I haven’t been posting here very often but I’m making slow but sure progress. I have $120 in savings — not much, but it’s something. I would have had almost $300 but I had to go to the ER a few weeks back because I cut myself opening a can of cat food. Yeesh! Hadn’t been to the ER in 25 years, and had to go to get one little stitch in my finger because of that. Oh well, if that’s the worst that happens for another 25 years I’ll be doing pretty well.

So, our health plan at work requires that we pay $150 for ER visits. We then turn in the receipt and fill out a form and get all but $35 back. So, it’s not a bad deal in the end but you need to have that money up front, so I’m very glad I had a little in savings, even if it was a small amount. When I get the $115 back (should be soon), I’ll put it back into savings.

I actually had a pretty bad month in January — still dealing with tendonitis in one wrist and something weird going on in my foot (I call it Dammit Foot until we really figure it out), my sciatica acted up and I missed 3.5 days of work, I broke a tooth, then the cat food incident. By the time I had the cat food incident, all I could do was laugh — that is, after I was done cursing for having another injury.

As for my finances, I’m starting to pay $500 a month on my student loan. It’s a lot of money, and it will make the pay-off on the smaller stuff take longer, but I really want to get rid of that thing. I’m sick of having it hang over my head. I still have my Netflix account but have decreased it down to two movies at a time. I know, I know — rent stuff at the library, etc. The thing is, I rent mostly documentaries and Netflix has just about everything you’d want and the library is limited. So, I compromised and reduced the number of movies I get at a time and will pay less each month for the service.

Oh, and I’m back on track with my lattes. Over the summer I’d stop every day on the way in for an iced latte (Barnes and Noble is next door to work) because it helped with the heat. However, I’ve been keeping up the habit and it’s not good for my health nor my wallet. When I drink that every morning, I don’t feel hungry and I don’t eat well and become exhausted and pig out at night — just bad all around. So, now I’m going on Mondays and Fridays and will bring that down to once a week as a treat, or less often that that. It’s not just the lattes, though. The people in the cafe are wonderful and I feel like my morning isn’t complete if I don’t see them, but I’m getting over that.

Instead of drinking the lattes, I’m drinking my black tea every morning. I admit I’m a bit of a tea snob and can’t drink Lipton or “normal” black teas. I tend to buy loose teas and tea sachets in tins. Again, I see it as a compromise — I pay just a little more for a tin of 20 sachets than I did for one latte, and I already have some loose tea and the tools to use the loose tea. I also have herbal and green teas. I figure it’s better to spend a little more money on something I like that to spend less money on tea I don’t like — then I won’t drink it and will go back to the lattes.

The whole thing is a process. I think some people will think that I’m not “gazelle” enough, but I want to live my life and enjoy it while I’m paying down my debt. Otherwise, it will be like my experience with dieting — deprive myself of all sorts of things then binge and be worse off than before. I really don’t want to do that and would rather do things in moderation.