My Goals for October 2008
Goals, goals, goals.
Goal #1: Originally my goal was going to be to eat on less than $2/day, but I think that might be a little TOO ambitious for me. I’m switching it to $2.50/day on average, so the goal is $77.50 for groceries. I think that I can beat this since I still have leftovers in the fridge / freezer and I won’t be able to finish before tomorrow.
Goal #2: Earn extra money
To do this, I expect to work at my dad’s office for him. While I’m there, I can pick up my Costco card and maybe actually use it! Woohoo! I hope to find Ramen for less than .20/package which is the best price I’ve seen so far.
Goal #3: Spend less than I earn!
I haven’t been doing this and it wasn’t a problem until I started eating up my savings. I think that I’m going to try to work on Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover plan, so the first thing that I need to do is save up $1000. I’m not close.
Goal #4: Save money.
I’ve made a zero-based budget, but I don’t know what I’m going to come out with at the end of the month, obviously. I’d love to have $200 at the end of the month, though, through extra work or rewards (like from my Discover card). Which reminds me that I need to buy gas tomorrow so I can get that 5% back one last time before the end of the 3-month period.
My Stupidest Move Yet
Holy Crap.
I knew that I was running out of money and I still did some stupid things. Rather, I didn’t do SMART things…like think.
1. I forgot to cancel my $100 automatic withdrawl from my main checking to my ING Orange Savings account. This morning I initiated a transfer of $470 from that account to my main checking, but it won’t post until Thursday. I couldn’t touch the $100 that won’t be available until Monday.
2. I didn’t pay attention to my automatic bill pay, knowing that my bank account would be low when my rent payment posted. I have two payments for a total of $262.72 scheduled to go out tomorrow and it’s too late to cancel them. In my bank account right now? $97.16.
3. I went to the Discover card website to request $200 (at a ridiculous APR) to be put into my checking account immediately…but who knows when it’ll really get there? I’m willing to pay the fee since I’ll bet that it’ll be lower than a bounced check fee from the bank…which still could happen.
I can’t believe how thoughtless I was; I’m never like this! I access my banking portfolio several times a week…almost obsessively! The real problem is that I’ve always had money available and so it’s never been a problem.
I kind of want to cry, but I won’t. What’s done is done. I’ve done what I can to rectify the situation and it will either be successful or it won’t. The bills that are causing the problem are my loans; my student loans and the car loan to my parents. The car loan doesn’t have a penalty if it’s late and I can still get the student loans paid within the grace period once my funds are all deposited.
I’m just feeling like a failure, but maybe this is what I need to start changing.
My Grocery Extravaganza–Not a good thing
I can’t seem to help blowing all my money on groceries. Okay, not ALL my money. I’m spending WAY too much, though, as I’ve complained before.
What made me spend more than I should have this month?
1. Cooking for RC. Even though I got the fish for free, I had to buy a couple bell peppers, a carton of eight eggs, ground ginger, olive oil and honey for the meal. Not hugely expensive, but I wouldn’t have bought any of those otherwise (except maybe the eggs).
2. RC had a cookout on Saturday and I bought 3 big cans of baked beans. I heated up two cans and still brought a lot of it home, as people attending were more interested in drinking than eating. I’ll definitely eat it myself, though, so it won’t go to waste, but I wish that I hadn’t bought so much.
3. This was rather stupid of me. I got a craving for party mix; not Chex mix, but party mix. My aunt makes the best party mix in the world (though she’s never given me the recipe…I’ll have to get it from my cousin) and sometimes I try to kind of make it. Anyway, this “forced” me to buy four boxes of cereal, nuts, bagel chips, pretzels, and seasoned salt. Unfortunately, once I was making it from an inferior recipe that I found online, I started remembering other things that my aunt includes, like Kix cereal, and I was bummed that I didn’t have that. I made it anyway, but I didn’t stir it enough while it baked, so some of it burned…still edible, but not awesome. B ate it anyway, though, and so did I.
