Health and Money

Now that I have a job, two aspects of my life are now in tighter control: my finances and my health. On my third say of training at Tripps, I signed up again for Weight Watchers. I had a lot of success with it last summer and slowly stopped doing it and gained all the weight back in the fall. My finances also got a little out of control. I put myself into a little debt in my last year of Korea and haven't done much to pay it off since.

But now, I'm on week 4 of Weight Watchers and have already lost 8 pounds (but lots more to go -- slowly, but surely) and I have a concrete financial plan for 1) paying off debt and 2) starting a savings. I'm lucky that I don't have to pay rent or utilities, so my money plan is as follows: for earned tips 40% goes towards my debt, 25% goes into savings and the remaining 35% is for gas, groceries, tanning, beauty stuff, shopping and whatever I want. For paychecks (which are very low since the minimum wage for servers in NC is $2.13), 50% will go towards savings and 50% can be spent. I'll revamp this budget once my debt is paid off and allot more towards savings and some towards a travel fund.

As far as Weight Watchers goes, I love the new Points Plus system. Some foods are worth more points and some are worth less, but the best thing is that fruits and vegetables are 0 points!!! Needles to say, I've been eating a LOT of fruits in the mornings and for dessert and I've been filling up my main dishes with veggies. Today I had a veggie fest by making eggplant and arugula pitas with homemade tzaziki and I also baked ricotta-basil stuffed tomatoes. All very good!!! I'm doing well with tracking my points and getting exercise on most days. I try to save up my extra points for days when I want to splurge. I have brownies in the oven right now and will treat myself to 1 (ok, maybe 2) because I did a lot of exercise this week and I ate very well today.

I am much happier now than I have been for a long time, mostly because I have a job. It's amazing what keeping busy and having money can do for your mental (and physical) health.