Debt Free in Ten Easy Steps

Somehow since I graduated from college (a mere three months ago) I have acquired a surprising amount of credit cards. This I attribute in part to the sheer number of offers I received in the mail. It was like the creditors saw the 22 year old with a regular pay check and a clean credit record and said to themselves, "Boys, what we have here is an easy target." And they were right.

I also attribute it to going to Biola. I subsisted for most of my undergraduate career on $150 dollars a month, since the rest of my pay check went to the big bank account in the sky that helped pay for my private education. I look back at these days in awe and wonderment at how I managed to pay for all my clothes, movies, hair products (man I buy a lot of hair products), make-up and more on this tiny, insignificant, ridiculously inadequate amount of money. It was this paltry sum of money that convinced me during my junior year to teach 30 7th graders why grammar is important at 8:00 in the morning (and if I knew why grammar was important then maybe that sentence wouldn't sound like grammar is only important at 8:00 in the morning).

Anyways, back to the issue at hand. After surviving for four years off of a very limited bank account and praying every day that I would not commit the dreaded sin of overdrawing, credit cards seemed like a gift from the gods. And indeed they are. The pagan gods who also force people to jump into volcanoes and sacrifice their first born.

The rest of this post was originally top secret information to be concealed from the parents at all costs as I was raised in the church of "Never, ever, ever, ever get into debt on your credit cards, ever", but what the hell; I am an adult. An irresponsible one, but one none the less.

I originally got a credit card in order to help finance living in England and for emergencies. It had six months of free interest, and so functioned like a savings account in reverse: money that just sat there without any penalties, waiting to be paid back. Then the day came that I would have to pay it back. This also happened to be the day I needed to pay for summer school, put down my first month's rent on my own room, and begin saving for a down payment to start graduate school. Before I knew it I had another, better card with no interest for 15 months and I merely transferred the balance from the now expensive card to the free one and congratulated myself (probably rewarding my financial prowess by buying something, which was the worst possible choice in that situation).

Fast forward to today. With the help of the federal government (who knew they would come in handy someday?), school costs are taken care of, and without the help of the federal government, I have been receiving regular, wonderful paychecks every two weeks since June 15th. Unfortunately, I also have four credit cards now. It is getting out of control. I am to the point that I refuse to open rectangular envelopes for fear of the offers inside.

It took me about 3 hours this weekend, but with the help of some remaining student loan money, an enormous expense reimbursement check, my savings account, and those glorious pay checks, I can pay off all credit cards this week. All of them. Every Freaking One. This will leave me with approximately 2 dollars, but it will also get me out of this period of credit card mania without ever having paid interest or late fees (a gift from God. The good one who doesn't like his believers in volcanoes). I've rarely done so much math in my life, and Mr. Carlson, if you are reading this, balancing credit card bills with your bank account would be a much more helpful topic than Mayan math.

So now the question is, to cut or not to cut? Do I keep my four hard earned cards in case I need to by something really really expensive and vitally important (I'm not sure what this would be [maybe a robot body guard in case of impending anarchy?])? Or do I let them all go but one, guard its balance like a jealous boyfriend, and rejoin society and my family as a contributing member?

Someday I will tell you about that time the federal collections agency was notified about my overdue video rental, but that is another financial disaster story for another day.

This is just to get Andrew to blog...

I am writing an article for the upcoming issue of The Symposium, Torrey Honor's somewhat quarterly publication. This issue is on the Inklings who apparently don't each warrant their own issue the way Lewis or Tolkien did, namely Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, and G.K Chesterton.

When they asked me to contribute I told them I wanted to write about the writers' fiction and why it is a really good thing to write smart fiction. But you see, my mind is being molded by spiritual formation classes each week, so I can't help thinking about people's souls all the time. Thus, during a Dallas Williard lecture the title came to me for my article:

An Exhortation to Good Fiction: Creative Writing as a Window to the Whole Soul

If that doesn't make their little Torrey Hearts cry out in joy, I don't know what will.

Books

Tagged by Brad and self-manipulated into posting because I have nothing thoughtful to say at present.

