On the 15th of December, 2018
This is one of the weekends where it is my turn to work. I work every 4th weekend, so here we are!
7:30am-8:30am – Even though I don’t have to be at work until noon, I set my alarm for 7:30, to begin getting used to that. We are going to renew our gym membership soon, and really the only time to go is before work, early in the morning. As such, I need to become OK with earlier wake-up calls, and earlier bedtimes too. I need to go to the gym really bad, but living that life makes me feel really old. I wake up, only hate the world a little, shower, and get dressed. Happy Saturday morning!
8:30am-10:30am – But until we get the gym membership going, I will spend this morning doing something else. I have recently decided to start driving for Uber on the side. I have a new goal: to own a home by the time I am 45. That’s 4 years from now. To do that, I need 2 things: (1) to have picked a forever-town, and (2) at least have 5-figures saved up in the bank. Considering that in 2018 (starting as of July of 2018 to be exact) I only managed to put away $1,000. This is not saving nearly enough, fast enough. As such, I set up the Uber direct deposit to go directly into my savings account. Since I work my job job this weekend, I can only devote a couple hours each morning to driving. Today, I had 7 trips. It’s really sort of fascinating work; you get to see all sorts of people and places here in town that you would never gotten to have experienced otherwise. I knew already that most people in town who use Uber are BSU-affiliated, and really don’t know where anything is in town off of campus. I felt bad for most of the passengers. Most were using it to get to work. There goes the first hour of their wages! I took someone to work at Starbucks, another to work at Panera. One young lady was finishing her graveyard shift at an all-night diner, only to go straight to another restaurant to work a double-shift there. I was amazed! What some people do to keep afloat is astounding. Whoever says the poor are lazy are living under a rock; here I was thinking I was overextending myself by doing 4 or so hours of gig-driving! The UN has concluded that women do 70% of the manual labor in the world, and I can see where that is true. Today was BSU’s winter graduation, so there was a lot of activity around campus. I wish I had the whole day off to take advantage.
10:45am-11:45am – I get a text from my husband, asking me to come home. He worries about me out there on the road, and feels bad that I feel the need to make extra money, when I am earning about triple the average annual income for an individual in Muncie. Part of the problem is that, for some reason, we filed taxed jointly, and as a result, my student loan payment spiked from $230/month, to about $540/month. My payment is income-based, and for now, until I can re-file separately, will remain at that amount. (If it were not income-based, and I was charged normally, the way most people with student loans are, I would have a $1500 payment each month.) Even with the $540 payments, none of that goes to principle. I am enrolled in the public service loan forgiveness program, and if the Trump administration removes the program, as has been stated they want to do, I am ruined. I arrived home at about 10:45, picked him up, and we went for a quick breakfast before I had to be at work.
12pm-5pm – It was really a slow, uneventful day at work. I just prepped a little for a couple of things coming up this week. The hubby stayed home playing video games on his weekend off.
5pm-6pm – On the way home, I turned on the Uber app again. I caught 2 quick fares, which meant that I finished my Ubering for the day with right around $30. That’s not too bad; if I can do $50/week, that’s $200/month that goes right into savings. And it didn’t take that much time, or burn that much gas at all.
6pm-7pm – Neither of us like cooking, so we ordered out for Chinese. I tidied up a bit, which the place needs.
7-9:30 – We have been doing this fun thing where we each have a list of 25 movies that we have never seen, and we surprise each other, making each other watch them. Tonight was my turn, and I took the opportunity to correct a 30-year-old Christmas Movie oversight. I finally sat down and watched Die Hard. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was a LOT better than I thought it’d be. I liked how the building was as much of a character as any of the humans. This has been an entertaining exercise we’ve been doing.
9:30p-10:45p – When the movie was over, the hubby went back to his game, and I turned on a web series I love. I have been going back and re-watching the old episodes, which I continued for a bit tonight. Then, I remembered I have a book club meeting coming up next week. I need to read that book!
10:45pm-??? – I got into bed and put on the audiobook for The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy. I suppose I was more tired than I realized…I must not have lasted very long, because at some point I realized I woke up and it was 7am the next morning. I remember the book being really dry; I’ll try it again before the book club meeting. For now, I need to get ready for another morning’s driving, another work day, and being literally broke for 5 more days, until the next paycheck.
My birthday is Tuesday.