I thought I'd be happier

When I was at the height of my "oh my god I owe THAT MUCH" debt I thought I'd be automatically happier when I was free. Less stressed anyway, it seemed a sure bet. It seems that what I've done is trade one stress for another. I no longer worry about whether I can pay all my bills with my tiny ass paychecks, now I worry about whether I'll be able to retire on my tiny ass 401k allocations. Which is ridiculous because not so long ago it was a lucky thing that I had money to allocate at all, money that didn't have to be thrown at debt to keep all my payments up to date. I'm crossed between deserving a break from financial worry and believing that I don't deserve one after fucking up so badly.

I read a lot of debt blogs where the writers missed payments or had things go to collection and I have to remind myself that I'm lucky that I turned things around before that ever happened to me. Things could be a lot worse for me than only putting 6% to retirement. Two years it took me to slog my way out of debt, two years and a lot of lucky breaks. I feel like I have to make up for it somehow, make up for lost time. The financial anxiety just has moved around but hasn't left and that's really disappointing to me. And, you know, anxious making.

Financial security, in my head, is the image of someone sitting at a big old desk with a leather ledger and a tell-tale cock of the head. I suppose I do that with my spreadsheets but excel just isn't as comforting as you'd think. Mostly I look at it and think "MORE MORE MORE, HAVE TO SAVE MORE!". My next budget venture, the rest of my life budget, should be really awesome. Counting your deposits before they happen awesome, but I think I left myself enough room to enjoy things and save half my paychecks. Save half my paychecks, I can't believe I'm that person and I'm still not calm and happy and all the things that I wanted money to buy. God, how frustrating.