I did some preliminary number crunching, now that I've been up front about my defaulted student loans and while I'll need to whip out MS Money later tonight, it seems to fit into my earlier budgeting. I do lose an extra $77.35 I was socking away for my yearly payments. Like my car registration…I divided it by 12 vs. trying to come up w/$250 on May 4th, which I always paid late and ended up paying late fees and penalties. More flitting away of money. *groan*

But I need to be smart about this. I need to be proactive and I need to get my ass in gear to be completely and totally debt free one year from early October. *grimace*

But yes, the two new expenses, didn't harm my overall budget. I can still do a 10% snowball. I'm still working on getting 3 credit cards paid off this month, maybe 2.5 due to a $318 bill. Once the three are gone, that frees up about $75 in minimum payments that'll be added to the 10% snowball and that's when things get a bit more interesting.

W/the snowball picking up speed, it'll take me 8 months to pay of the Cap 1 Gold and at the very least, I'll be credit card debt free by next August.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, back to the budget story line. So yea, I hate budgets and calorie counting, but I am on my knees now, both literally and figuratively. I've done it my way, I've done it kinda sorta, but not really 100% the right way, and now I'm just gonna suck it up and do what I'm told. If in 5 years I've only managed to make my situation worse, what'll 1 year of doing it by the book hurt? To help me, as I didn't really "budget" anything this month, starting w/my next check, I'm going to follow my allocations to the penny. And will check in here w/the status my budget's plan and actual spenditures.

A few caveats, in my budgeting, I have some looming major expenses in play, car work, healthcare visits, pet healthcare and a few educational courses I'd like to sign up for.

The courses, are optional, the others aren’t. Not being able to take the courses in the time I want to, has the possibility of depressing me. I'll try not to let it. It'll be tempting to just say, "Charge it!" and sort it out later. I'll resist. If anything, I'll do what the course I attended suggested, rather than use my 10% snowball, I can save that money for 2 months and that'll give me my courses, it'll set back paying off the cc's an extra 2 months, but it'll be worth it. I'll work on that later, b/c I need to decide badly much I want to go.

I also want to go back to school and while I wanted to pay cash this go round and going to a state school, it would be affordable, I won't be eligible for student loans for @ least 6 months, so I can see if that career path is something I really want to do, which relates to being overweight.

Based on my personal experiences, there are 4 careers I'm most interested in:

Web design - naturally. I got my degree in it, I love it.
Health/Fitness/Nutrition – but since I haven't gotten my act together, how can I really help others?
Getting out of Debt/Finances – same as above, so I'm using this year and the lessons I learned and successes I have and failures I go thru as a test drive
Real Estate – I'm not quite sure what angle, buying houses and the language makes my eyes glaze over, but I have an instinct for areas and trends, I can't tell you how many freaking areas in my city I just KNEW would turn around years ago, but didn't have money to get a piece of the pie. Getting a license @ the very minimum will be helpful.

All are pretty much out there and seem disjointed, but in the back of my head, I know how I can bring them together. The last 3 in particular have a lot in common and Web Design ties them all together.

Wait. How'd I get on the topic of the future, when I'm up to my eyeballs in debt today??

I mean I'm a tens of thousands in debt and attempting to get it all paid off in less than a year which seems like a longshot, I should be more focused on this moment right?

I guess it stems from a quote I read yesterday, the future has not yet been written.

Or has it?

;)