About two months ago I got sick. Not throw-up sick and not send me to the ER sick. I just did not feel good.
It is a weird thing to try to explain. I had easily explainable symptoms: fatigue, ear-ache, scratchy throat, and was congested. I had weird symptoms: my throat was tight and it ached, but it was also a hurting/pinching/throbbing in my neck, I got night-sweats, a metallic-taste in my mouth, and a couple times my left hand went numb for no reason. I was diagnosed with a sinus/ear infection – I took 10 days of antibiotics and did ear drops in my ear. I am finally feeling like myself.
I’ve become more health-conscious as I’ve aged. After my weird sickness I’ve thought even more about foods I eat. I’m talking added sugars, fake food, synthesized, bastardized “frankenfood”.
I’m experimenting currently with my diet. I’ve severely decreased the amount of sugar and dairy I take in and I avoid soy-products like the plague. Wheat is up next on my list. It’s gonna be a hard one to kick. After all, I do love me a sammich, but will it improve my health? We will see.
I don’t want this blog to become some help guide to getting out of debt. However, a lot about my life right now revolves around – getting out of debt.
I’ve been in some financial troubles in my life, most of them happening about 7-8 years ago when I was in college. Has anyone else had this moment:
Del Taco: $4.61
Bank Account: $4.00
Overdraft Charge: $15
Worth it? YES.
I ate a lot of Del Taco in college, even when I was poor, because everyone needs to eat crinkle-cut fries with tacos full of questionable beef product at least once (or in my case, multiple times) in their life.
My undergrad loan was a little over $2,000 when I got out of college. Lucky me. Unfortunately I also ended up getting laid off and spiraling into a 4-year-ish ride on the unemployment/temporary employment train. A majority of my days went something like this:
Finally I decided to do something: Get myself into even more debt! Brilliant!
I went back to school taking online classes for homeland security and saddled myself with another $20,000 of debt. Unsettling fact: I then proceeded to work at TSA for almost two years and am now selling advertising at a newspaper. Fuck! – I mean, Life! amirite?
I’ve since paid off my consumer debt, my undergrad debt, and I am currently working on the grad school debt and car loan debt. Here’s what I look like financially:
Car Loan: $14K
Student Loan: $20K
Future debt: $300K (For a house, which I will be sharing with my husband, because that is love… or something.)
I like putting it all out for the world to see because I feel like it pushes me to continue paying it down. That’s one of the things I do, here are some others:
I critique every. single. purchase. I make and weigh it against making payments on my debt.
I coupon and comparison shop, and I enjoy it!
I over-pay my debt by leaps and bounds every month if possible.
I pay consistently on my debt every day, even if it means just making small payments.
I often find myself researching ways to stay out of debt, get rid of debt, and reading success stories about getting out of debt. It keeps my head in the game.
I have resolved to stay out of debt and not take it on unless it is absolutely necessary.
I have discovered I can live a full, wonderful life without it.
I have rallied against the cry of consumerism and said NO.
When I do make purchases I make sure they mean something, are important, are thought out carefully over an extended period of time, and I make sure what I am purchasing is crafted well and will last a long time.
Someday I will be debt free.
Word Count: 480/500
What do you do to stay out of debt? Comment below!
A few days ago I was at work, working diligently, making sales, etc, etc. And I happened upon a link that said, “Why Did Josh Hartnett Leave Hollywood?”. Of course, I was intrigued. WHAT did happen to Josh Hartnett? Where’d you go Josh?
I have been MIA from this blog as well. I got a new job and got a little… busy. Life, huh? In my last post I said I had some goals for 2014. I’ve accomplished part of one of those goals: I paid off my consumer debt and now I am working on my car loan.
I am not sure when I decided debt was evil. But I am glad I did. Believe me, becoming debt free is one of the best things you can do for yourself. I still have a car loan and a massive amount of student loan debt. The amounts are daunting, but now that I paid off my consumer debt and my undergrad loan, it gives me the courage and motivation to get the other loans paid off too. I predict my car will be paid off by December of this year. It’s a 2011, so I would say that is pretty damn good. Plus – I’ll own my car, which I don’t think is a thing a lot of Americans can say these days.
