blogging

Hello readers!

Well. As we all know, I am TERRIBLE about saving money/getting out of debt. I purchased a sidekick iD yesterday. While I view it as a worthwhile purchase, as I really needed a new phone, I very easily could have lived without it.

How do you stop being an impulsive buyer? Isn't that kind of a trademark of borderline personality disorder? You're on meds, why do you keep spending like it's gonig out of style? - answer to that one is that the meds help regulate emotions, but they don't affect thought processes -

Well. I for one am going to stop carrying my check card with me. I am going to allocate myself a certain amount of cash each week to have for incidental purchases I may make during the week, but having the plastic makes it so much easier to spend. This will make my life harder (getting gas, online purchases), but it's worth it in the long run.

I am going to sit down and make a calendar that shows what the due date is on each of my bills, so I can see which weeks are going to really suck moneywise and plan ahead for them rather than being caught off-guard and scrounging for money one week of the month.

I am going to make a list of all my bills, the total amounts I owe on them, and what the monthly payments are. I have several that are in collections and the "monthly payment" is the total owed, and for those I will pay approximately 5% of the total bill per month.

When I get a windfall, some sort of extra or unplanned suprise, I normally do NOTHING with it. I don't pay things down, I don't save it, I don't buy some crazy something I don't need. It just gets put in my account, and spent. I need to put a kabosh to that. I opened an electric orange savings account at ING that earns like 5% on my savings. Higher than inflation. Higher than spending it on nothing. So 1/3 of "extra" money is going to savings, 1/3 to debt, and 1/3 to normal spending account. Fair enough.

I also plan on WRITING DOWN my financial goals, and looking at them every day. I think (wishful thinking, I know) that maybe if I can just keep remembering that I want 3k in savings by February, that I want all my bills except car and medical paid off by February maybe I won't buy caribou 3x a week, fast food almost daily, keep the desk stocked with candy, buy kristen stupid shit... it's a thought. I bet I could save $75 a week just on incidental purchases. I have about 123823945 caffeine pills at home, I should take one of those with water instead of buying pop. I have snacky foods here, and PB and wheat bread, I can eat those for lunch and probably feel fuller and healthier.


So, this week/weekend is going to really be a thoughtful one for me.