We can't spend anything extra this summer. Nothing.
This past Christmas I promised myself that by next Christmas we'd get most if not all of our debts we owe paid off. So far I still haven't achieved anything of that goal I set. In fact, every goal I've set in paying these several small debts off I've come way short in achieving. Never came close.
Not this year.
I don't care how much I crave a restaurant. I don't care how cute that shirt is. I don't care if I want a 25 cent piece of sour candy. The only money we're going to spend this summer is on bills. Thomas doesn't like that idea, but I'd rather go one summer with the bare necessities than to go through two more Christmases completely broke because we're trying to pay stuff off. I'm tired of these debts hanging over our heads. We never have much money left over after bills, but with God it is possible. I'm believing that we'll pull through. It'll be tight for a while, but it'll pay off in the long run. I want to get a Christmas Tree this year, and I want to buy people gifts. My family and friends always buy me Christmas and birthday gifts, but I'm never able to buy them anything. That always makes me feel awful.
We definitely need to be better stewards of our money. We have been horrible. So horrible that we had to borrow twenty bucks from a friend so we could buy Vincent some diapers after we dug into and emptied Vincent's piggy bank (which had accumulated a little under sixty bucks) for money for gas and food. If that's not sad I don't know what is. It was our own fault too. We were being irresponsible and dumb with our money. Thomas just got paid yesterday, and after putting some money aside for gas and groceries, we're putting the sixty dollars back into Vincent's piggy bank (Not to be touched again. That's his money, not ours) and the rest is going to bills. That's it. I'm tired of being behind. We make enough money to pay all our bills, albeit we don't have much left afterwards, but we have enough nonetheless. There should be no reason this whole summer for us to be behind on bills.
I'm also fixing to be pulling in a little bit of extra money through commissions that I'll be opening up on DeviantArt.com soon. I just have to get the headers, art samples, and stats ready for the commissions blog entry. I've already set up my PayPal account. I figured since I'm so used to doing artwork for people and not requiring payment for it anyway that I'll just let the money I make sit in the PayPal account and accumulate. That way it's not dug into constantly. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm only going to open one or two slots at first to see how I do, and to see how people respond, because I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I have a pretty bad habit of doing that.
I'm also, again, addicted to this computer. My housework ethic is dwindling because of it. I wake up, feed Vincent, and then head straight to the computer, like I'm doing now. I'm going to try out a plan though. I made up a 'Chore List' and split my housework duties up over the week, so I'm not overloaded. (I actually had it made up for a while, but I hadn't actually sat down and followed it. I'm an extreme procrastinator.) I'm going to do the little bit I set for the day, and get all of it done before hopping onto the computer. Because I've already thrown that out the window for today, I'm starting tomorrow (again, procrastination at its best). I am going to do my chores after this post though, which consists of doing dishes, dusting, cleaning the Kitty Litter box, and tidying the house. When I open up commissions I'll do my housework duties for that specific day first, then work on commissions for however long it takes, all the while taking care of Vincent, and THEN playing around on the computer for my own leisure. Sounds pretty reasonable. No reason it should fall through. I need to step up to the plate. Poor Thomas has been picking up my slack time after time, and it needs to stop.
One more thing, is that we need to start going to bed earlier. We used to make fun of Thomas' parents for going to bed strictly at 10:00 pm. Now it's not sounding like such a bad idea. We normally go to bed anywhere between 11:00 pm to 1:00 am. Every morning we're groggy because Thomas has to be at work at 9:00 am and Vincent usually wakes up to be fed anywhere from 7:00 am to 8:30 am. After that he wants to play. I'm usually too groggy to play. Going to bed at 1:00 am in the morning just isn't cutting it anymore. 11:00 pm should be the latest we're up, period. Maybe longer on the weekends, but even if Thomas doesn't have to work, Vincent is still my full time job. He still wakes up early, and I don't want him to constantly wake up to be semi-ignored by his half asleep mother because she was up too late again. Maybe this would be different if we didn't have a kid, but we do have a kid. I think we're finally becoming fuddy duddies. It's hard when you can no longer hang out at all hours with your friends like you did before getting hitched and having a child. You need to grow up at some point though, right?
This is just a realization that yes, we've finally come to that fork in the road. Responsibility is calling.
