So even though I don’t know whether or not I’m buying a house next week, I’ve started packing. In order to save money, I’m doing most of the move myself (everything but furniture, or at lest that’s the plan). So I’m going to be doing it slowly, taking boxes over in my car a couple of times a week until we hit the actual move day. To make this process less painful, I’ve started packing up boxes, things that I know that I can live without for a while.
And what have I learned? I have a whole lot of stuff. Way more stuff than I need. I’m trying to cull through as I pack, but that’s easier said than done. I’ve got a whole library of books, which is problem number one. Lots of crafting stuff. And then there’s just… stuff. I don’t know how to describe it.
One thing I will have to be careful of in the house is that I don’t let the stuff take over. I’m going from a two bedroom apartment (where one bedroom belongs to my roommate) to a three bedroom house. I will have an attic. I cannot let the stuff get away from me.
(I must admit, the attic freaks me out a bit, so I don’t see myself storing too much stuff in there – maybe the Christmas decorations and the two Rubbermaid boxes of childhood mementos that I’ve hung on to. So that might work in my favor.)
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.
There’s nothing like moving to show you how much stuff you have that you don’t need and never use. Now that you’re aware, you can be more mindful with what you bring into your next home, weighing whether you’ll use something before you even bring it in the door.
That’s the plan!
Still a productive exercise even if you don’t move yet!