In 2015 I will be concentrating on my grad school debt and hopefully I can start putting money away into savings. One day, I hope to be able to put 60% of my income into retirement savings, 10% into emergency fund, leaving 30% for bills and other things like shoes and haute cuisine.
I realize this won’t happen for a few more years. Heck, my husband and I plan on purchasing a home within the next few years, so I am sure that will throw some kinks into the mix. BUT – I believe I can do it. And so can you. You do not have to be the American consumer debt machine. Believe me. You can change too. It’s just a matter of will power. And perhaps dreaming of someday being like Scrooge McDuck?
Word Count: 358/400
Where I got my inspiration (mostly) to be debt free, and stop the cycle of the American consumerism dream: Mr. Money Mustache
A new year, a whole bunch of people claiming resolutions they will stop doing in February… or earlier. I don’t really have resolutions, more like things I’ve been doing in my life the past year or two. I was calling it, “Hey Ashley, stop being unemployed and get on with it.” I managed to get a couple jobs in the past two years, got married, and I feel like an adult? (Stated a la question like Ron Burgundy)
Here are some things I’d like to do this year to continue pushing myself out of my binge-drinking 20s…
and into my binge— I mean, tastefully inebriated 30s.
Continue cooking, baking, and learning new recipes, cuisines, and techniques. I’ve started out the year thus far by making “crockpot dumps”. A great time saving measure for us women who love domesticity, but are forced into full time work for some reason.
Pay off my debts as I have a goal to live debt free. Credit cards and school loans are the devil’s work my friends.
Learn/do/achieve something new. Last year I went skydiving, started biking on trails, and shot a bow and arrow. Next up: Scuba Diving.
Have you ever quit a job? I am sure pretty much everyone out there can raise their hand in a positive “Yes!” to this question. However, have you ever strategically quit your job in a specific way because you absolutely hated it? Probably fewer hands, but still a good majority would be up I suspect.
I have this inkling that a lot of people are dissatisfied with the American job market. In the past five years I have had close friends who have quit jobs, been “let go”, gone on unemployment, and those who have gotten new jobs only to realize the complete bat-shit insane way in which the company they got hired by is functioning. Basically the American job-market and economy is a barely functioning entity.
My job search, after being unemployed, temporarily employed, and seasonally employed for four years, came to a screeching halt about 1 year and 5 months ago. I was hired by the TSA to become a Checkpoint Screener/TSO/that girl who took your water away security “professional”. I could go off on multiple blog entries about the atrocities that befell me (and continue to befall my friends I made at TSA who still work there), but this blog is about my meticulous way in which I said goodbye to my now former employer.
The main reason I plotted so stealthily my way to exit TSA was because of the horror stories I heard from other people about how horrendous management treated employees who were exiting the organization in the past. I have a first-person story of a good friend who had a manager try to push her out of employment before her two week notice was up. Yes. These are the type of upper-management geniuses at work at TSA.
I burned up a bridge that is for sure. But. Sometimes that is just what you have to do. And if you don’t believe me, please read the blog-series below about burning bridges/quitting by a good friend of mine.
I straight up just quit TSA. No notice. They did not deserve anything like that from me and I will hold true to that.. 99.9% of my fellow employees agreed with me. The best way to quit TSA was to just show up and quit, which is exactly what I did.
My plan of action was laid out a week and a half prior to the day I walked into the office and dropped my badges. If you think about it hard enough I’m sure you could come up with the things that I did within a week and a half’s time. We all know what you do when you’re getting ready to quit a job.
So. I did it. I quit TSA and I couldn’t be happier.
Have you ever quit a job? Did you plan out the way you would do it? Tell me below!
