The dreaded day is finally upon me: I’m going to have to start paying rent.

Yes, I moved out of my mom’s house into the Big Wide World some four months ago, but onto a sweetass house-sitting gig wherein my only requirement was to keep the plants watered and the water chlorinated in exchange for a long, blissful summer in a huge apartment all to my glorious self.

Nudist curiosities were explored, much kitchen dancing was enjoyed, the swimming pool was well-loved, and the neighbors were likely bemused. But like anything completely awesome, it couldn’t last forever. It’s time to move on and move out, and it’s going to take some major readjustments.

For one, I have a new ulcer to factor into my monthly budget. So far, not paying rent has meant being overgenerous with my shot-buying and becoming addicted to sale sites. “You’ve got to spend money to save money,” was a mantra it’s time to abandon.

The Boyfriend was in town last weekend and wasted no time setting me up on Mint.com, a supposedly-safe financial website that lets you link up all your accounts, create budgets, monitor your spending, set goals, and fiddle with other dastardly mechanisms of maturity I want absolutely nothing to do with.

There’s this infuriating little gray line you can never quite get in front of that’s meant to illustrate your ideal budget progress, like you’re a greyhound constantly and pointlessly in pursuit of that drat rabbit.

I hate it. But it’s taught me much. Besides the fact that I seem to sustain myself more with booze than groceries, one thing seems certain: Some stuff has got to go.

So amid tears and dramatics (there may have been some leg kicking), I eliminated my preposterous coffee budget, pruned my shopping to a pathetic figure and canceled my membership to my beloved exercise studio. (After four months I still had nothing on the Tanglewood housewives who surrounded and intimidated me with their taut arms and freakish boob-to-body-fat ratios).

Armed with my newly freed-up capital, I set out with my high-schoolmate to find some affordable yet fabulous inner-loop living. Our initial efforts were a bit of a wake-up call, to put it mildly. The first apartment we visited was enough to inspire “this can’t be real” photo documentation. Three weeks later, with in-our-budget competitors like a half-sunken house with 9x9 closetless “bedrooms,” it’s also the favorite we’ve seen.

I can’t wait to have our first dinner party in a place we pay for, but I don’t know how many “are you … okay?”s I can take. We’re fine, folks. We’re frugal!

If anything’s to be gained from this new less-is-more lifestyle, I hope it’s some outward signs of our self-deprivation.

Fingers crossed that stretching thin translates to being thin.