job, money, and Mom

i got a 3% raise today. this is excellent news. i should be jumping for joy but i'm a little emotionless about it. maybe when i get my first new check it'll hit me.

dont know if ive mentioned it before but my job situation has turned around. as my manager put it "it's like night and day." i dont love finance but for the time being, i've made it my 8itch and have it under control. i've openly expressed to my manager and others that i can do it for another year but would like to explore other opportunities at my company.

dont get me wrong, my eyes still glaze over at times, many times, because what i do is boring, but the challenges keep me alert enough times.

i need to start thinking about what i want to do next professionally, and also how to invest the extra money i'll see in my paycheck. with everything being so unstable nowadays, i think my best best is to just pay off any debt i have sooner. that's an immediate return of whatever the interest rate i was paying on the loan was. (sorry if i lost you. in more concrete terms. if i have a loan with 5% interest, and i pay it off early, i am saving myself the 5% on interest on all the monthly payments i didnt make)

in other financial news, i just had to bail out my mom on rent money. she didnt teach me how to take care of finances. she plays lotto (or last i heard, recently stopped), has a very high and unnecessary(i think) cable bill, and absolutely no savings.

i remember being young and once telling her that playing lotto was a waste of money. i vividly remember getting mad and saying something like 'if you had to spend 200 to win 500, you didn't win anything'. she agreed but i think now she just said that to appease me.

drama ensewed

So it's official. I'm signed up for an Intro to Sewing class...again. This time there will be no mis-communication around the class being "cancelled." And to boot, an old friend of mine is going to be going with me. She's a friend from my 3 years of Junior High School. Last year, after 10 years of not seeing each other, we met up and it turns out we both grew to like some of the same things.

I'm excited. I keep buying small pieces of fabric for future projects. One thing I can't wait to do is make myself a new tote-bag. I just spotted one online that is $72 bucks. Umm, hell no. Take a look. I will be working my way up towards this. I will start first with a small coin purse. Then, an apron. Then The Tote Below.


Wish me luck!