Overwhelmed

I feel like my life has exploded over the past few weeks, both personally and professionally.  I just have so much to get done and have no idea how to get it all done.  I’m overwhelmed, to say the least.

Some of this is my own fault – putting things off because “I have time” and then realizing “Oh wait, I don’t have time at all!”  Thankfully, that’s mostly the personal life stuff – getting organized for visitors and scheduling appointments and such.  The work stress is definitely not my fault, but that doesn’t make it any easier (though it means my job isn’t at risk because things haven’t been done).  As a result of some recent work issues that I will not detail here, I will be out of the office at various locations for 2-3 days starting next week and lasting a full month.

Sounds great, right?  A couple of days out of the office every week?  Well, on one hand, I do like the opportunity to do other things.  On the other hand, my workload is not changing.  In addition to these new responsibilities,  I have to get my normal job done as well.  That’s going to mean some serious overtime.  I don’t get paid overtime, but I should be able to bank a few extra hours to use instead of vacation leave later in the year, which will definitely be nice.

In addition, I need to keep up with my race training and things like house cleaning and grocery shopping.  It’s going to be overwhelming, I think.  My current plan of attack is to start making lists.  What do I need to get done, what do I want to get done, when is it due, and when am I going to do it?  I’m planning to include everything on one list, since my work time will be pushing into my personal time.  And sometimes, maybe those work tasks that can wait will be pushed off in favor of a scheduled training run in order to keep me sane.  (Of course, that only works if my deadline isn’t ASAP, as with most of my job responsibilities.)

Thankfully, my boss is being very understanding about all of this.  I have a few days off scheduled over the next month because I will have family members visiting.  I mentioned that I wanted to still be able to take those days off and she said “Oh, no problem.  This isn’t your fault and your time with your family absolutely will not be sacrificed for that.”  So that’s one good thing.

I’m hoping blogging also won’t be sacrificed, though already, blog reading has taken a hit.  I’m behind on link roundups and my Google Reader is quickly filling up.  But I’ll get to it soon enough, I hope!

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.