It’s been a while. I’ve been wrapped up in a cocoon of a job that I loved. Almost 2 years in fact. I knew things were not going swimmingly well at levels beyond my paygrade but I decided to keep going to work until they told me to stop. Well, that day came and they told me to stop. I kind of saw it coming but after all my talk and work of getting out of debt, it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. I tried to share some of those learned experiences with my colleagues and I can only hope it did not fall on deaf ears.
That’s where the lesson is friends. You can’t be prepared for every single thing that will happen unexpectedly in your life but you can be ready at a more generalized level to better weather out the storms that WILL eventually come your way.
It’s not fun to find yourself out of work but it’s worse when the bills pile up on your doorstep at the same time.
Be ready when these hard times come. Know that sometimes things are not falling apart but rather into place.
If you are a colleague who has just experienced something like this recently, know that I wish you the best possible outcome.
If you are a casual reader of the blog, let this be a lesson to you. Life has the ability to throw a wicked curve ball your way. Be ready when it comes.
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All posts for the month March, 2016
It’s been a while since I wrote about having no debt. I have paid everything off with the exception of a lingering vehicle payment and a house payment. The vehicleis almost done…a couple months and then the house debt is next. After that, it’s all about saving. I may be redundant in writing about such things but I digress. The one thing I should have never bought was a new vehicle. It’s been the last of the debt albatross I have been working on ridding myself of for a long time. It wasn’t worth the cost and I’d not do it again. I will say though, when I do drive it, the grin that returns has made it much less painful…still don’t do it if you are deciding for yourself on taking on a car payment. It’s not worth the cost. If you must purchase a vehicle, save, negotiate a far better deal and pay cash. You will save tons of money. Trust me.
It’s been almost four years since I started on this journey and it seems like yesterday. I still remember the days of living in the middle east and working some crazy hours to get this debt paid off. The journey has been hard but well worth the return. I don’t cringe when checking the mailbox these days because of yet another bill and the feeling of not being a slave to the lenders has been remarkable. I don’t really care about a credit score since it’s really just a measure of how good you are at being in debt anyway. I have been blessed greatly and tasked with being a good steward of the money I have been entrusted with.
Another thought that comes to mind is excess material goods that only weigh you down when they serve no purpose but to consume your time and resources with zero reward. It’s one thing to stash things that can be given away when you find the need but another to not let go of something because it cost you so much to buy or is rare or you always wanted one. Trust me on this, I have bought and built shelves and stored crap in my life for years that I ultimately threw away because I never did need whatever it was I was hanging onto. I still struggle with this but the quest for clearing out such stuff continues with success, it’s just slow. It’s not a hoarders mentality but more of a creative mindset that says I can do this with that so I will save it for when I can get around to doing this with that. The reality is I can throw this IN that…where this=”junk” and that”=dumpster”. Ha Ha.
Oddly enough, I used to watch my father plant trees and play with growing plants as a hobby. I guess he figured something out about such things. I am now trying my hand in such ventures.
I have found that to plant something that grows long after we are gone from this earth has some satisfying qualities and I think I will figure out what that is eventually. I am beginning to plant things around my house and see what comes of it. The house already had a start and now it’s time to recover it after years of neglect. I think that gardening a little bit will be a good hobby to look into.
Rowland Ramble - 