The Truth Will Set You Free

I think one of the most difficult things to do in life is to be honest with ourselves. It's easy to be honest with others, about things, in life - but with ourselves? All too often we tell ourselves things that aren't true. Small things. Big things. Things that change the way we see ourselves or even live our life.

In the past couple weeks I have been trying to do better on being honest  with myself, but it has meant a certain amount of pain. It has meant that things I have took at face value for so many years are suddenly not what I thought they were. It has meant that I have had to take a deep breath and seriously look at myself and decide if I really want to be the type of person I am - not who I thought I was.

This past week I had an incredibly humbling moment. I say humbling, but at the time it felt more humiliating than anything else. For the past few years I have made choices in my life that have resulted in a lifestyle that would just let me get by financially. Whether it was the job I chose, the apartment I wanted to rent, the groceries I spent my money on, the school I went do, the countries I travelled to - whatever it was, financially I have just gotten by. And in a lot of ways, that's okay - it's pretty great really.

Lately I have had to take a hard look at myself and realize that though money is something I don't much care for, all that I want to do in my life costs money - money I don't have. A while ago I had to be honest with myself and admit that I have a problem with credit cards -- it's not that they don't agree with me, it's that they agree too much. Over the past years I have managed to whittle away at my debt until I am officially now at a point that I no longer have credit cards (yay me).

But I am yet to be debt free. There's still money I owe for student loans and money I owe family. That's not where I had to be honest with myself this week. Having no job has thrown me face-to-face with the reality that I have never actually kept to any budget in my life. EVER. It seems ridiculous to me that that is a fact in my life now that I have admitted it to myself, but it's the truth. And having no job just made it that much more apparent. There was no safety net of knowing when my next paycheck would come in - no smokescreen to hide how I handled the money I did have. And the reality was that I hadn't a clue where my money went.

The past couple of months I have been religiously writing down everything I spend in a budget journal - right to the last penny. I've been that annoying person at the corner store asking the clerk to print me a receipt when there's a line of 10 people behind me. I've been the person that has an envelope of receipts and actually schedules time each week to go over my budget and every month I plan the next budget. It's been excruciatingly painful at times to walk away from purchases I normally wouldn't have taken a second thought at buying. It's been hard to focus my grocery budget on the cash I have in my hand rather than the fabulous meal I have been drooling about making for the past week. It's been difficult, but I've started to get the hang of it. But that's not what I had to be honest about with myself this week.

This week the moment came when a cheque from Canada didn't get processed like I thought it would this week. And I was stuck. This money was exactly the amount I needed to get me through to when I do actually get paid from my new job and now it wasn't coming. It could take up to a month for them to process it as it is an international cheque. I didn't have a month. I had barely a week to come up with the money needed for rent. And I had nothing.

And so I had to ask my family for temporary help - and though I know it was temporary until the cheque cleared, it was one of the most humbling and humiliating experiences of my life. It wasn't the asking that was difficult, it was the response I got. It was the realization that my financial and lifestyle choices over the years had left an imprint on my family's mind of the type of person I was. The type of person with financial problems. They type of person that might not be able to pay back the money borrowed. The type of person that had no safety net. It was the realization that my financial support was not just going to come from my mom, but also from my Grandma who is retired and my sister who is three years younger than I am.

THAT's when I had to get honest with myself this week. Yes, the money borrowed from my family was a temporary loan to help me while I wait for this cheque to clear, but the bigger picture is the reality that I knew from the depths of my soul that I never wanted to be thought of as "that person" ever again.

It would be easy to lie to myself and gloss over the situation I am in to say that I have a job and it's just a matter of being paid. It would be easy to say that my budget situation is getting better and that I shouldn't worry. It would be so easy to just brush off my current loan and say it's "only temporary," but the reality of it all is that this is just the last thing that has happened in a string of support from people in my life to help me "get by." And I no longer want to be that person. I never really realized I was that person - but I don't want any part of it. I no loner want to be just "getting by." I want to feel secure with where I am financially. I want to actually be reaching my financial goals and living my life based off of my priorities - not what happens to be on sale in the next store window.