Debt Reduction 101

Tuesday was a strange day for the “latte factor” because of a few purchases – both expected and unexpected.

First – Future Husband and I are getting married in April. And according to the to-do list I made a few months ago, the Save The Date postcards I had made should have been sent out on Oct. 15. “Final” guest lists have been sent to our moms, labels are on approximately half of the postcards, but they are still in my office waiting to be sent. So I spent $62 on postage today – $54 of that was for the postcards. But hey – that’s much cheaper than what postage for our wedding invitations will be.

Second – I got a random email from a college acquaintance of mine. I adored Nate to no end when we were in various classes together and any time I hear from him is a good day. Unfortunately, Nate’s email contained more bad news than good. A classmate of ours from college was recently diagnosed with a tumor and part of her treatment was to have her right leg and hip amputated. Although there have been a couple benefits held to help her with medical expenses, she’s 28 years old, unmarried and is still struggling financially. A recent expense check from work has come in and I have money “hidden” for situations such as this, so with nary a thought (I’ll be honest – this person was a nursing major, I was in English – our paths never crossed.) I donated $20 toward the fund this woman and her family have set up for her care.

I’d like to tie this all up into a neat little package and leave you with some sort of snappy sentiment, but I really don’t have anything right now. I’m happy that there are people out there like my friend Nate who just unabashedly go into their email inboxes and send this sort of message out to their networks. And although I chose to give monetarily, Nate said it best when he pointed out that he knows there are many of us with tightened belts out there and that even if all we could do was keep this woman and her family in our thoughts and prayers – that was enough.

So here’s the rest of the latte factor.

$62.40 – postage (Note: FH told me he’d kick in half … that money will probably be used towards gasoline/groceries this week.)
$6.84 – LUNCH! (My dastardly spending habits know no bounds.)
$3.00 – library fine
$1.65 – the day was stressful – I turned to regular Coca-Cola and Famous Amos Cookies to get throught the afternoon without cracking under pressure.
$20 – Donation

Total: $93.89