During a recent visit to my hometown - deep in the heart of Texas – I started thinking about how many times while I was growing up that I imagined where I would be in my life by 25. College graduate (check), working toward a graduate degree (not so much), fabulous and fulfilling career (wrong), massive disposable income to spend on travel/clothes/investments/etc (erroneous). Instead of what I had expected my life to be at this point, I am a twentysomething with a B.S. in Marketing and Finance and am working at a job that I took out of necessity and have been trying to get out of ever since. ALSO, I graduated college in 2009 during a pretty depressing job market and the year of 2010 began with $30,000 in student loans, $14,000 left to pay on my car, and $23,000 of miscellaneous short-term REALLY bad debt. Sweet.
After a year of inconsistently budgeting, paying $1,000 in bank overdraft fees, working 3-5 nights a week at a part-time job to just barely cover my bills, and starting the decline into my quarterlife crisis, I have come up with a plan:
- Pay down my short-term really bad DEBT from $15,085.31 (01-2011) to $7,000 (12-2011).
- Not incur ONE banking overdraft fee - I hate giving the bank my money, ugh.
- Get a new job – that will get on me on the right CAREER path.
- Contribute to savings and distribute accordingly:
- My wedding (yay!)
- Emergency fund
- Retirement
- Travel/Holiday
- Start living a healthier lifestyle (Disclaimer: This does not mean workout everyday or start eating organic - I'm determined, not crazy.)
My goals are pretty ambitious, maybe too ambitious, to accomplish in one year. And you may be thinking that it sounds like I came up with these resolutions after having a couple vodka tonics on a 4 hour airplane ride back from Texas, while listening to Jacks Mannequin’s The Glass Passenger album on repeat… and you may be right. Nonetheless, its time to cowboy up and, in the great words of Rob Dyrdek/Big Black, do work. I will post the details of each of my goals later.
“There’s a lot that I don’t know, there’s a lot that I’m still learning…” – The Resolution, Jacks Mannequin
- K
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