Anyway, I have tons of leftover party mix ingredients if I want to make it again (and I’m sure that I will), but I shouldn’t have spent the money on that. I did get generic cereal where I could…but I still feel foolish.
There will be no more of this crap starting Wednesday. As soon as October hits, I’m sticking to my menu of Ramen and things. B bought me a 12-pack of Ramen this weekend that we didn’t open…it was $2.50…then I saw it for $2.39 at another grocery store, so I’ll be going there in the future.
I have a list of everything that I’ll need to buy for October and I’m going to work hard at sticking to things. No more fulfilling cravings!
Be on the lookout for my list of October goals!
My Jeans, Revisited
Ahh! They didn’t have a single pair of the jeans left at Pentagon City Mall on Friday! B and I were going to go to a different mall yesterday morning after Mass, but it sort of escaped me and I really couldn’t focus on anything but the Redskins-Dallas game (WOOHOO, Redskins!!!!!!!!!!) anyway. Maybe I’ll go today. If they don’t have them at Dulles Town Centre, I’m going to assume that they’re not available anywhere near me and either choose something else or keep the gift card until Christmas when I can maybe buy a couple gifts from there. I generally get my two brothers some sort of sweater or dressy sweatshirt anyway…also, my cousin has two sons (2 and 7 weeks) that I could get something for at Baby Gap. I’ll be really bummed, though, if I can’t get the jeans. That was the first time that I was really excited about a piece of clothing in a long time, and the only time I’ve planned so far in advance to get them.
Well, you live and learn.
My Jeans?
So now that I’ve lost the weight that I was going for, I’m ready to buy those jeans that I mentioned back in August. At the time, they were $59.99 and I was waiting on a $50 giftcard to Gap from Mypoints.com. I finally got the giftcard, but I’ve been putting off going until the weight was gone.
I mentioned this to R on Wednesday night and how I’m ready! She told me that when she was at the mall recently the pants were on sale ($41.99, I think), but that they might not have my size!! Crud. I went online today and they don’t have the pants in size 6 (the size that I think I will be), so I’m hoping they’ll have them at Pentagon City Mall when I go there after work to pick up B from the Metro. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going shopping with me!
So I’m crossing my fingers that the jeans will be in my size there and that they’ll actually look good on me when (if) I try them on. And it’ll be much better to have waited if I can still get them and actually have a few bucks left on the card rather than paying extra on top of it.
Anyway, my mahi mahi turned out well on Wednesday and I have enough left over for three meals, and I have lots of the rice I made left. I’ve made a menu plan for October and plan to spend very little money on food, so we’ll see how that goes.
My Selfishness
I’ve been selfish recently. I’m not proud of it, nor am I very pleased with myself. Because groceries are one of the things that I’ve really been going over budget on, I’ve started seeing every meal for the dollar amount that it costs. This causes me to resent my wonderful boyfriend whenever he eats my food, and to resent my friends. I’ve been looking at this meal cooking every other Wednesday as a chore and something that I’ve been roped into. I’ve seen it as another drain on my money and my time. I’ve focused on the financial aspect to blame it on my friends expecting too much of me when the real problem is that I’m mad at myself. I resent me for not being able to say no. I resent me for not putting my foot down and give real reasons why I don’t want to do things. They’re ruling my life because I let them and it’s a hard cycle to break.
So I’m going to start doing things and looking at things differently. I’m going to happily invite my friends (including one friend that I wouldn’t have invited, but R mentioned that I was cooking tonight in front of her, so now I have to–which is only a problem because I feel like things need to be perfect, apartment clean, etc. for this friend where I wouldn’t have felt as pressured if it was just RC) and just look at this as an opportunity to do something nice for my friends. Yeah, it’s a hassle, but I’m just going to pretend to myself that it isn’t. What’s the worst that can happen if I ruin dinner? I have to heat up some frozen pizzas in the oven. There are worse things than that.
