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LOL Tuyop you poor. Also dumb. Not knowing your extra pay didn't come until the end of your course and that putting you into overdraft is entirely on you. Get your poo poo together - having absurd financial difficulties sets a terrible example for your troops.
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Oct 10, 2011 00:50
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tuyop posted:Edit: I went into the stock trading thread just for something to read. I am now completely confused and feel poor. You are poor. That's what we've been trying to hit home to you. And you shouldn't be going into general stock trading threads because you don't have that kind of money. You have negative money. It shouldn't confuse you at all - you don't have money to invest for fun. The end. So unconfusing. If you want an investment thread, you want the long term investment retirement thread to show you what to do with your retirement savings. But yes, it's true. There are people around your age who are fiscally responsible and have money to play with for fun in the market. That person is not you.
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Oct 10, 2011 00:53
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KarmaCandy posted:But yes, it's true. There are people around your age who are fiscally responsible and have money to play with for fun in the market. That person is not you. You are the person who spent all your money on several leisurely vacations to other nations instead of saving at least a fraction of it to invest and take advantage of compound interest at a young age. edit: perhaps if you focused on passing your officer's course, your country would -pay- you to see other parts of the world.
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Oct 10, 2011 01:15
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Yup, that's why I worked 80-90 hours a week for the past month. But thanks for the tip, I guess! And I was more confused about the terms and stuff rather than the fact that some people have money. Oh, and the benefits documents regarding pay during Prohibited status postings are very contradictory and confusing and the unit has their own crazy rules as well, so even though I spent hours researching my entitlements before this course and had a pretty good idea of what I was in for, I guess I was reading the wrong reference or something. In the end, it means that I might spend 18 hours in overdraft this month and/or make minimum payments on my debt if my pay on the 28th is also messed up. That's why I have overdraft protection I guess! tuyop fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Oct 10, 2011 |
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Oct 10, 2011 01:50
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As a complete dick, this all makes me feel very warm and fuzzy inside indeed. On the other hand, in an effort to show at least some token compassion, at least you'll have learned your lesson in a relatively painless way (eg: not a 10 grand medical payment or something) and maybe you'll actually listen to us now.
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Oct 10, 2011 02:11
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I'm participating in a game on marketwatch.com. Just because I'm poor as gently caress doesn't mean I can't have fun with Monopoly money on my off time.  NFLX, TSL, and WYNN are up more than 6%. At what point should I sell? I'm thinking 10% or more but does that ever happen on the stock market? Edit: Contextual advertisements are awesome. 
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Oct 10, 2011 15:22
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tuyop posted:I'm participating in a game on marketwatch.com. Just because I'm poor as gently caress doesn't mean I can't have fun with Monopoly money on my off time. This is such a hilariously bad idea and I cannot possibly wait for it to go badly.
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Oct 10, 2011 15:31
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I disagree. Free stock market games have been a great reminder that I couldn't pick winners with a gun to my head, and that I'm better off index investing.
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Oct 10, 2011 15:36
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I enjoy gambling, especially with fake money. In January I'll probably put the 600 bucks or so that'll be in my TFSA into a mutual fund and use it to start up some retirement fund or something, but I can't see myself actually gambling away that money on Netflix stock.
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Oct 10, 2011 15:41
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The danger here is that you'll randomly do well in your online stock picking game and then believe that you can pick stocks and start gambling with real money. In the late 1990s... I wanna say maybe 98 or so... I took second place in an online stock game. (The winner got a vacation - I got a t-shirt.) Both of us had just happened to randomly invest our entire starting money in a biotech penny stock that got a positive result one day and increased in value twentyfold - the winner happened to have slightly more money in that stock and so I came second. But as a result I started thinking I could pick stocks and in the next two years I flushed away about $500. Thankfully not a huge amount of money but it was an object lesson in the difference between investing and the lottery. e. I want to say, I wasn't even being particularly stupid with my investing. I did research, picked good companies, and played a long game rather than trying to day-trade. Successful stock trading depends on both skill and luck, and if you have bad skill or bad luck you can lose. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 10, 2011 |
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Oct 10, 2011 19:03
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Leperflesh posted:The danger here is that you'll randomly do well in your online stock picking game and then believe that you can pick stocks and start gambling with real money. You are 100% right about that. When it is real money your emotions can make you make stupid decisions. There is a whole psychology but we hold onto our losers way longer than we should because we hope they will come back, and our winners we either sell before we should or get greedy and don't see the peaks. It must always be said that no matter how good someone thinks they are, no one should invest in individual stocks unless they already have a solid foundation and it is a small part of their entire investment strategy. Of course someone who doesn't over think (or think about) things might have a knack for it.
