If you could go back in time and talk to yourself 10 years ago, what would you say?

Dear Steph in 1999,

I’m from the future and you better listen to me because I’m you. You’re fourteen years old and you better stop thinking you know everything because you truly don’t.

1. Be nice to Mom & Dad… they’re only looking after you and trust me on this – if they trust you then they’ll let you do things. Tell them you appreciate them every once a while.

2. Don’t focus on wanting to be older, enjoy your life right now with your friends before you’re old and playing bills.

3. When you turn 16 and get a job, SAVE money. You’ll thank me/yourself later. Also when you’re in college, don’t use your credit card if you can’t pay it off at the end of the month.

4. Stop thinking about boys too much, you’ll meet the right one soon and his name starts with a T… don’t give him a hard time and start dating him right away before you move. Prepare yourself for a long distance relationship.

5. Help Mom & Dad cook and learn from them, otherwise you’ll be making your husband cook most of the time.

6. After playing sports in high school, keep exercising when you get into college because if you don’t – you’re going to be fat! You’re not fat now at 14, you only think that because you’re tall compared to all of your girlfriends.

7. I’ll save you decisions on going to college and tell you that you’ll be going to RIT in New York and it’ll be tough being far away from your family, but it’ll be worth it in the end. You’ll make lifelong friends there who will be in your wedding. You’ll become a sorority girl!

8. Don’t dye your hair yourself – you have beautiful thick hair now. You don’t want to mess up with your hair! Go every other month and get your hair done.

9. Tell Mom to quit buying beanie babies, they’re not worth any money now in 2009.

10. Smile… because it’s contagious! Enjoy life since time will go by so quickly.

Love, Steph in 2009

I think the best gift anyone could get is to be debt-free… at least it would be for me! Don’t get me wrong… Tyler and I aren’t struggling financially but we really want to get out of debt now before we’re stuck with it for too long.

I find paying bills kind of fun actually… it’s not dreadful as I always thought it was when I was growing up seeing my mom pay bills.

I have to start paying for my college loan soon so tonight Tyler and I sat down and calculated how much money we’re in debt and created a budget to follow to actually save money every month. We want to start saving money to put in our emergency fund and torwards our retirement savings.

I absolutely love this website, The Nest, where I can go to look for ideas and to receive tips! We used their Budgeter tool to figure out how much we’d be saving.

Saving money begins now!

Keep Calm and Carry On

Today I really needed this hung in my cubicle. There was an awards luncheon for our company scheduled for today and I had declined to go because there wasn’t going to be an interpreter provided for me. At the beginning when I started working there, my boss informed me that she’d get me an interpreter for meetings I’d be required to go and so far there has been none. Today I did not want to go to the luncheon and sit there pretending to understand everything that was being said and pretending to laugh when everyone laughs. It turns out G came over to question my intentions of going to the luncheon with K. I was furious because K is not me, and if G wants to know why I’m not attending then she can directly ask me! When I got back from lunch G gave off an attitude when I said Hi to her.

They’re breaking the rules with the ADA law of not providing an interpreter for me. I wanted to approach G about this but I decided not to and to keep calm and carry on.

With the economy so bad right now, I’m just grateful that I have a job and I’m not going to quit but in the next few months I’m going to keep my options open and see what other jobs there are out there and if they have anything better to offer.