A very old friend is back.

Long ago, when I was actually MAKING money, I had a friend who went everywhere with me. I'd check in with it everyday, find out where I stood, move numbers around and retotal everything.

It was my faithful,trusty 12-column ledger.

It went by the wayside once my student loans and my car were paid off. I tried to start it again when I started acting, but it was simply too depressing to have no money to move around, and simply talley overdraft fees from time to time as my bank accounts (once again) cascaded out of control because someone decided not to pay me on time.

But now. For the first time in over a year, I'm making more money than I know what to do with. I've bought some clothes. Replaced some makup. Bought new headshots. And this morning, upon deposit of my retail paycheck, I paid off one of my (two) credit cards.

I still have one more to pay off, with a much larger balance than the first. So out came my trusty rusty ledger. I dusted him off, made columns for each credit card and bank account. Colored over the SUM TOTAL and NET WORTH columns, and (just for fun) used my old colored pencils to draw vines of flowers in the header - for decoration. I don't know why getting to color in my ledger makes doing finances more fun, but it TOTALLY does.

And for those of you who thought my color coded dayplanner was the geekiest thing I'm capable of - welcome to a whole new level of fun!