Word Count: 479/500
Things you may be interested in after reading this…
The second, and final, installation of my camping entries. Just a recap: my husband and I went camping in Southern Utah over Veteran’s Day Weekend. We fished, kayaked, cooked food, drank beers, and that was about it. The area in which we camped did not have much else to do besides go 4-wheeling on the sand dunes around the reservoir area. I know what you’re thinking, What the flip was Grandma doing at the sand dunes? Okay, just me? Come on, Napoleon Dynamite people.
We do not have a 4-wheeler so we were treated to the sounds of dune buggies and ATVs at our campsite until about 1 AM on Saturday morning. Did I mention people were also setting off fireworks? Fireworks, ‘MERICA!
We also happened to grill steaks the first night we were there. By the way, they came out amazing. These steaks were seriously juicy and charred perfectly. Strange enough the Coleman camp stove my husband purchased works like a charm. Not only did we grill steaks, but also hamburgers, hot dogs, and we were able to boil water in about a minute for hot cocoa and coffee. Yes, we were really roughing it guys.
Eventually we gathered up all our things like the good campers we are and retired to our tent, which was being warmed thoroughly by an amazing heating contraption my husband purchased off of Amazon. We then proceeded to watch Aziz Anasari’s newest standup routine on Netflix and then drifted off to sleep. Next thing you know…
Seriously. Our campsite was like PartyTown USA until about 2 AM. ATVs going full blast over the sand dunes, people watching movies outside of their RVs on giant projection screens (I kid you not), and drinking/bantering in general. Then came the fireworks.
Eventually everything died down. I was sleeping, dreaming about cans. Yes, cans, being kicked around and crushed. It was odd. I opened my eyes and realized I was in the tent and I heard this sound… of cans. And so I came to the realization that we forgot to throw our garbage away in the dumpster and just outside our little tent a coyote was digging through our trash. You know, like your dog does, except wild, coyote, not-at-all a dog, digging through our trash.
Over Veteran’s Day Weekend my husband and I trekked to Southern Utah, specifically a place just outside of St. George and right around Zion National Park called Sand Hollow State Park. Sand Hollow boasts great bass fishing in its Sand Hollow Reservoir and (as we found out) lots of 4-wheeler riding on the sand dunes around the Sandpit Campground, which is where we camped.
We went for my husband to fish. Oh right, and me too, kind of. I’ve been in a kayak once before this time. It was a goofy kind of thing a friend and I did with one of those two-person kayaks. It was nothing like kayaking around a lake while also attempting to fish, drink water, eat, and generally spend about three to four hours of an afternoon. On a lake. In a kayak.
The number one thing to know is this: I managed to launch my kayak into the water, paddle around a lake, and get myself back onto the shoreline – TWICE! Honestly, just the act of doing those basic things was a big win for me. You see, when you first start kayaking, you think it’s like this:
But then, when you’re out in the middle of the lake and paddling to the boat ramp and you think you may be having an anxiety attack because some speed boat went by and created all these waves, it’s more like this:
Except, ya know, I’m saying it in my head exasperated while slapping my paddle into the water just gazing at the shoreline that seems to not be getting any closer. I staved off this feeling and did make it.
This is what I did most of the time in the kayak anyway…
Word Count – 289/300
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Foie gras. There. I said it. I spend my money on foie gras. Have you ever had the buttery, delicious, decadent mouth-explosion that is foie gras? And to just flaunt the fact that I am a total glutton-abiding American living as if I am filthy rich and can do what I want, I had it topped on my cheeseburger one night. BOOM.
A friend and I went to Holstein’s which is an overly-expensive burger place situated in The Cosmopolitan, a bouchey casino in Las Vegas that boasts a multitude of over-priced restaurants. Las Vegas is America’s playground. I live here so I get to play more often than others. Holstein’s has on their menu the Billionaire Burger ($28): Kobe beef, foie gras, port onion marmalade, frisee, and truffle mayo. Last night I basically paid 30 dollars for a burger.
I will go out of my way to spend a few more bucks for the better cut of meat or wine from France. It’s what I do. It’s my frivolous purchase, that we all have and don’t deny it – you have something too. Is it purses, shoes, makeup? Tell me below!
