Living Paycheck to Paycheck

My wonderful boyfriend has put together a diet/fitness plan for me!  Now I wish that I’d waited and not bought groceries so that I could have just followed his list.  Since he knows what he’s doing, he tailored the grocery list and meal lists to things I generally like to eat…only I hardly bought any of those things in an attempt to eat smart and cheaply.  There’s only a couple problems with the diet at all and one is that it focuses more on dieting food than healthy food, but I think that after I finish the first 21 days and we reevaluate what I need to do, I’ll be able to choose my meals better.

The other problem is the cost!  If I were to go to the grocery store today and buy everything that I don’t already have, I estimate that I’d spend about $150…that is well over the $2.04 I have left for the month.  So I have to decide whether to start this diet on Thursday or wait until June, a week and a half from now.  I’m very excited to start this and the exercise plan NOW while I’m still motivated, though I hate like hell to have to blow my budget.  What’s a girl to do?

My Pantry Diet is still going, but it won’t last much longer.  I have approximately enough food to last into next week, but not much else.  My dad gave me two 2lb. bags of frozen ground venison (that he killed and butchered himself with my uncle and their pals); I used one bag with two boxes of Hamburger Helper and felt like I was committing sacrilege.  Venison is soooo good and I used it with Hamburger Helper.  I’m so ashamed.  So I’d rather save my other 2 lb. bag for something better, so I might not count it in with the rest of the pantry diet.

 My boyfriend is going to create a meal plan and exercise plan for me to start as soon as I’m off this crazy pantry diet even though he doesn’t want me to lose any weight.  He’s really into fitness, though we both suck at keeping to a healthy diet: me because I don’t know where to start and I’m bad at sticking to things, and him because it’s easier not to stick to it.  Translation: laziness.  I’m looking forward to what he puts together for me.

My take-home pay each month is $2,409.97.  Knowing that I have not been living within my means, I decided to make a “Bare Bones Budget”.  What always screws me up when keeping a budget is budgeting per expense, instead of grouping things together.  Each month when I pay my rent, I have to pay mandatory fees and my water bill together with it.  So that always varies between $1032-37.  I could choose a number within that range, but why not add my other utilities in?  And if I’m adding necessary utilities, why don’t I add in the unnecessary ones like cell phone and internet?

So I’ve broken my budget into a few categories:

Category 1:  Rent/Utilities/Phone/Internet/Food — $1345
Category 2:  Savings — $250
Category 3:  Loans — $262.72
Category 4:  Gas/Tolls/Car Insurance/Car Maintenance — $480
Category 5:  Entertainment/Gifts/Clothing/Donations/Miscellaneous — $70

The only problem with a bare bones budget is that it doesn’t leave room for surprises (unless you count Category 5’s “miscellaneous” option.  Already this month I paid my county car tax for $64.39…technically, that could go in either Category 4 or 5…or 2, “Savings”.  With my $250/month, I want to put $200 into the savings for paying my car loan, $25 into an “Emergency Fund” which I don’t really have yet, and another $25 into a Gift Fund.  It seems like every month, I have another gift to buy, and sometimes more than one.  In July, I have two weddings and my grandmother’s birthday.  I want to start putting money aside specifically for that.

To do that, I’m going to start splitting up my bank accounts.  I have two checking accounts, two savings accounts, and one Money Market account.  The Money Market has the most money in it and is the savings for paying off my car.  My most often used checking account will stay the same pretty much; it’ll be used for Categories 1, 3, and 4.  One savings account will be the Emergency fund, one will be the Gift fund, and the lesser used checking account will just hold whatever money is leftover at the end.

If this is too hard, I may I have to fiddle with the numbers as I go.  For example, $250 is more than 10% of my take home income, and I already have 3% of my salary before taxes going into a 401K (with 50% match), so it might be best to put more into travel as this summer approaches and gas gets higher.

In other news, this weekend my boyfriend went grocery shopping for Saturday night’s dinner so that he could cook for me.  I told him that I didn’t want him to buy food so that I could stick to the pantry diet, but apparently he disapproves and didn’t want to stick to it himself.  So he bought me a package of lunch meat and bread for this week’s lunch while he was there.  I’m so used to not having that kind of food that I cooked lunch and came to work before remembering.  That’s the best part of this diet-that’s-not-really-a-diet:  I’m finally learning how quick cooking can really be.  This gives me hope that in the future, when I’m a parent, my children won’t starve to death.

I’m loving what I call my Pantry Diet.  In the last 2 1/2 weeks I’ve probably only lost a pound or so, but that’s not the real goal anyway.  The goal is to use up everything usable in my pantry / refridgerator.  I’m still doing well.

