Budgets, Vice and Sacrifice: Putting My Addiction to Rest

"Greg, you've been in bed for over 24 hours now... you okay man?"

I need help, but I can't let anyone see how bad it's gotten. Never let them see you bleed.

"I'm fine."

Now please get out of here before I start vomiting again.

It was 2009. I had wrecked my car the night before. The girl I was interested in stopped talking to me after I wrote six essays for her. In an effort to get past the pain, that night I had chugged 11 Red Bulls while hopped up on prescription amphetamines. 

Bad idea.

I had no idea what time it was. My sheets were damp with sweat. I felt like I hadn't slept in days.

I could feel my heart beating irregularly. I could feel it in my head. Weird.

I'm having heart palpitations... am I going to die?

I looked over at the shelf next to me: a half dozen empty bottles of Ambien, my handgun, and my temple recommend. It had expired months ago. I started panicking.

Not like this. It can't end like this. Heavenly Father, please don't let it end like this.

Then I started puking again.

---

Not my proudest moment. Or my smartest.

Looking back, drinking that many Red Bulls was probably the second most idiotic thing I've ever done in my life.

The most idiotic?

Buying another Red Bull the next day.

In my defense, $1.89 seemed like a pretty
good deal for a can of poison.

Why did I even start drinking these in the first place?

It wasn't about the taste or the energy, really.

It was about standing out in a sleepy Mormon town. Like smoking, it was about promoting a devil-may-care image that wasn't really my own. It was about getting attention.

I got attention alright, mostly because I looked like an anemic crackhead.

Me, circa 2009.
Greasy, sick, and rocking some hideous chops.
#addict

What's this got to do with debt?

Well, the first time I suspected that my spending was out of control was when my coworker estimated that I was spending around $2,700 a year on energy drinks. This was when I was making around $23,000 per year. That seemed like an awful big chunk of my income; I did the math.

$2,700 / $23,000 = .117 = WTF?

I was spending more than 10% of my gross annual income on energy drinks.

Now I'm no mathematician, but I think in this case we can apply the Vandagriff theorem of harsh reality to simplify the whole expression to I have a problem.

And I was taking out student loans to finance it.

Of course, I would have realized this much sooner if I had budgeted. But I kept telling myself I "didn't have time" for budgets! After all, my schedule was booked with work, school, and horrifying Red Bull comas.

As the years went by, I kept putting off the budget. I kept telling myself that it didn't matter since my income kept going up and VISA had my back.

I figured budgets were for poor people and penny-pinching losers who didn't have cards with $20,000 credit limits like mine.

Such arrogance. Such hubris. Is it any wonder that these internal attitudes would eventually spill over into my words, actions, and behaviors? How else can you possibly explain why I spent $80 on this abominable garment:

Fact #1: You can't buy good taste
Fact #2: 95% of the guys wearing flashy T-shirts like this one are living beyond their means

Whenever I started to get nervous about budgeting, I got another raise and the worries got pushed to the back of my head.

Things are going good, I would say, I have plenty of money and I seem to be doing okay. I had spent so much time living the lie that I started to believe it myself. I put prophetic counsel to the side and put my ego first. My philosophy was best summed up as:

My credit card and my gut instincts are my budget, why overcomplicate things? I can control my spending as needed without writing it down.

I bet when American Express heard that, they were like:

If I had an "unexpected" expense, like $300 on textbooks, the credit card was my "safety net". I would just pay it off next paycheck when I had more money. Spread the cost over several months, you know?

But sometimes I didn't end up paying it off then, either. Maybe I had a hot date that called for some new overpriced jeans, or another "unforeseeable" expense. I would look at my checking account and my card balance, do some fuzzy math in my head for three seconds before saying "Yeah, I can probably afford it!"

After all, you can't get married without designer denim, and I wouldn't want to screw up my chances of getting married to an amazing girl over a stupid budgetary issue. This is an investment in my future happiness! I can't afford not to get the $300 jeans! I'll just pay it off with my next paycheck!

Next paycheck turns into next month.

Next month turns into next tax return.

Next tax return becomes next disbursement of your student loans.

All the while interest is accumulating.

A damning cycle if ever there was one.

I knew I needed to budget, but I kept putting it off because I was afraid to wake up and face the reality that I was living beyond my means. I knew that when I faced that reality, I would have to start changing my lifestyle.

I would have to make sacrifices, not just of my possessions, but my entire way of thinking, my pride. My denial.

---

"We must be willing to place all that we have--not just our possessions (they may be the easiest things of all to give up), but also our ambition and pride and stubbornness and vanity--we must place it all on the altar of God, kneel there in silent submission, and willingly walk away.”

-Jeffrey R. Holland

---

I am ready to make those sacrifices now. I choose to budget. I choose to take control. Over the past 4 weeks I have already shaved hundreds of dollars off of my monthly expenses by making this decision. Even so, sometimes I'm not sure how everything is going to work out. It gets discouraging sometimes. I get scared.

And so I kneel and pray until I feel peace once again. I've found that it comes quickly when I choose to humble myself. Once I've found that peace, I get on my feet and I'm back to work.

My roommate gave me a couple Red Bulls yesterday. I threw them in the trash. I'm 24 days clean now.