It's been about a year and eight months since my bankruptcy was discharged. As you can imagine, following that frustrating and humiliating process I swore to myself that I would never get in that deep again. For a long time I refused to even have a credit card at all. I felt like they were pretty much evil and I didn't need one since I use my debit card for everything. But then the credit card industry reeled me in under the pretense of "rebuilding my credit" and I got a card with a small ($500) limit. I vowed to only use it for groceries or other things I already had money for. I thought I was playing the game, see. I thought I was being "responsible". Then one week I overextended myself and I needed to use the card to buy groceries that I didn't have money for. So I started carrying a balance. At that point, my relationship with my card underwent a subtle shift. All of a sudden I started seeing my available credit as extra money I could spend. After I made a payment I would think about what I would use the available credit for. I wasn't struggling financially at this point at all...I had enough cash in my bank account to take care of my needs without using the card. In most cases I was using the card for retail therapy, buying stuff to make myself feel better.
Believe it or not, all of this was happening without my even registering it. Here's what happened next: I had some extra money left over from my tuition reimbursement and I planned to spend it on fancy things for my new apartment. Initially I was going to buy a big TV and a sofa so I could watch football games and movies and invite people over to do the same, but one day I was looking at my credit card bill and I realized I was over my $750 limit (they raised it a few months in to reward my good spending) so I decided to use the extra cash to pay my card off and then use that available credit to buy stuff. It wasn't until I was standing in the shower last night, thinking about what I wanted to buy, that it occurred to me that that credit wasn't money to spend...I had, in fact, already spent it and was now simply paying it back. It seems like such a simple thing to realize, but it really did take me that long.
That credit card thing is a slippery slope. I'm just glad it finally occurred to me what I was doing before I got myself right back on the path to drowning in personal debt. The sad thing is that now I can't buy my big tv for another few months. I know, poor me. Being an adult is hard.
xo,
C
Monday, October 12, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Nesting
(I'm moving at the end of the month into a bigger unit in my building)
Since Friday I have had a nagging thought in the back of my mind that the new unit isn't the right one, that I should hold out for a one bedroom instead of a double studio. Well today I saw on CL that a one bedroom is also opening up in my building on Nov 1 so I arranged with the manager to take a look. Let me tell you, I am so glad I did. I'm still going with the double studio, but at least now I *know* it is the right choice. It's a vastly superior unit to the one bedroom. There's surprisingly more storage space, the laundry area is larger, it's on the second floor so it gets so much more light during the day, and it faces the back of the building instead of Hawthorne so it'll be a lot quieter. On top of that, it's a hundred bucks a month cheaper than the 1br. Not a bad deal.
I'm excited about moving. This is no big surprise since I have always loved the feeling of reinvention that comes with moving to a new place, but I feel different about this move. For a while after I moved out of Theresa's house I was reeling, just trying to grab onto something relationshiplike, trying not to be too much of myself so I could more easily adapt to the people around me. I was reluctant to settle into my own space, to make it my own, for fear that the love of my life would come along and I would have to uproot everything. Well when I went on my trip I saw how much bullshit that was. Spending day after day alone in my car or in a tent, having to make my own decisions about what was going to happen next reminded me of what an empowering feeling that is and how much I don't ever want to give that up to anybody. So a natural extension of that is wanting to create my own space.
I'm planning on buying things, like brand new linens when my linens are perfectly serviceable. New dishes...maybe new cookware. I'm going to mull it over and over and pick out just the right things...things I love. And I'm not going to bring anything with me that I am not emotionally attached to or that doesn't serve a specific purpose. I'm going to pare down to the things I love and can't do without, and every time I use them I will remember the care that went into choosing them and will be glad to make space for them in my life. Everything else? Goodwill. Seriously.
Since Friday I have had a nagging thought in the back of my mind that the new unit isn't the right one, that I should hold out for a one bedroom instead of a double studio. Well today I saw on CL that a one bedroom is also opening up in my building on Nov 1 so I arranged with the manager to take a look. Let me tell you, I am so glad I did. I'm still going with the double studio, but at least now I *know* it is the right choice. It's a vastly superior unit to the one bedroom. There's surprisingly more storage space, the laundry area is larger, it's on the second floor so it gets so much more light during the day, and it faces the back of the building instead of Hawthorne so it'll be a lot quieter. On top of that, it's a hundred bucks a month cheaper than the 1br. Not a bad deal.
I'm excited about moving. This is no big surprise since I have always loved the feeling of reinvention that comes with moving to a new place, but I feel different about this move. For a while after I moved out of Theresa's house I was reeling, just trying to grab onto something relationshiplike, trying not to be too much of myself so I could more easily adapt to the people around me. I was reluctant to settle into my own space, to make it my own, for fear that the love of my life would come along and I would have to uproot everything. Well when I went on my trip I saw how much bullshit that was. Spending day after day alone in my car or in a tent, having to make my own decisions about what was going to happen next reminded me of what an empowering feeling that is and how much I don't ever want to give that up to anybody. So a natural extension of that is wanting to create my own space.
I'm planning on buying things, like brand new linens when my linens are perfectly serviceable. New dishes...maybe new cookware. I'm going to mull it over and over and pick out just the right things...things I love. And I'm not going to bring anything with me that I am not emotionally attached to or that doesn't serve a specific purpose. I'm going to pare down to the things I love and can't do without, and every time I use them I will remember the care that went into choosing them and will be glad to make space for them in my life. Everything else? Goodwill. Seriously.
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