Current Income: $0/month
Bridget Jones always listed her weight and number of cigarettes smoked at the beginning of each of her journal entries. I don't have the luxury to worry about how much I weigh [not that I don't try]. I'm too busy figuring out how I'm going to pay the bills.
I graduated from law school in May 2007. I have yet to start working. I have finally found a job, but not in the state that I was originally planning, and so now I'm taking a second bar exam. Ugh! After the bar at the end of July I will be starting my new job at a small litigation firm.
My husband Josef and I recently got married by a justice of the peace. We had no witnesses and no reception. I cried the entire day before our wedding. We didn't even know we were getting married until two days prior to when we said I Do. Why? Because since I've been unable to get a job, I've had no health insurance. We were planning on getting married, but since I didn't have a job, we couldn't afford one. I had been sick on and off, but eventually I got so sick that I really needed to see a doctor, so our only viable monetary choice was to immediately get married. Once I got on my husband's insurance, I saw a doctor and eventually had my gallbladder out - damn thing was causing all of my problems. So now I've been married for two months. Now that we both will have jobs, we've decided to have a ceremony next year on our anniversary.
I really want to pay off my debt as quickly as possible. This year of unemployment has taught me how oppressive having so much debt is. I can't even afford to take a government job because it won't pay the $1000/month loan payments that I have [I couldn't even begin to think about a nonprofit job]. Last night my husband and I sat down and figured out a plan of attack on our debt. We will both be making $4000/month after taxes once we start working. It will be tight with our loan payments, but we should be able to live off of just one of our salaries [rent and loan payments alone are $3200 so it'll be VERY tight]. Then we can take the other salary and use it to pay off debt. Living that way will mean that we can have all of our debt paid off by July 2013. That's nearly exactly 5 years. I guess that's not so bad. I'm just so happy that I have a husband to share expenses with. If I was single, I'd never have this debt paid off.
All of this has made me increasingly more liberal. I feel like I am feeling the brunt of all of the bad civilian decisions made by the current administration [although apparently I'm not the only one]. I have felt the [literal] pain of not having health insurance. My husband and I both had difficulty finding jobs due to the current recession. We're strapped by debt because of rising educational costs compounded by reduced government assistance. I lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and lost half of my stuff.
Kanye West was onto something, but the quote should have been "George Bush doesn't care about Poor people."
My husband and I move to the Big City in three weeks. When I get there I want to somehow get involved with politics. I've been particularly fired up about all of this FISA nonsense. I religiously read Glenn Greenwald's Blog. Even though I'm not working for a non-profit like a lot of my friends, I want to feel like I'm doing something. The first step I'm going to take is to join my local chapter of Drinking Liberally. Hey, I'm a lawyer. Drinking is always the first step!
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