I was thinking last night about debt and all that messy stuff, and I was thinking that not ALL of the decisions that I've made have been crummy ones. It was nice to sit down and think of them because it makes me feel like there's hope for the future and that somewhere swishing around in this head is a rational spender with smart choices.

I think the biggest one that I've made that was a big decision that was also smart was to buy the house we're living in. It's an upper/lower apartment with just two units, so we live in one and rent out the other to a guy who's been here forever. It's not the nicest house or best house, sort of on the small side, but it holds all our stuff and is relatively affordable. After the rent check comes in, we come up with just $300 a month to pay the mortgage, which is much, much less than we were paying for rent. It's nice to have that wiggle room. I've decided as of today when I go to the bank later, i'm going to automatically deposit the rent check in the savings account, just to give us a little extra padding (or some padding, as the case may be.) I'm sure if we had bought a single house that cost the same amount (which we almost did) we'd be struggling like crazy to make ends meet and it would be impossible to put money into the savings accout or to make extra payments on things. Let me pat myself on the back for that one. Whenever I get frusterated that it's too small or cramped or we have to go downstiars to take the dog outside (at 3 a.m. that's NOT as easy as simply opening up a door) I just remind myself that it was the right decision, and plus when we are fininaiclly stable enough to save for a down payment on a new house (which I want to do by the time I'm 30) we can keep this house and rent out both the upper and lower, or decide to sell it if we don't want to bother with being landlords. Ok, so there's one good decision.

I guess the second (I'm struggling to think of a third) good decision was when it came time for me to get a new car a few months ago (mine needed a new transmission and basically a new engine... I'm a big Volkwagen fan, but putting a transmission and engine in a Jetta that was already old and had tons of miles was not something I wanted to do). I could very easily have went out and bought a brand-new car or a car that was a year old and was $20,000 or something, which is SUPER tempting when you picture yourself cruising around in a shiny new car, but in the end I decided to buy a six-year-old car that had only fifty thousand miles on it, a good body and lots of life left in it. It made the insurance much cheaper (yay) and since I live and work in the city, a new car only would have gotten all scratched and dinged up anyway. Not that I want my car to get dinged up, but it's not as bad when it's already older. Plus it will be paid off in a year instead of four or even five.

Well, I guess that about rounds out my smart decisions I've made. A house and a car are big purchases though, so I'll pat myself on the back just once for managing to not get in too deep with those items : )