Since I don't make much money, once in a while, I like to figure out whether I'll be able to pay for all absolutely necessary expenses by comparing them to my prospective income. This is what I've been trying to do today, and, to be honest, it ain't pretty at all. I blame everything on all the credit cards I have!

I've got my first credit card from CapitalOne absolutely unexpectedly. After being rejected by numerous banks because of nonexistent credit history, I gave up any hope of ever being approved, until, sometime in Fall of 2008, I received letter informing me of being preapproved for credit card I didn't even apply for. The amount of credit the bank offered was laughable ($300), however, I knew that it was an important foundation for building credit history and, thus, was extremely excited.

I didn't know much about credit policies back then and thought that the more credit cards I had the better, so I got one from almost every retail store I liked. Later, I found out that frequent requires and big number of revolving accounts with rather low credit limits actually have negative impact on the credit score. Having learned it, I closed all the store credit cards and was left with just two bank credit cards. Since available credit on both of the cards was rather low, I mostly used them to pay my tuition installments when I didn't have enough money saved and, unlike most Americans, never carried my balance to the next month.

I certainly indulged in unnecessary spending once in a while, but it wasn't too bad since there wasn't much extra money to spend...until one day I was stupid enough to apply for Macy's credit card. Imagine my surprise when I was given $3000 store credit. Starting from that moment, I could basically shop as much as I wanted and never run out of money (assuming that I paid my bills on time, of course). Before, I had to save for about a month to afford a little shopping spree and, naturally, I was able to spend just as much as I managed to save and not a penny more. With store credit on hand, however, I could shop practically whenever I wanted.

Starting from that moment, every time I was in the bad mood, I'd try to improve it by going shopping, which, of course, wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't had that credit card. For the next couple of months, I spent much more than reasonable amount of money on new stuff, took some time to pay the bill, and repeated the cycle again. Being in not a very rosy mood most of the time, I didn't feel like paying attention to the fact that I was spending all the money I was supposed to be saving on my credit card bills...I knew that I was running myself into trouble but simply couldn't make myself think about it.

Having paid my last Macy's bill today and estimated prospective revenues and expenses after that, I came to a conclusion that $3000 is the maximum amount of money I'll be able to save before moving to NYC, assuming I limit unnecessary expenses to $0. This is actually quite an issue because I don't even know what kind of job I'll be able to find there and might have to live for some time with what I've got. Taking into consideration that I'll have to pay my first tuition installment sometime in December and that limiting myself to $0 spending during next 6+ months is unrealistic, there is a good chance that my new address will be Central Park bench. If I could kick myself really hard right now, I'd definitely would!

With the majority of Americans overspending on a much larger scale, no wonder that the US economy is in shambles!