No Buy 2020: June Review

I don't want to talk about it.

Okay, fine. I'll talk about it. But I went off the rails a bit this month. Big time. I spent 112% of my average spending from 2019.

And you know what? I blame my vacation. But you're supposed to enjoy yourself on vacation so I guess I just need to suck it up and deal with it. Here's some of what happened:

$325 on hotels. The drive to visit my sister was 17 hours each way and I wasn't about to do that alone in one stretch. So I had two hotels for that. Plus, we stayed in a hotel near the Rocky Mountain National Park with a balcony and a great view of the mountains.
$300 on gas, an oil change before I left, and a car wash. Sh*t, that was a lot more than I anticipated it would be.
$280 on restaurants and dining. Meals on the road, lots of fun places to eat in Colorado, and a few times I ate out this month with friends before I left. Adds up quick, doesn't it?

I also bought some souvenirs, because no travel for me is complete without a clothing item and a coffee mug. Sorry, not sorry. And we cancelled all our flights, which means I didn't get refunded that money. Instead, it's in my airline account waiting to be used by this time next year. Definitely wishing it had been a true refund...

I'm doing this No Buy with a friend, and we're both, well, really sick of it. I felt like I was doing fine with this whole thing and then I woke up recently and was like, this is a load of crap. I want to buy things without feeling guilty or having to rationalize it. I want new summer clothes and seeing my sister's new apartment makes me want some new decorations for my home.

Maybe I just need to remind myself why I'm doing this. Because I want to be a financially responsible student. Because I don't want to take out more loans than I already need to. Because I will be jobless for at least a year and there will be bills to pay and I don't want to sell my house. That's big, heavy stuff. And that requires big, heavy sacrifices.

And sure, the vacation busted the budget this month. But I felt safe by driving instead of flying. We did a lot of socially distant activities like hiking. I loved seeing my sister and her dog and new place. It was good for my soul to breathe in that fresh mountain air. So yeah, it was worth it.

Comments

Three months: My life as a new PA-C

As I'm sure many new PA's can attest to, the end of PA school is a bit of a blur. One minute you're finishing up classes and studying for the PANCE and the next you're ... here? Three months into practice and wondering how it happened. Graduation was on May 13, 2022, and that was a really wonderful day. My parents came to support me, I enjoyed beers on the terrace with my friends, and I felt wonderful standing on the other side of three years of grad school. After a quick day of relaxation, I hit the ground running with my studying. I stuck with my plan for the most part, and felt equal parts "I can't possibly study any more!" and "But I'm not ready!" when exam day arrived. I happened to be at the very same testing center as a fellow student, so when we finished our exams, we headed over to the local mexican restaurant to enjoy tacos and well-deserved margaritas. Hilariously, our brains were so absolutely melted from testing that we could

Rotation #3: Internal Medicine (and pondering my future)

When I decided to go back to school to be a physician assistant, internal medicine is what I had in my mind. As a clinical dietitian, I had the chance to collaborate with APPs and loved the idea of being able to provide that kind of care to patients. One of the APPs who I had the chance to work with often while I was a dietitian became my preceptor for this rotation! It was very cool to be standing in the exact spot I had imagined back then. Back then, though, I did not appreciate just how challenging this job would be! I worked with a small private practice group that has privileges at various area hospitals, and my preceptor and I were based at one large metro-area hospital. The service was crazy busy the entire time I was there, and that was both good and bad. I got to see a ton of different diagnoses, a wide variety of patients, and was challenged to be relatively independent. But dang, it was hard to keep up most of the time. Honestly, I worked more and was more exhausted during

Rotation #2: General Surgery

Another one bites the dust! It's crazy to me that another rotation (and therefore all of my surgery experience) has come to an end. If I want to be one thing, it's totally honest. This rotation was challenging . I had a ton of fun during orthopedics -- I felt like a lot of providers and residents wanted to show off how great their subspecialties were. And they succeeded! But I didn't get pimped very much and I wasn't seeing patients independently. That all changed in a big way when I went to general surgery. Did I learn a lot because of this? Absolutely. Did I feel like an absolute pile of garbage most days because I felt like I couldn't do or answer a damn thing right? Yes. Did I talk to my classmates and get some reassurance that many rotations feel like this? Also yes. Thanks for making me feel less alone, guys. The days were long and the list of things to study was even longer. But here we are, one rotation down. We've survived, so far at least! One big t

OJ the PA

Search This Blog