Usually, I’m pretty good at budgeting my time, but as of late, I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed. Blog entries are getting written late and I still have to finish my Year in Review posts. I can’t forget about the last half of 2009. There were some pretty good days in there!
I know that I’m not alone in this. I think that a lot of people find themselves overwhelmed with responsibilities and commitments and struggle to make everything work. Right now, work is taking up a ton of my time, having to put in extra hours here and there. While I don’t mind the extra hours (my work is good about compensating us for our time, which means I’ll have extra vacation time to use later), I do mind the total lack of schedule. Last month, I was told “Don’t think about asking for leave during January and February, because you might have to work holidays.” There is a holiday on Monday and I still don’t know whether or not I have to work. If I have to work, I have to work, but I would like to know so I can plan ahead. I’m also running a half marathon in less than two months. That means I really need to stick to my training schedule. It doesn’t take a ton of time, but I do need to be sure to set aside time for all of my training runs. I’m trying to keep somewhat of a social life, even if it’s just drinks out one night a week with friends. Then there are family responsibilities and blogging responsibilities (like a new book to review – watch for a giveaway soon!) and general household responsibilities, and oh yes, the need to relax every so often.
Writing it out, it doesn’t actually sound like that much, but it was getting overwhelming. Yesterday, I decided to back out of my next choir concert. It was only the second week of rehearsals for this concert series, and they are understanding that not every member can sing every concert, so it’s not a big deal, but I still felt guilty about backing out. I knew it was the right decision – due to the unpredictability of work, I wasn’t sure when I would have to miss rehearsals and I didn’t know what kind of “homework time” I would be able to put in on the music. But even though I felt guilty, after I sent the e-mail, I felt like a huge weight was lifted. Somehow, just removing one little thing from my schedule made me feel so much less overwhelmed.
I need to get better about budgeting my time. I don’t want to become one of those people who has a planner with every hour scheduled out, but I do need to sit down and say “Okay, Megan, on Monday you need to do this, and on Tuesday you need to do this, and if something falls by the wayside, you should have some free time to catch up over here on Thursday.”
Do you budget your time? What do you do when things get overwhelming? I’m willing to try anything.
Well, almost anything.
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.
I like to make to do lists and cross things off. That’s my method! 🙂