Adventures of a Shockingly Average 30-Something

Fifty-two weeks ago , I started the "52 Week Money Challenge" as a way to force myself to save money.  And now, 52 weeks after starting that challenge, I'm here to say I  - the self-proclaimed actual literal worst  at saving money -  succeeded! What the challenge is: Over the course of 52 weeks, you save $1,378 by putting increasing amounts of money each week into a jar (or other place of your choosing), starting by putting $1 in the first week, and $52 in the last week. What I did differently: I realized pretty quickly that, for me personally, it worked better to do the challenge backwards.  Putting increasing amounts of money in the jar meant that the last four weeks of the year, I would have been putting in $49, $50, $51, and $52 into the jar.  $202 right at Christmastime, when money is already tight after buying everyone's Christmas gifts.  So I started out putting $52 into the jar, $51 the next week, $50 the next week, and so on rig...

I'm home from Florida (have been for a couple weeks now), and I still haven't been bothered to change the header on here.  So I guess we're still working under the assumption that I'm 23.  On that note, why change it at all?  Why not just stay 23 forever?  Why not just keep claiming I'm 23 until I actually look that age?  Because if that's the case, this say I'm 23 until I'm like... 40.  Maybe.  (I will change it... eventually.) I'm still doing the 52 week money challenge, which absolutely amazes me - I mean, the fact that I stuck with this for the entire year... and have only 5 more dollar amounts left to put in my jar... I honestly didn't think I would do it.  I thought I would miss a week and give up.  I thought I would forget.  I thought it'd be something I'd get bored with doing by halfway through the year.  But I didn't.  I didn't forget, didn't give up, didn't get bored with it.  And I've managed to save over ...

It's been a while, I know.  The picture up top still says I'm 23, though it's been a couple weeks now since that's been accurate.  Quick recap of my life:  Turned 24.  Celebrated with friends.  Drank way too much and could not shut up about giraffes and the fact that they have blue tongues.  Really paid for that night the next day.  Boring and normal life.  Flew to Florida.  Saw Taylor Swift in concert, and that's where we're at right now. Back in 2011, my best friend and I saw Taylor Swift in concert for the first time.  It was amazing and magical and the best night ever.  I still think back to that night, and if someone were to ask me to name the 5 best nights of my life, that would be right up there at the top.  The day after the concert, I wrote about it so I would be able to look back on that magic-filled night.  Today is 2 days after our second Taylor concert, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't write about that s...

Here it is again - the day I hate most.  The day I wish wouldn't come; I wish I could wake up and find that this day had been skipped.  But it won't skip.  It won't not come.  It's comes every year, and here it is again.  October 1st 2013 was such a normal  day for me.  Let me tell you, let me try to explain, just how normal and boring that day was.  I woke up around 8ish and spent all day in class.  I procrastinated doing homework for the longest possible time before finally giving up and getting it done.  I hung out with friends and went to a club meeting where I laughed and joked around and smiled with people who I loved and trusted and was, maybe not actually friends, but more of "friends by convenience" with.  I got dinner late and hung out with Steven and Dan and Matt and Justin until suddenly it was almost midnight and I had class the next morning and so I said goodnight to my friends and disappeared across the building to my...

Sometimes I want to write deep, meaningful posts - the kind of things that provoke deep thought and that you're still thinking about hours later... but then I realize I'm way happier reading posts like that than writing them.  The little trivial things I write about, and the bigger things as well, they aren't important to other people.  They don't keep people up at night as they try to figure out a meaning.  And they don't have to be.  Because the things that matter to me don't have to matter to anyone else.  This page, this blog, it's mine .  For me  to look back on in years and see how far I've come and how much I've changed. And so, my life.  My life is a series of constant countdowns.  Counting down until payday each week.  Until I have to make a student loan payment each month.  Until my cell phone bill is due.  Until Sunday because I get to sleep in for once.  Until my birthday.  Until one of the few shows I w...

I don't have too many things that my dad got me.  I have the collection of spoons he would always get me whenever he went anywhere (he would buy thimbles for my sister).  I have the multi-tool he bought for me when I first started up at Potsdam.  I'm sure some of the t-shirts or DVDs or CDs I have were birthday/Christmas gifts from him, but I don't remember which.  I have a purple umbrella he bought for me, another thing for when I started at Potsdam.   It's stupid, I remember telling him, I won't need or use it!  but he bought it anyway, and four years later... it's broken.  And I don't think it can be fixed. And I cried.  I cried over a broken umbrella.  I cried over more than just  a broken umbrella.  I cried because it's one less thing I have from him.  It's one less thing I have that has a memory about him attached to it.  I know he's watching over my siblings and I.  I know he smiles when we succeed and I know...

"You got your degree in childhood education, right?" "Yeah, but doing my first student teaching placement, I realized I didn't really want to be a teacher." "Oh, yeah it is hard to find a job in that field right now." "No, I just don't want to be a teacher." "So you're not.... doing anything then?" It's a conversation I've had far too many times since I walked the stage at graduation last May.  I had a great time in college.  When I graduated college, it was probably the most successful I'd felt in my entire life.  I'd worked so hard for five years of my life.  I stayed up late studying.  I did the assignments, the homework, the classwork.  I cried over extra-credit projects, and failing was one of my biggest fears.  I somehow managed to juggle classwork, friends, and several different clubs.  During student teaching, I spent all of my free time grading papers, trying to come up with fun/interactive les...

