The Story of How I Became Poor

I figured this is something you would like to know about. Maybe not. Whatever. I'm writing about it anyways.

I'd like to start with two general statements about the following story:

1. I know that my current state of poor is entirely my fault and I have come to terms with this.

2. I know that my situation is not a constant. I know it will change for the better in the future.

To start, my parents are very poor. From age 16 until my sophmore year of college (roughly age 19), I helped my parents pay bills to keep our house functioning. I definitely paid the electric bill like 6 times, each time in the same situation:

I came home from school (high school, mind you). The power was out in our house. We live in bum-fuck Egypt (common name for the "boondocks") so cell phone reception does not work. We only have a cordless phone, so I have to drive 5 miles away from our house to make a phone call to pay our electric bill in order to get the power turned back on-typically the bill was either my entire paycheck, multiple paychecks, or a big portion of one.

I'm also a pretty responsive person. This situation causes anxiety in me, and many days I came home from school expecting the same thing to occur. Needless to say, this is probably not good for a high-stress individual. Anyways, I kind of appreciate this particular experience because it helped to make a much more financially responsible than my parents are.

So, you're probably wondering why I would be writing a story about my descent into "poor-dom" if I'm calling myself a financially responsible person. Well, first, my "financial responsible-ness" was definitely a gradual experience. I've had some ups and some downs along the way, but thanks to an innate love of personal finance, I became a moderately financially responsible person (clearly my current situation takes away from this claim).

I went through a period where I overdrew my checking account by $245 dollars (age 18-scary experience). When we are barely working 8 hours a week, paying this off is a scary, stressful, slightly traumatic experience. Anyways, chances are (and statistics prove) that most of you have been there at some point so I probably don't need to explain it to you. Anways, back on track... From there, I vowed to become a save-aholic. I saved $1000 that summer, in about 6 weeks-impressive, I know-and put it in a CD. I consider this to be the official start of my financial responsibility-ness. Next, I got a credit card (age 19). I'm proud to say I have never carried a balance from month to month (I ALWAYS pay off all charges before the end of the month). Anyways, my sophmore year of college, I became a work-aholic and was definitely saving up a bunch, considering. I would consider this when I learned a lot about budgetting. From there, many things happened, but to sum it up, I started a Roth IRA, I continued to save up a lot, bought a car, went on a mini-shopping trip, applied to 6 grad school programs ($50 a piece for applications, $23 for GRE scores to be sent to 4=$392), and was then hit with unexpected expenses.

Apparently, my payment for one school was declined (too many charges in a day) and I mentally registered it as a payment. Well, the day the application was due, I received an email saying my application was almost complete, but I needed to pay the application fee-$50 (unexpected expense #1). Then I received word that we needed to buy $200 worth of gear for Scuba Certification (unexpected expense #2)-I'd rather not explain. Then our router died: $84 (unexpected expense #3). Now, if you have basic math abilities, you realize that it only adds up to $334 overall. Honestly, that wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't decided that the $300 in my account would best be spent on clothes for grad school interviews-a worthy cause, yes, but definitely not the best use of this money. So, thanks to timing, I spent all of my money on stuff I honestly didn't need, without even account for the fact that there might be something else I would actually need in the future my money might better be spent on.

So in an attempt to recover, I've been trying to work extra hours whenever I can. Unfortunately, I recently got sick (4 hours down) and have had 2 interviews this week, also cutting into my hours. Luckily, I was able to pick up almost 15 hours on last month's paycheck for my work-study job which should help.

That's my life, or at least my life in financial terms. Here are the things you should learn from this experience:

1. Always read the fine print on EVERYTHING in your financial life.
2. Always plan for unexpected expenses-typically $500 is a safe bet.
3. Learn about class expenses before you decided to go shopping for something you don't need.

I hope that helps your life.

With Love,

Elli

Roommate Situation

Well, I just noticed that I said I'd explain my 4.8 roommates in a 3-bedroom apartment with den, but I haven't done that yet. I guess I'll explain how it ended up like that, too.

