humble pie

So apparently my debt snowball plan isn't going to work out EXACTLY as I'd hoped. When I paid off that loan on Monday, I thought it was going to satisfy my minimum payment. Not so much. When I logged in yesterday to see if my payment had posted, I was greeted with this:

day 2

So I'm starting off my 52 Pounds in 52 Weeks campaign with a bang. Last week I bought a bike to put under my desk at work, so no more excuses!! It took a little bit to figure out how to position the pedals and my chair and me so I didn't hit my knees on the desk, but by yesterday afternoon I was cruising. Fortunately, I just got a little fan to put on my desk, so I'm not TOO sweaty :)

 

accountability

So The Year of Austerity isn't only going to be about money; it's going to be about food. The truth is, I eat way too much and I weigh way too much to be getting pregnant. Before law school, I was much thinner. Well, I may have been artificially thin when I started law school because of all the drama of the preceding summer. But seriously, look how thin:

08.26.13-- loan progress

Undergrad: $0
Law School: $48,898.82

and so it begins

I've been a little quiet here lately-- mostly because there's nothing really to report. Things have been going along smoothly, and I've been patiently waiting to hear whether or not I have something to be excited about.

fini!

Seriously, how big are his feet?!

I finally finished those damn socks, and they look pretty good if you ask me! I could point out all the flaws and imperfections, but for my first go at it they're pretty impressive. C is wearing them to work today, because he loves me.

Lesson learned: perhaps knitting with size 1 needles isn't for me...

control freak

So here's where I let my freak flag fly: I love Excel. I love everything about it. It is a magical program that I only use to like 15% of its capability. The thing I love to do most in Excel? Budgeting. Especially amortization schedules. They're awesome.

Now that my Sallie Mae loan is gone, all my money is going toward my law school loan. Now I may not have learned much in college, but I did learn about the compounding property of interest. I'll never forget how amazed I was that by splitting a loan payment into 2 and paying twice per month instead of once per month, you could save a lot of money in interest! As a result, I'm not about to sit idly by and just make one larger payment per month. No sirree.

pride

So last night C and I had a discussion about our financial situation. Current debt/expenses and income. Always a joyous topic. :) Basically the crux of the conversation was "how can we get out of debt even faster?" Where my pride comes into play on all this is that I'm the only one who has any debt (aside from the mortgage, which is a joint asset). Granted, I don't have all that much debt. I just have my student loan and my car. No credit cards or anything, which is a plus.

rearranging

C and I moved into our house last September, and we've been renovating it ever since. It was built in the 50s and had been vacant for 5 years before we bought it, so a lot of things were outdated and/or in need of repair. We tackled the kitchen (and adjoining laundry room) first. Completely gutted it and installed new cabinets, countertops, and floors. [Side note: never do a kitchen renovation yourself unless you LOVE washing dishes in the bathtub for 6 months.] We (and by we I clearly mean C) then extended said floors into the rest of the house (except the bedrooms and bathrooms). New drywall and paint in the main room, and new trim everywhere. There are still projects that we want/need to do, but the place is looking pretty spiffy.

As a result of all of this turmoil, the state of our unpacking is... marginal at best. Oh sure, the house isn't strewn with boxes or anything, but the front bedroom... well.... there might be some boxes (and extra furniture) in there. C's friends from college and their kids came to visit a few weeks ago, and the 5-year-old looked in there and said "Do you NEED all this stuff?" No, Luke. No we don't. It was sort of the slap in the face that I needed to want to get things more in order instead of just shutting that bedroom door and pretending that it didn't exist.

this just happened

Well, I think the whole point of the list of goals was to give me some medium-term items to work toward. Clearly I'm not very good at making things be medium-term.

30 by 30

I feel like doing a 30 by 30 list is something that a lot of people do. It occurred to me yesterday that I had nothing even resembling this when my friend Meagan suggested that I replace my baby-focused goal(s) with other ones. I still get my planning fix, and I can chill the F out for a hot minute. Given that with the current plan, I'll have my first baby while I'm 30, I can turn this into a "All the crap I want to do before I have kids/get pregnant" list. I have NOWHERE near 30 items on this list though.

Without further ado, here's what I've got thus far:

sallie mae is a dirty whore

Seriously, when I ask you what my payoff amount is, FUCKING TELL ME!

This is what I was greeted with yesterday when I logged into my account:

THIRTY-ONE CENTS!??!?!?!??!

 

Murderous rage.

wishing

I've been a planner for as long as I can remember. I'm happiest when I have a tangible goal and am actively working toward achieving it. As such, I'm not always very good at living in the present. I am always anxiously waiting for the next thing on the horizon-- that moment when I achieve my next goal. When I was younger, my mother would chastise me. "You're wishing your life away, Marcie!" she would say.

cautious optimism

This weekend was a very interesting weekend.

delusional

I've determined the emotion I felt when I saw that negative pregnancy test-- hope. Hope that the coin flipping around in the air made C decide that he wanted to have a baby after all. Hope that there was a reason that he bought 4 pregnancy tests, telling me "You'll use them." Hope that when he took me out to dinner last night to celebrate my loan payoff he'd say, "Hon, you've done such a good job thus far. Let's not wait anymore."

Alas, such hope was unfounded. If anything, I think it reinforced his opinion that he doesn't want to have a baby yet. So much for that.

conflicted

I've heard that taking a pregnancy test is a surefire way to know if you really want a baby or not. If that's true, then I'm not sure what last night says about me.

08.02.2013-- loan progress

Undergrad: $0
Law School: $49,714.84

Today is a momentous day. I have finally given the old F-U to Sallie Mae. It's one of those days that simultaneously felt like it would never come and snuck up on me.

C has something special planned for tonight. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm sure it will be fabulous. Assuming, of course,  I can stave off my old friend Nausea long enough to have a good time!