Mea Culpa

Lately, life seems like one big rollercoaster ride with all the loop-de-loops, sharp turns, slow climbs to the top and sudden plunges to the ground. There are days when I can't wait to get on because it looks like so much fun. I'm looking forward to the ride and all the thrills and chills that I'm excitedly anticipating. Once on, however, I sometimes wish it would hurry up and end. Maybe the highs are too high or the lows are too low or the loop-de-loops are just too crazy but sometimes it just makes me dizzy and I want to get off before I throw up. Some days I'm up for it and some days...well, not so much. Right now, I feel that I'm just in line waiting. And it's a LONG freaking line. Ya know, the three-hours-wait-past-this-point kinda line. That's how I feel about my debt sometimes. I can't wait until that day when I can enjoy the highs and tolerate the lows because I have that safety cushion where worrying about money is the LEAST of my worries. In fact, I can't wait until it's not a worry at all. THAT would be sweet! To actually go into a store and buy something I need for myself or my son and not feel guilty for buying necessities because I'm adding to my debt overload is something I am looking forward to soooo much that I feel like I'm at the end of a long damn line to the most popular rollercoaster in the world and it's been temporarily shut down for maintenance. Since no one wants to lose their place in line we all stay where we are...and we wait.

is me! I have been in lala land for the past four months or just past that give or take a week. Major upheavals in my life have caused me to procrastinate to the extreme. I'm only back because of a loving prod from a dear friend. Okay, more like an electrified cattle prod but then I kinda needed it. I've missed posting and reading everyone else's posts so I will try to correct that in the next few weeks. Regardless of my personal problems, I'm proud to say that I have stayed true to my journey to a debt free life. True, I'm not as far as long as I would have liked because of some financial issues that came up unexpectedly but I have managed to knock about 400.00 off of my total debt owed AND I just made my last payment on my 401K loan. I restructured my insurance so that I should be getting back about 20.00 more per month instead of PAYING more and with an additional 150.00 that I was paying towards my 401K loan I think things will loosen up a bit so I can breathe a little easier in the coming months. PLUS, I have 3 cards that are within 200.00 or less of being paid off and I'm hoping to have a small tax return this year which should help the strain even more. My goal for the end of the year is to have at least 3 more cards paid off (not counting the 3 that are close to being paid already) and not putting Christmas on credit this year. I did have to put 400.00 on my credit cards for Christmas this year (not happy about it but you do what you must for your children) but considering I'm still 400.00 lower (INCLUDING the Christmas charges) on my total debt owed I think I ended up in a better position then I would have initially thought after all the unforeseen expenses and emergencies combined. Victoria's Secret STILL tries to entice me back with another increase to my credit account but since it is one of the cards that only has 100.00 left until it's paid, they are unlikely to tempt me back.

I truly believe this will be a MUCH better year for me (or at least hoping), especially since I will actually have a real birthday this year. In Leap Years, I will be 11 years old. By people years, that would be 44. I prefer the Leap Year accounting best.

Happy New Year's to everyone and I hope it's one of the best years to come!

I logged onto my VS account today to check my online statement and what to my wondering eyes did appear but a 700 increase in my credit limit. I'm a little over 200 from paying off my account and they have increased my limit from 800 to 1500! I guess they are onto my nefarious plan to pay off all my debts and eschew further charges to any and all credit cards. Fortunately, I have cotton in my ears so that I can no longer be led astray by their siren song.

I posted an entry the day before last and it still has not shown up on the personal blogs main page. It shows up fine on my blog, however, or at least it does for me. If anyone happens to visit my blog please let me know if it shows up for you, too. It was a blog about Dave Barry's book that I just recently read and highly recommend for a good laugh.

I just finished reading Dave Barry's book "Money Smarts" and it is hilarious! I highly recommend it for a good laugh. If you like to read as much as I do and if you are reading everything you can get your hands on in regards to money management, debt reduction, etc. then you may, like me, be suffering from money management overload. I will include an excerpt from Chapter 1.

"In prehistoric times, there was no such thing as money. When people needed to buy something, they had to charge it. And then when the bills came, nobody could understand them, because there was also no such thing as reading. This led to a lot of misunderstandings and hitting with rocks."

Another excerpt further down in the same chapter...

"And so the quest continued for a better form of money. Various cultures experimented with a number of commodities, including tea, grains, leather, tobacco, and Pokemon cards. Then, finally, humanity hit upon a medium of exchange that had no disadvantages--a medium that was durable, portable, beautiful, and universally recognized to have lasting value. That medium, of course, was beer."

And those weren't even the funniest excerpts that I read, they were just shorter paragraphs then the rest. Of course, keeping in the frugal mindset, I rented it from my library instead of purchasing it but I would consider it a good purchase if you like humor that's a little offbeat.

to get by. It seems like I've lived my whole life in that mode but, although I'm still living like that, there is one small difference. Instead of getting depressed and running up my credit card accounts, I pull up my debt repayment plan on the computer and look at the totals due and all the interest I pay each month. Talk about your wet blankets on a spending spree! That inevitably douses any desire to head to the mall with plastic in hand. I realized I had really arrived when I was flipping through the shop-at-home-til-you-drop catalogs and found that I was just flipping the pages absentmindedly. There was not ONE thing that I just HAD to have or thought would make a great present for someone. Although I only have 42.00 to get me through until next Friday, I'm optimistic that I can do it or at least make it until I get my 40.00 gas expense check. Plus, I have sold 16 CDs on Half.com and have 28 listed for sale. I sooooo wish I had not sold over 100 CDs to Half Price books. Such a waste! I think I might have received 50.00 max for all of them when I could easily have made four times that amount if not more. Oh well. Lesson learned and committed to memory. Now all I do is look at things and think "Can I sell it for more than what I paid for it"? And if I can't and don't absolutely need it then I pass it by. My new motto in life is to buy low and sell high whenever I can. Oh, to be sure, that won't happen every time I need or just plain WANT something but it will definitely hold my wants in check so that I don't go hogwild on a half-crazed shopping spree. At least not THIS week since 42.00 will not buy even a quarter-crazed spree let alone a half-crazed one.



Ciao, my frugal friends!

my blog, at last! This will, of course, be short and sweet since I'm taking a few minutes from my job (bad Darla, BAD!!!!)to write a few, brief sentences. I have been lurking in the blog background long enough and decided to boldly go where just about everyone else has already gone before. Yea, I'm not much of an adventurer you could say.

Anyhoo, this week has been a wonderful week for me since I just sold two items on Half.com and made about 43.00 from those two sales. I was very low on funds and worried about how I was going to make it until next Friday and now it's all good. This is the first time I have sold anything online before but it has really motivated me to go through my vast collection of crap and start listing just about everything I own with the exception of my beloved son and cat. I was so excited when I got my first sale. I wish I had done this last year before I went to Half Price books and sold off some books, cds, and dvds to them. I know that I could not have made more than 1.00 or 1.50 for each item and on Half.com I sold one item for 7.50 and another for 35.00. True, the latter was a multiple (4) CD item but the former was a single CD. I would love to kick myself in the butt for all the potential money that I have lost that could have been applied to my debt. ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I WANT OUT OF DEBT!!! I'm sick of it! I looked at how much I pay in interest each month on my credit cards and loan and it just made me ill to see how much money I'm wasting. Totally NOT cool. I can't wait until the day that I'm free and clear of all debt and pay cash for everything with a big, FAT savings and retirement account on the side. Then I can say the same thing I said the day I left my ex-husband (which, appropriately enough, was also Martin Luther King day), "Free at last, free at last.....Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!!!"

God Bless!