Young, Fabulous, and Broke

That's me. I'm young, fabulous, and broke! Imagine my surprise when I happened along a book with that as the title.

So, of course, I bought the book. I thought it would be an appropriate choice for my first book on personal finance.

It was. I've read it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may be in debt, but I was still ahead of who she was writing to in this book. That made me feel a little better. I still learned a lot from this book.

I recommend it to anyone....young or old, good shape financially or not so good shape. Very good read for beginners to money lingo and advice.

Good night and Good luck!

Wednesday Night After Process Map Training

I haven't written in a few days....I'm not stopping though.

I've been really busy at work the first part of the week. Today and tomorrow I'm at offsite training. We're learning about mapping our process. It's interesting so far, but we spent today mapping a fake pizza restaurant. It was a pretty fun day. They provided bagels and coffee in the morning, lunch, and snacks all afternoon.

Free food...that's never a bad thing!

I washed dishes when I got home. That's good thing, because it means I got six points on my chore chart competition.

Now, I'm sitting on the couch watching TV and typing this. Bedtime will be in any second.

1....2....3...time.

Sandy the sweetheart.

I have three dogs...Sandy, Lady, and Sophia.

Sandy is a golden retriever. She is a gorgeous dog.

We've had Sandy now for close to two years. She came from the animal shelter when she was about a year and a half old.

Her previous owner trained her well, but he must've been mean or a little too strict because her habits and attitude show this all the time. She always thinks we're trying to trick her. She used to be really skiddish. We kind of "untrained" her a little. She used to refuse to get on the bed or couch, but we broke her of that (haha). She just doesn't really know how to be a dog. She's more worried about upsetting us.

She is super well behaved (to the point of absurdity). She refuses to do anything wrong (even if she sees the other dogs doing it).

If for some reason our front door opens and the dogs are free to escape....What does Sandy do??? She sweetly sits on our front porch and watches the other dogs run away. You can tell that she desperately wants to run too, but she doesn't because she knows she's not allowed to. It's really funny.

She does however have a barking problem and sometimes she's a little scary. If she hears the tiniest sound outside, she goes nuts and barks with a ferocious sounding bark. We can't get her to hush. She growls at strangers. We can't get her to stop that either. It's really embarrassing. People approach her because she's a golden retriever and that breed is known for its gentle nature. Not our Sandy! She's a sweetheart, but she must get to know you first.

She gets sooo excited when we come home. Even if we've only been gone for 5 minutes. It's so sweet.

She's a good dog. She is the best dog we own. (If you ask David this, he will disagree at first, but then he'll agree.) When I say the best....I mean, she gives us the least trouble. She's so sweet, but like I said...she just doesn't know how to be a dog.

The maze.

Here is a maze game.

You should try it, but make sure your sound is up.

http://www.winterrowd.com/maze.swf

The filing cabinet

A few months ago, I was completely in the dark ages when it came to paying bills.

I had NO system! I had no easy way with keeping up with mail, paperwork, or bills.

I found a surefire way to correct this problem. This may seem like a simple solution for most normal people in the world, but to me...it was not. I bought a filing cabinet.

This filing cabinet helped me in sooo many ways.
You have to keep in mind that I am one of the most unorganized people ever.

How did it help, you ask....
First: It gave me a reason to search throughout my entire house for any and all paperwork.
(This was no small task. Being as unorganized as I am, I had piles of paperwork EVERYWHERE.)
I gathered all of my paperwork and slowly, but surely, separated it into different categories. I made file folders for each category and eventually, after many hours, I had a beautifully organized filing system.

Second: It helped me understand my bills.
I have a file labeled "current bills." I use this to place my (take a guess)...current bills all in one place. This makes the time to prepare for bill paying very simple. Before the filing cabinet came into my life, preparing to pay bills was not very easy. I would attempt to gather all of my recent mail and open the mail. I would then have to figure out what had already been paid and what was just another mailing of the same bill, etc. Not fun.

Third: I increased how often I pay my bills.
Because I am now organized, I can pay my bills in a fourth of the time it used to take. I now pay my bills every two weeks after each pay period. This has been so helpful.

I love my filing cabinet. I realized I was unorganized and cluttered before, but I never imagined how much a little time spent correcting this problem would help me in the long run.

Here I am...

Since I have so far been unable to post a picture to my profile and I am still playing around with this new blogging thing, I think I'll try to put a picture of myself in this post.

So (drumroll, please)....here I am:

The Lowdown

Well...Here am I. My first attempt at blogging.

Basically, I am a 26 year old who just became an adult. I've been working at a "real" job now since August of 2004. That puts me being an "adult" now for about a year and a half.

I'm majorly in debt. I'll get to my debt later....

I am determined to rise above my debt and become a financially sound person. This is no small goal considering I have approximately $50,000 of debt. Wow! That really sounds like alot once I see it typed here.

I believe I am on the right track.

I look forward to tracking my success with this blog.

My first blog

Here is an attempt at my first ever blog.

I hope I will enter the blogging world with no problems what-so-ever!