The Dollarz

Those who know me know this: I am awful with my money. Absolutely awful. I can work and work and work without successfully saving a single penny. In fact, during my summers of college I would work ALL SUMMER and almost ALWAYS overdraw my bank account the first week of school. At this point the extravagant spending is pretty much a talent.

But wait. Here's the funny thing. "Extravagant spending" suggests that I'm buying cool things and living a fabulous life. But I'm so not. (ok that's a lie. I mean...fabulous things happen every day (I hate the word fabulous (catacomb of parentheses))). I'm totally your typical American 'nickle and dimed' victim. Coffee? Sure. Lunch at work? Fine. Just a banana...what's 50 cents? (but really..what's 50 cents?). I suppose what's especially dire about all of this is the fact that it's absolutely 100 percent common. Being raised in the 90s I learned that I'm special and an individual and there's no one quite like me. Well that may be true but being a broke recent college graduate with little to no hope of making legit money in the future is about as original as a racist religion.

So here's the deal. Step one to fantastically figured out financially secure life: come out of the financial closet and embrace my brokeness. I tend to ignore the details of the contents of my bank account and go off of a rough estimate of what I think is probably there (Suzie Orman just had a stroke), but starting today I'm going to face the numbers and start of a journal of my spending?

Why now? Well I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions and I figured it's the 4th of July so why not start working towards the birth of my new money sense on the day the nation was birthed (I hate every single thing about that sentence). I'm going to stop silently resenting those in control of their financial situation and stop emulating my friends with bank accounts linked to high powers (and salaries). My reality is that I have a parking ticket to pay, gas to fund for the summer, and in less than two months a move to Washington DC that will probably require 1st and last's month's rent....the rent will probably be due August 1st. I'll probably end up begging my parents and then having to pay them back and hating my life.

It's going to be really tough. I already often feel like I experience way less than a lot of people that I hang out with because of money but if I have any hope of doing anything ever I have start organizing things now. Darin mentioned mint.com, maybe that will help.

Here we go...