Pretty Fly for a Homeless Guy

If there were ever a contest for the best-dressed shelter-dweller, I may just be in the running. When Dean Martin penned his classic, "Money Burns a Hole in my Pocket," it must have been a prescient opus to the kid. Three paychecks have seen me reunited with the mall, in a way that would make your favorite fashionista jealous. Not that I have anywhere to arrange, sort, (and forget about iron), but the winter wardrobe was capped off yesterday, by a classic pair of timberlands.

In anticipation of the coming half of foot of snow we were blessed with last night, my mother asked me if I wanted some boots. Being the responsible adult that I am, I paid for half of them, and stuck my all-white Nike Cortez's in the backpack for safekeeping. Well actually, there wasn't much room in the backpack, due to a budget laptop that had been purchased earlier that day.

I justified that purchase by saying it would help increase productivity, and well it has (as I'm writing in Starbucks right now), however, the point is let's just say I've left some room for improvement as it concerns my financial discipline. This was not lost on my mother, who after seeing the laptop, and certain sartorial choices I had been making, said, "Now that you have your computer and boots, have you thought about saving?" Yes, yes, and yes.

In one of Mike Tyson's many interviews that I have committed to memory, the famed pugilist, who has also been suspected as having bipolar disorder said, "I either have to have a lot or nothing." Amen, says the choir. Financially speaking, and in some other instances as well, I have been at the mountain top relative to my peer group, or the in valley. While there are beams of light coming into the financial valley now, controlling my spending, and cultivating discipline in other aspects of my life, hoping that it will help improve my finances, is atop my resolutions for the coming year.

As it concerns my other goals for the upcoming year, chief amongst them is transitioning from the shelter to my own living space, no matter how modest so long as it is mine. My payscale helps me, "save" money seeing as how I am paid bi-weekly. Heavens know, if I was paid weekly, if I were paid Friday, I would be broke by Monday with a few hundred bucks a week. However, the decent chunk of change that comes my way every other week should hopefully suffice for a move-in on something halfway decent.