money can be stressful

especially when spending half a year's salary or more... like buying a home... or on a smaller scale, buying a car (though the car is sometimes more stressful as it is almost more of a commitment than a home unless you have multiple tens of thousands of dollars of spending money each year, which i no longer hand since i gave it all away... a few times... alas, generosity can become a one way street to the poor house, wherever that might be)...

actually, spending the money can be a rush, a release... shopping and deciding what to buy produces the real stress... so today was rather stressful as i gave much time to researching cars and once again had to face the fact that i spent more than thirty thousand dollars of savings in the past couple of years primarily because i was not working but also because i have been paying jackson's way and would have spent half of what i spent if she paid her share and didn't need to borrow (not that i expect it back) so much along the way... yeah, i'd have an easy time buying a car if i had half of that thirty thousand back in the bank...

another frustration is that my credit rating took some hits due to my decision to not pay some bills along the way because i do not pay for products or services that are ethically wrong or simply a rip off (like double billing at hospitals or mechanics or internet sites that do not provide the services that were purchased)... while it would be easier and probably wiser to just throw the few hundred dollars at the thieves, i choose not to which lowers my credit rating below 700 which, combined with the reduction of savings, means i do not qualify for the zero financing and therein must pay even more for the car i finally choose which forces me to eliminate some cars i would like to buy...

so now there are five cars on the list... the prius iv (though likely a used one as i am trying to cap the piurchase at twenty thousand dollars), the corolla, the mazda 3, the honda civic, and the honda insight... and it may turn out that the hondas are above twenty thousand like the prius so then i poinder whether i want to go for a used car or a new car... and knowing the new car loses thousands of dollars in value in the first year, the used car seems to be a sensible option and yet, a new car has less chance of having problems that i did not give it...

and then there is the fact that i've spent a thousand dollars on the rental car simply because i have not have time or motivation to go shopping for cars primarily because i do not feel i've done enough research yet (which is why i spent the whole day doing research today, while watching college football, naturally) and now i am ready to actually find dealers to visit for test drives and to see just how much the actual cost will be with financing and all that and what i qualify for and so on, but i won't have time to actually do that until next saturday which will mean spending another %220 on the rental next friday... ultimately, if i buy the used prius, i need a ride to lake worth which is several hours away and i don't feel like asking anybody to do that but i don't want to spend an extra three or found thousand dollars which is how much the same cars cost here...

so anyway, it's been a bit of stress today...