I Am Broke

Shouldn't confess this, but I must.

Checked my accounts the other day in anticipation for my trip to St. Louis.  I have about $6100.  I give myself a floor of five grand; it used to be because if I fell below that I'd incur a monthly penalty, but since I got a savings account it's an artificial threshold.  I'm close to it because (sigh) a got a thousand bucks from My Father for a class I have, uh, yet to enroll in.  But I swear I will!

This is largely brought on because I continue to rack up huge charges on my credit cards.  I was expecting this come holiday season, but I didn't really buy any gifts.  Instead, I just treated myself to nights out on the town.  That largely continued after the New Year, partly because I was fighting with Father and I just wanted to fucking out of the house.  But then I just drove a lot to places to, like, drink coffee and write on my laptop.  So now the biggest portion of the charges on both of my credit cards is gas.

Obviously this can be remedied by not going out (and not buying so much stuff either), but there are a lot of excuses I can come up with.  I need to drive to work.  The modem's been on the fritz lately, and I need the Internet to research, write and send my stuff.  I can't work at home because of all the distractions.  I don't want to be thought of as lazy because I don't do housework, so I stay out and come back after my parents return home.  And hey, I like driving.

But the bottom line is I have to tighten my belt, again.  And I don't like that.  I don't think I'm an extravagant person, and I don't think I live beyond my means.  But the credit card statements say otherwise.  So I have no choice but to stay at home more.  And that means I'll have the "opportunity" to wash the walls, pick up my papers and otherwise do shit that doesn't need to be done.

It's kind of ironic; the past few months I have bought stuff that is blowing a hole in my account because these are for things that I've been putting off for some time.  For example, a couple weeks ago I bought these binders.  I haven't touched them yet, but they're either for my papers or for my parents' financial statements.  And lately I've started to work out.  I found a community activities center that I kind of like.  Trouble is it's about 15 miles away.  I've gone there about a half-dozen times the past two weeks, and so I've been using up a lot of gas.  Should I just get fat because I don't have the money to pay for filling up my tank?

But my bad feelings over seeing my checking account drained so low because of what I've done still saddens me.  No one wants to cut back because that means you're sacrificing creature comforts that make you the happiest.  I'll miss the late-night coffees, the dinners at Hooters, all the times I went to get lapdances at stripclubs.  (OK, maybe I won't cut back on the strippers.)  But I feel worse that I'm blowing through money right now.

Things on the horizon aren't making these easy.  The state might be cutting back on my PCA hours.  And I still have that vacation to go to.  I don't want to control myself in St. Louis -- specifically East St. Louis.  But if I'm hemorraghing cash, I'll be worse off in the long run.

Ah, fuck my life.