Monthly Finance Post (with emotional state info, as a preface, too)

Yesterday something, which I cannot remotely explain, happened.

I checked on the status of money and was left with a profound feeling of deep and inescapable sadness.  Like, depression deep.  (Though not Major Depressive Episode[tm] deep.)

Now, to be clear, it's not that my finances are so good they should be making me happy.  I said last month that it would take ten thousand dollars, more or less,to get me free of the mess I'm perpetually in and it is most definitely not the case that I got that.  But you all, and Ana, and Ana's twitter following have done more than I thought possible.

Thus, when taken in context, things are better than I believed they could be.  Things shouldn't be making me sad because the are indicative of massive improvement.  They're better than they have any right to be.  I've filled my heating oil.  I'm settled with my mother/landord (for the moment) all of my bills are paid through the end of the month, everything is rosy and golden and shit.

Now, profound feelings of deep and inexplicable sadness are sort of par for the course.  Many times they hit out of nowhere with no source or no apparent source.  (Just one of the joys of being me.)  But this had a clear cause.  I checked on money, I got inordinately sad.

The only thing I can think of is that I really thought I was going to fully pay off a debt that I'm not able to.  I did some math wrong.  I had all of the figures and everything necessary to get the right answer, but I must have left one of those figures out of the calculations.  And, yeah, I was totally excited when I fucked that up and therefore thought I could pay the debt in question off completely, but I really don't feel like the loss of that false hope should have laid me so very low.

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So, where things stand:

As I said, everything paid through the end of the month.  (I think.)

The next major non-monthly is $635.40 due on May 10th.  When the time comes I'll probably be unprepared because paying down high interest debt is generally more useful than the peace of mind that comes from knowing I'll be able to cover a bill two months from now.

(Of course, being asked, for two months straight, whether or not I'll be able to pay it when the time comes is really stressful.)

The ballpark for what it would take to put all of this behind me has dropped to closer to seven and a half thousand (like I said, I got more help than I imagined possible. thought realistically possible.)

If I include the student loan, my total debt is currently $12,431.21

A bit over one thousand of that is not currently gathering any interest at all and I have about a year to pay it off before interest is retroactively applied.