good and bad and ugly
After calculating my net worth this month, I’ve got a few good things, and a few bad ones. First the bad: I had to spend a lot on gas this month because it’s the holiday season and I’m traveling more. Also, energy costs were a little high. I don’t even want to talk about how I’ve been relying on using credit cards and paying off at the end of the month. That is so dangerous! But I am paying off my credit cards each time I get a paycheck with one exception. I’m allowing myself to leave $200 worth of Christmas presents on credit, to be paid back by the end of January 2008. The rest of the bad news is it doesn’t look like I’ll pay my loan off by December 31st. Oh - and I’m broke with almost two weeks until payday.
The good news is, I’ve started to withhold money for a 401K. I’ve been putting away a little bit of money into my saving account automatically (though I was tempted to use it to pay off my old credit card debt, like I’d been doing over the past several months). And I was able to pay off over half of my remaining old credit card debt this month.
I might be cutting it too close with the credit card usage to get by so I can use my available cash to kill debt. I know I’m not right for doing that. I’m not scared, though. I will continue to pay my cards off continually.
I’m just getting tired, though. I’ll call it self-enforced-poverty-fatigue. I want to eat out. I want to buy clothes. I want to buy expensive presents. This last 2,000 is the most difficult to pay off. The temptation to abandon aggressive payments is getting worse and worse. I almost seriously considered making the minimum payment so that I could keep some cash for myself this month. I wanted to spend money on eating out tonight just for the sake of spending the money. This, dear reader, is trial by fire. I’m hanging on.