Well, basically it works like this:  Coleman and I share the master bedroom. Ashley and Amber have their own rooms (designated bedrooms) and Erika lives in the den. Tim, who doesn't actually live with us, but has recently been home more than Amber, also lives in Amber's room. I don't really mind this anymore now that he's paying "rent" (out of the utility bill)**, because honestly...I like him more than Amber. Whatever.

Our reasoning for living in such a crowded situation is because, as mentioned before, we are all very poor college students. With the current set-up, we pay a very small amount of money compared to other rent in the area. We live in the only apartment complex in town that allows more people on the lease than there are bedrooms. Coleman and I were looking at living off-campus and we didn't want to:

(a) pay for an apartment we weren't going to use

(b) pay for a room we weren't going to use

So, Coleman and I decided to live together this year (we basically had been for the previous year). And because we like money, we decided to have roommmates...lots of roommates.

**Coleman and I paid our year in rent up-front. We have also paid for the year for the internet and cable. Therefore, the only thing we were still paying was the utility bill. To make it fair to everyone, we decided to have Tim pay his "rent" for living in our apartment out of the utility bill.

Well, that turned out very disorganized. I hope that makes sense.

With Love,

Elli

Gmail Forwarding

So, for the past four years, I have had a Gmail account that every other email account I checked  regularly forwarded to (this includes my college email account). However, because I made this account when I was 17, and I'm in the process of applying to grad schools and getting a big girl job, I decided that my email is not sufficient (again, I was 17-sucky email name). So, I started what I thought was going to be a seemingly easy, instantaneous process. I was wrong-very wrong. I have thought of reversing my forwards (my professional email was being forwarded to my "17 again" account) but I was afraid of having to keep logging in and out of accounts to see older mail. Luckily, I found the wonderful feature known as "Importing Mail" from another account. YAY! I could have it all in one place. Unfortunately, I started this process at 3:00pm today. It is currently 9:44pm and my account is still in the process of importing my mail. I realize there are many, MANY emails (after 4 hours of leaving it alone, I had 1900 emails in my inbox), but I feel like maybe this shouldn't have been more than a four hour project. So, it looks like maybe I'll checking my already-checked email for many hours to come. We shall see. I'll keep you updated.

With Love,

Elli

Roommate Rant

Okay, so I feel really bad for complaining about finances so I'd really like a turn of pace. Please enjoy the following rant about my 4.8 roommates.

Here's our cast list:

Amber: approximately 4'11", brunette, love-obsessed, family-oriented, white-trashy, clean-freak

Major: Art Education (previously Theatre)

Distance From Home: 30 minutes

Roommate Status: Leased, official roommate

Employed by: Sonic

Position: Manager

Primary Rant Subject

Tim: approximately 5'11", brunette(shaggy), very white-trashy, wants to be a cook/chef

Major: Never attended college

Distance From Home: 30 minutes

Roommate Status: Amber's Boyfriend-->unofficial roommate (who did not pay rent for the first 4 months spent here, but now does)

Employed by: School Dining Services

Position: Server

Secondary Rant Subject

Allen: 6', blonde (very oily), minimal showering, white-trashy, aspires to be a metal singer

Major: Theatre (dropped out)

Distance From Home: 30 minutes

Roommate Status: Amber's ex-boyfriend-->previously leased, official roommate

Employed by: None

Position: None

Mooched off Amber

Minimal Rant Status

Ashley: 5'5", blonde, very family-oriented, fun-loving, Disney Princess

Major: Theatre

Distance From Home: 5 hours

Roommate Status: Leased, official roommate

Employed by: School's Theatre Costume Shop

Position: Semi-Assistant Director

Minimal Rant Status

Erika: 5'11", blonde, very family-oriented, very quite, school-oriented

Major: Biology

Distance From Home: 1 hour

Roommate Status: Leased, official roommate (replacement of previous 5th roommate)

Employed by: None

Position: None

Supported by parents

No Rant Status

Coleman: 6'2", sandy blonde, outdoorsy, fascinated with mechanical objects, very independent

Major: Geology

Distance From Home: 1 hour

Roommate Status: Leased, official roommate (my boyfriend)

