One of the things I’ve been going through lately is some stress over finances. It’s a regular thing for me, and I will admit that part of going back to school was to put myself into a better financial position when I’m done (no, it’s not the ONLY reason or even the biggest reason I’m in Nursing School).  But, at the moment a point of stress is that I’m living on debt.  Knowing that I’ll have loans when I’m done that I’ll have to pay back.  It scares me a bit about how long it will take to pay it back, even if I am paying it back as quickly as possible.
To take control I’m thinking about how I manage my bills and finances.  I’ve used  a spreadsheet for the last few years but it takes much too long for me to input the receipts and transactions so for the last 6 months I haven’t really had a picture of where my finances are at. That has been stressful, but not having time to manage them hasn’t helped.  So I’m testing out some software for my Mac to make that easier.  It will mean spending some money to buy the software, so I’m taking time to really compare the programs to make sure I’ll use the programs.  It’s nice knowing where things go.  But, the software testing will be a post that I’ll publish later, once I’m done testing and have made my decision.
Unfortunately, it means I HAVE to keep working, and have to figure out how to trim some discretionary spending.  But that will come in a later post, particularly once I’ve been able to better track my finances.
Today I did have one success, I called the cable company to talk about my cable bill, and was ready to cancel. They couldn’t give me the student deal that was available last fall, but they did tell me they’d cut my cable bill for 6 months by close to 50%.  Plus they’re giving me faster internet for 6 months for free. I’ve put it in my calendar to cancel the faster internet after the 6 months and hopefully by then there will be a student deal available. But at least it means I have better prices. If over the next 3 months I don’t watch TV I’ll cancel cable entirely simply due to the lack of use.