a tinsy financial rant

Why is it, the harder I try to get out of debt the more debt I seem to be in? Is it just a totally vicious never ending cycle? I had such great expectations to be debt free (excluding mortgage) by 2005, but seriously, the harder I try the worse it gets. On top of all that I keep getting mailings from lenders and credit card companies asking me to dig myself deeper in the whole by borrowing even more money. Borrowing money to get out of debt caused more of a problem than just struggling through it would have been in the first place (this started in 2001). Things have only gotten worse, especially when I listened to that same lender who talked me into refinancing the loan again in 2003. Sure, the rate was much better, but adding the credit card debt I had accrued between 2001 & 2003, the loan payments are much higher than they had been and I find myself asking (over and over) why, oh why, didn't I just refinance what I still owed on the original loan at the lower interest rate and get that paid off??? I've been kicking myself in the rear-end ever since. Bottom line is, there is no easy way out of debt. Once you are in past your eyeballs it's time to get a second/third job (but that's not so easy either since everyone around here seems to be in a similar situation. Time to rethink my entire life strategy.

Oh, and since I'm talking about money I might as well crab about how expensive healthy food is. I'm trying to lose weight and every time I compare prices pasta is much cheaper and has a much longer shelf life than fresh vegetables and fruits. Face it, it is more expensive to eat healthy than to eat less healthy. All of this seems to just compound what I perceive to be problems right now. It's more practical to buy the 5/$1.00 boxes of Mac & Cheese or the &5/1.00 packages of Top Romain than it is to buy a head of lettuce for $1.59 and only get 2 meals out of it. The whole thing is depressing and, like I said before, never-ending.

Life sure seems bleak when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know that things will work out, they always have, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to deal or cope with. Lately I've not been coping with things at all, instead I sleep. Sleep has always been my great escape. My mom and dad got into a fight, I'd go take a nap. Little sister got yelled at, I'd go take a nap. On the weekends I have great intentions of cleaning out a couple of boxes, but when I go to do it, I suddenly feel extremely fatigued and sit down for just a couple minutes and wake up 2 hours later. Some of my friends and family are afraid that all my sleeping and lack of energy is the result of depression, and I guess that's possible given all the financial stress that seems to be taking over my life... I just really don't want to go to a doctor just to have him/her tell me that I need to de-stress my life and give me no practical tools with which to do it.

WOW, I think this is the most I have typed in a long time. Maybe it will help to get it all written down?