Employed by: School Outdoor Recreation Program

Position: Manager

Boyfriend Rant Status

So, we'll start with my favorite rant subject: Amber and Allen/Tim. Let's start from the beginning. Amber and Allen dated for just over two years. Amber worked and because Allen did not have a job, he played video games all day, every day. I am not kidding when I say every day, all day. I literally watched out power meter go up by 2000 the month that he lived there. Anyways... Everyone in the apartment knew she had recently started seeing Tim (Allen's best friend) except Allen. Sometimes Allen would go home to his mom's house and Amber would stay here (and so would Tim, sometimes). So, we had talked about the fact that Amber was going to break up with Allen and begin dating Tim soon. She decided the best time to do that would to be 3 days after their two year anniversary. That was a fun-filled week. Especially since we were all still living together and we all kind of knew what was going on, without Allen knowing we knew what was going on. So, after about a week and a half, Allen decided he should move out. Then we began the fun process of finding a new roommate. It turned out to be pretty easy. Erika had left a message with our landlord about finding an apartment so that she no longer needed to commute from home. We let her test out the apartment for a week to see if she liked it, and she decided to say. The seventh day of trial-run, Ashley, Amber, and I got into an epic discussion about polygamy (and since that didn't scare her away, we decided we liked her).

Moving on...

So, probably the day Allen and Amber broke up, she started dating Tim. They seem happy, so yippee for her.  In contrast with Allen, Tim actually helps out around the place. However, Tim also did not have a job, so she began supporting him as well (up until the first week of January). Anyways, the initial rant here is about the fact that we were all paying to have Tim live without us, without anyone's consent. I found it really frustrating. 5 people in a 3-bedroom with den apartment is pretty crowded to begin with. Why not add a 6th person?

And to add to that, Amber really likes to have family over. That's nice and all, but when you live 30 minutes away and your family is located in a little cluster all together, it really is just easier on everyone if you go to them. Sure, you can bring your family over to look at the apartment, that's fine and dandy. But bringing over your like 7 sisters and just hanging out in our apartment, running around, and being incredibly loud... Let's not get too overzealous. And her sisters' are SUPER OBNOXIOUS! They take over the living room, scream most of the night, use all of my dishes, and seriously overwhelm me. There have been a few instances where they ate my food. Needless to say, I was furious. She paid me back though.

So, she likes to bring her family over (including both of her divorced parents-separately, of course-and her step-mom is in no way related to her anymore) and take over our living room. Don't get me wrong, I do understand to some extent, but seriously, if you're going to bring 12 people to our apartment, could you at least be kind enough to TELL US?!?! I talked to her about it and asked that she let us know when she's bringing more than five people over to the apartment (Any number smaller and they stay in her room), of if she is having ANYONE spend the night. I have yet to be informed of any of the 45 people that have visited our apartment on her behalf since that occasion, except her sister's sex-toy party that happened in our apartment (I talked to her about again, too). Regarding this same subject, Tim's family has recently started coming around. Funny thing is, they claim that he lives here but this happened before he started paying rent... Hmm...

She also goes on cleaning sprees throughout the apartment (conveniently almost all of them are when Tim isn't around or I have a migraine). Ironically enough, though she is a clean-freak, she has this horrible habit of not doing her dishes. Sure, she'll do dishes when her family is coming over, but she let's her pile get ridiculously huge (like the entire two-cabinet top width to the right of our sink) and then only washes half of them-because the dish-drainer we have only holds so much and the 14 dish towels we have clearly don't work.

Oh God. The cooking. Amber used to cook for Allen all the time-he was incapable of making anything or getting his own beverage. So, since Tim came along, Amber has done very little cooking. A nice, relaxing switch for her which she probably deserves. However, Tim loves to cook Asian, Southern, and any other type of food that super-crusts pots and pans and/or fuses the odor into the metal. Also, they apparently don't believe in rinsing their dishes before putting them in their pile for 2+ weeks. Typically, they also use almost every pot and pan we have and then they sit there. Coleman and I do our dishes about once or twice a week. Ashley does hers about once a week. Erika doesn't have dishes. So the mountain in our kitchen belongs to Amber and Tim, in all of its smelly glory.

And that ends rant number 1. Please check back for round 2. Or 40. Whatever.

