Wow, so I just woke up and checked my bank account, as I do every other Saturday, to see the amount of my direct deposit. I was especially interested to see this one because it’s the first from my new job.

I knew it would be extremely low. I took a week off, then I took another day off because Jay got sick and had to go to the doctor. I think I had four days of billing, and none of them were great because it was the first week of school. I knew these things.

But I wasn’t prepared to see a direct deposit for only $333.81.

I don’t have my pay stub yet, so I can’t see everything that happened. I know the cost of my benefits doubled, so a big chunk came out pretax. I also changed my tax withholding since I didn’t know how this would go for the first few months. But DAMN.

So I just drained 1/3 of the emergency fund I’ve spent 9 months building to transfer $700 to my checking account. (The funny thing about that is $70 is going right back into savings on Monday. Plus $200 to my Roth.) And like I said, I knew this was going to happen; I just wasn’t as mentally prepared as I thought.

I know my next check will be better. But I also know there were things I could have done better or differently. I have the opportunity to make a lot of money but I have to stay disciplined and make sure I bill. I need a minimum of 5 hours a day of billing. Period. And I can easily get that much at school if I make some adjustments to my schedule. I’ve noticed I’m bad about thinking, Well, I have three appointments in the clinic today. If they all show up, I can get away with only billing two hours at school. This isn’t like a salaried job where I can just screw around and still get paid.

I feel like I shouldn’t be freaking out like this. After all, at least I had the money to make up for my crappy paycheck. I can pay all my bills and continue saving (though that seems weird when I’m borrowing from savings). It will be okay.

But I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to throw up.