I’m also going to stop focusing on the prices of food that I buy once it’s been bought. When B eats half my food, I’m just going to be glad that he’s eating well for once. I’m also going to start loading up on Ramen noodles and soup fixings. My goal for October is to eat for less than $2/day, even if that means eating Ramen four or five times a week. Because I’m bad at sticking to goals, I’m going to post some October goals this week or next and spend the month trying to meet them. And actually update on them, too! We’ll see how this all goes.
My Pockets are Empty
When I started this blog in April, I wasn’t too bad off financially. I was “living paycheck to paycheck” a little bit while I waited for my tax refund and $600 stimulus, but once those were deposited, I was doing okay and my financial outlook was great.
Now, though, it’s not that great. In three weeks’ time I’ve spent $969.70 on car maintenance. To be fair, I should have been doing this for the last couple years, not all in two shots, but it just never occurred to me. My dad is great, but he sometimes forgets that I need to hear step-by-step instructions on when I should get my car maintained, rather than a simple, “Make sure that you’re keeping up with your car maintenance.”
When I talked to him on the phone last night and told him what I’d just had done he reminded me that I’ll save a lot of money in the future by getting these things taken care of now. I told him that I really want to get past 200,000 miles on the car and he said that since it’s a Toyota, I should definitely be able to do that…if I keep taking care of it. And I can’t expect to not pay anything for car maintenance each year, either.
So I’ve been naive…and foolish. And now I have practically no money. I’ll still have enough for the $5000 to my parents in 40 days(!), but not much more on top of that. In fact, if I had to estimate how much I have without the $5000 and subtracting what I’ve spent on my credit card this month, I have about…whatever change is in my wallet.
This is really scary to me! My big focus now is going to have to be on earning extra money because cutting expenses is really hard and I’ve been terrible at it. My dad said that I could work for him, but I need to press him a little to get that in the works. I should be able to get around $250 from that (before taxes). I may start looking at freelancing a little. I’m a professional editor and there are tons of people who need their stuff proofread and changed. It would be a pain come tax time, but honestly, I need to do something.
My Money Driving Away
$386.46 for diagnostics, new fuel filter and fuel injection.
I’m very quickly milking myself dry.
My Car Woes
So my car is going back to the shop.
On Wednesday, and once two weeks ago, my car stalled out. I could immediately restart it, but I want to make sure that it isn’t a major problem. I brought it to the tire and auto place near my apartment yesterday afternoon and they could have kept it, but I wouldn’t have had a way to get to work this morning, so I agreed to bring it in this afternoon. I hope that it’s something small and inexpensive and not the transmission like a work buddy warned.
Anyway, this is just another thing to thow money at. Yay.
In other news, I’m at 132 lbs. or so says my scale…I’m starting to think that maybe it’s off a little, but I’m not going to worry about it. I believe that I’m finally where I want to be, so I won’t be dieting exactly, just concentrating on healthier foods and cheaper foods. Now that I’ll be eating more, I’ll be spending more if I’m not careful, so I’m really concentrating on clipping coupons (I just subscribed to the Sunday paper for the ads) and planning out when I’m buying things.
Anyway, that’s all for now. As always, I’ll keep you updated.
My Mahi Mahi Must Wait
So I’m really glad that I decided to buy the peppers today and wait to thaw the fish when I got home because this morning I received an e-mail from R asking if it was all right if I came to their house for dinner, that she was going to cook a real meal, and our friend H would also be coming over.
What was I supposed to say to that? No, it’s not okay? I mean, at least this is an extra meal from them to me, but we’d agreed that we’d alternate each week and she made the decision to take my week without consulting me. What if I had the fish thawing in the fridge already? I would have had to go home, grill about 8 pounds of fish, complete with glaze and everything, package it up to be frozen, and then gone over to her house. And I doubt that I could have done it in the hour that I would have had between getting home and leaving for her place.
So I’m a bit annoyed about that, but I’m going to look on the bright side: 1) I won’t have to cook or clean, 2) free meal, 3) I have time to hit the library, 4) I have time to play Sims, probably, and 5) I can leave early and play Sims some more when I get home, maybe.
I swear, though, if she serves Honey Ginger Mahi Mahi, I’m going to freak out in my head a little.
