Less Debt Equals More Time, Happiness
Posted on August 22, 2006 by Him and tagged debt
When Her and I first moved in together, we would get tons of mail. Credit card offers, store catalogs, and oh yeah, bills bills bills. We'd open up everything, shred the crap, and put the bills next to the computer so that we'd pay them the next time we sat down and worked on our finances. Between the two of us, we had about THIRTY different bills we were paying every month! That's about a bill a day. Just the ritual of opening up everything was quite exasperating, knowing that every open envelope was more cash out of our pockets.
Fast forward to last week. Her and I were a little worried that the "to pay" pile next to the computer was...empty. Sure we had paid some bills at the beginning of the month, but we were sure there was more coming. Day after day, we'd get the same crap, but no bills would appear. We were worried that we would end up forgetting to pay one of the bills because it would never arrive. At the end of the week, two managed to trickle in.
So what happened? When we sat down to look at our financial spreadsheet, we realized that we have now lowered the number of bills we pay per month from almost thirty to about ten. In the last two years, we've either paid off or consolidated much of the debt that we already have.
Psychologically, this has had a great effect on us. Our morale has been boosted, and overall we now spend less time opening envelopes and more time doing stuff that is important to us. Now we spend about a half our time taking care of this stuff when it's bill paying time. We still have a long way to go to eradicate the debt, but having everything streamlined sure makes things a lot easier.
It does feel weird though, to not have to spend an hour or two in front of the computer every Saturday morning to wade through our financial sludge...just about as weird as finding out all my pants are now loose because of our concurrent weight loss.
Just think, in ten years we'll be better looking and richer than all you bitches! BWAHAHAHAHA!
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Oh doesn't it feel great to feel like things are going your way with fincances? One of the best feelings in the world! Congratulations!
Good for you. I'm one of those sickos who actually enjoys paying bills--you know, the satisfaction of having them all PAID, at least for this month.
Now most of my bills are paid online, so it takes almost no time. I pay a couple of them directly or through credit cards, and several of them I pay using mycheckfree.com.
Anyhoo, congrats on consolidation and especially on paying some of those f***ers off.
moominoid | Aug 28, 2006
Wow, can't imagine 30 bills a month! (I have 3 - phone, electricity, credit card - rent is paid automatically). What you have to look forward to is more and more STATEMENTS etc. :)
finance girl | Aug 22, 2006
Hey congratulations! On both the debt and weight loss! I have a cousin that sometimes I call and many times in response to me saying "so what are you doing?" he'll say "paying bills" it's actually an inside joke between another cousin and I, because that bill paying cousin must have a pile of bills to be spending so much time "paying bills" !
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