My Good Will Books
On Friday night, RC and I drove down to our university to watch our football team in the semi-finals. We lost. Sad. The good news is that the trip did not cost too much.
Ticket: $10 (instead of $20) because R’s brother got student guest tickets for us.
Hot chocolate: $5, but it came in a plastic novelty cup with our mascot and stuff on it that I’m keeping.
Alcohol: $5 for my share of the airplane bottles of booze
Gas: $21?? I estimated this, for $7 for each of us. I filled up at $1.48/gal. Exciting!
Breakfast: ~$4 at Panera
Books!!!: $10.24 for 19 books at Good Will!
This is the Good Will that I ALWAYS go to when I’m in town. If I’d been by myself, I would have brought home more books, but my pals were waiting in the car and getting antsy. I’d picked up 10, disapppointed that the ones I usually get seemed to be all out, but as I walked away I saw them! In two big cardboard boxes, stacked high and they were 25 cents each (as opposed to 75 cents each for the others)!!! I’m very seriously considering calling them sometime next month and seeing if the books are still there. If they are, I’ll get them to hold them for me while I drive down for a day trip just to load up. I can always sell the ones that I don’t want, after all, after I finish reading them. The cost of gas to get down plus the cost of the books is definitely worth it, in my opinion, for the hours of entertainment that I’ll receive. Maybe I can plan it around seeing my old roommate, J, and her baby, too….
Argh. Now I’m sad that I didn’t get them all at once. I’ve already read two of the nineteen that I picked up and it’s only been two days.
My Christmas Spending
I’m back, pals! Back from nowhere, really, but I’m ready to start posting again. I don’t know why I felt like I needed the break, but I’m ready for things to get back to normal. I’m also (for now) ditching my weekly to-do lists. I wasn’t getting anything done anyway.
So Christmas is coming! I’m in the holiday spirit and my biggest problem (if you can call it that) is that B won’t let me listen to Christmas music around him. I understand–this is the first year since my senior year of high school that I got into the Christmas spirit more than two days before Christmas. I’ve been listening to 97.1 for the 24/7 Christmas music and loving it!
So I’ve done something silly…or rather I haven’t done something. I never made a Christmas budget. And I’m not going to, either. I was getting so stressed out trying to budget that I just gave up (that sounds healthy, right?). January is a three-paycheck month for me, so I’ll let that soak up some of the overflow…if there is overflow. Because even without a budget, I’ve been getting great deals on things.
My younger brother’s gift is taken care of (or will be when I receive things in the mail). I got him three c.d.’s that he wanted. I have to say that the Amazon wishlist thing is quite helpful. One c.d. is an old one that I was able to order for about $4 off of an Amazon seller. The other two are new, but were $10.99 and $9.99 respectively and I got free shipping. So his gift was right at $25.
My cousin has two sons, 2 and 4 months old. I’m just going to give them two coloring books and some markers. Obviously the baby can’t play with those, but my cousin won’t care. Approximate cost for this is $13.
My dad told me that he wanted some dry sacks (or wet sacks?), these bags that keep everything in them completely dry if a person tosses the bag into a river while fishing. I’ve used them before when tubing on a river, to hold keys, wallets, clothes, etc. I just tie it to a rope and let it float on the water. Anyway, my dad gets this Sportsman’s Guide catalogue thing and told me that it was a 3-pack for about $17. When I went to the website, it was $15-something. I found a $5 off coupon code, so my final price (with tax and shipping) was $15.46, I believe. I’m going to find him something else to go along with this; maybe a shirt from Kohl’s where I still have about $20 on a gift card.
I picked out two books for my mom and used ebates to get a good price. I’m getting 8% cash back by going through Borders.com and I got 30% off one item. The two books were originally $13.95, so I didn’t have the $25 to qualify for the free shipping until I added the two coloring books that I got for my cousin’s sons. My final price was $33.20, without the 8% cashback. With it, it’ll be something like $30.54. I think that I’ll get my mom gloves and a scarf to finish up her gift.
So I’ve spent just under $75 so far. I’m planning on baking cookies or making candy for gifts for other people mostly. Other gifts that I need to buy:
For B: I have a few ideas…I want to keep this under $50
For RC: A couple years ago R and I went halfsies on a boxed set of Friends with the intention to buy a new boxed set someday. At the time, we paid around $172. I’ve seen it online for as little as $80. I’m thinking that if I buy it, their gift really only costs $40…and less if you count C’s birthday in a couple weeks and R’s birthday that I never really finished getting a gift for a few months ago.
For B’s parents: wine and a framed picture of B and I.
For my grandparents: framed picture of B and I, and some cookies.
For my cousin and her husband: wine and cookies. I’d like to make some cookies that her older son can eat because he has tons of food allergies.
Another cousin: bottle of wine or cookies. He and I always exchange one bottle so I might keep this up.
