3 weeks

3 weeks ago today I started taking Chantix.

I haven't had a cigarette since.

I am proud of me. That is all.

Oh, wait, no it isn't! I went to a local yarn store today (Knit Wit & Stitchery), the ladies working there were very nice and understanding that I'm a knitting newbie, I start a class on Saturday the 19th or thereabouts (Knitting felted clogs! Will help me learn short rows and increases, two things I need to learn in order to knit socks), and I was able to grope yarn. I like bamboo yarn. It is pretty, has a sheen to it, and is soft.

I also started my Winter-session class today. 3 hours is a very long time to sit in one class.

Oh, duh, edit!

R talked to his buddy that lives in Houston, that has the same certifications that R will have upon graduation. At this point in time, it looks like it is 99.999999999999998% certain that we WILL be moving to Houston, probably sometime in June. The money is just too nice to pass up, honestly. If I've crunched the numbers correctly, we will be out of debt within 8 months of moving there. Exciting exciting stuffs!

I'm scared to move, but I think that's part of the whole thing. R has promised me that we can set up a savings account specifically for me to come back to Montana WHENEVER I feel the need to, outside of planned "hey, we're going to your mom's for Christmas, right?" I think that will help. I'm fortunately lucky enough that I can say that my mom is my best friend. Not many 25 year olds can say that.

Also, it is quite possible that we will be buying a house in Houston, after we're there for a while. Since we're going to be there for at least 5 years, why not, right? We'll keep it within the "Dave Ramsey Rules" of 20% down payment, 15 year fixed rate loan, and no more than 25% of our monthly take home (which right now looks like it'll be over 10 times what we're making yearly now).

Old Man Winter comes to visit...

Hooray for snow! We just got our first (and hopefully not last) dousing of snow for the winter. 7 inches in one night! Woke up this morning to the most beautiful carpet of white outside my windows. Unfortunately, the snow was the wet heavy kind, so it clung to the power lines, and caused quite a few of them to break, causing lots of power outages. Also, with it being wet and heavy, there were quite a few downed trees in the area as well. There was one branch that fell from one of the pines on campus, the branch alone was over 7 inches in diameter, to give you an idea how much snow it took to break it off. My mom had over a foot at her house, 30 miles away.

Finished my mom's afghan finally, I will have pictures of it as soon as I get the batteries charged for my digital camera and get pictures taken. It's quite pretty, and it used about half of the yarn the pattern called for... because I screwed up the pattern. Whoops! Ah well, it still turned out, and it's going to be a nice present for my mom for Christmas. Only 4 more to finish! Right now I'm working on my scarf, as the snow this morning reminded me just how cold it can get, especially with nothing covering my neck. I'll probably work on this a bit longer tonight, get to bed, and start on another afghan tomorrow after school.

I'm looking very forward to Thanksgiving, I get to spend it with my mom's side of the family, and my grandma is coming over for it as well. I haven't seen her since October, she's such a fantastic lady, and I thoroughly enjoy spending time with her. Mom says there's going to be anywhere from 19-28 people at her house for Thanksgiving.

Things here at the house are going well, R and I are getting antsy for school to finish out for the semester. Hard to believe we only have about 2 weeks of actual classes left, then finals week to tackle. Seems to have flown by, and yet creeped along, all in the same breath. I feel that my brain is going to start leaking out of my ears if I have to cram very much more information in there. I will have to start forgetting things, I think, in order to make room for the next two weeks. What was your name again? Hehe, I'm just kidding... I think.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I'm thankful for a lot of things this year, everything from learning to be on a budget, to paying off debt, learning to knit (Thanks Jen, you've been so fantastic, I don't feel that I can thank you enough), making new friends, spending time with my family, expanding my cooking horizons, and overall just being alive. Certainly better than the alternative!

A rant for my Classic Social Theory class

Sacrifice vs. Instant Gratification in a “Gimme” Society

“Moooooommmm, gimme it, I want it, you have to give it to me because I want it!!” “No, young lady, I do not have to give you whatever you want, just because you want it. Now let’s get the rest of this grocery shopping done, so we can go home, we’ve already been here for an hour.” “But Mommy, Daddy lets me get whatever I want at the store, so you have to, too!”

This is an exchange I heard a few days ago at the grocery store. The part I’ve left out is the child subsequently throwing herself to the tile floor, flailing her arms and legs, screaming, because her mother wouldn’t buy her a bag of candy. The mother, helpless, turned her cart around, and left her daughter in the aisle. All I could do at this point was shake my head, and remind myself why I’m glad I don’t have children yet. The children of today’s society are growing up in what I call a “gimme” society. Gimme this, gimme that, gimme, gimme, gimme. One has to wonder where this young lady picked up this mindset she has, is it because she’s just being a little girl? Is it because her nice daddy gives her whatever she wants, and mommy is just being mean? Is she being raised in a “gimme” world?

