Home from Vacation

Why are vacations always followed by a reckoning? I'm up three hours early, still on Eastern time, and I have to look my finances in the eye.

I can tell you exactly where I went off track. Nordstrom Rack. I had $300 budgeted for the week, I was up to spending $227, then my mom and sister want to go to Nordstrom Rack. Ok, this is how women in my family bond: over deals.

I go, and I have no plan. Having no plan seems like my number one problem, in situations big and small. People with impulse issues need plans. They also need cash instead of charge cards.

I find a pair of earrings I love, as in "Gasp! I love these!" love. I find some other jewelry but settle on just those. Then I find them, the perfect boots: $109. Boots are a pre-approved purchase due to the fact that my Converse and Florida ankle socks are not cutting it in the Seattle cold. I obviously have to get these. The earrings...they're already in-hand. I put back some other things I'd been looking at. Will this be taken out of my spending money or my clothing money? I don't know. I just buy it.

Then I walk pretty much blindly through the rest of my vacation, wondering what all the dinners out are costing me, not tweeting my expenses. I currently have three bank accounts, and I let one get to -$3, then -$54, and now -$98.

I still have rent to pay and my mom said she would transfer $500 out of my account but never did. My boyfriend and I went out super hungry last night and somehow ended up at a place that cost $35 just for my dinner. Plus, oh shit, I turn around and it's the holidays. That means gifts, decorations, parties that are all going to cost money.

So I'm up, early, and I figure: You have to stop it at some point. In order to stop rolling down the hill, snow-balling, you have to stomp down your feet, stand up and look where you are, even if it's farther down the hill than you'd like to be. I'll be working in Excel if anyone needs me.