Welcome back to the world of the living Mr. Epic Autistic. It seems like forever since you graced the world with another epic blog. How about coming out of the cave of yours to drop another classic. You’re like Eminem when it comes to blogs these days; you drop instant fire, hide and, come back once more to grace the world with some of that Olympian fire. Please grace us with that Olympian fire just one last time Mr. Autistic! PLEASE?!

Fine, I’m out of retirement for now; not that I ever retired to begin with. I’ve been super busy and while I think about this blog, I’m never in the mood to write anything. I haven’t been in the mood to write the book either. It’s not writers block or anything, I just give myself little personal time. I’m terrible at structuring the small slivers of free time I have which results in me mindlessly sitting in front of the computer some days. I think about both very often but, often I can never get petal to metal. With a bit of free time, I decided it was time to write another blog about something I struggle with and no, it’s not another blog about daddy issues though there are some references to him in this. This is a struggle that has plagued much of my twenties and I’m working to make sure it doesn’t plague my thirties. Today we’re gonna talk about money.

Not many of us Autistics actually hold jobs and the few of us that do don’t get to manage our own money very often. There are very few of us that understand money well enough to be able to manage it without intervention from our care takers, I reside in that category and that’s where the problems begin. I have my own bank account, I pay pay my own bills, I earn my living via a non profit that I’ve been employed by for 3 and a half years. I’m good at doing what I need to do in order to bring in money; I suck at saving money. I can manage money well enough to pay bills and, deal with short term problems. I have a problem with controlling my impulses long enough to pocket away money for the future. I’ve always had poor impulse control when it comes to money; it goes back to another problem I have when it comes to being patient. I have that “gotta have it now” mentality that makes it very difficult for me to save money. I have a list of things to buy when I have money and I’m always thinking of the next big thing without asking myself if I need said item as badly as I convince myself I do.

I started saving money sometime in 2015 and, I was on a roll; the problem was that sometime towards the end of 2015 I got the urge to buy a rare and pretty expensive retro gaming console (The Turbo Duo, a combo of the Turbo Grafx 16 and Turbo Grafx CD). I had been eyeing it for a while and in October 2015 when I was still reeling from being dumped, I decided to splurge with the money I had set aside. Some repairs had to be made on that system too so, in total I spent about $450 just to add the thing to my collection. It was totally worth it at the time as I gained access to another retro gaming library I had wanted to indulge in for quite some time. The problem is that it hurt my savings quite a bit. Two months later I decided that after the really rough six months I had endured, I had deserved a Christmas gift for myself so, I dropped another $300 to buy a WiiU. I had barely any money in my savings and thought that there was no point in saving. I didn’t care much about the future at the time, I just wanted to feel good in the moment in hopes of filling a gaping hole in my heart. The impulse control issues that plagued me didn’t help the matter either.

In early 2016 I got good old fashion kick in the ass from my mother. She did a budget sheet with me to determine where my money goes. I realized just how bad my spending habits got when I realized how much money I blew through each month. It was a pretty sobering experience that made realize just how bad I let myself go not only financially but, in many aspects of my life. From there on, I started saving money just a bit at a time. $200 a month would eventually bring me in the territory of $1200 by the summer. This trend was crucial because it would set me up for the next stage in life. My boss had offered my a promotion to a position that would require a car. I though I would have a starter car in the form of a car chilling at my house my brother wouldn’t use once he changed to a job that relied on public transit. The problem however was that the car I had been eyeing died fairly recently. I was given some time to rectify the car situation. There were many cars in the pipeline but, none of them really panned out. It took me a lot longer than it should’ve to get a car and, it’s a situation that could’ve been avoided had I had more money saved from the get go. I should’ve been able to just dive right into the meat of my work but, my past recklessness with money caught up to me in the worse way possible Thankfully God is good because I did eventually find a car as well as a means to obtain said car. I won’t explain this story again so, if you want to read more then read the post Welcome To The Next Level.

I spent a lot of time figuring out where my poor spending habits came from. My mother was one of the most financially responsible people I know. My mother knew how to stretch her money and make it last a while. She was able to keep a roof over our heads, keep us fed and, clothed; she even had money left over for Christmas and birthday gifts. With all of that you have to wonder how the hell I became so bad at managing money. The one thing I forgot to mention was that my mother did all of this alone. My dad was around but, with the exception of Christmas and birthday gifts he never really took on any bills. For a while I thought the man was rich because he’d take us to places like Montreal and Florida; we’d stay in a really nice hotel in Montreal. I thought we had it all, he put on this “most interesting man in the world facade” that could easily fool anyone who didn’t know any better. I would learn later that he loaded up a bunch of credit cards in order to achieve such feats. The man like the hypocrite he was would preach saving all while we watched him gamble away money like it was nothing. I learned nothing good about money from watching my dad.

I’m now at a crossroads in my life where I need to get my shit together in order to in order to prepare for the latter stages of my life. I think about marriage every now and then and, I realize I have a lot of work to do in order to be prepared financially for that sort of thing. I also have strong desires to raise children of my own and, I need to be able to provide for them and, keep a roof over their head with the help of my future wife. In order to do that, I need to avoid all of the mistakes my dad made. I do what I can to eliminate my debts and, save money though I have made many mistakes along the way. In an effort to consolidate some credit card debts, I ended up getting screwed into a very high interest loan; thankfully my mother’s quick thinking got me out of that hole. I’m thankful for having a financially savvy mother and girlfriend that can let me know without hesitation when I’ve fucked up and tips to avoid getting bend over a kitchen table or, laid across one spread eagle. I hope to one day be on my A game when it comes to money, I hope to get right for once and keep my foot on the gas. I put my foot on the gas some days only to take it off too soon like the Atlanta Falcons in Superbowl 51 (too soon?). Anyways, I’m done for now. I’ll be back hopefully sooner with another blog post.

Stay Classy….

Post Blog Scene,

Yes I’m aware I mentioned a girlfriend again without letting y’all know who the lovely lady is. We’ll get to that soon. I’m sorry I just love teasing the shit out of everyone who reads this blog, it’s funny as fuck. You’ll get what you so desire in due time. Patience my little padwan…