Taking Control

Ok so enough thinking, what have I been doing? Well as I said I have been in a convenience guzzling tail-spin lately which is a bit poor. But what I have been doing is whipping my finances into shape. So while I feel like I have been indulging in terrible wicked consumerist ways, I can't have been that bad because I have managed to save a whackload of money. Or reassign it anyway.

So what have I achieved? Firstly I rationalised my bank accounts. I had at least 7 different bank accounts with 3 different banks. Lets not go into how I got myself into such a state. So what did I do? I decided to get rid of the lot and startup with a completely new bank, kiwibank actually, which I chose because of its NZ'ness - whether its just a marketing ploy or not I don't know but it worked on me. Hey, I'm not perfect!

It was quite a process but eventually I got there, and an outcome of it was that I consolidated my two credit cards onto one new low-rate debt consolidation type card with a very low interest rate for 6 months. So I made a plan to pay that off in 6 months.

I didn't get off to a fantastic start as the first hiccup was that I needed a car so that bumped up my debt by $2000 right off the bat as I didn't quite have enough saved. But the best thing I did was to brag to a guy at work that I was going to pay my card off in 6 months. He is an engineer. They always think they are right :) Guess what his answer was? 'Well, statistics show that it will actually take you 2 years to pay it off'. Well, right there and then, I made  a bet. Five bars of chocolate (big kingsize block ones) that I would pay it off in 6 months. This guy is very food motivated. The bet was on - I had till 22 August to pay it off.

I am now very pleased to announce that today, on this 16th day of July, 2010, one engineer who shall remain nameless, owes me a swag-load of chocolate! Oooh it feels soo good to win!!!  :)

I'm not normally particularly competitive, or have gambling inclinations for that matter,  but the particular stupidity of this bet, considering he didn't even know how much I owed, really appealed to me. So I wanted to be damn sure I won, and win I did.

I'm going to make myself soooo sick on that chocolate.