cleaned my entire kitchen so it looks like it’s completely brand new, much better than I could have done. Makes me inspired to look inside my fridge now – it’s super clean and organized! Of course, having my furballs around me 24/7 is also a huge help on my mental outlook. It’s going to be so hard to go back to work when my healing time is over!
This week I will attend a training session so I can start doing independent contract work as a bar essay review grader – basically what it means is that people who are studying for the bar can do practice essays to prepare for the real thing. Then I get to grade them, and I get paid for my work. I passed the bar in three states, so these three I will start with (and was glad to see they are some of the more high paying states) and then I will see if I have time to do grading for other states. Just have to get myself certified for each state in which I want to grade. Looking forward to making some extra cash and putting it toward my savings. Granted, a lot of the work for that won’t start to hit until after the middle of May when bar review actually starts, but by then, I”l be done with classes (by next week actually!) and then I’ll still be off work. Since I don’t plan on taking more than one class this summer (medical terminology), I figure I can use the time wisely. That and to sell off stuff I don’t use anymore, or donate.
My stress level has definitely gone down since last week or the last day of work, about ten days ago. I’ve been able to get caught up on schoolwork, and even finish everything for one class, although admittedly, the workload for that class was negligible. I think it’s being home so much with my animals who have such a calming influence has something to do with it. I wish I could always spend this much time with them! I’ve also been able to watch a lot of youtube videos of financial vloggers and am getting inspired at their progress at paying off debt and also saving at the same time. I’m an information junkie and admit it, I’m always ready to learn about new things, tips or tricks, and especially when it comes to finances and animals. I’ll add links to some of their channels on this blog in case you are curious.
I’m putting together ideas for more posts on this blog – since I have the time, I’d like to be more productive with it, and also use it to discuss causes and topics that really mean a lot to me.
One other thing I did – as you can see below, I’ve been collecting change for a bit of time now. Added it up and had $36.31 in total, so tonight my mom and I rolled coins together. I put everything that’s rolled up in my little fire-proof safe. And from now on, I’m going to be more vigilant about picking up change I see – in just the past two days, I found 26 cents! (Hey, mock if you will, but every little bit does add up eventually. There are even blogs out there of people who update their tally every day of found change.)
So, after months of Paralysis by Analysis or Decisional Impairment, I pulled the trigger, and have decided I’m going to NC. I’ll be traveling in February (let’s just leave it a bit vague since this is the internet) to do a couple things. One, hopefully find a place to live, and two, (2) check out the area, and (3) hopefully meet some veterinarians or vet techs that I can just talk to about their jobs, their field in that area of the country, etc.
I’m not sure why – maybe it was the sheer number of vet offices and animal hospitals I found within the Greensboro area, or the fact that my weather app told me it was in the 50s there this week, while we’re freezing to death up in Boston. Maybe it was the prices of homes down there and the realization that I could actually afford to buy something and have it cost less than renting. Maybe the fact that taxes in the county areas outlying Greensboro have taxes of about one-tenth (yes, you read that right) of what I used to pay for a house in the suburbs of Boston. I told my sister about some of this and she just laughs. I sound completely amazed and keep saying “OH MY GOD, it’s SO CHEAP!” and she’s like “um, yeah…that’s what it is for most places in this country.” (Remember, she’s in MI, a state pretty much in the shitter, but still…) Or the fact that some of my online research confirmed that there is a large number of horses that can be found in NC, along with horse events. And where there are events, I think they need vets, and where they need vets, I hope they also need vet techs. And even if I don’t work with horses, there a ton of companion animal vet practices down there as well, and you all know how I love those types of animals too.
And maybe it was the luck that when I looked into flights to get there, I could find a non stop flight for $177 on jet blue, so I can check a bag for free. (Good thing because little Baby O is going to go on her first flight with me. I’m going to be gone for five nights, and I always miss the furballs when I am gone. Plus, it would actually cost more to leave her at home. And, believe it or not, but she actually will cost more to go on this flight than I will. For the bargain basement price of $100 each way, NON-REFUNDABLE of course, your pet can fly with you as one of your carry-ons. Yep, she costs $200 while, taking up a human size seat, cost less. Figure that one out…
Anyway, I was able to find a really nice place to stay through airbnb, and it’s actually on a horse farm. So yes, I get to see horses there too! I feel like things are starting to really come together. The lady with the horse farm is married to a real estate broker so he was able to refer a realtor to me who I have really liked working with so far, and she was able to refer me to a few lenders, one of which I contacted the other day and really like. So, I’m already pre-approved for a mortgage.
