#126 : MY "GRATEFUL RECOVERING ADDICT" FINANCES
I didn't open a credit card until I got sober in November 2022.
Hello beautiful readers! I am surrounded by pencils, print-outs, my Muji clipboard, and my Blue light glasses, which means I’m once again mired in my mini Draft Four of The New Book, tasked with something particularly complicated: turning my 4,500-word Chapter 14 and 4,500-word Chapter 15 into ONE 5,500 word chapter (it really should be 5,000, but oh well). This kind of fastidious and technical work is INCREDIBLY SLOW and tricky, at least when I do it, goddammit.
It’s May, which means tax season is over. I’m currently waiting on a jumbo tax refund for the first time in many years. A huge part of my recovery has been financial. One of the biggest reasons I stay clean, in 12-step recovery, is that it has kept me incredibly organized, and in 2024, tax-wise, I indeed did everything right.
In active addiction, aka Adult Childhood, I did everything wrong. I never had systems for setting aside money monthly for taxes (as we self-employed hoes must), nor credit cards, nor a CPA, nor ANYTHING remotely adult. And while I never missed rent payments or got into the kind of debt that shows up on a credit score, I was a payment plan whore who frequently let my tax bill balloon in an “add it to my tab, with interest” kind of way—even when I had money to pay it off.
No thanks. Amphetamine Cat was crazy. She smoked cigarettes and bought overpriced shit on The RealReal. The idea of owning money to the IRS ever again makes me feel sick. Now I’ve got a high-yield savings account, a retirement fund, a brokerage account, two credit cards, and a bookkeeper. Read on for exactly how I organize my money!
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STEP 1: INCOME ENTERS CHECKING ACCOUNT
