Fiscal Fridays: An FD update

Well, I've been on the Financial Diet for about three months now. And I've done really well. I did bump my "petty cash" fund up from $40 to $60 a week. I was going over on $40 almost every single week, even when I was really making my maximum effort to stay within that range. And $60 a week is no cakewalk, either. I blow through it faster than I would like. But I'm making it work.



I'm still living paycheck to paycheck with the money I make from my 9-5 and freelancing. (By the time I pay the rest of my bills due during this pay period, I'll have $10 left. That really sucks. But between the start of September and last weekend, I managed to save $600 from my waitressing job and selling a few things on Craigslist. That's more than halfway to my minimum goal—the amount I'll need to fix my car's clutch when it goes. It's been a crappy six weeks, to be sure. I've lost most of my weekends (with the exception of Stephanie's wedding and this Saturday, my parents' vow renewal ceremony), and I've missed out on some social events that I would have liked to attend (like my close friend's birthday party—sorry Allory).

And I'll admit it. Sometimes—when I'm cleaning out the lady-product trash cans in the bathroom or breaking up juicehead fights or mopping up the by-product of too much alcohol or apologizing way too much for forgetting a customer's third Cherry Coke—I get frustrated. I wonder how I wound up back in a crap job after working so hard to put myself through college. I rage on the inside when I think about the fact that I'm making roughly $3 an hour, plus whatever meager tips the broke college kids decide to give me, to bust my @$$ like a crazy woman.

And then I remember that I only work the crap job two days a week. That I actually love what I do for a real living. That it won't always be this way, because I'm taking control of my life now. There's a quote in the Dave Ramsey book I'm reading; it's printed at the bottom of every page. If you can live like no one else, later you can live like no one else. It means that if you're willing to make sacrifices now, you can later live the life you've always wanted. And true, maybe I'll never be the hand in the photo above, holding a giant stack of $100 bills (and thank God, because that's definitely a hairy man hand). But I'm taking the initiative now to make sure my life will be better in the future.

And that makes everything else so much easier.