Just finished sitting down and updating my little notebook with all my spending since the beginning of April. I’m trying my best to keep track of every penny that leaves my possession in exchange for goods, services, etc so that at the end of the month I can sit down and look it over to see where I’m spending the most money at and the areas where I’m spending more money than I should (i.e. fast food, movies, etc). I’ve never been more worried about my finances than I am now; especially since I have been unable to find a steady job even though I’ve been looking for almost 6 months now.

Plus, its 10 times worse right now because I keep coming up with things that I actually legitimately need. I need to get my medicine prescriptions filled (one that I know my insurance won’t cover at all), since it’s getting hotter and I live in a house with other people I need some shorts since all my night clothes consist either of long pants or boxer shorts, I need gas for my car, I need groceries so I can actually eat.. It just seems like a never-ending list of things that I need to spend money on, and yet there’s relatively little money actually coming in.

I came back to school with $700 to last me through 11 weeks which is roughly $63/week. But in an attempt to save money I’m trying to budget myself to $50/week with extra money rolling over to and overages subtracting from the next week (since I’m sure there will be weeks when I won’t spend any money and other weeks that I’ll spend more than $50 like when I have to pay my cell phone bill next week). I’m already 1/2 way through Week #1 without spending any money, but tomorrow I need to go fill my prescriptions, so there’s going to be a sizable chunk of change gone.

I just don’t want to end up someone who screws themselves over by raking up a lot of debt and destroying their credit score. While I’m sure that bad credit loans are really helpful for some people when they’re trying to crawl their way back out, it’s just not something that I really want to have to do in the future. I’m the daughter of a banker, so I know how bad it can get and how hard it is to get back out again. So my goal is to keep my credit score right where it is (it’s good right now) and do everything I can to stay on top of this.