I Enjoy Paying My Bills

Do you want to know one of my quirky little secrets?  I actually enjoy paying my bills.  I am the only person I know who really loves the chore of paying bills.  It may simply be the accountant in me that enjoys the rhythmic process of ripping open bills, writing the checks (yes by hand!), and logging them into my register.  However, I also have a theory that my love of bill paying has to do with my financial stability.  I am never worried about having enough money to pay my bills.  Surprise expenses can get me down sometimes, but they do not put me in a panic.  I enjoy getting to see just how much is going into savings this week and where that puts my total savings balance.  Please do not misunderstand me, I am not rich and I never have been.  But I am financially independent, and I do not live paycheck to paycheck.

While paying bills may never be your favorite chore, I firmly believe everyone can get to a point of stability where it is not so scary.  The first step to learning to enjoy paying your bills is simple:  know what your money is doing.  I have read numerous financial articles full of great advice.  It is beneficial to save for retirement, build an emergency fund, set budgets, pay down debt, cut expenses, make money on side projects, etc.  However, the problem I see most of my friends and family struggle with is much more basic than the advice in these articles.  It seems like no one knows where their money is going and whether they are spending more than they make.  Before someone can put all that great financial advice into practice, they need to assess the current situation.

So how do I know where all my money is going?  First, I figure out how much money I make in a month.  This is easy since I am salaried and so is my husband.  I know exactly how much is going to show up twice a month for my paycheck and every other week for his.  Next, I list every single thing we spend money on in the month, regardless if I pay with cash or credit, and then I categorize it.  There are numerous websites out there that will help people do this, but I rely on basic Excel.  In my Expenses spreadsheet, I have made a tab for each month of the year and a totals tab that combines all the others.  Each tab is separated into columns like House Payment, Electric, Insurance, Groceries, Dining Out, Medical, School, Household, Entertainment, Charity, etc.  At the end of each month, I subtract my expenses from my income and see if the number is positive.  It almost always is, but when it is not I know that either a) I had a large one-time expenditure which came out of savings or b) I was too extravagant during the month.

When I become too extravagant, then I know I need to reign in my spending in future months.  I use the categories to see where all my money went in a month and figure out where I can cut back in the future.  Some expenses are inflexible (I cannot change my mortgage without a costly and time-consuming refinancing), but many are easy to manipulate.  My biggest weakness is dining out.  So when I start getting out of control in this category, I either plan more meals at home or I switch to less expensive options (Fosters Grille instead of Texas Road House).   I also look at trends over time to see if there are any patterns that I need to plan for in the future.  For example, I save money all year for Christmas so I do not have to come up with several hundred dollars in December to buy presents.

I know that making money changes is hard work.  It took me several years to get to the point where paying bills is no longer a worry.  It was really important to me to get there though, because I never wanted to recreate the instability I saw my parents struggle with my entire life.  When it seems like my financial goals are out of reach, I remind myself how much better off I am than they are and how much better off I am than I used to be.  I also remember that no matter how difficult something seems now, I can make big changes given enough time and effort.

I am off to pay my bills.  See you next week!

The First Blog Post – Anxiety Attack

What in the world do you write about for your first blog post?  I know that technically this is my third post, but I used the first two in more introductory ways.  The first was my statement of intent for the blog.  My second was some background information on myself.  Now I need an actual topic.  I have so many ideas in my head, but somehow none of them seem quite right.  I keep rejecting everything for fear that it is not good enough for people to want to read.  So I decided to deal with the situation by writing about the cause of my hesitation.

I mentioned in my last post that one of the things I dislike the most about myself is my anxiety.  It is something that I have always suffered from, although the strength and focus of it has varied over time.  As a child, I was fairly shy, hesitant about new situations and new people in my life.  During high school, this escalated into full-blown social anxiety.  I would panic over the thought of interacting with anyone outside of my immediate family, even people I had known forever.  I would play expected interactions over and over again in my head, trying to cover every possible turn of the conversation.  The idea that I would not know how to respond to something someone said though was enough to keep me from participating in most conversations.  I would even take zeroes on assignments (me, a perfectionist honors student) rather than ask for clarification from the teachers if I did not understand something.  The social anxiety also manifested as kind of claustrophobia where I could not be in crowds of people without having panic attacks.

As an adult, the social aspect of my anxiety is still there but it has lessened considerably.  I still can get uncomfortable meeting new people, but usually can make it through with no major issues.  I have very little anxiety in crowds provided there is enough room for me to move freely among the people.  I have no concern over interacting with most people I know even moderately well.  Now my anxiety is found in my perfectionism and my unwillingness to put myself in strange situations.  I have always wanted to write, but I worry that I cannot produce material that is good enough.  I really want to travel the world, but I get anxious about making the arrangements, getting around unfamiliar locations, and dealing with the language barrier in foreign countries.  I want to work out, but I worry about looking stupid if I go to a gym or fitting in if I try a studio class.  I want to make more of an impact at work, but I think that I cannot handle any more responsibility and that I am not a very good manager as it is.  I would be interested in trying new hobbies or activities, but I fear ridicule from others over the interest in something unusual for me.  Because of all the worries about new situations, I have a tendency to just not start doing anything.