I signed up for the May Grocery Challenge at Give Me Back My Five Bucks and made my goal $100.  Since I usually spend MUCH more than that, I figured that it was a good goal.  Also, when I run out of food, I’m going to have to go to the grocery store and stock up on everything I’m missing which I’m guessing will be around the middle of May.  And since I’m still letting myself buy milk, eggs, and vegetable oil, I’ll definitely  have to shop before the week is out.

I considered myself to be “out of food” two and a half weeks ago when I decided to go on the Pantry Diet, but I still have plenty to last me.  How often do we let things sit around because we’re not in the mood to eat it, and then go drop $150 at the grocery store getting more appetizing things that are gone before we know it?

I have one bag of potato chips (given to me by my parents / left over from my party) and one or two bags of kettle corn left as ready made snack food.  Everything else in my pantry is stuff that needs to be cooked or baked or something else that takes more steps than just opening a bag.  I’m not eating as much because I’m often too lazy to cook something.  Yesterday, I baked some gingersnaps with a box mix I had (also from my parents) and ate a few (delicious).  I didn’t feel like cooking a real meal, so I had ramen noodles.  This morning before work I cooked up spaghetti, half of which I brought to work with me and the other half I refridgerated for tonight or tomorrow’s lunch.  And I have TONS more spaghetti where that came from.  I’m counting on being well under my $100 goal, and I hope to keep it under that limit for the foreseeable future as well.

I’m still doing the whole “no buying groceries” thing.  I’ve had spaghetti for lunch and dinner everyday…well…for lunch, anyway.  Last night I took a nap that led me to sleep from 6:45 to 10:15pm when my boyfriend called and woke me.  This frustrated me because I didn’t want to miss The Office or Scrubs and had actually set my alarm for 7:30 so I’d have time to fix dinner and watch TV.  Then I got to read as my best friend and I gchatted that she couldn’t BELIEVE that I’d missed it, that it was THE BEST EVER!!!  MAJOR PLOT DEVELOPMENTS!  MAY-JOR!  Sigh.

Anyway, I slept through dinner, but I forced myself to bake some biscuits to add to my lunch for today so that I wouldn’t get hungry because I knew that I wouldn’t buy anything no matter how hungry I might be.  I can’t decide yet if this whole thing is healthy for me.  I was afraid that sticking to the pantry foods would cause me to gain weight, but I actually feel thinner (this MIGHT be from missing dinner two nights in a row, but who knows?).  I haven’t weighed myself yet, but it would be awesome if this financial goal was helping a weight goal, too.  I want to weigh between 130-35, and when I weighed myself last week I was at about 140.  I’m quite tall, so on graphs that show how much a person should weigh given his/her height, I should weigh between 125-145.  The last time I was at 125 I was WAY too thin, though, and it took forever to gain weight back, so I definitely do not want to go that low again; I just want to fit into my old work clothes that are sitting in my closet.

In other news, I signed up for the ING Direct Orange Savings Account.  I received $25 just for depositing $250.  For each referral I give, I get $10.  So far I’ve been credited with an extra $20.  If anyone would like a referral for the savings account or the checking account, just e-mail me at livingpaychecktopaycheck at gmail dot com.  Just tell which account you want; the same rules apply to get the $25.

My weekend starts in less than an hour now!  Yay!

Recently, I found myself saying to a co-worker, “I have to go buy groceries tonight; I don’t have anything for lunch.”  I’m trying to always fix myself lunch before coming to work so that I don’t have to buy downstairs at one of the two fast food options in my building.  Although one day I got to work early and bought two sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddles and they were totally worth it.  SO delicious.

Yet, not something I can have habitually.  Anyway, I started thinking about grocery shopping.  I throw down all sorts of money everytime I go, while my pantry stays somewhat stocked with things that I never use.  I have tons of uncooked spaghetti and lots of other things that I can makes meals out of for weeks, if necessary.

Therefore, I’ve decided not to shop for groceries unless absolutely necessary.  I’m going to tweak “absolutely necessary” for a few items; I have one Claritin tablet left and MUST buy more, but I will get the generic kind.  Some of the things that I’ll cook will require milk, eggs, and vegetable oil, all of which I’m running low on (i.e., teaspoon of v. oil, one egg, a few cups of milk).  I have enough of everything else I might require for a while.

I’m curious to see how long it will take to eat all the spaghetti, rice, etc.  Maybe this won’t be the most nutritious month ever (but I do have some frozen veggies!), but I’ll be able to fix that when I resume shopping–and whenever I eat at my parents’ house.  I’m estimating that this will last about a month, with approximately 90 meals.  I hope that this will also get me used to cooking nightly, which will then make it easier for me to plan meals, which will hopefully make it easier for me to plan my meals around sales at the grocery store.

So…as little grocery shopping as possible…starting…now!