As I type this, well...
I admit, even with both our new jobs, things are still a bit tight financially. But we're adopting our own austerity measures including cutting back on excessive eating out or extra junk food. This was motivated by new things entering our lives including:
A NEW CAR!
This purchase was motivated by a major safety issue. The loyal Saturn after eight years had to be put down. When Lisa drove it to a dealer in Greenwood 50 minutes away (the nearest place for a Saturn service) we discovered it had worn wheel bearings and a broken control rod in the front right tire. And they let her drive away with that problem!!! It's a miracle the steering didn't give out!!!!
After clearing our heads after a bit of panic, Lisa and I decided to go with a new car rather than pay for car repairs that we couldn't afford at the time. Lisa gets a discount with Ford for being an Indiana University employee so she decided to call them. After telling the Ford dealer our situation, he advised us to "Not drive the car!" We did in fact drive carefully to the nearby Bloomington Ford dealer and traded in the Saturn for $1500.00 (not bad actually). Within an hour (and 30 minutes past their closing time), we were driving off in a 2012 Fiesta!! Lisa put this model on her wish list after reading good reviews about it. One of the dealers said quite proudly; "We saved two lives today."
Bless you, Bloomington Ford!
And yes, we have full platinum warranty on it. :-) Now Lisa and I can sleep better knowing that I am in a much safer car when driving home from work at 4am.
We also have new cell phones with a contract. This allows us to text and talk to each other for free for less than we kept spending on pay-as-you-go phones. Signal is good in these parts, not perfect but it'll do. The old cell phone I have is now an alarm clock. It still has it's uses, right?
Our jobs are good. Not the dream jobs we both wanted but it's what we needed, like The Rolling Stones would say. There is still a long way to go as Bloomington, IN is more of an extended waystation. But we needed this to clear our heads and plan our next moves. The nice apartment with decent rent helps.
And yes. Symon was the best thing to enter our lives since we met each other back in Memphis.
We couldn't have made it without him. >^.^<
Yes money will be somewhat tight, but not as bad as in the past. And we already feel much better about things and are so much happier than we have been in years. How strange that the way to curb bad stress-induced spending habits is to get a bit more into debt. But we are so much happier these days. Now we can focus on our mission to calm our minds and view things with a clearer perspective and do what we want with renewed energy.
