Ashley The Millennial

Late Night Rambling

Happy Thursday! It’s 1:30 in the morning right now and I’m still awake. As I wrote in a previous post, I was furloughed from my job recently so I don’t need to be awake early or anything. I’m a night owl at heart.

The reason I started writing this post was because I feel so anxious and uncertain about the future. I’m not sure how I should be spending this time. I’m treating the rest of this month as a vacation but after that, I’m really not sure what I should be doing.

Part of me is very worried about my job. Without getting too specific, I’m in a profession that doesn’t have a ton of openings right now in my area. I haven’t technically lost my job but I’d like to know that I can get another one if I need to. Lately, I’ve been regretting going down this career path to begin with. At the same time, however, I am not sure what else I would want to do.

I was one of those kids who was really smart and I seemed to have a promising future ahead of me. I got good grades for the most part and I was just good at the whole school thing up until my university classes. I think that’s where things kind of started to fall apart. I had a dream but didn’t think it was viable so I went for a safer option degree-wise. I don’t think my dream from years ago is viable for me at this point in life.

I guess my point in all of this is that for the last 4 years of my life or so, I have been feeling lost. I thought being furloughed might help but now I feel lost and useless.

I know I can do great things if I set my mind to it but what are the great things I want to do? Self help posts telling you how to find your passion have never helped me. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. Or maybe I’m a lost cause.

I always thought of what I wanted my personal life to look like in the future. I never really put the same amount of thought into my professional life…

I should go to bed. I hope everyone reading this is having a better time than I am lately.

-Ashley

What I Spent Money on from May 11-17

Happy Monday! So I try to do these week by week but who knows how wise that is since some weeks I barely spend any money at all. This was one of those weeks.

The only thing I spent money on this week was toilet paper. It was $9.58.

I am getting groceries today but that’ll be for my next post like this. That post should have some more stuff in it.

-Ashley

May 2020 Budget

Happy Tuesday! Well, not really for me. I found out today I am being furloughed. That is going to throw a wrench in some of my plans for the year but I’ll qualify for unemployment at least so that will help. This is why I hadn’t posted a May budget yet… Some good news is that I was so busy freaking out about the possibility of it happening that I’m surprisingly alright now that it has happened. I did make some changes to my usual budget though.

Alright, so there it is. I’m leaving food, home, utilities, debt, other, and iCloud alone for now. I might reduce the debt and opt to not pay my student loan this month since it is in forbearance. I’m undecided so for now I’ll leave it in my budget.

I changed transportation to allow me to get $20 in gas once if need be. If you saw my last blog post, you’ll see that I paid for six months of car insurance with the rest of the amount there.

So the main thing I ended up changing was savings. My savings category is just what I choose to deposit into my savings account. I removed the amount I had set for it because I’m not going to make depositing cash into a savings account a priority right now. At this time, I am choosing to leave cash in my checking account and do nothing with as much of it as possible. This is pretty much a crisis so I am in full on crisis mode. I hope it all works out for the best in the end….

-Ashley

What I Spent Money on from May 1-10

Happy Monday! I feel like the weekend went by too fast. I almost forgot to post this so let me get right into it.

The first thing I spent money on this month was my rent which was my normal amount with a $2 online payment fee. It was about $887.

The next thing I spent money on was my car insurance. I pay every six months and I only get the minimum that I need so that was $206.

Finally, I spent $42.94 on food this past week.

In my end of April budget post, I mentioned that I wouldn’t be posting my May budget for the beginning of the month so I’ll briefly mention the reason for that. My income has gone down. I will probably need to tweak my normal budget and conserve as much cash as possible just in case. I still have a job, but you never know…. I am on the fence about paying on my student loans since they are in forbearance. I was going to keep paying to knock out the smallest one but now I’m not so sure. I think I’m going to have to take this month by month and see what happens.

-Ashley

End of the Month Budget Overview – April 2020

Happy Saturday! I’m going to get right into how I did this month.

So, I did pretty well overall. There were not a lot of unexpected purchases or anything this month though. My savings was huge because of the stimulus check.

Since there isn’t really a lot to go over here, I will end this on a more personal note. I learned some news that will probably affect my future 2020 budgets. I am choosing not to elaborate for now because I don’t have all the details. I might put off posting my May budget until I know more. I just thought that might be worth mentioning.

