« More Sidewalk Finds and Some Blog Posts that Caught My Eye | Main | Advertising on My Blog »
Debt Check-In
By Jay | January 13, 2008
Good news on the debt front.
My bonus was deposited into my checking account last week. I’ve paid down $11,000 in debt. I also put $2,300 into my savings account — feels good to have an emergency account again. And, I made a substantial contribution to my 401K. I took a big hit though over the last 3 months because of the market — about 15% — so my 401K balance still seems depressingly low. At any rate, my net worth has gone up by 78%, to $37,000!
But what feels really good now is that I haven’t frittered away the money. Last year my bonus was half-spent by now, on a vacation, some nice dinners, new clothes, gifts. And I was locked into yet one more year of mindless drudgery in my little cubicle.
I think dealing with financial windfalls has been one of my main weaknesses in the past. I usually had a backlog of things that I wanted, so I would use windfalls to catch up on my “acquisition” list. Unfortunately those acquisitions never quite fulfilled me the way I expected them to, and I ended up “needing” even more things. In the end the windfall would be gone, I would have even more credit card debt, and my “acquisition” list would be longer than ever.
It wasn’t until I learned the folly of “needing” and “acquiring” that I started turning myself around. I think I finally got to that point early last year, when I started blogging about my finances last April. You may notice that my blog archives only go back to November 07. The reason for this is that my first blog entries just went too deep, became too personal, revealed too much inner turmoil. Putting my money issues out to strangers forced me to look at them in a different way, and that brought about 40 years of financial dysfunction to the surface. I went through a lot of inner upheaval as a result, and I honestly felt like I was losing it at points. Changing the direction of our lives is hard work, even when the change is for the better.
I wrote a few days ago that the sensation is sort of like turning around a large ship. The ship can be headed toward a rocky promontory (or in my case, just cruising along on a course where it would never reach land) — the captain can know it needs to change direction — but the actual act of turning a large ship is a difficult one. The staff activates; all hands on deck. The water becomes full of turmoil, seething with eddies and whirlpools around the hull. Finally, the ship swings around — a new direction is achieved. The crew relaxes, the energy required to turn dissipates, and the ship moves forward again.
This is where I’m at now. And it feels good.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Stumble it!
Topics: Budget |
January 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Congrats on spending your bonus wisely. I’ll be applying mine to some debts and setting aside an emergency fund (just in case I don’t get paid again).
January 15th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Thanks! I’ve stuck a couple thousand into my emergency fund too, and will put my tax refund there as well.