It has been a while since I last posted. I'm not so good at this whole "regularly" thing apparently.
I've been a busy bee lately. Vinnie and I are hitting the diet and exercise regime pretty hard, and I've been working about 50-55 hours a week. I don't mind it so much now that I'm no longer on the phones. Dealing with customers through email and instant message is SOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier than over the phone. Why? Because when people get angry the worst they can do is TYPE IN ALL CAPS and use lots of !!!!s. It's comical, really.
Life is good. I'm not exactly passionate about my job, but I like it and have fun while I'm there. Living the DINK lifestyle is more awesome that I'd ever thought. I'm going to Vegas in March for three days, NYC in May for 4 and San Francisco for 5 in September. Next summer we're going to Albania for our Albanian Wedding. As much as I can't wait to have kids, the lack thereof allows us to do the traveling that I've always wanted to do! And I get to go with the man that I love. I am so lucky.
We've also been talking more and more about buying a house. That will most likely happen around the end of 2008. It's really great that we're beginning to make these long term plans. Vinnie has a stable job, we're very near being debt free (by the end of this year we should be completely debt free except for the Xterra), and we're able to save a lot of money each month.
This must be what it feels like to be financially stable. I've never known what that's like. It is a beautifully unfamiliar feeling. Sure, my parents are stable now, but when I was growing up we didn't know the meaning of the word. They were pretty good at keeping it a secret from us, but there was always something to give it away: Mom getting angry with Dad for buying Oreos and Nutter-Butters when she sent him to the store for milk and bread, moving out of our house in Provo after Dad's business went under, selling the boat, Mom having to go to work...
Those kinds of things never really made a ton of difference to me at the time. I was young and didn't know any better. As I grow older (and somewhat wiser I think) I realize how hard it was for my parents, and how hard it would be for me if I was in that situation.
Let's review for a moment: My parents married at 20 years old after dating and being engaged for a total of 6 weeks. Two weeks after they were married, they were pregnant with Eryn. Eryn is 3 years, 5 months older than me, and Matthew and I are two years apart. Matthew and Geoffrey are also two years apart, and Anna was born 14 months after Geoffrey. If you add all that up you'd see that my parents had 5 kids under the age of 10 by the time they were 30.
That's a lot of little kids in a three bedroom house. So it's really no surprise that they struggled financially. The point that I'm trying (hoping) to make is that financial instability has always been a part of my life. And, it has affected me. I have an innate fear of spending money that professes itself as guilt over purchases. I can't make any sort of purchase, with the exception of groceries (as long as we're getting the best deal possible), without the guilt of spending money settling right in to the pit of my stomach.
My husband would argue, for sure. He'd tell you that I have zero problem spending money. I don't really blame him, because from his point of view I don't. Whenever I get mad at him, I go shopping. Last time I bought $140 worth of scrap booking supplies. I do it because it's bad. It's my way of rebelling. It's my way of saying: Saving money is important to you, so I'm going to spend money to make you mad. Revenge is sweet.
And extremely pointless, because it's my money that I'm spending too. But I do it because it's my last resort...when yelling and crying and pouting don't work. ;-)
I'm really lucky that Vinnie is as frugal and saving-oriented as he is. I've always been pretty good with my money (because of that whole guilt thing), but he inspires me to be better. He's pretty good about keeping me on track with my savings account(because I could name you about a hundred things on the spot that I want to do with that money).
So basically, once again, my point is that I'm finally at a point in my life where I have money saved, but can still spend money to have fun. I simply do not have to worry about money. It's like inhaling pure oxygen all the time. It's beautiful! I'm smart enough to realize, of course, that the "fun" we have at the moment is fleeting and inconsequential in the end, but saving the way we do certainly gives us a good footing to stand on the rest of our life.
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