The mashed potatoes I mentioned in my last post turned out great, by the way. No one asked but I wanted to brag a bit. 🙂

-Ashley

What I Spent Money On from April 27-30

Happy Friday! I’m so glad the weekend is almost here. I’m looking forward to relaxing and trying to make mashed potatoes from scratch for the first time. Let’s get into how I spent my money during the end of April.

I bought $123.31 worth of food and cleaning products for May that is going on my May budget.

And that’s it! I don’t know why I feel like I spent more…. Perhaps it is because I paid my rent this morning. Today is May though so it wouldn’t count for this… I’ll post my April budget overview at some point today or this weekend.

I’ve always felt weird asking questions in these because this is technically just something I do for myself so I don’t expect any response but I’m going to give it a go. What is your favorite recipe for mashed potatoes?

-Ashley

What I Spent Money On from April 20-26

Happy Sunday! It’s been quite an interesting week for me but I’ll just get right into what I spent.

I spent about $71.45 on food to last for the rest of the month. I might need milk but that’s about it, I hope.

I paid my phone bill so that was $47.63.

I also paid for my iCloud subscription and that was $2.99.

I paid my credit card bill minimum which is $127. I also paid $175 toward my student loans. My loans are in administrative forbearance because of the virus but I’m going to try to pay the smallest one off (which was at $791.18 when I made my payment) prior to September 30. If I keep at it, it will totally be possible to get that paid off.

Finally, I bought a new purse that was $25.91. That went into my “other” category on my budget. Yesterday, I went out for a walk and fell into a creek. My purse was ruined so I ordered a new one online. Luckily, I am ok. I slipped on a rock and pretty much landed on my purse. It could have been a lot worse… I’m a bit sore today but no bruises or broken bones so I’m glad.

-Ashley

What I Spent Money On from April 13-19

Happy Sunday! This is going to be another short post because I didn’t really spend much this week. I’ll get right into it.

I spent $27.58 on food. That’s it.

However, I also put $1200 into my savings. I got my stimulus check so I decided to save it which helped me meet my sinking funds minimum goal. Woohoo. I will keep adding to try to get to the maximum amount I wanted to save for the year but I’m glad that I was able to fund that. Even if it was in a way that I never would have expected.

-Ashley

What I Spent Money On from April 7-12

Happy Monday! I only have two transactions to report for this timeframe so I’ll just get right into it.

I spent $27.80 on food. I just needed a few things to get through this coming week.

The other thing I spent money on was a thermometer. It went under “other” on my budget sheet and was $20.85. Thermometers have been really hard to find around here so we just got the first one we saw. I wasn’t trying to save money with that purchase since I didn’t have one.

-Ashley

My Thoughts on The Total Money Makeover

Happy Saturday! Or should I say Happy Almost Easter? Today, I finally finished Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover. It was one of my birthday gifts this year. I’m going to share my thoughts on it.

So, I will start out by saying that I liked the book. Personally, I am pretty bad at remembering what I read so I’m not going to give a full review of the book or anything. These are just my thoughts after finishing it. I think I will end up reading it a few more times. I would like to also read Dave’s book called Financial Peace. I hope to get my hands on that one before the end of the year.

The Total Money Makeover has left me feeling very hopeful for my future. I put it down about 20 minutes ago to start writing this while it’s still fresh in my mind. I think when I first started reading it, I didn’t believe that I would feel as energized as I do right now. The vision Dave lays out in that book is what I wanted for my life all along… Now I just need to get there.

I like the little stories of people who have taken The Total Money Makeover journey sprinkled throughout the book. At first, I thought those might get annoying but they are positioned in a way that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the book and allows you to see that all kinds of people take this journey. They were inspiring.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not some kind of Dave Ramsey fanatic. I disagree with things he has said and ideals that he has. However, I see that the plan he talks about is working for so many people. I think that it can work for me too, even if I tweak it a bit to meet my personal needs.

My final thought is that this is a really good book to read if you’re feeling lost financially and you want some help getting on track. I encourage everyone to read this book who finds themselves feeling that way.

-Ashley