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Oct 10, 2011 21:31
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It's hard to lose huge amounts of money in the markets (particularly liquid ones) if you know what you're doing, are properly hedged, and have a mechanism in place to close every open position you have quickly and with minimal losses in case of a major price shock. The problem is 1) we've seen over the past few years that most even sophistical, professional investors don't always follow those rules--proper hedging means less profit--and 2) the tools a small-scale retail investor has at their disposal don't allow for that anyway. Also don't read the stock picking & trading thread 90% of the posts are retarded horseshit which should be ignored. One question I have, and bear in mind that I've only read the first few pages and last few pages of this thread so it may have been covered, is why you don't strategically default on your car loan. Companies do it all the time (debt restructuring), and if I recall most car loans are non-recourse debt so the lender can only go after your collateral (repo your car in this case). Obviously you'd want to finance a replacement (if you don't have the cash-on-hand to buy outright) before defaulting (or have your girlfriend/a relative do so if you can't get financing) or risk denial/a ridiculous risk premium on your interest rate. Again, apologies if this has already been floated.
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Oct 12, 2011 09:38
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tolerabletariff posted:strategically default on your car loan. Why the hell would he default on the car if he can keep up on the payments? Yes he's underwater on it, but so is EVERYONE who finances a new car EVER at some point. He's in the worst part of the depreciation curve, so the delta between loan value and car value is rough right now, but in a couple years he'll be fine. Also, you're dead wrong: Most car loans ARE RECOURSE LOANS - otherwise everyone could drive a new car for a year and hand it back and the dealer would be screwed every time. Besides, Tuyop is in the military, and his credit could very easily effect his job status, so risking it for a measly 5k is just plain stupid. In spite of Tuyop's mistakes in life/the thread, he's not had any trouble making the min payments, it was more about turning around the course of his life, and he's working on it. He's never posted that he'd had trouble making payments before his pay got screwed up (and even then is was paying extra on debt, not minimums), so it sounds like he can keep it up.
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Oct 12, 2011 10:46
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T0MSERV0 posted:but so is EVERYONE who finances a new car EVER at some point. I agree completely with most of your post but this is simply not true. You can avoid being upside down on a car loan simply by making a sufficiently large down payment. For an extreme example: if the car you buy will lose 30% of its value the day you drive it off the lot, make a 30% down payment and you will never be upside down on the car (unless I guess if you go for like a seven-year loan or something). Most people put far less down on a new car than they would need to to stay right-side up, but that's why insurance companies offer "gap coverage". Given how low the interest is on car loans these days, it can make a lot of sense to finance more than you really need to, but staying right-side up so you don't have to pay extra for gap coverage is not a terrible idea.
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Oct 12, 2011 22:47
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Yeah, making minimum payments will not be a problem. Unfortunately I couldn't call my car financing company because I wasn't in a place with cell phone signal on Tuesday and I was very busy regardless so I might end up paying a dollar or so in overdraft interest. I'm just glad that I didn't get rid of my overdraft protection yet. I'm not going to default on my car loan, that just seems so wrong to me. I signed a contract for the car, it might not have been in my best interest but I don't really like to break contracts. Today a friend of mine with the same job and income as me was saying that he has 12k in debt and wasn't going to have it paid off for five more years. He also just bought a 600 dollar watch. Priorities I guess?
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Oct 12, 2011 23:18
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tuyop posted:Today a friend of mine with the same job and income as me was saying that he has 12k in debt and wasn't going to have it paid off for five more years. He also just bought a 600 dollar watch. Priorities I guess? Brand new guys in the military aren't exactly known for financial prowess, Tuyop. I wouldn't use your buddies as any sort of metric.
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Oct 13, 2011 00:12
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You could get like 6 pairs of underwear for the price of that watch!
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Oct 13, 2011 03:09
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Speaking of watches, I found my original one in a bag somewhere so that one I bought on eBay in July turned out to be a 20 dollar waste. gently caress. Something else I did: I took the long term savings portion of my savings account (335 now) and moved it over to my TFSA because the interest rate is much higher and I shouldn't need any of that money for awhile. I'm kind of feeling like using that account for emergency fund as well since the fluidity is the same and the only difference is that I'd have to go to the TD app on my phone and transfer it back to chequing before I use it rather than just using the Savings button on a POS machine. I figure it's worth the 5 bucks a month that I'll be making in interest.
