Alright, I am getting back into the blogging world once again! Right in the midst of my finals at that - two weeks left until the end of my first trimester of college, and a little more than a month left until 2008 is over.

This has been a trying year for me, and I’ve come into a lot of new things.

One of the main things is frugality. And for those who don’t know:

Frugality is the practice of

1. acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and
2. resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal

There have been moments in the past three months where I thought I was not going to be able to pay my bills and the consequences I would face, not just at that moment, but in the future. I feared for my future credit (yes, I have a credit card close to the limit), that I had usually always paid weeks in advance, my future ability for people to believe that I would pay on time (my landlord), and just being without.

I had two/three different jobs in the past two months because they did not pay well enough, and I have to be all about the money right now or they completely went against my own natural beliefs and morals. I took up two different jobs in telemarketing, one with a good home improvement company, and one with a third party charity organization, and the third job was a brief two day stint at a marketing company. The home improvement job was okay, but the expectations of trying to sell windows with our economy was high, and they were trying to break out of their word-of-mouth sales (but why in the WORLD would anyone start with telemarketing is beyond me). I quit that after a week once the boss and I had a nice chit-chat, it was all on good terms though.

The marketing job was actually second and that involved traveling out of my way to this job in one of the corporate forests. It was, in reality, only five miles away from Providence, but the bus that would drop me off in front of it only ran during bank hours and the closest bus to drop me off over there was a two mile walk. The day in question had been one of the worst and I was two hours late for the interview because of issues with my group for a project I had in one of my courses and I had a previous interview that day (in which I was an hour late for that) for the charity telemarketing job. I walked two miles to the marketing job and ended up getting lost and having to back track a half a mile and walk the last mile to the job. It turned out to be good, I got accepted for a second interview, but I was stranded in a strange area with no energy to walk to the needed two miles back to the bus, and I wasted $17 for a cab back into downtown. The cabbie was nice and had a thick English accent which reminded me of a special someone.

The second interview consisted of a full-day training session, and I can honestly say I loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed myself with the people, the environment, the selling - I loved it, but… an intern who worked there, in which it was her last day that day, let me that the pay was horrible. Actually, there was no pay! You were paid only on commission in which for every $10 you sold, you might get $3.50. Now everyone knows the people raising money for breast cancer, kid funds, etc. outside of grocery stores? Well that’s what I was doing. When you see people out there, most are not volunteering, it’s a job. I honestly needed the money to make my rent and other smaller bills and I was required to be on my feet for 8 hours (clearly outlined in the employee guide book) with NO base pay. =/

Now… the charity job is the most recent. I actually just left that job on Monday of last week. Initially, I was not going to get hired because I expressed previous dislike of telemarketing, BUT I had found their ad on Craigslist and they said OFFICE WORK/WORKING THE PHONE, and the explanation on the Craigslist ad said “answering phones,” not phone sales. Even when I called about the job, it was NOT explained to me until at the interview. Anyway, the guy claimed I had a good voice. I tried it out, I liked the fact I was actually doing fundraising work for a school in Massachusetts, but I hated the fact that everyone else lied to these people and the shady way the business handled things. I have passive-aggressive tendencies at times and just to spite them, whenever the people asked questions about myself (we were not suppose to have chit-chat with them) I would answer and explain who I was to them. I often spent 20 minutes at a time on the phone with one person, and it helped me cope with the fact that they were trusting enough to give me money over the phone and I could have been a scammer.

I was given an ultimatum by the boss because I was not pulling in $200 a night in donations, myself and another worker were compared to two girls who had been there for three years (wow), and who did not bring in any new sales! They were only calling people they had called in previous years. Unfair.

I only made $130 on Monday night and I was going to leave my resignation with one of the other supervisors, but I had questions on my check and I was going to come in early the next day. I ended up getting a BS, drawn out call from the boss who had given me an ultimatum - attempting to tell me I was fired, yet I had initially already quit. Jerk, he KNEW I was leaving because I told him that when he gave me the ultimatum.

During all this time, I watched my money levels dribble away into nothing, and I had to bug and borrow off of my mother in some instances in which she was unable to do much.

I sat down one day and drew up my entire expenses and my incoming cash, and I was defiantly doing some deficit spending. I cut out going to Dunkin’ Donuts - no more morning coffee or breakfast sandwiches. I switched to 7-Eleven which was a cheaper alternative, but it came to a point that I could not even afford a $1.20 coffee and had to cut that out. I cut out all breakfast eating together because I could not drain my food sources at home, and I had a limited amount of commuter meals left on my school ID.

More and more expenses were cut, things I could live without, and things I could wiggled around and keep. Massive headaches and sickness followed even though I pride myself to take things in stride, but life was piling up against me, and I felt I was drowning with no life guard in sight. I turned to the internet on in sight how to make things easier for me, what more could I cut out of my life, and how could I bring in more income. I found hundreds of inspirational blogs on finances and other people’s lives.

Things began looking up in on Election Day (OBAMA!), and after I voted I met a new friend and we went out to the mall together. We were initially there for Ben & Jerry’s Free Ice Cream Day and ended up stopping by Victoria’s Secret in which I saw they were hiring! I filled out an application and an interview was set for me the next day. I went, prepared and all, and I waited on pins and needles as I assessed what I thought was going to be my last check before I got a call back (to make it official, the supervisor had already hinted I had the job) today and I officially start working tomorrow. ^^

Life seems brighter and I think I found a chunk of wood to hold onto while I float amongst this sea.