Revelation Revisited

I wrote a few months ago about how terrible I am with money and how I was going to make my own personal budget cuts. And I did. And it worked. For a little while. I quickly went back to my old spending habits, much to my own detriment. Now, being unemployed for the last few months and trying to find an apartment and job it has really hit home how much I suck with money. I have a closet (well, now several plastic bins) full of lovely clothes and shoes, but really all those have gotten me are huge credit card bills. It hit me like a ton of bricks today while talking to my mum that if I don't start getting my shit together I will spend the rest of my life in debt. I live way outside of my means. I shop as if it were my job, and I can't even justify it by saying I'm a particularly thrifty shopper. I love to spend money, so I spend money I don't have.

How did this revelation suddenly revisit me? I want to live in a nice apartment, in a nice part of the city. Nice apartments in nice parts of the city cost money and landlords want to know that you can pay. For my own sanity and satisfaction I am not very willing to compromise my nice apartment, which means that something has to give.

So, my friends, what does this mean for me? It means no more store credit cards. I am about $80 away from having my store cards paid off and then they will be ceremoniously cut up and discarded. Actually, I only have two, but that is not the point. Then we tackle the biggins, the "regular" credit cards. I don't really want to get into specific here, but there are 3 and their balances are rather sizable. The plan is to get down to one with a small balance. I know I shouldn't have any balance at all, but that just isn't realistic right now.

How do I accomplish this? I'm not entirely sure of my plan of action, but I know it involves getting a job as soon as I can after my apartment and saving this shit out of the money I make there. My student loans should be enough to pay rent and bills, so any money I make at a job will need to go towards paying off my debts. This obviously also means an end to the era of "shop like there's no tomorrow". It means only buying things that are necessities. It means a more strict definition of what a necessity is. It means starting to be a grown up.

Stay tuned.