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Oct 13, 2011 09:19
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Leperflesh posted:I agree completely with most of your post but this is simply not true. You can avoid being upside down on a car loan simply by making a sufficiently large down payment. For an extreme example: if the car you buy will lose 30% of its value the day you drive it off the lot, make a 30% down payment and you will never be upside down on the car (unless I guess if you go for like a seven-year loan or something). No, you'd still be upside down on the car for that period. You might not be upside down on the LOAN, but you'd be upside down on the car. To use your example for a $10,000 car, you'd go in and pay 3k down and finance 7k on what ends up being a 7k vehicle. Just because that 3k isn't part of the loan doesn't mean you didn't just pay 10k for a vehicle that is now worth 7k - you're still out 3k, you just elected to pay your way above water up front. Since most people don't turn around and sell cars that they just bought, no one would really care, but the financial value of the transaction (excluding cost of interest) is identical whether you finance 100% of the vehicle or 0%: There will be a point in time where the vehicle's depreciation will outstrip what you've paid for the car, but over time the two values will come back together.
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Oct 13, 2011 12:18
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tuyop posted:I'm kind of feeling like using that account for emergency fund as well since the fluidity is the same and the only difference is that I'd have to go to the TD app on my phone and transfer it back to chequing before I use it rather than just using the Savings button on a POS machine. Balance transfers don't happen on weekends, holidays, and random days for plenty of other reasons. Your emergency fund should be immediately available (or darn close to immediately available) in case of, you know, an emergency. quote:I figure it's worth the 5 bucks a month that I'll be making in interest. What the hell? $5 a month? That's at least $60 per year, not accounting for compounding. That's at least 17% per annum. There's no way your TFSA is earning you that much in interest on a principal of only $335. Are you sure you didn't see a yearly rate of like 1.5% APY compounded monthly and assumed that meant you'd be be getting $60 a year just for parking your cash there? Use your head, man. edit; I actually just checked TD Canada's website to see for myself, since I would become a citizen in a heartbeat if the savings rates were that high (maxing out a TFSA every year at that rate would let me retire about 20 years early). code:
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Oct 13, 2011 15:07
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tuyop posted:I figure it's worth the 5 bucks a month that I'll be making in interest. Tuyop, now this is the kind of attention to detail and financial acumen that will get you right back to a life of luxury and dozens of international vacations each year! bam thwok posted:This account will earn you $3.87 this year. Enjoy. Heh edit: to be serious for a moment, have you actually sat down and considered that you repeatedly and consistently miss important facts or have financial troubles that catch you by surprise? Basic things like not understanding your interest rates, not knowing how and when you'll get your 'extra' pay for being in the 'field', or overdrawing your balance, while not acceptable, are forgivable if they happen... once. You seem to constantly encounter these issues. These seem to be symptomatic of a bigger problem and you need to figure this out. Even though you posted this thread, you're still constantly making mistakes, which shows you haven't learned sufficiently. Fortunately for you, your income as a junior officer is exceptionally generous, so you haven't really been bitten in the rear end yet. It's going to happen eventually if you stay on this path, though. I'm not suggesting you lash yourself before a statue of Milton Friedman and beg for forgiveness, but you have to stop. You've said that you want to leave the military eventually and teach. A teacher's salary won't be nearly as generous as an officer's and you are going to get your teeth kicked in and then repo'd if you try to live the same lifestyle. Old Man Fancington fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Oct 13, 2011 |
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Oct 13, 2011 15:29
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Make sure you understand how a TFSA works before you start moving money in and out of it. There's a limited amount that you can put into a TFSA every year (if you've never used one your limit should be $15,000 right now, but check your tax return assessment to be certain). Once the money is added if you take it out you can't put that money back in until the next year. So if you put $10,000 in, take out $3,000, put it back in, than take $3,000 out again you can only put $2,000 back in as now your $15,000 TFSA is maxed out for the year (even though you only have $9,000 in it). Even with only $300 dollars in the account if you make weekly transactions you could run into issues. Keeping your emergency fund in a TFSA isn't a bad idea (although as already pointed out you aren't going to gain much by doing that) but you need to treat it as a true emergency fund (used less than once a year, hopefully never) not a floating balance to be used for every little unexpected (or unanticipated) expense.