So when it comes to this blog, my instinct was to quit before I had even started.  I had my first two blogs planned out before I ever created the site on Blogger.  Thus, the first two weeks were easy.  However, the third week has been a struggle.  Since I decided to keep my blog open to write about whatever, I gave myself an enormous amount of options for my entries.  This is when the anxiety took over and threatened to freeze me up.  I did not want to choose a topic that would be inflammatory (such as a political or religious topic).  I feared that if I choose a beauty topic, I would be setting myself up as too girly.  If I chose a financial topic, I would be too boring.  If I wrote about something I want to learn more about, I would come across as stupid.  If I tried for social commentary, witty observation, or an artistic creation, then maybe I would come across flat instead of entertaining.  After thinking about and rejecting many, many ideas, I decided that I should just start with myself and how hard something like this blog really is for me.  So instead of letting my anxiety keep from continuing with this blog, I used it to get past this first (third) blog hump.  If I want to be a writer, then I have to write something and I have to keep doing it again and again.

As the weeks go by, the topics will hopefully vary as I intend.  Some of them may not please every reader (and maybe not even please myself 100%), but at least each week I will have beaten the fear and have written one more time.  See you next week!

Who Is Ella J Cee?

So today, I thought I would provide a little introduction to myself.  It would be impossible to describe everything in one post, but here are some of the many ways I define myself.  Hopefully, this will provide some background to who I am and where I am in my life so you better understand the topics I cover in my blog.

Who is Ella J Cee on a personal level?  I am thirty-three years old.  I grew up a bit north of Pittsburgh, PA, but I have lived in the Washington DC metro area for the past ten years.  This, of course, makes me a Penguins and a Steelers fan, though I do not follow sports with any dedication.  Aside from writing, I love to read, to take walks, and to visit museums and art galleries.  I wish I was more creative than I am.  I have a great imagination and some skill with words, but sadly little talent on the visual or musical sides.  I recently have become more interested in my appearance which has led to an addiction to beauty blogs on YouTube.  Summer and early fall are my favorite times of year because I love the warm weather, all the picnics, and area festivals that come with it.  I dislike snow which was a big factor in my decision to move south of PA, and I hope someday to go even further.  The thing I like the least about myself is my anxiety which can often keep me from pursuing personal and professional goals.

So who is Ella J Cee on a family level?  I am the older of two girls.  My sister is three years younger than me.  We did not get along very well growing up, but we are great friends as adults.  Both my parents are living and in reasonably good health.  I have always been a Daddy’s girl.  My relationship with my mother is rockier, though improved with age and distance.  My mother’s side of the family loves to get together, and therefore I am much closer to them than my father’s.  Most of my family (including my parents and my sister) still reside in the Pittsburgh area.  I miss them, especially around holidays.  I have been married to my husband for almost two years.  Our relationship is mostly good, but there are some moments when I wish I was just not married to anyone.  I am the stepmother to a six year old boy, who is adorable one moment and drives me crazy the next.  The relationship with his bio-mother is civil but not particularly friendly, and I am grateful for that.  I have no children of my own, but we are currently trying for one (I hope it is a girl).

And finally who is Ella J Cee on a professional level?  I am an accountant.  I have my Bachelor of Arts in Accounting from a small liberal arts college in PA.  I have my Master of Business Administration with a General Business concentration from a public university in VA.  I have spent my entire career in the accounting field.  I did a year and a half in a public accounting firm, focusing on small business financial statements and tax returns.  Then, I moved to general ledger accounting and financial reporting in the corporate sector.  I recently was promoted to a supervisor position, and I am not sure I am transitioning very well.  I often find myself very unhappy with my position and my company.  I think a change is needed, but I question whether I want to switch positions, companies, or careers.  My next logical step in the accounting field would be to get a Certified Public Accountant license.  I am also considering future application to a PhD program and transitioning to the academic side.  And yet, there are times when I think maybe I should not be an accountant at all.

So there is a bit of randomness about myself.  I hope to get to know you better as we go.  See you next week!

Welcome to My Blog!

Hello everybody, my name is Ella J. Cee.

This is my first attempt at any kind of online writing.  Therefore, I ask your patience as I learn how to use this website and as I find my online voice.  As a first posting, I want to give some background on why I wanted to start blogging.

The first reason is that I want to be a writer.  I have always loved to write, and I thought that this would just be a part of who I was.  Somewhere along the way though, I lost the time and motivation to do it.  In high school and college, I wrote a number of short stories and small novels, but as an adult I let other work and personal obligations push it to the side.  I have recently realized that I have not written anything that was my own in years.  So this blog is my first step in writing more.  I hope that by giving myself a weekly obligation, it will help to build up the habit of using my free time to write instead of watching TV or surfing the internet.  Plus, this will give me the practice I need to become a better writer.

The second reason is to use this space as a way to explore myself and the life that I have created.  There are times when I have no idea how I got to where I am, if this is really what I want from my life, if there are any changes I should make, and how I should go about making those changes.  So this is a way to help myself work through all these ideas.  While I do not intend this blog to be solely journal-like (I have one of those already), it may from time to time take on an introspective quality.  At other times, I may use it to process and question outside events that are affecting my life.  In the end, I hope to have a better idea of who I really am.

The final reason is to provide interesting material for others to read.  The whole point of publishing online instead writing more in my personal journal is to have other people read it.  Hopefully, I will gain readers along the way that will find what I am offering worth the time spent reading it.  This blog will be very wide in its focus, covering a variety of topics at different levels of depth.  I would consider myself a fairly average person with no real expertise or passion on which to focus a blog.  Although I appreciate those that do focus narrowly on a topic to provide in-depth information when I need it, I also have the desire to read people who seem just average like me.  And so, I plan to jump around discussing a little bit of everything that touches my life.  In this way, I hope to offer readers some information, some entertainment, and hopefully a sense that there are people out them who are just like them.

There it is…my first blog post.   See you next week!