It’s said that no news is good news and if that’s the case I must be doing pretty well. The only newsworthy items I can think to post about are that I’ve finally paid off my car (8 months early at that) and I got the deal of the year on a Blu-ray player over the weekend (thanks to Sears posting it on their website for $149 instead of $249). Other than that, it’s life as usual. Work keeps me pretty busy to the extent that I took a day off and came back to over 50 emails and a dozen voicemail messages. It’s nice to know people find me important but geez!

I haven’t updated the blog in a while. Working for a tax preparation company means that 8 months out of the year I get to work 30-hour weeks but come January 2nd that climbs up to 50-hour weeks. Sometime I come home and don’t even want to watch TV but but when you’re saving money for a trip to the Caribbean you do whatever you can to avoid blowing money at the bar.

Let’s see… my birthday came and went with little fanfare. It was the first year since I turned 21 that I didn’t go out and get totally wasted, though Sara dragged me out to South Beach for Sunday morning mimosas. Christmas was also uneventful and as usual lacking in presents (though I did splurge and get Rachel a green iPod nano). I almost didn’t stay up for the ball drop on New Year’s Eve and just bought my first crackberry to keep up with all the work I’ve been doing. I am officially on track to becoming one of the most boring people on Earth. It’s a far cry from the days when I partied hard and slept more than I worked.

Heath Ledger died yesterday. The Net seems to be in chaos over it. Me, it makes me think about the fact that I’m two years younger than he was and I haven’t got nearly as much to show for those years as he did. Or maybe I do and I’m just too hard on myself. Regardless, for some reason it made me realize that too many people waste parts of their lives doing stupid things or worrying about what other people think. So I went ahead and deleted my MySpace account. I admit I still have a Facebook account (for now) but I’ve decided that the people I want to keep in contact with either have my phone number, my email address or know how to use Google to find my website.

Here’s to two-double-aught-eight being at least as good as last year. Cheers.

In any case, the other really weird thing about living in a condo but not owning it is the odd looks we get from some of our neighbors. Once a month there’s an HOA meeting in the common area between the two condominiums and all the owners are invited (encouraged? coerced?) to attend. All the owners means everyone who lives here, except me and Rachel. It’s strange to hear your neighbors making decisions about where you live without being able to have a say in anything…

Being a contract employee means not getting certain perks (thankfully I have health insurance via Rachel’s work), and alas when you’re in a situation like mine it means taking a pay cut from what you’re used to just to get a paycheck at all. I get a decent wage for what I do, but it’s nowhere near the average household income for this city. If it weren’t for my girlfriend, I couldn’t even afford to pay the rent!

To make matters worse, I recently sat down and analyzed my financial situation. Things are going well save for one major problem: my credit card debt keeps going up and up. I won’t say how far in debt I am suffice to say it’s around the national average. For the longest time I didn’t even know how it’d gotten so high. I know I’ve bought lots of toys for myself, and the higher cost of living in southern California certainly hasn’t helped the balance. But after doing the math I’ve discovered that in the last year alone I’ve been charged over $1000 in interest. If I were to pay only the minimum due on the card every month I figure it would take about 39.7 years to pay off my balance in full; to cut that down to a more reasonable 5 years I would need to not rack up any more charges AND pay an amount equal to that of my monthly car payment. That means I’d need close to a $5000 raise just to meet that mark and maintain my lifestyle.

Now before you start giving me tips on saving money, keep in mind that I already don’t go to the bar or out to dinner unless it’s a special occasion and haven’t even been to the zoo since I moved here because I can’t afford to. I’ve grown accustomed to the cardboard-like taste of microwaveable food, and there’s a whole shelf in the pantry dedicated to Ramen noodles and tuna fish.

I know my situation isn’t any different than that of millions of other Americans, but I wish it weren’t so. I know I need to go back to school and figure out what I want to do with my life, but I hate that my primary motivation for doing so is money. What happened to the days when people worked to pay for the things they want (like a house, a car, or a Hawaiian vacation) rather than the things they need (like food and a roof over your head)?