Adventures of a Shockingly Average 30-Something

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...

I was scrolling though a website I spend far too much time on, and came across something called the "52 Week Money Challenge."  It seemed simple enough - there's 52 weeks in a year, and the goal is to, each week, deposit one more dollar than the week before.  At the end of the first week of the year, put $1 into wherever you've decided to save your money (I'm using one of those jars that counts your coins for you), then at the end of the second week you'd put in $2, and so on and so forth until the end of the last week of the year, when you put in $52.  One of my goals for the year was to save money - I know it would be better to save it in the bank, but I like the idea of being able to physically see  the money I'm saving - and at the end of the year, I can deposit all $1,378 that I should have in the jar into my bank account.  I am terrible at saving money and I think that come partially because I can't actually see  the money I have saved in my bank...

Do you ever feel as if your dreams are trying to tell you something of importance?  Typically, I'm not one who remembers my dreams for longer than a few precious seconds after waking up, but last night and the night before, my dreams - or bits and pieces at least - have stuck out in my mind. The night before last night, my dream took place someplace I can't recall having ever been.  There was a large fenced in field surrounded by trees and berry bushes.  At the opening of the fence stood a small, plain, wood building.  Not much of a building really, more like a room with walls and a window where people could purchase admission to the field.  Whenever someone tried to pick the berries, a uniformed man would exit the building and yell at whichever person had done it.  On the edge furthest from the building, there was a hill.  You had to squeeze through the fence, or climb over it, to get to the hill, where there was a path lined thick with trees on eit...