Tough Economic Times

So today on the car ride in, NPR was doing yet another story on the hard these economic times and I started thinking to myself, “has my life really been affected by the economy?” Honestly, the answer is “no.”

Let me qualify this by saying that yes I do have friends who have lost their jobs and I know that they may have a different take on things, but for me personally, the answer is still “no.” I have a job, and for the foreseeable future, this will not change. Because I have a job I have been able to pay my bills. In fact I recently just paid my car loan off and have a little bit of extra money that is now going straight towards my student loans and credit card payments. I haven’t seen a huge increase in any of my bills, which is something that I was worried would happen. All in all, my life seems pretty unchanged because of the economy. Which makes me think “why do I make myself feel so guilty about every little thing I buy myself?”

It is my money right? I should be able to spend it how I want and as long as I am not too frivolous with it, who cares how I spend it. In fact, supporting local business is probably one of the better things I can do with my money. But every weekend I find myself afraid to spend too much money because of some impending economic doom that is going to happen where I will lose everything.

Money causes so much anxiety in our society. Looking back at some of my old blog posts, so many of them are me worrying about money. Why? I am doing pretty well for myself. Sure there is more I want to do, but I think everyone has that feeling. I am doing better than about 90% of the rest of world (stat totally made up). Andy and I are going to meet with our bank next month to see if buying a house is in our future. Hell, I am going to Europe at the end of the summer!

So from this day forward, I am going to stop talking about the hard economic times. I am going to stop feeding the culture of fear that surrounds money. Take that!