flashback to the suicide apartment.

i have a really bad habit of spending a lot of time finding great deals and saving my pennies… only to waste them on things that i don’t need throughout the week (remember that time i bought workout clothes instead of going home to get my own?!). i really need to learn to be more careful, and overall more discerning about my funds if i ever want to get out of debt. i remember when i was 21 and i graduated from college, moved to portland, and got my first real job (temping in a windowless office at a local law firm) and my first apartment (a tiny cockroach riddled studio for $455 a month that my friends referred to as the “suicide apartment”). i made roughly $21,000 that year.  i remember having $7 with which to do my grocery shopping my first week alone because i had given them all my money for a security deposit. i bought a loaf of white bread, a package of $.99 baloney. $1.50 worth of sliced deli cheese, some mustard, and some ramen… and i lived off that until i got paid. i don’t remember it being that bad. i didn’t have any credit card debt yet, i didn’t have cable or internet, or a cell phone. i didn’t really have anything except my futon, the roaches, and the combination tv/vcr that my mom got me for graduation. i’m pretty sure that i was reasonably happy.

flashing forward 10 years, i now make more than twice the amount that i did when i was 21. i own a condo (no more cocoa-roches), and i’m still reasonably happy. but now i have roughly $15,600 in revolving debt… and that adds a certain level of stress and uncertainty to my life situation that really does make me a little bit less happy. and when i think about wanting to go to medical school, and know that i won’t be able to have a job for 2 years while i’m in school, it just makes me doubt that i’ll be able to do it. my debt is far more than just a financial burden. it’s scary.

considering how much money i make now- it should be controllable, completely deletable even…. but just as with my weight, i have a consumption problem that i have not yet been able to curb.

they (weight watchers, richard simmons, bob & jillian on the biggest loser) always say that keeping a food journal is a surefire way to lose weight. maybe the same thing works with money? i’d like to try a little experiment with my own spending this week (possibly this month?) where i just write down everything i spend in a effort to find out where all my money is going.