The summer I finished college, I quickly got a part-time job. Don't misunderstand, though, this was not the kind of part-time job that helped me squeak by - the first few months, as I worked my way into more hours, I was making $300-400 a month. Talk about being broke.
By the time the winter came, I was more in the realm of $600-800 - enough to keep my car rolling and make the minimum student loan payments when they kicked in while my parents covered everything else in my life.
The next spring, I got a promotion, and started making enough to put me above the poverty line. I knew it was time to make a budget.
There are a million people and blogs out there that will tell you how to set a budget, and I did a lot of research before making my first budget. Two years later, my budget has changed to reflect a growing income and changing student loan payments, but the main tenets have remained the same. A budget is personal, so my budget theory is personal. I believe a good budget should:
- Focus first on paying for necessities: rent, groceries, utilities, transportation
- Focus second on paying off debt. NOT minimum payments, but aggressively paying it off.
- Be envelope-based. This means that you intentionally set aside a certain amount to spend in each category (groceries, gas, clothes, enterntainment, etc) and when you run out of money in that category, you stop spending for the month.
- Think long-term. If you're paying insurance every six months, calculate the monthly amount and include it in your budget so you aren't spending money you'll need soon.
- Reflect your priorities. It's more important to me to build up a "romance fund" so I can see my long-distance guy than to buy new clothes, and the amounts I put in each category reflect that.
- Be zero-sum. The total of your spending categories should equal your income. Every dollar should go to a category, with no extra. If you plan out each category and have extra, recalculate. Give yourself a little breathing room in tight categories, add to your debt pay-down plan, or put the money in your savings every month.
- Hurt a little. If your budget doesn't pinch a little and make you think twice about purchases, then it is probably not getting you toward your long-term goals (yes, you should have long-term financial goals).
If it's your first time making a budget, it can seem kind of impossible to figure out what categories to create and how much to put in them. To help get started, I really like Dave Ramsey's Monthly Cash Flow Plan. It lists more than 50 categories you should think about, and it offers "optimal" percentages to help you see what's reasonable or not. Again, my percentages don't always line up because some categories are more important than others - I don't always agree with Dave Ramsey - but it helps me be more conscious of where I might be spending too much.
I have never quit a job.
Me leaving a job (with the exception of one time I was let go - the story behind which would be an entire blog) has always been inevitable because I was moving to college or home from college, a predetermined going away point that just tick-tocked closer and closer.
That changed this week.
Now, I have known my boss almost my entire life. My brother and I went to school with her two kids. She gave me my first job in high school. She handed me my diploma when I walked across the stage at my high school commencement. And while she's not exactly a friend, she has played a huge role in my life. I appreciate the many, many things she has done to help me, especially in the last ten years, despite the fact that we often don't see things the same way.
There's a level of stilted-ness that comes about when you know your boss is trying to sell the business and that your job might not necessarily exist when that happens. You have to watch what you say, because if the business doesn't sell, you still have to work for her, but at the same time, there are serious questions that need to be addressed. Knowing if anyone has looked or mad an offer completely changes your timeline. At the same time, though, you then become responsible for what you tell those below you - you need them to keep working and keep the business running, but you don't want to blindside them with a complete loss of income either. It's a tightrope.
The tightrope is made thinner by the fact that I don't enjoy my job. And not just because it doesn't challenge me or I don't enjoy the work, but because I have some fundamental struggles with decisions that are being made at the top and I am burned out from being on call 24 hours a day.
It is time for me to move on. I know that, and I've felt it for a while, but I had a strange little plan of sticking out another nine months or so before really starting to look elsewhere. Then a job opened up - not necessarily my Dream Job, but at least a dreamy one - in my desired field, with a raise and benefits. It was a long road, but I got it.
And suddenly I had to tell my boss that I got a new job, when I hadn't even told her I was applying for one. As I was telling her, all she could say was, "Ah, Sarah," in this keening way that reminded me of the way my dog whimpers when someone leaves without her. "What are we going to do without you?"
