Seeing that I will be turning 34 on Friday plus the fact that I have been listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio as I drive to work, I have decided that I need to get my "financial act" together. I have wasted a good portion of my life in debt and unless I change my ways, the remainder of my life will be spent in debt as well. If you have read my bio, then you will know that I struggle with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. Over the last few years, my ocd has gotten me into a lot of financial trouble. The ocd cycle will start out with me going on a wild spending spree as soon as I got paid. After I spent my money I would have no money to pay legitimate bills. That lead me to using payday loans. That, in itself, is a big mistake. After a number of times doing this, I find myself in a situation in which I can't easily get a bank account because I am in the chex system. Last year, even though I could have gotten a checking account through Compass Bank, I chose not to. I decided to deposit my paychecks into a a deposit only account (Account Now) so it would discourage me from taking out payday loans. The one good thing about Account Now is that I can't overspend and overdraft my account. When I had a banking account, I found it very difficult to stay in the black. I was always ending up in the red because of the overspending. With my constantly having to pay overdraft charges I never had the money to pay all my bills which lead to payday loans.

As I listen to Dave on the way to work, I find myself wanting to change my life. My life could be better. I could be happier and for the most part worry free. During the last two or three weeks I have decided that I have had enough and that things need to change. So the first thing I decided to do was to save my change I got from every transaction. I have a jar at home in which I save all coins. Maybe if I start out small, then maybe I can gradually build myself up to bigger things such as saving dollar bills along with the coins. Right now, I have quite a few bills that I must tackle and don't exactly feel comfortable in saving the dollar bills yet.