Budgeting

Bills are crazy. Here, look at my monthly laundry list:

Car payment $392
Car insurance $135
Rent/util $200
Gas $160
Student loans $50
Groceries/expenses $100
Debt $300

Add 'em up, ya gets the total of $1337. You know how much take home pay I get a month? Approx. $1516.75. And that's IF there are no sick days or holidays for me, that month, since I'm still a temp.

So that basically leaves me less than $200 for going out (to movies or eating, etc.), any new stuff I want (books, movies, music, clothes) AND any emergency expenses.

Now ask yourself...could YOU truly spend less than $50 a week on yourself? Think about all the lunches you buy on lunch breaks (instead of packing a lunch), the books you buy, the clothes, the things here and there, and then your weekend activities...

See, this is like my mom - she was insane and caused most of our financial trouble when I lived there. She kept accusing me of using up all MY money and she "didn't understand" where "all my money" was going. And yet she would hit my dad up for like $20 here, $10 there...on an almost daily basis - HELLO!? Even spending just $20 a day is using up $600 a month - and she would spend it on junk! My dad would tell her to save it for gas money, and she'd go and put like $5 of gas in her tank, buy herself a SCRATCH TICKET ($3 right there) and a soda and some chips or something (another $3), and then spend the remaining money on other junk, possibly another scratch ticket or going camping by herself (with our dog) and paying the fee to stay there, when my dad told her just to stay home.

Now, this is ALSO if they're NOT garnishing my wages...which they will, eventually. It's just a matter of the legal paperwork finally catching up to me - they garnished my wages at Ameritas and they have "caught up" everything yet. They even tried reinstating the garnishment at Wells Fargo - which closed my account several months ago.

The garnishing takes exactly 25% of my pay (after taxes). So let's see, that's about $379. Well, there goes my debt payments. And I'll probably have to save on groceries as well by getting all the really, really cheap stuff each month to bring it down to $50 (it can be done, trust me, pot pies and ramen noodles are my heroes).

So if that happens, unless I have a better job that pays well by that time, I'll have to probably work overtime just to be able to pay other debts. The garnishment would last probably about 4 or 5 months, considering what's left of the balance.

Did I mention I added up all my other debts? Okay...NOT including the garnishment (it's what I owe UNL directly, like for unpaid housing, after my financial aid didn't disperse b/c I couldn't register b/c my status was locked due to $600 unpaid balance)...also NOT including my student loans (those are still above $4000)...

My total debt other than these items is somewhere slightly over $5000. Seriously, it's crazy:

-I still owe a hundred or so in unpaid medical stuff
-I owe $800 on that damn computer
-I owe Wells Fargo like $545
-I owe like $200 to Alltel for unpaid phone bill
-1st Financial claims I owe them like over $900 now, but I'm arguing that shit like there's no tomorrow (long story, but basically I paid them off long ago, and now this balance is all fees and overlimit charges b/c they quoted me the wrong pay off balance - I'm dead-fucking-serious, too, IT'S ALL FEES AND OVERLIMIT CHARGES, I HAVEN'T USED THE CARD IN YEARS)

-I owe Aspire Visa like $1000 (yay, thanks mom, yeah, let's activate this THIRD credit card since our family's having trouble this summer - once again the vast majority of it is FEES)
-I owe Progressive $180 I think, for old insurance that got cancelled
-I still owe $400-ish to Advanced Cash for when my accounts collapsed and I couldn't pay back my payday loan

God, is this list insane or what? And I know there's more, too, I just can't recall it all right now...

Oh well...I figured it out, and if I can keep paying at least $300 a month, I should have all this cleared up within about a year and a half.

AHHHH, I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE AMERITRADE JOB THAT PAID LIKE $16-$17 AN HOUR!

I need a full-time job with benefits so that taking days off every now and then won't be another financial set-back, not to mention I need insurance so I can take CARE of myself!

