<$Wednesday, April 18, 2007$>
A matter of perspective
| It may seem (and often feels) like I'm starting at the bottom, but financially I've come a long way from where I started a year ago. This time last year I was out of work. The longterm temp assignment I'd been working for the past year ended about six weeks prior, the temp agency wasn't coming through with any new assignments, and my hunt for full-time employment turned up a few nibbles here and there, but no actual bites. The savings I'd built up in anticipation of my assignment ending were about to run out, and I was stupid enough to assume that since my last job had been temporary, I didn't qualify for unemployment benefits (I found out later that I was wrong, and I did; that's what I get for trusting my assumptions instead of checking out the facts, and let that be a lesson to you), so I was starting to borrow money from my mom to help cover my bills. It wasn't quite the lowest point in my life, but it was definitely in the bottom five. I was also trying to plan a wedding. I still had my job when we started, and with my mom agreeing to pay a fixed amount, we decided to keep up with the planning, and to try to keep the budget within the range that my mother was willing to pay. Planning a wedding is stressful under the best circumstances. Add it to the stress of being unemployed in a crappy job market with a mountain of debt already looming over you, and you can pretty well guess that I was a basket case. A month later, I finally, thankfully, landed my current job. My husband-to-be was absolutely miserable in his low-paying customer service call center job, and, truth be told, it was making him a little miserable to be around. So I prayed hard for a job that would pay well enough to afford us to live on my income while he went back to school. My BS in social science wasn't good for much other than either low-paying social service work or more schooling, but I had enough administrative experience under my belt that, combined with my degree, made me eligible for a pretty high-ranking and decent-paying administrative job. Since starting this job almost a year ago, I've gotten married, learned how to budget for two, and figured out how to live in such a way that we're fairly comfortable on just my income while still managing to pay down my credit cards and build a savings fund. I also started making a small amount of money from my knitting and related craft projects--not much, but enough to finance my knitting habit; and I also monetized my journal, which hasn't exactly made me rich, but has done a lot for our savings fund and provides a comfortable cushion between paychecks. Since the sucktasticness of a year ago, I'm now about a month away from paying off my highest interest credit card, we've got just about enough in the bank to finance our move once we find a new home we're both happy with, I've got a decent start on a retirement fund, and thanks to my discovery of personal finance blogs, my financial education has grown exponentially. We've still got a ways to go before we achieve financial freedom, but compared to where I was a year ago, I already feel like I've struck it rich. Labels: personal |
