Man I am scary close to being completely “serious” debt free.  Meaning that the debt I have accrued that has interest rates over 5%* is nearly, completely, gone.  I could go on some LifeHacker-esque thing about it.  But really all it came down to was giving up my credit card to someone that couldn’t use it, and pouring every extra cent I had into my debt, instead of savings.  The thinking being that the interest rates on my savings accounts (1.3%) are no where near the interest I’m being charged (12-18%) on my debt.  So in reality by locking money up in my savings I was actually losing it faster than I was saving.

So there you have it.  A year of debt pounding and I’m almost free.

Katie and I are getting married next year.  This poses some interesting life  questions.  Mostly planning related.  To date my life has been lived by the seat of my pants, pay check to pay check.  And now I need to get away from that.  A daunting, terrible reality I have been struggling to realize for probably the last 3 years.  

The problem has always been that I haven’t had enough money to simultaneously pay my bills, buy groceries, and maintain my lifestyle.  Out of those three things my lifestyle is the easiest thing to change.  Things like not buying lunch at work, not buying the new sweet video game, not getting that iPhone game, not going to bars, generally decreasing my social activity. 

Man that sucks!  What about all the fun stuff?  Hard to say, but when you have your eyes on a house and a wedding, its easier and easier to give that stuff up.  I suppose that has always been the problem, no real clear goal. Now that I’ve made a real and life-long  commitment to Katie its easier to set those things as real deal serious goals.  To stop living paycheck to paycheck and really act like a grown up.

Shit maybe I’ll get an IRA while I’m at it.  Oh and my stuff is done compiling, guess I’ll get back to work.

i was on for like, all of 30 seconds earlier, and its pretty fun to just make horrified faces at everyone.

Golden Gate Park

….but i wanted a place to post random thoughts that didn’t necessarily fit into the barbarian group blog.  anyway — we’ll see.

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Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic?
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The cool thing about eBay’s support system is it will always answer your question; unfortunately, that answer will always be a form letter on how to reset your password, as Timothy discovered when he tried to figure out how to sell his laptop to someone who wasn’t a Nigerian scammer. Timothy has learned the awful truth behind today’s eBay—something many readers here already know—which is that it’s become virtually impossible to sell any sort of medium-to-high end electronics there anymore.