Financial Fatigue
Every so often, there are days when you just want to take the budget that you've been carefully adhering to for so long and just chuck it out the window. Some days are worse than others. Every time my wife mentions something that she wants, I wince inside. I mean, lets be real here...there are things that I want too...NFL Sunday ticket for example...or the chance to go pursue my dreams of playing on the WPT...but I know that those things can wait. Or at least, I keep telling myself that they can wait. Sirius Satellite Radio...window tinting for my car...a PlayStation 3...*sigh*
All pipe-dreams for now. I've been doing this for 5 years now. Admittedly, I haven't been blogging about it...and I've had moments of weakness along the way, times when I pissed away money gambling or drinking that could have been better spent elsewhere...but everytime it seems like I'm getting closer to debt free, another debt rears it's ugly head to be paid. Like a Hydra, I keep whacking them down, only to see them rise up twice as big someplace else.
Now, progress has been made...I can't argue that...I have a positive networth, a steady job, and I am saving (currently) 13.17% of my GROSS pay each month. Considering that I'm an E-5 in the military, that's not too bad. My take home pay is less than $3000 per month, and I feel I'm doing pretty well to save as much as I do.
Still, it irritates me to no end to read stories on other personal finance blogs about people who make anywhere from twice to three times as much as I do whine about their debt load. I gaurantee you, if I got a raise from the 33K per year that I make in take home pay now to about 75K in take home pay (like some of these other bloggers) that I would be debt free (to include my mortgage) in under 5 years. Extrapolating out a bit, that extra 42K of take home pay would have me retired as a millionare in just under 20 years...and that includes a couple serious upgrades to my lifestyle.
The worst part of it all is...it's not like I can just get a better degree and make more money. I can't change jobs any time soon either. I can get promoted, but believe me, that's not as easy in the Air Force as it is in the rest of the branches of the service, and I'm already WAAAAY ahead of the curve in that department anyway. So what am I supposed to do? It would be difficult in the extreme to cut spending any more than I already have...and I already work too many hours as it is to want to think about taking on a second job...so what is the solution here?
*sigh*
I just want to go on a shopping binge and buy some nice toys to play with for awhile.
But what would that accomplish? Nothing. It would put me a few steps backwards on my journey to financial freedom. So...with the discipline of the last few years...I will press on. Hopefully, by May of 2009, the only debt I will have will be my mortgage.
I will be a millionaire one day. All it will take is a paycheck, patience, and time.
All pipe-dreams for now. I've been doing this for 5 years now. Admittedly, I haven't been blogging about it...and I've had moments of weakness along the way, times when I pissed away money gambling or drinking that could have been better spent elsewhere...but everytime it seems like I'm getting closer to debt free, another debt rears it's ugly head to be paid. Like a Hydra, I keep whacking them down, only to see them rise up twice as big someplace else.
Now, progress has been made...I can't argue that...I have a positive networth, a steady job, and I am saving (currently) 13.17% of my GROSS pay each month. Considering that I'm an E-5 in the military, that's not too bad. My take home pay is less than $3000 per month, and I feel I'm doing pretty well to save as much as I do.
Still, it irritates me to no end to read stories on other personal finance blogs about people who make anywhere from twice to three times as much as I do whine about their debt load. I gaurantee you, if I got a raise from the 33K per year that I make in take home pay now to about 75K in take home pay (like some of these other bloggers) that I would be debt free (to include my mortgage) in under 5 years. Extrapolating out a bit, that extra 42K of take home pay would have me retired as a millionare in just under 20 years...and that includes a couple serious upgrades to my lifestyle.
The worst part of it all is...it's not like I can just get a better degree and make more money. I can't change jobs any time soon either. I can get promoted, but believe me, that's not as easy in the Air Force as it is in the rest of the branches of the service, and I'm already WAAAAY ahead of the curve in that department anyway. So what am I supposed to do? It would be difficult in the extreme to cut spending any more than I already have...and I already work too many hours as it is to want to think about taking on a second job...so what is the solution here?
*sigh*
I just want to go on a shopping binge and buy some nice toys to play with for awhile.
But what would that accomplish? Nothing. It would put me a few steps backwards on my journey to financial freedom. So...with the discipline of the last few years...I will press on. Hopefully, by May of 2009, the only debt I will have will be my mortgage.
I will be a millionaire one day. All it will take is a paycheck, patience, and time.
posted by ~Scott~ at 2:21 PM
1 Comments:
I so know this feeling. I had been feeling really discouraged for a couple of months too. It seemed like every month I had to play a shell game to move money from here to there and delay this payment and reschedule that payment to make sure all the bills were payed. I robbed our joint E-fund to pay off some credit card splurges, and my spouse and I even took a couple hundred dollars from each of our personal savings accounts, money that's usually sacred.
At the moment, I'm feeling a little better, because it's the end of the first week of October and the mortage is paid and the preschool tuition is paid. My two biggest bills. A paycheck came in yesterday, and guess what? Not all of it is spent yet! That's progress.
Hang in there. And remember we are all where we are. The bloggers who make more money just have different money demons than you. And your income is not too far off from mine. We make 60K gross annually for a family of 3. Our income and our savings fluctuates a little, so I'm not totally sure of my numbers, but I think we're saving somewhere around 15-18% of our gross annually. Go us! And go you! What was your number? 13%? That's really healthy for somebody who takes home what you do.
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