Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Patience and Forgiveness

Because nothing says vacation like dealing with your finances, I spent most of my morning today figuring out a strategy for getting myself to a positive net worth*.  Ever since I started budgeting, I've been haunted by the negative on my balance sheet and desperate to get back into the black.

The good news about my strategy session is that I figured out that I can be back to a positive net worth in just 16 months, thanks to having lots of room to invest in an RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan, the Canadian equivalent of a 401(k)).  The bad news is, it's going to take me 16 months.  Which literally feels like forever.

It's hard at times to forgive myself for the financial mistakes that I've made in the past.  There is absolutely no way that I could have made it to this point debt-free, but I know that my burden of debt could have been much less if I'd been more careful with my spending.  And it's even harder to be patient, to refrain from adding more call shifts and more patients to each clinic just to bring my bank balance up.

I have to remind myself, on pretty much a daily basis, that it took me eight years to get to this point.  16 months is entirely doable for getting rid of it.  I just need to breathe.

*My goal is to increase my assets beyond the level of my debt, rather than to pay off the debt itself, because interest rates are currently so low.

2 comments:

  1. 16 months sounds pretty good! It's great that you're really committing to this and I hope you blog more about your money management :)

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  2. It's not terrible...but given that I had significant savings when I started medical school 9 years ago, it feels painful to me.

    I will undoubtedly blog more about money management! I'm a bit uncertain how much to reveal here (I grew up in a family where we DID NOT talk with other people about money), but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.

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