I replied tongue-in-cheek and excused myself. Only later that evening did I hear that after I left, her husband found her sitting at the desk, teary-eyed over my abandonment. I can't say I'm surprised by this, but I wonder if maybe it isn't even more of a sign that I need to go somewhere else, that I allowed myself to become indispensable in a place where I had no desire to remain.
While she was crying, I was just happy for this chapter of my life to close.
I live on site at my job. It's 26 feet from my apartment to my office. This sometimes leads to awkward, strange mornings - me sitting at the desk taking a reservation when my boss unlocks the door on my day off, running for the phone still in a towel after my shower, or a renter knocking on my door having locked himself out.
Or, as it was about a month ago, a realtor trying to open my bedroom door.
Luckily, I lock the doors at night, otherwise the poor realtor, potential buyers (a high school friend of mine and her mom - seriously, small towns can get so damn awkward), and my boss would have had quite the sight.
The day the realtor woke me up was the same day I submitted a job application in a nervous, hopeful fog. I had applied for this job once before, senior year of college when I still had a full semester of class ahead. I never heard a peep. A lot changed in two years, and I held my breath as I prayed over the process, sure that God's timing was so obvious here.
Three hours later, I had an interview.
The interview ended with them saying I had "an awesome set of skills." They told me the decision would be three days.
Three days later, they told me three more days.
Three days later, the opportunity was gone.
They were very complimentary. Basically, it had come down to me and someone else, and the someone edged me out. If another opportunity came up, they would love to have me.
A nice rejection doesn't make you feel any less rejected.
I sat in the bottom of my closet and cried as I called my SO and my mom. I ate an absurd amount of calories. I bought some vodka. I argued with friends, because sometimes they just don't say the right things and sometimes you just don't care enough to be nice about it. And mostly, I felt crummy and boxed in and just not good enough.
7 days later, everything changed.
I was checking my email during a particularly slow moment at work. The woman who would have been my boss made an appearance. In essence, the someone else had backed out, and they wanted me - was I still interested?
Um, yes.
So now here I sit, filling my last two weeks before moving into The New, The Different, and The Unknown. I spent those seven days resigning myself to staying where I was, to believing that the right thing would come, that there was a reason I wasn't "there" yet. And now it's all changed again. The world is so topsy-turvy sometimes, so hard to reckon with. But I believe those seven days were good for me, if only to serve as a reminder that I need to accept myself and accept that I won't always be the best, the brightest, and the winner.
For the last few weeks, I've been in "get it together" mode. Which, as a recent grad, basically means trying to find a job that I can actually be excited about. And one which, possibly, will mean that I can pay back my student loans AND eat more than Easy Mac for every meal (just kidding, I hate Easy Mac). I should note that there is nothing painfully wrong with my current job; it's just that I'm currently only part time and minimum wage, so I'm feeling the pinch in more ways than one, and this isn't something I can picture building the rest of my life on.
So I'm in the cycle of applying for jobs, and there are a few things I will never understand. Why do I have to fill out a full job history and include a resume? How long do I wait before I assume you laughed reading my materials and threw them in the discard pile? What exactly is the magic formula for filling out the "Salary Requirements"? And why are you not required to give me a reason for saying no?
Yes, I started my Round I'm-Not-Even-Counting-Anymore search with finding my dream job - and I didn't get it. Unfortunately, I discovered this information in the midst of a personal crisis and the day before my next application was due, an application for a very similar, very dream job-esqe position.
So the question isn't really "how do I keep doing the same process over and over" or "how do I make myself more appealing," it's "how do I not lose faith in myself when no one else seems to have it?" I always thought there was a direct line between my dreams and me - work hard, stay honest, study a lot, be rewarded. But somewhere between Summa Cum Laude At My Top Choice School and Everything I Really Want, I got derailed. Maybe it's my fault for chasing a dream that got changed half-way through, or maybe it's just part of the process and all my fellow graduates who seem to have it together are just hanging out in the faux-green grass.
The only thing I know for sure is that I just need one chance. Give me a chance, and you will find that the only thing I know how to give is all.
