Warning: What you are about to read is very long, and whiny. Read at your own risk!
Sheesh! The past week I have been stressing out about finances, future, and life in general. I don't know what my deal is! I am usually pretty level-headed and chill when it come to all this stuff, I just do what needs to be done and don't worry about the rest. But this week, this week is different. I am what i like to call the "snowballer" I think about one thing and it stresses me out, but then that thought will lead to 10 other equally stressful thoughts and before I know it i am spiraling out of control in my in my brain. Usually this is cured by a good cry and a good nights rest.
First off, my thought of the fact that this year will be 9 nine years since graduating from high school and that time has felt more like 5 years, it has gone extremely fast for me. Then I thought (my first thought that triggered my insanity) was "wow look at everything that has happened in 10 years!" Then I thought "wow what does the next 10 years have in store" which led to "holy crap in 10 years I'm going to be 37" (37 years of age PEOPLE!!!!!) which of course lead to "I will be basically 40, which means I'm over-the-hill, which means i can officially say I'm getting old, then retirement will come and i will be a grandma, which means I've basically lived my life and i may as well throw in the towel!" (see what i mean about the whole spiraling thing) So in a total of 3.7 minutes i had a mini pre-midlife crisis. Im 27 Jody, not 85! Pull it together!
todays snowballing started out by me reading this article on the D-news about going from two income home to one and how to do it when financially it doesn't seem like it would work. It was a pretty good article for me right now because, I have failed to mention, I have put in my last day of work to be on March 16th!!! Can I just tell you the relief this gives me. I have been waiting for THIS day for 5 years!!!! But that is a whole other post for another day. So i thought about how I need to assess our finances because lets face it, we are probably the worst budgeters in the world and we have no concept of spending vs. saving vs. loans and even though in the past we have instituted a budget, it would only last about 3 days, kind of like a diet. We basically look at our account see how much money is in there and just spend and thats it. So I thought I was going whip ourselves into shape and bust a cap on our spending (not like we are crazy spenders, we are poor people!). Then that got me thinking (here we go again) about how much money we DONT have and thinking about our future. In our near future we are going to need to save for a home (I am REALLY jones-ing for a home right now), save for a future car (I'm sure we are going to need one in the next 5 years), save for an emergency fund, and save for our future children's college (aka 529 plan). All these savings made my heart and stomach crawl into a ball and shake. So i signed us up on mint.com (which is super cool) and got a good start on our financial planning and whatnot. The heart palpitations started when I set up our goals. I looked at the "buying a home" goal and it basically said we are going to need around $40,000 for a down payment on a home. SERIOUSLY $30,000! WHAT THE HECK!!!! And thats on the cheap end. And we would need to set aside $666/mo. to reach this goal in 5 years. I am pretty sure that will take us 20 years just to save up for a down payment on a home, not to mention all the other costs and a mortgage payment. That means I will be 47 by the time we can afford to buy a home. THEN i actually did sign lucy up for a college 529 plan through UESP and it said on average (in future costs-inflation) we will need to have saved $150,000. That is for 4 years of college, paying for everything. $150,000 PEOPLE!!! Thats for ONE CHILD! Ok I thought, we have approx. 16 years to accomplish this (and our kids are TOTALLY getting jobs) so we can get a good chunk of money saved in 16 years. Then it said to reach this goal we will need to put aside $450/month! Ya right. Not to mention I am quitting my job to be a mom and moving to St George for 3ish months and neither myself NOR Ty will have a job. Which means no income which means we won't be able to save the $1100+/mo in order to be on track (not like $1100+ is even attainable WITH a job, but thats added stressful thoughts going on inside my brain). Not to mention loans we have to pay off and every other expenditure we have.
So here I sit, eating away my feelings (literally eating, I just put away the bag of chips!) and wallowing in sorrow because how on earth is a person supposed to get ahead in life!!!
