It's actually weird how much I love managing my money, paying my bills, organizing my various savings accounts. Collectively, I'm in about $20,000 in debt (eff student loan interest. For seriously.) but it's healthy debt and I don't worry about it too much. If I were to (God forbid) lose my job tomorrow, I'd have at least a teeensy bit of squish room and that's exciting to me. If you know me at all, you know I'm notorious for spending money... and when I was younger, I was the notoriously irresponsible one who somehow had two jobs at all times and never had a dime to her name, always borrowing from the Bank of Britta and taking out Mommy loans. I've come a long way.

It's scary to me to look at my student loan repayment and feel like even paying twice as fast as scheduled, the number is somehow allowed to keep growing. It's a weird monster in my life, but one that I am living with, accepting of. Although I have my fair share of opinions on academia and financial aid now that I'm out of college, I can't change that I owe the government this much money and I wouldn't, considering it was all for fantastic explorations and magical misadventures. What I can do is have a positive attitude about it.

I work very hard at my job, five days a week. I'm extremely dedicated to it and I love it, would not want to leave for anything at this moment in my life. I love it. I felt that there were moments in the last few months where money would get tight--- by that I mean, I'd have money to cover small things but I found myself transferring out of my savings and this and that, which defeats the purpose of the savings, and it just started to bum me out. I started babysitting one day every other week and that tiny addition to my funds, while not necessary, is helpful, and comforting. Maybe this blog should be more about how I taught myself to manage my money, but for now, I'm just reflecting on how I turned this thing that used to be such an awful demon in my life into something fun and thrilling. The most important thing for me was setting small goals, ones that were both attainable and more fitting to who I am, not just what I had to pay for.

Yay!