Ever feel like a bat trapped in a bra? Suffocating in your warm coziness?
Or maybe you feel like a headless bunny sometimes. It's that feeling of contentment mixed with frustration with a just a dash of insanity (or maybe a dollop if your insanity comes in a thick, cream-based form). Usually, you're content except for some extremely frustrating and difficult circumstances. Maybe it's one or two things, or it could be a multitude of things, but everyone's dealt with this at some point.
For me, it's several things. Tim's job, my difficulty in making time to write, gas prices, and our debt. But it's that last one that is a constant weight whispering raspy discontents in my ear. So if everyone in Americaland could just send one dollar to my PayPal account, we could beat that motherfucker down, right off the ba—
No?
Well, it was worth a shot.
Seriously, though . . . the last four things are so inextricably intertwined, it becomes a tenuous balancing act. If any one of them goes the wrong direction, it directly affects everything else and could be ruinous. I've been trying to take care of the debt. Have a budget plan all lined out and everything. Even managed to stick with it the past four months. But now that gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon here, and with the skyrocketing cost of groceries and pet food eating into our budget, I don't know that I'll be able to follow it much longer even though I've managed to pay off four credit cards.
You know, I always hear that I must contribute to my 401(k) and I'm a fool if I don't start investing for my retirement now, blah, blah, blah. What they don't explain is, if my annual salary increases are being outstripped by inflated costs of living (I'm talking gas, utilities, and groceries) to the point I can barely make ends meet, where the hell am I supposed to find the money to contribute to a damn 401(k)?
Admittedly, I'm at least mostly responsible for getting myself into this mess. But when your car needs tires or repairs or inspection, or you need a computer for college, or you need a suit for going on interviews, or you need two root canals and a crown and three wisdom teeth pulled, and you have no cash to cover it and the credit card companies make it sooooooo easy for you, the college student with little-to-no income to get a credit card, which route are you gonna take? Exactly.
Then the interest piles up and your payments begin to increase, then the rent, utilities, groceries, and gas prices start going up, and the student loan payments start kicking in even though you still haven't been able to land a job six months after graduating, making you even more cash-strapped. You still have dental bills, medical bills, car maintenance and repairs, etc. to pay for, so you put it on plastic. Next thing you know, you're in debt up to your eyeballs.
And even when you do have insurance, you still have bills. Take my dental plan, for example. I had to have three crowns, a wisdom tooth pulled, a root canal, and some other expensive, but necessary procedures done. Even with my dental insurance, I had to pay about $2,600 for it all. What do you think I put it on? Credit. Dentists don't do payment plans; they take cash or credit card. Hey, they got bills to pay, too, you know.
Then when Tim first started his job and thus had no sick time, we both got sick several times over the course of two months and had to go to the doctor several times. We have a $40 copay, and Tim had to take the time off unpaid. Four doctor visits and then some really pricey medicine added up to about $300 on top of him losing two days of pay. Yeah, it all went on credit.
This year, we both needed glasses and contacts. Insurance pays for the eye health exam, but if you're nearsighted and you wanna be able to see, you gots to pony up. Another $500+ on credit.
You see where I'm going with this? Ten years of this has dug us a pretty deep hole, with setback after setback putting us just a little bit further behind, slowing down our progress just that much every time.
And I will freely confess that some of the purchases we put on credit weren't absolutely necessary. But anniversaries and birthdays actually comprise a fairly small portion of the debt.
Anyway . . .
It will hopefully all work out eventually. We're still making ends meet, still staying on top of all the bills and crap. As long as Tim doesn't lose his job unexpectedly, gas doesn't hit $5 a gallon and the stock market doesn't crash, we'll climb out of our hole . . . eventually.
Than maybe, just maybe, I can stop whining and start investing.
Or maybe you feel like a headless bunny sometimes. It's that feeling of contentment mixed with frustration with a just a dash of insanity (or maybe a dollop if your insanity comes in a thick, cream-based form). Usually, you're content except for some extremely frustrating and difficult circumstances. Maybe it's one or two things, or it could be a multitude of things, but everyone's dealt with this at some point.
For me, it's several things. Tim's job, my difficulty in making time to write, gas prices, and our debt. But it's that last one that is a constant weight whispering raspy discontents in my ear. So if everyone in Americaland could just send one dollar to my PayPal account, we could beat that motherfucker down, right off the ba—
No?
Well, it was worth a shot.
Seriously, though . . . the last four things are so inextricably intertwined, it becomes a tenuous balancing act. If any one of them goes the wrong direction, it directly affects everything else and could be ruinous. I've been trying to take care of the debt. Have a budget plan all lined out and everything. Even managed to stick with it the past four months. But now that gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon here, and with the skyrocketing cost of groceries and pet food eating into our budget, I don't know that I'll be able to follow it much longer even though I've managed to pay off four credit cards.
You know, I always hear that I must contribute to my 401(k) and I'm a fool if I don't start investing for my retirement now, blah, blah, blah. What they don't explain is, if my annual salary increases are being outstripped by inflated costs of living (I'm talking gas, utilities, and groceries) to the point I can barely make ends meet, where the hell am I supposed to find the money to contribute to a damn 401(k)?
Admittedly, I'm at least mostly responsible for getting myself into this mess. But when your car needs tires or repairs or inspection, or you need a computer for college, or you need a suit for going on interviews, or you need two root canals and a crown and three wisdom teeth pulled, and you have no cash to cover it and the credit card companies make it sooooooo easy for you, the college student with little-to-no income to get a credit card, which route are you gonna take? Exactly.
Then the interest piles up and your payments begin to increase, then the rent, utilities, groceries, and gas prices start going up, and the student loan payments start kicking in even though you still haven't been able to land a job six months after graduating, making you even more cash-strapped. You still have dental bills, medical bills, car maintenance and repairs, etc. to pay for, so you put it on plastic. Next thing you know, you're in debt up to your eyeballs.
And even when you do have insurance, you still have bills. Take my dental plan, for example. I had to have three crowns, a wisdom tooth pulled, a root canal, and some other expensive, but necessary procedures done. Even with my dental insurance, I had to pay about $2,600 for it all. What do you think I put it on? Credit. Dentists don't do payment plans; they take cash or credit card. Hey, they got bills to pay, too, you know.
Then when Tim first started his job and thus had no sick time, we both got sick several times over the course of two months and had to go to the doctor several times. We have a $40 copay, and Tim had to take the time off unpaid. Four doctor visits and then some really pricey medicine added up to about $300 on top of him losing two days of pay. Yeah, it all went on credit.
This year, we both needed glasses and contacts. Insurance pays for the eye health exam, but if you're nearsighted and you wanna be able to see, you gots to pony up. Another $500+ on credit.
You see where I'm going with this? Ten years of this has dug us a pretty deep hole, with setback after setback putting us just a little bit further behind, slowing down our progress just that much every time.
And I will freely confess that some of the purchases we put on credit weren't absolutely necessary. But anniversaries and birthdays actually comprise a fairly small portion of the debt.
Anyway . . .
It will hopefully all work out eventually. We're still making ends meet, still staying on top of all the bills and crap. As long as Tim doesn't lose his job unexpectedly, gas doesn't hit $5 a gallon and the stock market doesn't crash, we'll climb out of our hole . . . eventually.
Than maybe, just maybe, I can stop whining and start investing.
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