there's a hole in the bucket...
Listen, I am about to be broke. Broke as a muthafuckin joke. I’m talkin’ rice and beans, peanut butter & jelly, cashin’ in the change jar broke. Which I guess isn’t really that broke, because at least I can afford rice and beans and peanut butter & jelly and there are lots of people who can’t. But right now, I am realizing that I will have to budget down to the dime next week to afford to do laundry. And it’s going to be like this for awhile. I got approved for a “lowering” of my monthly student loan payments. This lowering takes the payment down to $240 (which is still going to gouge me), but it does not start until November, so I have to pay $335 at the end of October. Then there’s rent, and then there’s the phone bill, and my gym membership, and electricity, and Metrocards. So that means goodbye to buying clothes, goodbye to buying lunch out, can’t afford to go to the dentist like I planned, can’t afford to go to the gyno like I planned, and it will still be an effing miracle if I don’t fall behind in anything. Then, it might get a little better by the end of November. Maybe. But I still will not be able to save anything. And my credit card debt remains, a mountain that I have yet to begin to climb.
I liked not having my bank account completely drained every week. It was nice. It was nice to be able to afford luxury items now and then. I know how to live extremely simply, though, and I do believe it will be good for me to be forced to do it. I will do it. I want to do it, if it means that I will be making progress. I just don’t want to find myself in the exact same position at 40 that I will be in at 30.
And it’s so much harder in New York. In Michigan, there wasn’t so much STUFF flying in my face all day long. It was possible to get from work to home and vice versa without THINGS flying in my face asking me to buy them. I didn’t HAVE to stop at the bodega on the way home because there was no bodega. There were gas stations and 7-11s and liquor stores, but those were different because going to them generally involved walking several blocks or parking the car and getting out of it or what have you. There was not a place to get coffee on every block. And when I went grocery shopping I bought in bulk and put the bags in the car, rather than taking trips to the grocery store every two or three days.
BLAH BLAH BLAH. That’s not my reality anymore, and I need to live within the reality that I’ve created for myself. Right now I have a job and an apartment and (somewhat) reliable transportation here, which I do not have in Michigan. So this is where I am, and I need to learn to love within my means here. I suppose if I had been doing that all along, I would have saved some money and I wouldn’t be so broke right now. So, it ends here. My frivolousness ends. I buy only what is necessary to my health and sanity. We’ll see how that goes.
I liked not having my bank account completely drained every week. It was nice. It was nice to be able to afford luxury items now and then. I know how to live extremely simply, though, and I do believe it will be good for me to be forced to do it. I will do it. I want to do it, if it means that I will be making progress. I just don’t want to find myself in the exact same position at 40 that I will be in at 30.
And it’s so much harder in New York. In Michigan, there wasn’t so much STUFF flying in my face all day long. It was possible to get from work to home and vice versa without THINGS flying in my face asking me to buy them. I didn’t HAVE to stop at the bodega on the way home because there was no bodega. There were gas stations and 7-11s and liquor stores, but those were different because going to them generally involved walking several blocks or parking the car and getting out of it or what have you. There was not a place to get coffee on every block. And when I went grocery shopping I bought in bulk and put the bags in the car, rather than taking trips to the grocery store every two or three days.
BLAH BLAH BLAH. That’s not my reality anymore, and I need to live within the reality that I’ve created for myself. Right now I have a job and an apartment and (somewhat) reliable transportation here, which I do not have in Michigan. So this is where I am, and I need to learn to love within my means here. I suppose if I had been doing that all along, I would have saved some money and I wouldn’t be so broke right now. So, it ends here. My frivolousness ends. I buy only what is necessary to my health and sanity. We’ll see how that goes.