Now, I want you all to know – my plan is to only buy a place that, if I were to only make 10-12/hour, I can still afford the place and even be able to save money every month. That’s a possibility down in NC. I REFUSE to be house poor. Just because I got approved for about 5X as much as I want to spend on a house doesn’t mean I need to spend it. And I don’t plan to. I want a small house, something that is in decent shape, and not too large – a 700 square foot house or smaller would be ideal, as that’s pretty much the same size as my apartment now. (I think i surprised the mortgage broker too, when I said, oh no, this isn’t just what I want for a few years while going back to school – I want a small home, permanently!) And in case you are wondering why I am looking to buy rather than rent, well, it literally will be cheaper to own than to rent down there. And I would like to build some more equity in my life in addition to my retirement funds.
I’ll write more about the lending process as get further into it, but so far I’ve found that it’s actually harder to take a smaller mortgage from a lender than a big one – there is a federal law that aims to prevent small mortgagees from paying large fees relative to the amount of the loan. So I may not be able to borrow less than $50K – needless to say, I’m going to do some more research into this. But I’ve decided, if that’s the case – if I can get a smaller home, with maybe more land, then I would be able to take care of more animals down the line. And that’s hugely important to me.
I’m really feeling like this is the plan that it has rightfully taken me a long time to come across. I know I have changed my mind more times than I can count but with every false step I took in one direction, it taught me more about myself. Small is still great for me. I still love the outdoors, and having a small space forces you into the outdoors. I still want to experience warmer weather during this time of year. And I DEFINITELY want to have animals in my life in a big way. This morning, Max rubbed up against me as I was doing some handwashing in the bathroom, and I thought to myself “how could I NOT want to work with animals every day??!! They make me so happy.”
Well, it’s time for me to get a move on, on this MLK Day. My plan is to get a lot of my letters written up so I can snail mail them tomorrow to vets down in the NC area. Now that I can tell them when I am coming down there, and school starts tomorrow! (yay!), I can demonstrate even more my commitment to the move and to the new way of life.
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I couldn’t sleep well the other night – kept waking up, and finally, at 2 a.m., just gave up and opened up my chromebook. I’ve started listening to some personal finance podcasts – not taking everything they say as gospel, of course, but just trying to keep an open mind about what others are thinking of doing, or have done, to improve their financial situations. (I’ve got a few linked on the right hand side of the page.) And the other day, the Listen Money Matters! podcast interviewed a girl who paid off $28K in three years after she graduated from college. And no, she didn’t live at home, but she does live with her boyfriend so she is able to cut down on her rent costs. I started reading her blog, Debt Free After Three, and then it lead me to this other blog called Dear Debt, wherein people are encouraged to write a Dear John type of letter to their debts. Their debts are not limited to just student loans, but it seems like they are a big cause of angst and pain and frustration!! (Gee, I *think* I know what they feel like…..) Read more
I called up Navient today – they are the company that has recently taken over my loans from that EVIL BEE-ATCH, Sallie Mae. Have to say, it was nice talking to someone who didn’t sound like she was reading from a script and could actually answer questions. When she heard that I had already been paying my loans for 17 years (and she could see my balances), she said “oh, that makes me feel sick.” I said “trust me, if it makes you feel sick, you have NO IDEA how sad it makes me feel.”
Someone commented last week that they know about “student loans” and they hear about “student loans” but it’s another story to see them. So I need to put down some cold, hard numbers here. In addition to my LAL loan (which is private) and has a current balance of $13,390.70, this is what is sitting there for my federal loans:
BIG DADDY (consists of my federal law school loans):
Loan 1-09: $44,347.24, interest rate of 7.5% (fixed), unsubsidized
Loan 1-10: $30,821.51, interest rate of 7.5% (fixed), subsidized
TOTAL: $75,168.75
SIMMONS (consists of my library science school loans)
Loan 1-07: $9,106.26, interest rate of 1.62% (fixed), subsidized
Loan 1-08: $14,081.79, interest rate of 1.62% (fixed), unsubsidized
TOTAL: $23,188.05
GRAND TOTAL of FEDERAL LOANS: $98,356.80
GRAND TOTAL of ALL LOANS: $111,747.50 (including my LAL of $13,390.70)
Anyone depressed yet?? This is what the loan system has turned into! This is after 17 years of paying on the $75K portion of Big Daddy and the LAL loans, and paying for 10 years of paying on Simmons Loans!! Ok, I digress and will stop ranting.
