Taking stock

A good friend of mine called me during the week when he was in a jam. "I really need two hundred dollars in a hurry. If you have it extra. I don't want to put you back. I could pay you back on payday in two days."
Normally, no problem. This is one of those friends that I've had for almost thirty years who's more like a brother. Normally I would just give him the money with no expectation of him paying back.
But this time something wierd happened.
I have no idea how much money is in my bank account.
I couldn't tell you within five hundred dollars what my bank balance is.
I am clueless. I may be broke, I may have plenty. I just don't know.
So I told him that I would have to balance my checkbook and see what I have. I'll call you back in a couple of hours and let you know.
So he got back to me a few minutes later and said that he was able to get the money from somewhere else, so nevermind.
Ok, cool.

So I have been in a quandry all weekend.
It turns out that not only do I have no idea how much money I have, I also don't know how much debt I have.

I think it all started back in the college days when we were so poor. At least we would have been poor if we were not broke. Counting pennies for Ramen noodles kind of poor. Stealing toilet paper kind of poor. If you have never been there, let me just assure you that it really sucks.

After college, I started making some pretty good money, praise the Lord. And at that time I pretty much quit balancing the check book. I make enough to cover the bills and the food. I have a good idea of how much I spend compared to how much I make, so I know that there is money in the bank most of the time. If I go over, I have a line of credit with the bank to cover it. It is just not an issue in life at this time. I make money, I spend money, but I almost never think about money.
Money is not one of those things that is important in my life.
I am usually free with my money. It's not unusual for me to bail someone out of a jam or to "loan" money to someone. This year alone I have given away over ten thousand dollars in one form or another.
More than that, actually, because I built someone a ten thousand dollar computer system so that he could go into business for himself. I bought someone a high dollar camera, too.
I'm not trying to brag or anything. But I have been blessed. I think it's precisely because I am so free with my money that I am so blessed. I think you get back what you give out.

But lately I have been blog surfing through some of the blogs that are based on the "save Karyn" website. Where people get into debt over their head and then have to rework their life to get out of debt. It's a hard process.
I must have read through fifty different blogs during the last week, all of them from people who got into more debt than they could handle.
It's easy to dismiss someone like that. It's easy to say, "You made your bed, now sleep in it." But I'm more the type of person to say, "There but for the grace of God go I."
Because these are not bad people. They are not irresponsible (most of them, anyway) and they are not stupid.
It's just that they don't teach personal finance in highschool.
The common thread that I have seen in all of these people's stories is that they were doing just fine all the way up until everything collapsed. Then it's easy to burn through your savings and be not only dead broke, but hard up.
How does it happen?
Debt is insidious. Before you know you have a problem, it's too late.

I don't want that to happen to me. So I think that this is a good time to take stock. I need to balance my checkbook, which I haven't done in almost five years. And I need to figure out how much money I owe and to whom.
After that, it's my intention to start paying everything off. I intend to pay it all off as if I really were in debt trouble and then stay out of debt for good.
It's just not worth it.

So my project for the week is to see where I stand and then make a budget of sorts to get out of debt.

Won't that be fun.