Goals

i continually frustrate myself. i WANT to be healthier, i WANT to do better with saving money, and i WANT to have a clean/clutter free apartment.

i read an interesting article about willpower recently. i think it might have been on MSN. anyway, it said that people have a limited amount of willpower, and if one uses a lot of willpower for something, there is less leftover for other things. this makes sense to me, especially lately, as i use a lot of willpower for work and school and then feel like i have NOTHING left for finances and health.

the article also said that it is possible to gain more willpower with practice. i think, in a large part, that is what the past eight months (since i started simplicity) have been about: my struggles with how to allocate the willpower that i DO have, and practicing to gain more.

as a child, i was never the queen of willpower. monetarily speaking, in comparison with all my friends, i was well off due to having had a part time job that paid decently from the age of 13 on. so if i wanted something, i bought it. pretty much EVERYTHING i bought was an impulse buy. the high point of vacations was the shopping that could be done while there. my parents would often question whether i really needed something or not, and in my head, i'd scoff and think, "why does it matter? i have plenty of money!" HA. i should have listened. sigh.

i also never had much willpower in the food department. as a teenager, i'd regularly down entire cans of french onion dip (which, i noticed the other day, contains almost zero actual food) or whole canisters of honey roasted peanuts, or whole bags of cheese puffs (the bags were smaller than they are now, but STILL).

HOWEVER, over the last year, i have noticed small changes. i don't LIKE spending money very much anymore, and i ask myself if i need whatever it is, and if not, then i ask how much value it will honestly bring to my life. i still suck sometimes, but at least fifty percent of the time a useless purchase is avoided.

i miss how i felt when i exercised, also. but so far, that hasn't proven to be motivating enough. i'm working on the willpower thing though.

and the most important piece of news:
i joined a credit union at work the other day. (wednesday is when we had the little meeting and i filled out all the paperwork). so i get a call today (just now) from the loan lady at the credit union. i had told her about my car loan and wasn't really hoping for much, because the loan i have has a pretty low interest rate (4.9%), even if it is exceedingly long (6 years). so anyway, she called me TODAY, after getting all my account stuff in yesterday, and informs me that she can refinance my car loan with an interest rate of 4.75%, in MY NAME ONLY (my mom's on it because at the time i didn't have a real job), AND shave a year off the payments, for about the same money per month. that, people, is AMAZING. so i was all excited.

AND THEN. she can get me a credit card with at least 5% less interest than the ones i have, transfer all the balances, and then i can pay THAT off EVEN FASTER. she rocks my world. ROCKS. MY. WORLD.

so, i am looking at forseeably being out of all debt other than mortgage in as little as three years (less if i use what i pay on credit cards after i pay them off for extra on my car loan).

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this is gonna be an AWESOME memorial day weekend. :)