Slow That Roll

Time to go!

My financial advisor gave me a bit of a talking-to the other day. I totally deserved it.

See, I close on the new place in five days. She is perfectly aware that I am spending the bulk of my money on the down payment, but also knows me well enough by now to know that my Amazon cart is, at this very moment, stocked with copper drawer pulls and such for an apartment that I do not yet technically own. She knows this because we first started working together right after I moved to Woodland Hills, and she set me up with this software that’s sort of like Mint, but actually functional – it puts your expenses into various buckets, so you can see what you’re spending on, and where you seriously need to cut back – and quickly discovered that my top expense was home renovation and decor items. For a rental.

This, to be clear, is not an intelligent way to spend one’s money. (Neither is Sugarfish take-out; she told me to cut that out, too.)

I know this, but I couldn’t help it; I just really, really care about making wherever I live feel like my own – all the way back to my dorm room, which looked more like a mini apartment when I was done with it than like a place where any college student should reasonably expect to live. This tendency, as you might imagine, bodes poorly for my finances once I am in possession of an actual home that I actually own, and which I can rationalize purchasing things for under the guise of “adding equity.” Hence the talking-to.

So my job is to slow my roll, and take on projects one at a time, DIY-ing as much as humanly possible. Which should make for fun content – but will require every ounce of self-restraint that I possess (which is not much).

That doesn’t mean we can’t look at inspo photos, though…right?! I mean, those are free! I have a whole Pinterest board going with ideas here, and some of my favorite concepts are below.

wood chair rail in bedroom