MollysBrother.com

Before My Spiral Notebook

I used to spend money everyday. Every. Single. Day. I would slip under the covers each night, tossing and turning. Morpheus and his gifts were kept at arms length because all I could do was think about stretching this dollar to pay this bill. I was stealing from Peter to pay Paul…and Mary, for that matter. I knew the bills were due: the car payment, the credit card, the cell phone. That was one week. Health and car insurance were due soon, too. Or were they all already past due?

I would wake up from a sleepless night, knowing that I had to be creative with my bills. But I failed. I would lunch with friends and coffee with friends and drink with friends. I knew that bills were due and I knew I had to save money, but I would spend anyway, thinking—of course—that there was twenty dollars left in a checking account for this or for that. But—of course—I had forgotten that I had spend that twenty dollars twice already when I pulled out money at another bank’s ATM for drinks or lunch or dinner or coffee with a friend.

It seemed like I was never going to be able to break this cycle of spending and spending and overspending.

Until one day, it happened. I woke up. I stopped living my life on automatic pilot and I got honest with myself and I got serious with myself. And I started to track my spending. And I started looking at my bank statements online. And, whoa, I started to find that I actually did have money to save at the end of the month. Or I had more money to send to this credit card debt or to that car loan. After a few months of this, I eliminated debt entirely. ENTIRELY.