Pinching the Pennies

After an almost 2 week hiatus and far too many online purchases, the guilt was finally starting to overwhelm me. Earlier this week I got started with tracking my spending in an excel spreadsheet. I hoping that I will somehow shock myself into spending less. So far nothing, but I'm optimistic. I had a hairy situation with my bank account a couple of weeks ago, but I'm happy to report everything is back on track. Sometimes I feel like I'm managing my money properly, but there are times when I make slip-ups and that of course throws everything off. I wrote out a little check list of things I need to take care of this next month. First being rolling my 401k from my old job to my new job and getting my contributions set up. After that's taken care of I need to open my ING account and get funds set up for my HSBC account. I want to put 10% into 401k and 50$ to each savings account each pay. That ends up being about 450$ saved each month, which is managable for me right now. I still have many more month of my Debt Management Program (especially since I missed a payment last month), so I want to try and pay double on that every month. Right now my biggest challenge is buying crap online. I am seriously considering ordering a new debit card from the bank because I've memorized my # and that just makes things way to easy.

In the past week I've ordered:
Skin Care Products - 25$
3 Art Prints - 70$
Car Charger for my phone - 25$
25+ Songs from iTunes - 25$


I could've saved that :(

Making Ends Meet

Over the weekend I was given a very BIG and HORRIBLE reminder of why I started this blog. I have been looking at this apartment for about a month now, and finally submitted my application (with co-signer) along with the fees for that ($50) and the first month's rent ($575). Of course, not an hour after I had applied, the woman called me back to notify me that my credit app had been denied (shocker).

At that moment, a lot of thoughts went through my head. First, of course, was *($@#^@. Then I started to get irritated about putting myself in this situation. I've said before that I've made a lot of stupid decisions, especially when I had SEVERAL opportunities to pay off my debt, which I'm kicking myself for now, but I'm trying to get back out of this hole. I was really upset about being irresponsible, I was upset at my parents for being irresponsible (neither one could co-sign for me because of credit problems), I was upset with the management company for not being more understanding (I sent a letter to the woman explaining my situation beforehand), and I was just generally stressed because I happened to be leaving town that day and was totally unprepared.

I ended up asking a friend for help. That made me feel even more uncomfortable, but she told me sometimes you just have to accept help when it's available. So, despite struggling with all of this over the weekend, the management company called today and said they are mailing out my lease! There are a few small financial details to be worked out, but I'll have to talk more about that later. Headed to class...