Personal Finance

I am part of the “instant gratification” generation. I affectionately refer to us as the “microwave” generation. We do not save any money to purchase anything.  Why do that when with the swipe of a card I can have what I want.  Now. Our folks saved to buy everything.  There were no credit cards, no zero-down. Nada. You wanted a house, you came up with a 20% down payment.  When I think about it, 20% down is crazy! How can anyone afford to purchase property? But, they did it.  Life in the States is totally different. if not careful, you can find yourself in debt to your eyeballs trying to keep up with the joneses.  I’d like to say that I’ve always been great at managing my money, but that wouldn’t be completely true.  Granted, I’m a very conservative spender.   I’ve always been cautious with how I spend my money, but I must admit I’ve never quite kept a working budget.  I roughly knew how much was in my account, and I spend based on that.  Well, i’m all grown now, so I’ve been really working at learning ways of making my money work for me.  I really hate debt! Hate it! But, I’m in it.  Thank God, none of it is credit card debt.  I learnt that lesson the hard way, but I’m happy to say credit cards are history in my life.  But, I do have about 13K in student loans, and $14K in car note.  The former was a necessity.  There was no way I was going to be able to attend school if I didn’t take the student loan.  But, my student loan is just for my graduate school.  I worked two jobs to pay for my undergrad and I’m darn proud of that.  The car note, well, that’s a different ball game.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t have bought my dream car at the time I did.  But, the instant gratification side of me took over my generally cautious side.  If i had to do it again, I wouldn’t have bought the car at the time.  But, here I am.  I need to pay both of these off ASAP.  I’ve really been working at “snowballing my debt” by significantly trimming down.  It takes discipline, and somedays just sheer grace.  I’ve implemented some of Dave Ramsey’s spending habits.  Like the “envelope system.” It works especially when I need some retail theraphy.  Having what is allocated in my budget for shoes in cash in an envelope has really helped me avert unnecessary shopping sprees.  I still feel that there’s more room to trim down.  I recently decided to park my car and ride the metro.  With the gas prices as well as the sheer hours I spend stressed in the traffic, this is by far the easiest trimming down decision I’ve made.  Riding the metro though has its moments.  Like galfriend telling her business over the phone to the entire bus at 7 o’clock in the morning is enough to make me pull out my glock! LOL!!! The only saving grace is when I think: $10/week on the metro vs. $45/week on gas. Priceless!