Otherwise, that should be it for me. I’m estimating my costs to be around $175 for the things that I haven’t bought yet, not including the cookie ingredients and all the wrapping and things. Estimating that that will be an additional $75 (I hope that that’s a steep estimate) and adding that to the $75 that I’ve already spent, I’m hoping that I don’t go over $325. Man. That’s even lower than I expected. I’d even be okay with $400.
So, budget or no, I’m still doing pretty well. As long as my friends and family love baked goods (which reminds me that I might have to buy a couple extra cookie sheets or this will take forever).
My Latest Impulse Purchase
Okay, this isn’t completely impulsive. For a few weeks now I’ve been searching online (and in stores the one day I went to a mall) for a new winter coat. There’s nothing wrong with my black peacoat except that it doesn’t go with any of my brown pants / skirts and it’s not dressy enough for winter parties and things or Christmas, etc. I really wanted an off-white, knee-length coat.
I found one that I liked a lot at J.Crew online, but it was far too expensive for me. Around $280 or so. Everywhere else I searched just didn’t have what I was looking for. Then last night, R told me that I should look at Victoria’s Secret because she’d gotten a coat from there recently for about $100. Well, that sold me enough to look!
Look I did. Finally I found this coat and decided to order it (even though it’s backordered for another couple of weeks):
Cute, huh? It was listed as $99, but Victoria’s Secret is awesome in that they let you type in three coupon codes at checkout. So the first thing I did was go to ebates.com and saw that I could get 4% cashback on whatever I spent. Sweet. The next thing I did was pick out a lip gloss ($7) to make my subtotal $106, so I could qualify for a free shipping code.
I used three codes:
1. FA813573 For $10 off (using the Victoria’s Secret Angel Credit Card)
2. SHPSAVE For free shipping on purchases of $100 or more
3. FA813441For a free tote bag with a purchase of $75 or more (Tote bag value? $75.00, according to them)
This brought my total to $100.80. But since I went through ebates, I should be getting $4.03 back to make this purchase (of coat, lip gloss, and tote bag) $96.77.
R said that she’d buy the lip gloss off of me, but I might wind up giving it to her as part of a Christmas gift. I don’t know what I’ll do with the tote until it gets here. I’ll either keep it, give it as a gift, or sell it.
So I’m pretty happy with the purchase, even if I REALLY shouldn’t be buying anything right now. I’m hoping that this will curtail some of my purchasing for the rest of the month. Last week I bought a black flannel dress from J.Crew that needs to be altered. It’s just a little too big in the bust area. Otherwise, this is a perfect dress for work, church, and winter parties…all for $85 (including taxes and shipping, but not counting what it’ll cost for tailoring). On Monday afternoon I bought a pair of chrome (?) flats from Gap on the $50 gift card I got from Mypoints.com back in August / September. I NEEDED shoes like this, though I could have found them for less than $41. On the other hand, it was still a free gift card, so money didn’t come out of my account for it at least.
Anyway, there you go. I’ve decided that this was a smart purchase because I didn’t have any feelings of buyer’s remorse as soon as I submitted the order like I sometimes do.
My Spending for May, Week 3
End of the third week!
Income (from beginning of May):
Paycheck: $1204.98
VA State Tax Refund: $165
Revolution Money Exchange Pay-Out: $35
Federal Tax Refund: $1529
Money Paid Back to Me: $100
Total: 3033.98
Expenses (for this week):
Gas: (Three trips): $147.75
Tolls: $35
Groceries: $84.17
Internet: $44.99
Gas Bill: $38.84
Target Bill Payment: $105.47 (Since this was for last month, this includes stuff from my party, my mom’s birthday, a couple general expenses).
Charity Donation: $30
How does this look for my Bare Bones Budget Categories?
Category 1: Rent/Utilities/Phone/Internet/Food — $275.43 / 1,345
Category 2: Savings — $1010.61 / 250
Category 3: Loans — $262.72 / 262.72
Category 4: Gas/Tolls/Car Insurance/Car Maintenance — $330.89 / 480
Category 5: Entertainment/Gifts/Clothing/Donations/Miscellaneous — $135.47/ 70
NET EFFECT: $2015.12 / 3033.98 OR $1015.12 / 1204.98 if you look at what I actually earned for the month so far and take away the $1000 I put into my Money Market account from my tax refund.
Coming soon: another paycheck and a big ol’ rent payment.
My Dream
Last night I dreamt that I was at some sort of office supply store with a shopping cart, just kind of throwing things in. I started thinking about whether I needed any of those things because I was becoming horrified–I’m not supposed to be spending any money on things I don’t need right now. So I put all but maybe two things away. I woke up wondering how I could be so stupid for even buying THOSE things when I realized it was a dream.
I can’t decide whether this is supposed to tell me that I need to relax on the no spending thing, or that I need to beef up my resolve.
