No Spend week, and now I want stuff

I really want this Sanyo Indoor Barbecue Grill with Griddle which is great for people who live in apartments. It’s also great for having people over for dinner where you can cook, talk, and drink some wine/sake/soju/beer with everyone — which I don’t do. Sigh. I guess I’ll have to wait this one out.

I’m also really tempted to get a new set of camping gear even though the season is over and winter camping, I’ve found, is pretty impractical with my current lifestyle. Darn.

Good news is that I went an entire week without spending if I don’t coun

This weekend was all over the place!

I blew $21 on an impulse pizza purchase to go with my post-workout beer. I’m so mad at myself. What a waste. Not only that, I don’t feel good and have been having crazy painful stomach aches all weekend. I think my body was shocked by the junk.

I really don’t feel like cooking anything. Maybe I’ll go pick up some salmon, wild rice and broccoli and call it a week.

Cheap coworker

For some reason, one of my coworkers really, really bothers me. She makes it very well known that she loves free things. I hate going out to lunch with her because she will gorge herself on everything she can, just because it’s free. It’s disgusting, embarrassing, and she makes loud, inappropriate noises in between her loud (she must be partially deaf), inappropriate remarks.

Even though she had a meltdown because she had soooooo much work to do today and made herself look like a friggin victim even though we all work twice as much as she (due to her being twice as slow… um… in the head) — she wants to come along to a semi-team lunch anticipating that it’s going to be free.

If it is not, then that means my $10 plate will be jacked up in price due to her getting the most expensive item she can, even though she may actually want something else. Which is why I’m armed with cash today.

I blame it on the youngest kid syndrome. That, and I think her mom had 50+ drinks/week while she was pregnant with this one. (I’m ranting about other things now, *sigh).

New 401k Plan

My company is switching to a new 401k plan in a few months. This one is a tricky trade-off: has a shorter vesting time, but matches employee contributions up to 2%, with 50% matching after that until 5%.

I’m wondering if I should lower my contributions with this new plan and use the extra, though not much, to pay off debt? I could then go back to contributing 5%, with the rest split between a Roth IRA and savings.

Alcohol is expensive

Duh. I know this little fact of life, but I just checked my account and was still shocked to see that I’ve spent close to $50 on alcohol so far this month! That’s ridiculous. I need a new hobby. Maybe lobbying for free alcohol?

New glasses, contacts, Lasik

My prescription recently changed drastically. I got a supply of contacts and still need to get new glasses, but held out. It may not be worth the cost.

Here’s the dilemma: I’m going to get Lasik. Somehow, someway. (Hey, at least it’s arguably a lot more useful than a set of fake boobs!) Because I’m so active, contacts pose very inconvenient obstacles, especially on overnight hikes. Sure, I could wear glasses, but that also doesn’t fit with white water rafting or kayaking. Assuming that I qualify for the procedure, I’ll put $3,000-$4,000 into my FSA account. But that’s $250-$333 a month, and I’m not sure I can afford that. I do have a budget, with a projected one for 2009, but it never really seems to follow reality. I make enough that I have more than enough left over, and looking at my past spending, I’m being pretty good and it’s second nature to me to be frugal. Maybe the credit card payments are skewing my perception because I’m sending out about $800 a month, and my checking account’s been so lean for so long.

Writing this all out, I’m pretty disappointed that I may have to wait until 2010 to get Lasik done. But that’s another reason to keep chugging along. I’ll have to revisit this in January, and decide whether to get more contacts and new glasses, or if Lasik is really feasible.

Theatre tickets

I subscribed to the theatre this season, and have already missed three performances. I subscribed — as one would sign up for a gym membership, I suppose, with the best intention — because tickets were cheaper that way. Little did I know how much work would suck up my time. I’ve also been really tired lately, and the thought of being in the next town at 11PM and depend on public transport to get home is even more tiring. Next season I’m just going to get tickets for individual performances.

Groceries

I think I shop for groceries and plan meals a lot differently than most. One of my greatest downfalls is liking food a lot. I always have homemade beef, chicken, and sometimes pork stock in my freezer. I thought I would just live out of my pantry, but decided that my sanity and displeasure would not be worth it.

Split chicken breasts
Swiss cheese
Turkey pastrami
Rolls
Bag of small yellow onions
Whole wheat bread

Dozen eggs
2 bottles of wine for cooking
2 blocks tofu
Spicy chicken sausage
Soy milk
Coffee
Can of Trader Joe’s Clam Chowder – not sure if I’ll even like this, but it’s a guilty pleasure
Mustard
Can of green hatch chilis
Frozen French green beans
White mushrooms
Whole wheat English muffins
Total – $61.52

I like to be able to access a variety of items, and have things around I can quickly choose based on the day’s schedule: work, working out, extracurriculars, etc. I just got a microwave as well, and it’s been immensely helpful — now I can have rice and other grains cooked and packed into single servings to have on hand. Yesterday I quickly browned the chicken breasts, added a chicken stock (from previously frozen homemade stock), hard boiled eggs, hot peppers (freezer) and soy sauce, and braised. Took the meat off, returned bones and added frozen carrots to the pot for stock. The meat went into the freezer after a meal.

I like my system a lot. I found that I would rather not eat than have to have oatmeal because that’s the only item available. Not good. Hopefully this way my frugal efforts won’t seem so stark.

Anyone use Wesabe or Mint.com?

I signed up for both Wesabe and Mint.com. I always seem to run into this problem of liking different programs that offer slight variations of the same product or service to achieve an overarching goal. Here, it’s saving money. But the differences between the two programs are enough that I’m having a difficult time choosing, and trying to manage finances in two (really, three if you count my own notebook) different locations is redundant, leaves room for mistakes and incongruencies, and therefore wastes time (a precious resource for all of us).

Months later…

And I’m back! I hope to update much more frequently here now that the busy season at work has officially ended. I did end up getting slapped with a pretty complex project recently, but at least it’s one and not three.

On the finance front, I did fantastic in September, spending about $150 (food, transportation, etc.) total outside of fixed expenses — thanks to work sucking up 18-32 hour days. Yes, one time I had a 32-hour day, which only counts if you see the sun rise twice in a row without sleeping. Usually I end up spending around $400, mostly on beer. I know, it’s a slight problem, but this is a finance blog.

I also took some time this past weekend to redo my budget. Seeing how this debt makes it impossible for me to go to grad school, build a savings, get Lasik, or anything else that I want to do. It’s constantly bringing me down, and though I’ve railed against it and run around making firm decisions and budgets and proclaiming dedications to eradicate it, I haven’t. To be entirely honest, I just didn’t like seeing the debt, and it make me feel insecure and unsafe in being wholly unprepared on the financial front, which is important and valid — but it never actually hit me that I cannot go to grad school because of it.

I resigned myself to the fact that I will have to give up the next important thing, at least for the next few months: the membership to my fitness program. This is 50% about finances and 50% about time and health. I have a slight musculoskeletal injury that wouldn’t make the program so effective for me, and I really need to sleep. The gym is 10 miles away, which means that I generally wake up at 4:00AM so I can drive to the gym, work out, drive back, get ready for work, and still get there on time. This was feasible during the early summer with its perfect driving conditions and lax attitude at work, but not so much now. Physical exertion is something I do as a matter of course, like brushing one’s teeth, and something I absolutely love and can’t live without. Lately, what has been working is doing lower-impact exercises after work on my own time/schedule and getting the sleep I need.