I have fallen off the wagon, but I am not blaming my Semitic friends, nor am I calling police officers "sugar tits."

Truth be told, I have felt hopeless and alternately slackful achieving financial comfort. Just like I can never be perfect enough to guarantee a spot into Heaven, I can never be comfortable enough to stop worrying. Nobody stops me from my self-sabotage, because the signs are so small: I am too beset by chores of entertaining/training the young boy, doing laundry, keeping up correspondence to pay attention to finances.

I should feel comfortable: I am WAY better off than my parents were, than my brother is. The Assets:Liabilities ratio is high, and for the first time since February 1999 my debt is below $160,000.
Just looked at a July blog post of mine: $163578 in debt! And here I am with $157087. That's a 4% drop in 100 days!

But I have less than $5000 in my savings account, and need $3550 for contributing to my Roth IRA, and will gross less than $5000 by the time my contract ends. I need a new wardrobe.

And we're not saving much money because I've been in the "OMG must see what I can of the state before I can no longer afford it!" mindset or the "OMG must get most of life as possible before some inattentive dimbulb runs me over" mindset.

Being falsely confident in the overly inflated house value, just because our market has been slow to grow (the dot-com bust of 2001-2002 hit my city HARD) will not help. Believe me, I think of purchasing gold, gold mutual funds, cashing out of some mutual funds -- I am still in some GNMA fund which has had the largest growth percentage of the investments in my Roth IRA. However, with each of my diverse mutual funds representing under 10% of my portfolio I am not freaking out.

My supposition is probably: "Gee, my friends aren't freaking out about their $370,000+ mortgage, why should I freak out about having $4500 in my savings account?"

I have a one week's pay bonus at work, already divvied up in my head: 45% IRA, 35% wardrobe, 20% savings.

Also, thank you LuxLiving for caring. It helps me regain my resolve.