This past Christmas I promised myself that by next Christmas we'd get most if not all of our debts we owe paid off. So far I still haven't achieved anything of that goal I set. In fact, every goal I've set in paying these several small debts off I've come way short in achieving. Never came close.
Not this year.
I don't care how much I crave a restaurant. I don't care how cute that shirt is. I don't care if I want a 25 cent piece of sour candy. The only money we're going to spend this summer is on bills. Thomas doesn't like that idea, but I'd rather go one summer with the bare necessities than to go through two more Christmases completely broke because we're trying to pay stuff off. I'm tired of these debts hanging over our heads. We never have much money left over after bills, but with God it is possible. I'm believing that we'll pull through. It'll be tight for a while, but it'll pay off in the long run. I want to get a Christmas Tree this year, and I want to buy people gifts. My family and friends always buy me Christmas and birthday gifts, but I'm never able to buy them anything. That always makes me feel awful.
We definitely need to be better stewards of our money. We have been horrible. So horrible that we had to borrow twenty bucks from a friend so we could buy Vincent some diapers after we dug into and emptied Vincent's piggy bank (which had accumulated a little under sixty bucks) for money for gas and food. If that's not sad I don't know what is. It was our own fault too. We were being irresponsible and dumb with our money. Thomas just got paid yesterday, and after putting some money aside for gas and groceries, we're putting the sixty dollars back into Vincent's piggy bank (Not to be touched again. That's his money, not ours) and the rest is going to bills. That's it. I'm tired of being behind. We make enough money to pay all our bills, albeit we don't have much left afterwards, but we have enough nonetheless. There should be no reason this whole summer for us to be behind on bills.
I'm also fixing to be pulling in a little bit of extra money through commissions that I'll be opening up on DeviantArt.com soon. I just have to get the headers, art samples, and stats ready for the commissions blog entry. I've already set up my PayPal account. I figured since I'm so used to doing artwork for people and not requiring payment for it anyway that I'll just let the money I make sit in the PayPal account and accumulate. That way it's not dug into constantly. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm only going to open one or two slots at first to see how I do, and to see how people respond, because I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I have a pretty bad habit of doing that.
I'm also, again, addicted to this computer. My housework ethic is dwindling because of it. I wake up, feed Vincent, and then head straight to the computer, like I'm doing now. I'm going to try out a plan though. I made up a 'Chore List' and split my housework duties up over the week, so I'm not overloaded. (I actually had it made up for a while, but I hadn't actually sat down and followed it. I'm an extreme procrastinator.) I'm going to do the little bit I set for the day, and get all of it done before hopping onto the computer. Because I've already thrown that out the window for today, I'm starting tomorrow (again, procrastination at its best). I am going to do my chores after this post though, which consists of doing dishes, dusting, cleaning the Kitty Litter box, and tidying the house. When I open up commissions I'll do my housework duties for that specific day first, then work on commissions for however long it takes, all the while taking care of Vincent, and THEN playing around on the computer for my own leisure. Sounds pretty reasonable. No reason it should fall through. I need to step up to the plate. Poor Thomas has been picking up my slack time after time, and it needs to stop.
One more thing, is that we need to start going to bed earlier. We used to make fun of Thomas' parents for going to bed strictly at 10:00 pm. Now it's not sounding like such a bad idea. We normally go to bed anywhere between 11:00 pm to 1:00 am. Every morning we're groggy because Thomas has to be at work at 9:00 am and Vincent usually wakes up to be fed anywhere from 7:00 am to 8:30 am. After that he wants to play. I'm usually too groggy to play. Going to bed at 1:00 am in the morning just isn't cutting it anymore. 11:00 pm should be the latest we're up, period. Maybe longer on the weekends, but even if Thomas doesn't have to work, Vincent is still my full time job. He still wakes up early, and I don't want him to constantly wake up to be semi-ignored by his half asleep mother because she was up too late again. Maybe this would be different if we didn't have a kid, but we do have a kid. I think we're finally becoming fuddy duddies. It's hard when you can no longer hang out at all hours with your friends like you did before getting hitched and having a child. You need to grow up at some point though, right?
This is just a realization that yes, we've finally come to that fork in the road. Responsibility is calling.
No comments:
Post a Comment