I think she is. It astounds me the sheer amount of consumer debt we have in this world today. Unbeknownst to many, 100 years ago, credit, in the way that we think of it now, basically didn’t exist. Henry Ford didn’t allow credit to be used at Ford Motor Company until ten years AFTER General Motors did. Why? Henry Ford thought that debt was a lazy man’s way of purchasing items. In 1910, the Sears catalog stated “Buying on Credit is Folly”, yet they make more money now on their credit cards than they do their merchandise! J.C. Penney department store founder detested the use of debt, and was nicknamed James “Cash” Penney. So what’s changed? Three of the biggest lenders today were founded by people who HATED debt. One hundred years ago, people saw the holes that debt can create. Now, people (lenders) are seeing the opportunity to take advantage of the gimme society that has been created. We’re all about instant gratification and having things now than waiting a few months, saving up the money, and paying with cash. It takes sacrifice to pay for things with cash, and most people today won’t sacrifice that. Have you ever noticed that it’s way easier to walk into a store, pick up a few things, and swipe a card than it is to open your wallet and start handing over cash? Spending cash has a different mental “feel” to it than paying with a card. Even the new “Fashion Frenzy Barbie” preys on young girls, and engrains the use of credit, with the comment “I love shopping, you never run out of money!”

Simmel says that sacrifice is the means to an end. But what end are people in this gimme society working towards? What are they sacrificing to get there? The means of today’s society is the plastic card with American Excess written on it, Master Charge, what have you. But what is the end of those means? Massive credit card bills, where the bank gets to make money off of you. Most people don’t see that credit cards are basically a person paying the bank to let them borrow money. Why not sacrifice a small portion of a paycheck, put the money under your mattress, and pay for something outright? Most people in today’s society see that as too much of a sacrifice, and would rather pay the same price for a product, plus fifteen percent interest, because they wanted it right that second.

Simmel also states that the value of anything is a result of our sacrifice in order to obtain it, and that you cannot have one without the other. I think this also has an effect on whether or not something is determined as a “need” or a “want”. The value of water to a thirsty person is much higher than the value of food to someone that is not hungry. The priority of what is a need or a want completely changes when you have to sacrifice something to get it. For example, my fiancé feel that we need to be out of debt. What is our sacrifice? I sacrifice 20 or so minutes of my time to search through the ads of the local grocery stores, finding the deals, and making our menu accordingly, which means that we get to throw a few extra dollars to debts we owe, or extra money to savings. My fiancé sacrifices 3 afternoons a week to work at the College of Technology as a teaching assistant so that way his personal spending money doesn’t come out of our monthly budget. I clean a house once a week for the same reason, not to mention it saves us money, because we don’t have to budget twenty dollars a month for quarters for laundry, as I can do our laundry at the house I clean each week.

My friends are shocked when they hear that my fiancé and I live comfortably on less than fifteen hundred dollars a month, and that we are able to put money in savings every month. However, slowly and surely, we are getting out of debt, because we feel that is something we need to do. Sure, I’ll admit, I want things. I want an ipod, for example. So what am I doing? I’m slowly saving money for one. I sacrifice two mochas a week so that way I have money to put in savings for that ipod.

Fact is, Simmel has it right when he wrote that sacrifice is a means to an end. I just hope for our sake, and the sake of our children, we learn that instant gratification isn’t sacrifice, because eventually it will lead to a forcible sacrifice of cars and houses, and then at that point, life will really be rough.

Yay! Studied for the stats exam

My friend M-M called, and we got together and studied. I'm SO ready for this exam, wahoo!!!!!!!!

Happy Saturday!

So, this week has been a crazy one. I turned in all of my graduation paperwork, and provided all of my ducks are in a row, I will graduate on May 10th.

I'm excited, but then again, I'm not. I've loved school, and I enjoy learning. And yes, I realize that I don't have to stop learning just because I'm not in school, but I keep telling R that if we ever win the lottery, I'm becoming a professional student.

The main reason I'm not looking forward to getting out of school is because I really don't want to see how much my student loan payments are. I think I've racked up somewhere in the 30-50k range. Granted yes, the way R and I have it planned out, we'll be completely out of debt, including those student loans, by September of 2009, provided that we both find jobs fairly quickly in Texas, if we do still move there.

Also, today, my cousin is getting married. I'm happy for her, because she deserves to have happiness in her life. Before she met the guy she's marrying today, she's dated a bunch of losers that would have never made her happy in a million lifetimes, so I'm very happy for her. Little jealous too though, cause she's getting married before me, hehe.

Anyhow, gotta start finding the outfit I'm going to wear to the wedding and hop in the shower, etc, but thought I'd write down some more of my mind's wanderings.