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Oct 13, 2011 16:14
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quote:TFSA stuff Yeah, you're absolutely right. For some reason I looked at my .15 interest on 125 and thought 1.5%/month. I even did the math but hosed it up extremely somehow. I know that interest is annual and stuff. I blame the fact that I get very little sleep lately. So that was probably a mistake. I've never had a TFSA before, so my contributions are sitting at 15000, or 14616.83 now. It's not exactly a huge deal, I just probably should have asked for advice before doing it instead of being like, "I have a brilliant idea! The thread will be so pleased with me!"  quote:Larger problems related to TFSA, pay blunder See, I'm blaming the TFSA thing on my lack of sleep. The pay thing. You guys can review the CBIs if you want, they're public, but it's a loving mess of references and crossreferences and contradictory poo poo which all means nothing if a clerk in the pay office usually pulls out a different reference that makes sense in your case and decides that its rule is supreme. I based my estimate for income off of what had happened in the past and what my unit policies said, which I researched thoroughly. From 2007 to Winter 2011 I got my field pay two weeks after I was in the field, regardless of if I was on course or if it was over. My unit policy changed at the end of August to resolve all those benefits at the end of a person's claim, which takes precedence over everything else somehow I guess. Therefore, I don't think that my not knowing about it is proof of total incompetence.  My pay is also screwed up because the person who processes quarters payments was on leave when I gave them my documents that make it so I don't have to pay quarters. That poo poo gets backdated by several weeks for some reason too. Field pay from August still hasn't come in because the clerk in charge of finalizing that stuff was on leave from the end of July until mid-September. It'll be actioned whenever she gets around to it (November?). The reserves have owed me $2000 since 2008. They suck and I wasn't getting anywhere with that three years on now so I escalated the problem. It might get solved at some point. I'm not counting on it. But I mean, being 55k in debt kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it? 
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Oct 13, 2011 22:20
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tuyop posted:pay stuff So for at least three years you've known that getting your salary on time and in full can be a sporadic clusterfuck of a bureaucratic nightmare, but did nothing to plan for that possibility?
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Oct 13, 2011 22:59
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T0MSERV0 posted:No, you'd still be upside down on the car for that period. You might not be upside down on the LOAN, but you'd be upside down on the car. To use your example for a $10,000 car, you'd go in and pay 3k down and finance 7k on what ends up being a 7k vehicle. Just because that 3k isn't part of the loan doesn't mean you didn't just pay 10k for a vehicle that is now worth 7k - you're still out 3k, you just elected to pay your way above water up front. Since most people don't turn around and sell cars that they just bought, no one would really care, but the financial value of the transaction (excluding cost of interest) is identical whether you finance 100% of the vehicle or 0%: There will be a point in time where the vehicle's depreciation will outstrip what you've paid for the car, but over time the two values will come back together. The common meaning of the words "upside down on" refer to debt, not to the difference between resale value and what a business would track as depreciation. Unless you're running a business and track depreciation, what being "upside down" means is that if you sold the collateral for a loan, you'd still owe money on that loan. Hence the most common use in the media, referring to homeowners who are upside-down on their loans - it only refers to those whose loans are larger than the present resale value, and explicitly not to everyone who has experienced a drop in value from what they paid. I think someone would have to be a pretty huge idiot not to understand the basic fact that a brand new car will lose resale value after purchase.
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Oct 13, 2011 23:41
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bam thwok posted:So for at least three years you've known that getting your salary on time and in full can be a sporadic clusterfuck of a bureaucratic nightmare, but did nothing to plan for that possibility? If you count each pay, my pay has been screwed up roughly 70% of the time I've been in the military. There was the time that they paid me. 27000 instead of 2700 and then instead of fixing it just didn't pay me for three months and then took like 26k out of my checking account without telling me. Then the 9 months where they paid me -200 instead of 1400 for no reason at all. Then when paying me back double charged me for 9 months of rations. Or when they paid me for a train to Shilo when I took a plane, even though the ticket was arranged entirely by them. Also general admin issues, like how I lost a hat on September 9th, reported it on Sept 10th, but still have seen no replacement hat some five weeks later. Hats are very important in the Canadian military so this is a Big Deal. But yeah, this whole time I've kind of been reeling from the constant administrative nightmares too much to really plan for anything financially. And also I'm just resistant to planning in general as a personality trait, so I guess I'm a retard.
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Oct 14, 2011 00:28
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tuyop posted:Also general admin issues, like how I lost a hat on September 9th, reported it on Sept 10th, but still have seen no replacement hat some five weeks later. Hats are very important in the Canadian military so this is a Big Deal. $100 underwear.
