So I decided to spend some of the money I’m getting back from the feds and the state. And it’s my mom’s fault.
Friday night, my mom unexpectedly showed up for a 12 hour visit. Seeing as she lives 13 hours away, it’s a long story involving flight delays and weather and redirected planes. But that’s not the point. The point is that she was in my house and saw it in its natural state.
And she means well, but she commented about how the place is slowly getting there, but I clearly have some work to do.
And she’s right. There are still many bare walls. There are boxes in the dining room that belong in the attic. They aren’t in the attic because I don’t have a ladder because I haven’t wanted to spend the money. So after she left, I bought a ladder. I also started looking for furniture again, and have decided to finally hang some of the wall art that I have. Baby steps.
I’m not going to just go out and buy the furniture I need to fill the spaces. I’m going to continue to wait until I find the right pieces. But I should at least look.
And maybe the next time she visits, the place will be even more organized. I’ve been in the house almost a year. It’s time!
Megan is a 30-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.
Hee! I hear you.
I’ve been in my house now for just over a year, and I still have oodles of boxes that I haven’t unpacked yet 🙂
I’ve been collecting up picture frames from thrift stores, and I spray painted them all one color – last summer. Since then they’ve been sitting in my dining room waiting for me to put photos in them and hang them.
Last weekend I *finally* pulled them out, laid them out in a grouping I like and started the process of identifying photos to print out and sizes I need. My goal is to get this done by the end of the month 😀