So, the good news: next year, when I change my living situation and move (probably south, but definitely someplace warmer), I will apply for what is called and Income Based Repayment or IBR plan. With this plan, I will never have to pay more than 15% of my AGI as long as I keep reapplying for renewal of the status every 12 months. I know that as a veterinary assistant, my salary might be somewhere in the 20-30K range (and the 30K range is kinda pushing it.) So I asked the Navient person to run some numbers, if I had an AGI of $25K and 20K, respectively. Whereas right now I am paying $538 a month just to keep my loan from growing, my payments would go down to about $93/month and $33/month, respectively.
What’s the catch? You know there had to be one, right? Of course there is. The catch is that the IBR plan will last for 25 years. At the end of the 25 years, whatever amount is not paid off will be forgiven. (There is some question as to whether that amount would then be imputed to you as taxable income for that year or not.) So if I were to do something like that, it could be conceivable that I could be paying off law school (and Simmons) loans for 42 years. You read that right. 42 years. And that’s if I changed to that plan right now. However, changing to that plan right now would actually raise my monthly payments, likely to something around $700, so if I do switch repayment plans, it’s not going to happen right now. I’d be paying something like $1800 to save myself somewhere around $360 or $1080 (depending on how low my salary is) to end the loan 25 years from today instead of 25 years from next fall.
So here’s where I am at. I don’t love the idea of paying loans for another 25 years, obviously. I’m already 42. Who wants to pay until they are almost entitled to social security and are almost three times the age they were when they first got out of law school? (I was 24.) However, since I feel like I have paid for these loans already at least twice, I don’t feel too badly about making the government wait and wait and wait to be paid these amounts, and to then be paying smaller amount overall. I know as a vet assistant, it’s not like my salary is going to drastically change over the years. It’s not like I could ever make it back to the salary I am making right now, I know that for sure. And, since I have learned to live simply, I could maybe afford to save a bit at the same time too, so I’m not living hand to mouth. I still want to be able to save for retirement, even if it’s at a smaller rate per year. And keep away from the credit cards, because those can bury you. Luckily, I don’t have any of that debt right now. And I would hope that working as a vet assistant, I could maybe get a break on vet care for my herd. 🙂
Unfortunately, society just doesn’t place such a huge monetary value on those who care for animals. It’s not like I’d be running a huge investment bank or anything important like that, right? (Don’t even get me started on that kind of rant about executive compensation getting out of hand…again, I digress. Sorry.)
I do still plan on paying off that LAL loan by the time I move. I could pay it off right now – I have enough in savings, but it would definitely put a damper on what I have saved. And it feels good for me to mentally keep looking at the savings balance I do have and know I’m getting somewhere. Right now, so much of my payment on that loan goes to principal, that my financial advisor suggested I keep hoarding cash and then take a look at things in the spring or summer and decide to pay it off then. That way if anything else happens in the meantime, expected or not, I’m prepared and have some liquidity.
I find it somewhat sad, but this actually seems like good news to me right now. Any thoughts from any of you? If so, please drop me a note below.
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I came to a few realizations last night and I went to bed angry. Fighting mad angry. But in a good way. I owe a lot of this to my friend Dan, who answered a text message of mine that said “Do you think I’m stupid for wanting to leave a good paying job to do something that will pay so much less?”
The reason I asked this question is because I see so many people struggling just to get by and I feel like I should just be thankful for whatever opportunity is thrown my way. For example, there are the cleaners/housekeeping folks at my gym – all three of them work two jobs. None of them have English as their native language, which definitely hurts their job prospects. I know for a fact that one of them works seven days a week, and that a second one was until he finally had his daughter talk to me to write a note to the manager stating that he would like to take Fridays off since he was working seven days a week. (He and I are slowly teaching each other some words in Spanish and English.)
In response to these concerns, my friend Dan told me, among other things, “you can still be thankful and desire to live a Purpose Driven Life.” He also said something that struck home: “No one says on their death bed, ‘Thank God I paid off that student loan.'” Finally, “It (my student loan debt) runs your life in that it makes your decisions for you.”
So now, I’m going to do what he suggested: “Find a balance between the obligation you owe the debt and the bigger obligation you owe yourself.”
I looked at my loan details last night for my Big Daddy loan. I started paying (or shall we say, deferring and forbearing) back in 1997. Now that I have been paying interest-only payments on it for the last two years (as part of a graduated repayment plan), just to keep it from growing, I see that the final repayment date is in 2034 and another in 2035 (Big Daddy consists of two consolidated loans – one is unsubsidized federal money and the other is subsidized.)