1. One book that changed your life - The Iliad. It was my introduction to real education as a freshman in high school and shaped what I want to do for the rest of my life (and it is not wage war against the Trojans, in case that is what you were thinking)

2. One book that you've read more than once – Little Women

3. One book you'd want on a desert island - What's that old joke about the Guide to Ship Building...

4. One book that made you laugh out loud – The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Woodehouse

5. One book that made you cry – A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

6. One book that you wish had been written – I wish Keats had lived past the age of 26. He became a staple of the English cannon and a powerful force in the Romantic movement, and never even saw his 30 birthday. Imagine what he had yet to write!

7. One book you wish had never been written – Most of what stocks the shelves of Christian book stores.

8. One book you're currently reading– Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Williard for school, The Mating Season by P.G. Woodehouse for fun.

9. One book you've been meaning to read - At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline Le'Engle

On Horses

Being homeschooled and introverted, I developed many hobbies as a kid. I sang at church and participated in years of piano lessons, as well as dabbled in drawing, poetry writing, and play production with my little sisters. All these however paled in comparison to a passion that would go on to consume my teenage years.

When I was nine years old I developed a seemingly instantaneous and overwhelming adoration of horses. I to this day cannot remember what initially brought this on, as I was living a relatively horse-free existence in the middle of suburban Southern California. Whatever brought it on, it came on strong. I was soon voraciously reading everything about horses I could get my hands on. I saved up to buy horse-themed magazines from the grocery store (Equus was a favorite because it was so very serious and professional). I bought out-dated horse calendars and ripped all the pictures out to hang on my wall, and began amassing a collection of Breyer model horses (the best kind). I begged for riding lessons and my parents tried to placate me, assuming this obsession would soon go the way of most young girl's love of horses and be replaced by a desire to look pretty and get a boyfriend. This, however, did not happen.

By the time I was ten I had acquired my first horse and started boarding her at a friend's. Soon there were two, then three, and then a house in the country where we could keep them all ourselves. After years of second-hand saddles, even older horses, and countless lessons, trainers, and dollars, I found myself at fifteen with a beautiful personal arena, a competitive barrel-racing horse, a trailer, a lucrative riding lesson business, and very happy. Afton, her horse Abu, and my horse Joe and I spent weekend after weekend on three different competitive circuits and loved every minute of it. I remember by Junior year of high school when we were at our best, girls would start complaining and sometimes even crying when they saw our trailer pull up. They knew we would kick their little 4-H asses.

When my Dad got involved, we added a different element into our competitive horse lives. Dad liked to trail ride, and not just the wimpy trails around our house in the Wine Country. He got his friend Bud involved, and pretty soon we were all hauling our horses up and down mountains and riding for days with only what our horses and one uncharacteristicly small mule could carry. These rides were invaluable to me in the way I looked at horses. What was first an obsession had become a sport and a job. My horse was an impressive athlete, but his mind had been lost with too much work and way too much speed. When we got out onto a mountain trail we both settled down and enjoyed the scenery and each other. He got to be a real, useful animal, who I needed to get where I was going and home again, and he learned to trust me in the face of cliffs, bears, and the rushing rivers I was asking him to cross. He became my friend and fellow adventurer and we got to experience a side of nature that most people don't get to see.

When I went to school I had to leave the horses behind and concentrate on academics. For the first couple years I road on the weekends and on summer vacations, but it had gotten to the point recently where I would go for 6 months without sitting on a horse. Afton and I went to the Norco rodeo a few weeks ago, and since that time I couldn't get my horses out of my head. The holiday weekend and the visitation (in the non-ghostly sense of the word) of Heather Dodds gave me an opportunity to ride, and oh how I've missed it. The next night I went out again at dusk with Afton and we loped out to a vineyard. As night fell and the last traces of the sun went down behind the mountains between us and the coast, we road through the newly harvested vineyards, got chased by an angry coyote, and road home by the moon light. Our horses are a little older now, and we've been through so much with them that they are pure pleasure to ride now.

I remembered last night how peaceful the outdoors can be. I don't think you can experience natural beauty on a postcard or in a movie. You have to be really out in it to get it, and that's what horses have done for me. Despite finally being at the point in my life wherein I would in fact like to look pretty and have a boyfriend, I will never lose the love of horses instilled in me over the years.