With love,

Elli

Money Matters/Avon

I'm poor. Very, very poor. My hours at one of my jobs got cut, I spend the majority of my savings (like all but $45) on a new car, and I have grad school interview transportation/application fees/GRE scores to be sent out. All of these require money. I still need food, my car still needs gas, I still need electricity/water/sewage, and the income isn't matching the expenses. So I'm thinking about selling Avon, or something similar to make extra money. Don't get me wrong, I'm still aiming to pick up extra hours at work and all that, but I'm a bit desperate. I'm interested to see how it would work out for me. Who knows.

With Love,

Elli

**Also Not An Import** WTF Is Today?

So today at work I was fixing some shoes on shelves that are low to the ground. I was on my knees, sitting on my heels. A man walks into the store, looks at me, and says, "Oh, you're on your knees. Good position. You should spend more time there." It took me a moment to register what he had said and he has moved to another part of the store before it clicked. Needless to say, I was angry beyond all reason and quite offended. What made it worse was that I walked over to the register where a coworker of mine was standing and the man was looking a shoes very near by. I'm certain I had a look of hate and horror on my face which my coworker noticed. The man said the following to my coworker, "She's not going to help me now that I was mean to her. I said, 'Oh, you're on your knees. Good position. You should spend more time there.'" At that point, I went into the stock room and proceeded to move and straighten things until this particular man left. Clearly he did not realize that he had offended me (or possibly that what he said could be offensive) but that doesn't make it any less offensive.


Also, a woman came in a return and stormed out less than 2 minutes later after I did not say precisely what she wanted to hear. She was quite rude to me and I did not appreciate it, or her talking down to me. I honestly hate people, hate working in retail, and hate today.


With Love,
Elli

**Not an Import** Time to Get Super Fucking Personal

Warning: This story contains periods and an excessive amount of cursing. Also, you may have a different view point about the following events that's fucking dandy with me. These are my views going into my story so if you're offended by that shit, don't fucking read it.

Well, I've just had an exceptionally stressful past 7 hours.

I've been having some of my PMS symptoms, which became noticeable to me on Wednesday. Those symptoms include: moodiness (extremely angry reactions to shit that should not induce rage; random desires to cry about day-to-day events that people don't even normally think about), tender breasts, low level annoying cramps.

For the past few days (probably 4-5 days), I've been having these weird cramp-like things that kind of hurt a little bit but are more of like an annoyance than anything. Anyways, that shit is usually kind of normal for like 2-3 days before I start but this time it was longer.  At this point, I was talking to my uterus and vagina in the following manner:

Day 3: What the FUCK is going on with you? Why are you doing this shit to me? What did I fucking do to you.

Day 4: FUCK!!!!! Start that shit up already! You're making me uncomfortable.

Day 5: Start! Start now! Right this instant!


And to make matters worse, I spotted a little bit last night. That's never happened before. Well, being the internet-addicted, instant-gratification-seeking person that is inside all of us, I looked that shit up.

Guess what those things (moodiness, tender breasts, slight cramps, spotting) put together can mean?

Motherfucking pregnancy.


Of course, at this point I'm like, "That shit can't be right... I'll keep reading until I come across something that makes me feel better." Bad fucking idea. Basically, according to WebMD, it was much more likely that I have dysmenorrhea (true fucking story, happens every month), PMS, or endometriosis (look that shit up-not a fucking picnic). So basically I came to the conclusion that whatever was making my vagina all jacked up, it was some serious shit.


So at that point I accepted pregnancy might be an option and immediately looked up a clinic that could be of service to me in the area and started reading. I also took a quiz to see the likelihood of this whole potential baby thing because I didn't have a lot of early pregnancy signs and the quiz was like "You might be! You had more likely answers than not likely." Fucking awesome.

Back to the clinic site. Think about my future. Think about my week. Earliest I can get that shit taken care of it next weekend... Do I want to take a test like tomorrow? Do I want to wait a little while and see if my vagina acts like fucking normal again? WTF do I do?!?! So I got all anxious and worked up (mind you this is at like fucking 2:30am, WAY past when I'm normally asleep). I spent about 10 minutes seriously considering going to Food Lion to get a test right that second.

I got to a point where I was like, "I can't fucking deal with this shit alone right now." So I texted Coleman, telling him I MIGHT be pregnant but I wanted to wait a couple days to see if things worked themselves out (this happened at about 3:35am).