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Oct 14, 2011 00:34
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Wow. Why were you so surly about having an emergency fund before? Like, despite obviously having the most regular kind of employment possible your cash flow was all over the place, and you still didn't see the point in having a little bit stashed away to get you through the rocky bits? You have an employer who has, in the past, wrongly taken money out of your accounts and not been concerned that you might have a hard time making ends meet? You are an amazing blend of stubborn and stupid. At this point it's just a relief that you've come around.
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Oct 14, 2011 03:00
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tuyop posted:If you count each pay, my pay has been screwed up roughly 70% of the time I've been in the military. There was the time that they paid me. 27000 instead of 2700 and then instead of fixing it just didn't pay me for three months and then took like 26k out of my checking account without telling me. Do go on about how being in the military through 2023 exposes you to very little financial risk. 
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Oct 14, 2011 03:21
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tuyop posted:Also general admin issues, like how I lost a hat on September 9th, reported it on Sept 10th, but still have seen no replacement hat some five weeks later. Hats are very important in the Canadian military so this is a Big Deal. Tuyop have you checked if your hat is on your head? You've missed a lot of other important details lately so I think it's important to cover all your bases here.
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Oct 14, 2011 06:16
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Bushwack posted:Make sure you understand how a TFSA works before you start moving money in and out of it. In summary: if you've been in Canada since 2009, and have been over 18 for that whole period, contributed 11k thus far, and withdrawn 8k, your available contribution room in January 2012 would be 17k: 4k in room you haven't used yet, 8k in growth, and another 5k for entering 2012. It is important to note that this means high-growth investments retain the total size of the tax-saving room until the end of time [or until your portfolio shrinks, whichever comes first]. It's a pretty kickass system.
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Oct 14, 2011 06:29
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tuyop, in another 2 weeks you'll be at the 3 month mark from starting this thread - it might not be a bad idea for you to write down your thoughts and how your perspective has changed since then, not to mention how you're treating your finances differently and how much debt you've been able to pay off. Obviously it won't be anything hugely substantial in the first 3 months of debt reduction, however it can be greatly beneficial just to reflect on the change in attitude. And while people are still giving you a hard time, I have to say you've made remarkable progress in such a short time.
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Oct 14, 2011 07:29
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As an investment tool how does the TFSA work? The guy at the bank made it sound like if I take, say, 1000 from my chequing and put it in a mutual fund, the returns from the mutual fund are taxed, but if that 1000 is taken from a TFSA, then the returns on the mutual fund are not taxed? That made absolutely no sense to me, is that how it works? If not why would anyone put their money in the TFSA instead of a mutual fund or something else?
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Oct 14, 2011 11:55
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Shooting Blanks posted:tuyop, in another 2 weeks you'll be at the 3 month mark from starting this thread - it might not be a bad idea for you to write down your thoughts and how your perspective has changed since then, not to mention how you're treating your finances differently and how much debt you've been able to pay off. tuyop, you completely sidestepped the question that Shooting Blanks asked. What lessons have you learned? 3 months is enough time to start a new habit. But if anything, this whole derail into the TFSA so you can get an extra 1% on your money makes me wonder if you have learned the wrong lesson. You have the all too common attitude that you can somehow get out of debt by playing interest rate games. What always happens is people end up going through these financial contortions to make an extra 70 cents a month. Since you didn’t answer the question, I’m going to ask people to answer it for you. What lessons do you think has tuyop learned?
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Oct 14, 2011 14:28
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Zeta Taskforce posted:What lessons do you think has tuyop learned? I honestly have no idea, but I do know that I got new boots. Boots y'all. 
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Oct 14, 2011 14:54
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tuyop posted:As an investment tool how does the TFSA work? The guy at the bank made it sound like if I take, say, 1000 from my chequing and put it in a mutual fund, the returns from the mutual fund are taxed, but if that 1000 is taken from a TFSA, then the returns on the mutual fund are not taxed? That made absolutely no sense to me, is that how it works? If you're so concerned with your future, you should stop smoking.
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Oct 14, 2011 15:42
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archangelwar posted:I honestly have no idea, but I do know that I got new boots. I bet he's gotten a lot of new hats, too. Coldfront is clearly in Canada. Tuyop, if there's so many issues with the paycheck, why wouldn't you cling to every dime? Hell, every time they start talking about government shutdown earlier this year, I curled up in a ball around the ATM card and wouldn't let anyone near it (because what if it lasted longer than 6 months? We'd be looking at losing our house and all kinds of horrible poo poo  )You need to stop and realize that if you stopped getting paid right now you would have absolutely nothing for.. well, anything. You're still hemming and hawing about a lot of stuff. You really need to devote yourself to this.