In case you’re wondering what the difference is between a subsidized loan and an unsubsidized one–well, the difference is when who pays the interest that is accruing during terms when you are not in repayment, such as when you have taken a deferment. Deferments can be for a number of reasons but the most common ones are that you are currently in school or you are going through some sort of economic hardship. With a subsidized loan, the federal government pays the interest coming due. With unsubsidized ones, that interest just keeps on accruing and accruing and accruing and at the end of your deferment or forbearment period, all that unpaid interest gets thrown on the top of the loan, essentially making your principal balance, upon which more interest accrues, even larger than when you started. Do you see why this can get overwhelming to think about? I had loans that were unsubsidized during my first year of law school. You’re encouraged to not work during your first year of law school for a lot of reasons. So even by the time I graduated my principal balances had already grown by a whopping lot.
My Big Daddy loan actually consists of two loans – out of $75K, one has a principal balance right now of $44K. So that puts the other one around $31K. Here’s the funny thing – that loan that now has $44K to its name – when I consolidated that loan back in 2001, guess what the principal balance was at that time? Yeah….it was about $41K. All these years, I have paid at the very least $538/month, and for many years, while I was married, I even paid extra principal to it every month. Sometimes, about $700/month, on the combined Big Daddy loan. So, how, you ask, is that balance even higher? If you take an average of $6000 paid every year and you multiply that by 13, how much do you get?? Hmmm. 78K. And yet the balance of Big Daddy these days is still over $75K.
So here’s what I decided the other night – I’m going to switch careers to something that I find much more fulfilling, and if I pay less money per month to my student loans, so be it. I want to have a life where I feel like what I am doing every day is more in tune with my heart. And for me, that means working with animals.
Beginning this week, I am going to begin volunteering with the Animal Rescue League of Boston and work with their livestock animals. Right now, that means goats, sheep, a horse, and some chickens. I heard back from my local vet who asked me to send a resume or CV and let them know the hours during which I could volunteer, so I would be able to get experience working in a private vet office with small animals. I want to try to expose myself to as many different types of animals and types of organizations so I can see what best fits with me and my personality, etc.
I already know the average salary for vet assistants is something like $22K-30K. This is about what I live on right now, but I currently pay extra money to my student loans and paying the higher amounts on my loans. With a lower salary, I will be eligible for different types of repayment plans, and one can lower your payments to about 10-15% of your salary. So yes, it moves the final payoff date out that much further into the future, but life is short.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a slacker. i do want to pay back my debts. I do. I just think that with all the money I have paid this government over the years, the government can continue to wait for the 2x and 3X the principal amounts I will end up paying back. I could walk outside today or tomorrow and get hit by a car or something worse. I could be like Brittany Maynard who was 29 and found out she had an aggressive form of brain cancer. I’m not trying to be melodramatic or anything. I just have decided to not let these loans run my life anymore. I’m going to start living my life for me. And for the animals.
So this is the new plan. I’m going to pay off the private student loan which is sitting around $13,500 right now. That one, I don’t have tons of options about. But the federal ones…I’ll deal with them, probably for the rest of my life, but at least it’ll be a life that I feel good about at the end of every day. I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given in this world, and every time I go to a talk at my school about animal rights, I get this strong feeling in my stomach that I NEED to do something to help them. And with my background, I can. I want to work with the animals in a hands-on way, but if there’s a way I can also be involved in using my education or my social or personal skills to their advantage, well, I plan on doing it. I’m open to the opportunities.
I’m home with my mom this weekend to celebrate an early Thanksgiving. I hope you will all have a great weekend. If you’ve liked this post, please hit like or subscribe, or drop me a line below.
I think the last time I actually counted these posts in the title, I was at 16. So now, let’s just start with twenty. That sounds good.
You’re probably wondering what it’s down to now – of course “down to” is all relative. But now that I think about it, it’s been about a year since I really started keeping track of my total debt. Just thinking of it as an amorphously large number doesn’t really motivate you to kill it in the same way as staring the numbers in the face.
Don’t worry, people, I don’t mean in a mental way. Although last week was stressful, I’m talking about finances. When I get stressed about the unknown, or thinking and wondering to myself if I’m being unrealistic about possibly workamping next fall, I start to play with figures on a piece of paper. It helps me to see things in black and white, literally, on the paper in front of me. And not on a computer screen, I mean, the literal paper and ink. Read more
Chasing Simple Dreams 