I loved my dad.  I still do.  Because he's my dad.  But the thing is, when I was growing up, we never really had a lot of father-daughter moments or had that father-daughter relationship you see depicted in the media.  I don't remember a time where I ever lived in the same state as him.  He was  is my dad, but he was also someone who I only saw maybe four or five times a year. I wasn't oblivious to the fact that I didn't have the same relationship with my dad that my friends had with theirs.  I had a great family situation - I lived just up the road from my grandparents and, for a few years, my aunt and uncle lived right in the same building at my mom, my sister, and I did... but I still found myself jealous of what my friends had that I didn't - their dad as a constant in their life.  Their dad as someone they could turn to whenever something happened.  Their dad as someone who could help them with homework or who would grill hamburge...

Well since today was payday, I threw more money at my student loans.  Hello paycheck, goodbye paycheck... The amount going towards all the different groups is set to go towards them today, while the $85 towards group D (which is the one with the highest interest rate) is set to go towards it tomorrow.  Since I've been making slightly larger payments (and I do mean slightly  larger, my minimum due is usually $268.48, and I've been paying $270) and I paid that extra $50 not that long ago, the minimum payment I had to make this time was actually only $208.92, but I figured that since I had the $270, I might as well put towards my loans what I've been putting towards them. I only have two paychecks left to get from my job that's going out of business.  I have to find out from my boss if she's mailing out everyone's last paychecks or what she's going to do.  For that job, we get paid every other Friday.  I get paid this Friday (the 17th), and then the nex...

Somehow it's already  the middle of April.  This is incredibly weird because I swear it was January only about five minutes ago! I'm working two jobs at the moment.  One will be closing soon; April 26th is the last day they're open, and April 19th is my last day on the schedule there.  Basically this means that until April 19th, I have almost no free time - with one job Monday - Friday and the other on Saturday and Sunday.  But I really don't mind because it's not for too much longer and it's a little extra money I'll be earning to pay back my student loans. And speaking of student loans:  I haven't put too much thought towards my student loans.  I make the monthly payments because I have to, and I've pretty much accepted that I'll be putting nearly $270 a month towards them every single month for the next 10 years of my life.  I haven't been late making a payment, and now that I have this second job, I'm not too worried right now abo...

Rumors that my current job is closing "soon" have been swirling around the community for a while now.  Some people actually thought we were already  closed; a conversation I had more than a few times went somewhat similar to: Person: Where are you working now? Me: (name of the place) Person: Are they still open?!?? Me: Well I'm working there, so... Person: I thought they closed months  ago! I can't say anything, but these rumors have only been getting louder the past couple of weeks.  Like a couple others I work with, I've been searching for another job so I won't be left jobless (and unable to make my student loan payments) if we close.  Well, after applying to so many places that I felt like "applying to jobs" could be my full time job, I got a call back from someplace... and my first day is today. I won't be working with kids at the new job, which I'm a bit bummed about, but it is what it is.  I'm not sure what I'll be ge...

I'm not going to lie - I'm surprised that this blog still gets daily views, despite the fact that I haven't posted anything here in over a month (so much for that "goal" of posting more often eh?). The hunt for a second job continues.  I actually got a second job back in January, but in order to take it, I had to leave the daycare because the hours I was promised at the new job conflicted with the hours at the daycare.  Since the new job would be giving me more hours, I made what I thought was the right decision, and started there.  Over a month later, I've pretty much only been getting weekends.  Honestly it's disappointing because if I had known that was what it was going to be, I would have been able to do both... but that's not the way it worked out.  I haven't yet been late on a student loan payment, but with what I'm working, I'm not making any money to save .  I can make my loan payments, but absolutely nothing else.  I can't...

My student loans are literally going to kill me.  Maybe not literally, that just brings to mind a bunch of pieces of paper chasing after me with knives.  But either way, these monthly payments of $268 are going to be the death of me.  The second payment is due February 12th, but I decided to just pay it now and not have to think about paying another one until after February 12th.  Looking at my current bank account balance makes me so sad... I have enough in there right now to do one more payment...  Being an adult and paying for my own things is expensive and I don't like it. My hours at work got cut, so now it's even more part time than it was before... one day a week.  Finding another job could not happen soon enough.  I love the daycare so much and I'll be so sad to so goodbye to the kids, but I need to find something where I have more hours.  I can't even almost pay back these loans with what I'm making right now, and that really really jus...

I know that most of the people who follow my other blog and my youtube page are slightly younger than I am, and because of this, I feel like it is my responsibility to tell you guys, dear readers, something extremely important that I've only just recently learned. I recently graduated from college with a large amount of student debt, which isn't uncommon.  I'm paying back $268.48 every month for the next ten years -- 120 monthly payments of $268.48.  That's, well, a lot of money. Why am I telling you this?  I'm not going to ask you to donate to paypal or anything like that, so why am I telling you how much I'm paying on my student loans?  Because as current (or future) college students, you need to know what I wish  I had know while I was a student: Start paying back your student loans while you are still a student. Looking back now, it seems as if that should have been common sense.  When I got my refund check back every semester, I should ...

I spent the morning today reading more about the 52 Week Money Challenge that I posted about last night.  A lot of things that I read actually made a lot of sense to me, and so, while I am still going to do this challenge, I'm going to do it a little differently. The last four weeks on the year, I would have to be putting $49, $50, $51, and $52 into the jar.  That's $202 right at Christmastime, when money is already stretched thin after having bought everyone's Christmas presents.  So when I've decided to do, for the most part, is to do this challenge backwards - putting the larger amounts of money in the jar at the beginning of the year, when I have some extra money that I got at Christmas.  Each week, the dollar amount I put in the jar, instead of increasing by a dollar, will decrease by a dollar. However, I want to try to be realistic.  If I miss a week, odds are that I would give up on the whole thing.  So, if money is ever to tight to put in th...