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Oct 14, 2011 20:38
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Old Man Fancington posted:Tuyop have you checked if your hat is on your head? You've missed a lot of other important details lately so I think it's important to cover all your bases here. He just needs to follow his nose! He'll find his hat when he follows the smell. Zeta Taskforce posted:What lessons do you think has tuyop learned? I don't think he has learned any, frankly. Based on what I've read he hasn't dramatically changed his spending habits, is still trying to game interest rates, and is utterly unwilling to give up a habit that is killing him from the inside out. (I, too, am a smoker, and know how hard this is, but to completely dismiss the thought of quitting, or even cutting back, for the sake of his finances is crazy.) Also, he's tuyop, who bones strangers in Spain that he met on a train for the experience and shits in his hat, so what do you expect?
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Oct 14, 2011 21:21
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I was on a break at work when I posted that from my phone. I thought he meant two weeks from now as some kind of benchmark post. And we were discussing TFSAs so I thought I'd ask. I'll get to it this evening and I guarantee that it will be an enlightening and balanced post with all kinds of evidence and et cetera. tuyop fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Oct 14, 2011 |
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Oct 14, 2011 22:11
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Three months in post* Attitude I'm not sure if I can actually notice a change in attitude in myself. My friends definitely do though. Since August I've said no a lot more than I ever have before. Everything from "Hey Tuyop do you want to go out for a couple of beers?" To, "Hey tuyop my friend has a condo in Italy and the flight is only 750 do you want to come to Italy on block leave?". This involves a lot of people buying me pity soup at pubs and stuff because they order a burger or something and don't want to see me just nurse my lone domestic draught. If attitude refers to thinking, the biggest thing that I got my head around was the cash jar system. I've limited myself to the amount I want to spend, on a weekly basis, and just sort of trick myself into believing that that's all the money I have for that purpose. For other things like gas and groceries, I take that money out when I need it and they're relatively steady expenses anyway. The danger is spending 300 on bars completely by "accident", or going on a 1200 dollar vacation because I happen to have a 1400 dollar balance on a credit card. Finances August was a very good month and I paid 1391 down on debt. ~60% of that was all principle. September I went on course and I've been very disorganized and my pay fuckups began. Income down from 2900 to 2200. Still paid almost 1300 in debt. ~60% principle again. October my pay is still hosed up and I'm debating putting minimums only on my debt while building an emergency fund. I will have a large payout at the end of my course, as well as back pay from corrections after this is all sorted out, that can immediately be put onto debt in order to meet my schedule. This graph may help to show the financial change that has taken place.  October is only half over. Debt repayment schedule posted:Mastercard: December 2011 Total debt graph (September):  Lessons learned I need an emergency fund and should have known I needed an emergency fund. I probably should have had an emergency fund in 2008 onward. I don't have an emergency fund though. I'm now debating ways to acquire an emergency fund while meeting debt and other savings goals. Savings are very important in general. Smoking is bad. Most of BFC doesn't wipe their asses. Cash jars are great. The majority of financial gurus are probably correct about financial things in most cases. I am most cases. Biggest changes I feel much, much more boring. But at the same time I feel quite liberated. I'm not constantly in a state of crisis. My biggest crisis since July was when I had 550 in my checking account instead of an 800 buffer that I had scheduled for, rather than -425 which was normal for me on a monthly basis and just hoping that bills didn't come in before paycheques did. The strange thing is that having a plan and sticking to it has given me a weird kind of peace of mind. Every month when I look over the numbers and totals I panic a little bit because I have a huge mountain of debt to climb, and then a huge mountain of savings to build if I ever want to achieve some goals, but at least I have a system that seems to be working to get there. I also hate that I did this to myself. It was loving retarded. Instead of being frugal for the past couple of years and finding other ways to deal with stress so that I didn't just pile up massive debt, I'm spending 3-4 years in my early 20s putting more than half of my income on credit cards and loans. Watching that 1400 a month just leave really makes me appreciate what that represents, and yeah, I feel stupid. I'm not sure if I wouldn't do it all again though. I could die driving to work on Monday and all that would really matter was the experiences I had when I was alive. I think I've done pretty well that way, now it's just time to pay for it. *May not actually be three months in.
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Oct 15, 2011 00:32
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