You know, I haven't had a regular doctor, my entire life...seriously, the only person who ever took us to the doctor on a normal basis was our grandmother. My parents only took us if we were were seriously ill.

My last dentist appointment was almost 2 years ago now, I think.

I don't even REMEMBER my last physical check up (other than ugh, I'm sick, give me medication)....Seriously, I think it was when I was 13.

I still wonder if my back is screwed up. People told me in the past, looking closely at my back, that it arches more than theirs...and I never seem to feel comfortable sitting in chairs for very long. I don't know. I just know that in 5th grade when they told the kids to have the scoliosis testing, the nurse told me she detected the possibility of it in me and gave me a sheet of paper to show my parents - which they completely ignored. When I brought it up to my mom, she told me I was being dramatic because of how my grandma always freaked out about health issues, and that I was perfectly fine.

This is a really negative post, isn't it?

You know, I was looking over Nicole's online journal, in one entry (I'm not in it much, she says "Eric" a lot but she's mostly talking about Eric Kinsey from AZ) she did one of those personal survey things...and she lists me as her "most pessimistic friend".

Which doesn't surprise me - I used to be way more pessimistic than I am now. And I know this post is REALLY bitchy, but I mostly post this kinda stuff here, to get it out.

Ironically, though, I am a Pessimistic Dreamer, not a Pessimistic Realist.

Weird combination.

I feel bad for bitching about "Oklahoma!" to Eric. Everyone did a fine job - I just...Okay, he mentioned something to me about how my expectations are too high and I'd have a better time if I just let it go and enjoyed it. Well, there's a problem with that - I just don't really enjoy watching "community" theatre musicals. I REALIZE they're not supposed to be professional quality, truly. But when people tell me "Just have fun and enjoy it for what it is" that's the exact problem - I DON'T enjoy watching people sing and dance and act goofy.

The entire reason I enjoy musical theatre is for seeing how music and story can intertwine and create catharsis or wit. So when that element of it is lost, I'm BORED. I DON'T watch musicals just to hear the tunes and have fun watching people up on stage - that bores me - I'm really, really not trying to be snooty, I'm just saying...ok, let's give an example...

Suppose you enjoy going to parties because of the socializing aspect? There is food, music and games, but what you really love is getting to interact with your friends and the joy of developing relationships and rapport...

Now suppose everyone at the parties were cold or unwilling to interact - the party just becomes food, music and games. Which you can do elsewhere. So it loses what you actually found pleasurable about it.

That's like me with theatre. I don't go to shows to see the jokes, the singing and the costumes. I go to see the STORY, told in a way that it grips me, the way a movie or a novel does. When that element doesn't work out or is lost on me, I get bored. And there's a lot of community theatre around here that gets so into the music and the costumes and the "characterization" and the "jokes" etc., that they completely miss the boat on making the story gripping - by "gripping" I don't mean edge-of-your-seat, I just mean the story has a fluid and well-sculpted SHAPE to it.

I know everyone's just having a good time, and I want to, too, but the sad truth is that that simply is NOT the reason I enjoy theatre. I feel bad, b/c I know everyone's working so hard and performing their hearts out, but it still does nothing to entertain me. I'd rather be reading or watching a movie, or something. I can't help it - I get bored.

And a lot of the time, this is the fault of the directors for A) not doing their PRIMARY job, which is SHAPING THE STORY - there are so many directors who do not take CHARGE of their actors and think that it's their job simply to get the staging to look nice and to direct an overall "look" and "effect" to the show - wrong! Directors are supposed to SHAPE the story and help the actors shape the scenes, not just the physical movement - Actors ARE supposed to develop the characters and make choices, yes, but the problem is that actors, because they are not looking at the story as a whole (like the director does) cannot always see how a certain moment fits into the grand scheme and overall arc - the director has to say "No, this won't work here, because of this - we need to find a different choice."

Anyway, it's time for me to heat up my lunch.