Soapbox: Normally, I would not want to involve a significant other with this shit if it's just a chance, but we have a standing agreement that we're splitting the cost of all procedures and I really needed to get that shit out of my system.

So I'm anxious as fuck and can't go to sleep so I finally pass out around like 4:30am this morning. At approximately 6:40am, Coleman calls me. He was freaking the fuck out far worse than I was and he doesn't even have to voluntarily "get the flu" to take care of things (symptoms of a pill abortion include vomiting and diarrhea for up to 2 days, based on a friend of mine's experience).

This is a very abbreviated conversation meant to get the point across.

Coleman: Just got your text. Are you okay? Go get a test and do that shit today! I need to know! Are you going to be able to go through with the plan?


And of course, I'd spent like 4 hours last night looking shit up about this.

Me: Yes, the plan is still on. Are you sure you can't wait a couple days? I don't want to waste money on a late period.
Coleman: I want to know now. We need to get that shit taken care of. Isn't it time sensitive?
Me: Yes, but up to 63 days and the farthest I can possibly is 30 (although realistically, probably more like 20). I think we'll be just fine if I wait a little while to take it.
Coleman: Please take it today?
Me: I will. I'm super fucking excited to go to Food Lion on Memorial Day weekend where there will be a bunch of judgmental old people staring me down while I buy a fucking pregnancy test. Fucking best day ever!
Coleman: Yeah, well, it's better to know, right? Just call me whenever you take it
Me: I guess.
Coleman: Okay, I love you. I've really got to go to the bathroom. I'll talk to you later.
Me: I love you, too.
Both: Bye. (approximately 6:58am)

So because I'm already up, I go take a piss. And guess what fucking happens?!

I START MY MOTHERFUCKING PERIOD!!!! My reaction was as follows:


So I immediately called Coleman (at like 7:00am) and he was like:


And now I'm in bed with my typical painful cramps counting down the time until I don't feel like I'm going to die so I can fucking go to work!

I feel like my body is possessed by the devil and actually waits until I have shit to do to start this shit up. That's probably why it was it was being all weird. Yesterday, I didn't have shit to do and it was probably like, "Oh! It's about that time... Wait, she doesn't have plans today. Can't start that shit now. Gotta wait until tomorrow when she's going somewhere! But wait! Let's tease her with some spotting! That'll fucking throw her off!"


Anyways, now that it's like 8:00am here and I'm running on like 2 hours of sleep, I need to do other things with my life (like maybe try to go back to sleep)l. I'm still in a fucking awesome mood because I'm not fucking pregnant!


How I normally am on a day-to-day basis:


How I feel today:



For those of you who read this:


Have a super fan-fucking-tastic day!

With Love,
Elli

The Interview Process

Well this grad school interview experience is more of a process than I thought. I went to talk to my advisor about interview questions and left with homework that had to be completed in order to be fully prepared. That was stressful. So I've been reading over the Colorado State and Appstate's MFT websites for the past few hours. My brain hurts. My head hurts. I think I might explode. And my first interview is on Monday. Woo-freaking-hoo. Just thought I'd update you on the situation. Thanks for reading.

With Love,

Elli

Simple Introduction

Well hello there. I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Elli. I'm 21. I was born on Christmas. I'm getting ready to graduate in May. I'm a psychology major. I'm blonde. I'm left-handed. I think I'd like to be a professional student. I have a wonderful boyfriend who gets on my nerves sometimes. All of my friends are getting married. But I'm not because I'd like to go to grad school in the fall and I can't afford it without financial aid.

Uhm...

I like to read. I don't like to read for school. I'm somewhat decent with CSS/HTML. I have 2 jobs. I live with 4.8 other people in a 3 bedroom apartment (I will explain later). I like all sorts of music, depending on my mood. I'm from a small town near a big city/county.

Hmm...

Well I think that's about all I can come up with for now. If you want to know anything else, lemme know.

With love,

Elli

Before We Begin...

Just a heads up on this whole blog thing... I'll be importing previous posts from a Webnode account I have that I wish to be rid of. Please forgive the fact that they begin in early 2011.