Life, and revising my budget

I’ve been thinking a lot about my future lately, and I’m worried. I’m worried that life is going to pass me by and I won’t have experienced and accomplished the things that I really want to do. Like living in Europe for at least six months or moving to a new city or going to grad school. I feel like I’m stagnating. A friend from high school emailed me recently (we haven’t really talked since graduating) and she wants to know what I’ve been up to for the past 20 years! And I feel like I really have nothing interesting to tell her. I graduated from college, moved here and I’ve worked at various jobs, slowly moving up the ladder. Really, that’s about it. I’m not unhappy, just feeling a bit discontented. And I don’t think I can really do anything about my situation until I get my debt paid off. So here are some ideas on things I can cut out of my budget so I can put more money toward the debt:

• Discontinue cable. I’ve gotten used to having it and DVR. It would be hard to part with, but I’ve done without it before. I can do it again. Savings: $70/month
• Get rid of my land line. I’m not totally sold on going with just a mobile phone, but I can at least try it. Savings: $55/month
• Cancel my dial-up. I’ve never gotten around to this because of the pain of moving to a new email address. Savings: $23/month
• Cancel my gym membership and join the gym at work. Savings: $10/month
• Move to a pay-as-you-go mobile phone plan. Savings: Probably about $30/month. This would be more desirable than cancelling the land line, I think.
• Cancel paid parking at work. Savings: $40/month. Actually, we’re moving to a new building with free parking next month!

This weekend, I’m going to work on moving my email account with my broadband provider and contemplate the other changes. Any other ideas?

Nasty credit card tricks

My monthly interest accumulation increased this month from $225.56 to $249.34. Why you ask? Because the interest rate on my Keybank card increased from 7.99% to 12.99%. That made my interest charge jump from $55 to $96. Ridiculous! Supposedly I received a notice with one of my statements that this would be happening, but I never read it. So lesson learned: read the crap that comes with your credit card statement. I was able to get the Keybank representative I reached by phone to reduce my rate to 10.99%. Now that my Sears balance has been reduced, I think I will spend some time focusing on Keybank so I can get that monthly interest charge reduced. Ugh.

6-month mark!

I just realized as I was updating my status today that as of the end of June, I’ve reached the 6-month mark with this blog experiment. So, drumroll please, my debt has been reduced by a total of $4,317.40 since July. Not terribly bad; I wish I were a little further along, but at least I’m heading in the right direction! That total represents a monthly average debt reduction of $719.57. My roommate is moving out at the end of July, so that will force me to really watch my budget going forward. That means no more clothing spending sprees (yes, I’ve had several relapses. But as I recently learned, relapse is part of recovery. Hee hee!). I’m getting down to business! In fact, I just decided that my goal for the end of the year is to be down $10,000. If I really put my mind to it, I can do it!