Some place to start, The beginning is good!

Well, here it is, I'm starting this blog to help myself through a tough time, and hopefully it can help some others too. This is a hard time for a lot of people. I will tell you how I'm doing my best to save money, show my progress, my failures and hopefully reach a goal or many goals over the time I write this. So here we go.

I'm 33 I currently live with just pets, I have an OK job, I work long crappy hours, weekends and holidays, I generally work 6 days a week, sometimes more, and sometimes less. I could make a lot more, and I could be making a whole heck of a lot less. before you go on about well if you don't like it change jobs. I have tried, still looking, If you want to hand me a job with nights, weekends and holidays off with great pay by all means! Untill then, I do what I have to make ends meet.

I have never been well to do, and have always tried to be careful with my money, I don't have the savings to live off of if something happened which is probably why I am where I am today. Mind you its not a bad place. It can be terribly stressful and depressing at times, but it could be far worse. And I'm thankful for what I have. the problem started a little over two years ago. I got very sick, spent 6 weeks in the hospital, and another two months at home recovering.  Like I said, I did not have savings in the bank more than a small amount, and I was in between insurance companies having dropped due to crazy rate hikes. that's when it always happens though. My medical bills were over $250k. Some of the bills went into collections before I could even return to work.

There are programs set up based on what you make to help with payments, and even to absorb a good percentage of the medical costs, even with settling on some bills ( put them on credit BAD MOVE but you live and learn) I currently owe more than a new car.. and it will take many years to pay it off. I was not prepared to have to put a whole new *car* payment into my life. Unfortunately credit was all I had to live on while recovering, my family helped out as they could, but my parents are retired unless I was giving up at that point and moving home they did what they could.

So tighten my belt, don't go out much if ever. Don't eat out, don't spend money on anything you really don't need. Still not enough, You see all those coupon shows on TV there has to be some truth to it. And there is, and slowly I have been learning how to do it. Hoping to one day achieve 90% or higher in savings, I can then also hope to pay off debts faster and one day have a debt free life and a large weight off my shoulders. In  posts to come I will explain how I have started to save. thanks for reading!