There is an entire emotional rant on how I backslid so bad. Put it liek this, years of living check to check, oh I still am, but w/rent and household bills takign all my cents, I felt so deprived and had nothing for a new apartment.

The tiny bit of breathing room and some creative juggling had me in and out of IKEA and Target like a mad woman. I really lost my mind. I remember shopping and leaving the stores feeling ill, but too stubborn to take anything back.

Since going to that financial class on Sunday, I also ordered the books, saved almost $50 bucks doing the PDFs vs. buying the hardcopies. I almost cringed @ it, but just reading the first 4 chapters, I have gleaned a tremendous amount and while the other day I was a bit chuffed I was already doing this stuff, ie snowballing my debt, the book takes it a few steps further, and for the first time in a very long time I have...hope.

I felt motivated enough to do a few things, that I'll fine tune in coming days:
- Get total owed on my credit cards
- Get total monies I have in various cubby holds
- and don't throw rotten tomatoes @ me for this one, I printed out my check stub (got direct deposit) and will sit down and figure out exactly how much is coming in, I have NO CLUE!
- started a tentative budget, well i wrote down all my regular payments
- printed out the last 6 months of bank statements, so i can see how much I've been flitting away
- and lastly, this is majorly hard, I am going to go to consumer credit counseling services so they can help me come to terms and face the debt I've been avoiding for the last year. It's bad. It scares me. It's major, but I have to be a big girl about it.

Yesterday was my birthday, it's way overdue that I grow up already.

So that's the gist of what's up. I'll share the gory credit card deets in the next few days, update the chart, and back to snowballing.