Clearly I am terrible at this blog with a purpose thing November 10, 2010

I had grand plans of doing a cash only system once I got my bank-approved credit card. Not so much. Turns out, I just don’t have the willpower to go to the atm and I hate cash.

What I have been doing is using the credit card on all gas and grocery purchases to build up my cash back. I only use my debit card for frivolous purchases and I try to limit those to weekends. I’m trying to cut eating out of my weekday life and confine it to weekends. This has been met with limited success because sometimes the thought of eating another frozen meal for lunch or that hummus I thought was a fresh idea makes me want to vomit so I’ll get a gyro from the Greek restaurant across the street.

I’ve also been depressed lately so I’ll buy myself things (books, movies, clothes) which doesn’t help.

I’m not exceeding my income but my spending habits aren’t the best. I am trying, though, and I guess that counts.

I don’t do budgets well September 1, 2010

For the last several months I’ve tried keeping a budget. I created an Excel spreadsheet and I had columns for my income, my set expenses, and a column for those things that aren’t set like gas or groceries with an estimate of how much I intended to spend on those each month.

Unfortunately things kept happening that meant no matter how well I budgeted I was destined to go over. Mostly this had to do with my car. One might ask why I didn’t budget for potential car expenses and I don’t know. Wishful thinking? May was the unexpected expense of replacing a busted out driver’s side window thanks to the criminal element in my old neighborhood. That was $100 I had no way of even budgeting for because who expects someone to throw a rock through your window for no reason? June was paying a new car insurance premium because I moved, replacing a busted radiator hose, and registering my vehicle in a new state.

I wasn’t able to save any money those months because by the time I spent what I’d budgeted on everything else (below what I earned anyway) these unexpected expenses came up.

July was better. July was a 3 paycheck month and nothing went wrong with my car. July allowed me to save nearly half of my income for that month.

August, though, I decided to stop with the budgets. I do not keep to them. I try and I fail and when I fail I feel guilty. August was 3 days off when I went out to lunch or dinner every day and went shopping because I wasn’t working so I was going to spend more than I intended to begin with and I refused to feel guilty for having fun on my days off.

August wasn’t able to save as much as I intended but I was able to set aside the amount of a student loan payment (which I will have to start paying back in April although since I’m in IBR and currently my payment is $0 I’m not sure what it’ll be re-evaluated at but I’m setting aside a monthly payment based on what they say it will be in April) and a very small amount for my travel fund.

I’ve been saving before but my saving habits have always been: spend less than you have and I haven’t actively been saving for something, just that mythical rainy day. Which means I didn’t actually save each month. I’d leave the money in my checking account rather than moving it to my savings accounts. Now I’m doing that so I actually feel a bit like an adult rather than someone who transferred money to savings when I had “extra” money like a tax refund.

This month there’s no budget. There’s no way I’d keep to it because I’m going out of town 3 times this month. Things like eating out are going to be unavoidable because I’ll be staying in hotels and a Lunchable will go only so far. Instead my goal is to spend less on other things that I don’t need since I know I’ll be spending more eating out and buying wedding gifts. Normally I start off a new month with going out to lunch because, hey, new budget! Or I treat myself to Starbucks (which will be hard to avoid because the pumpkin spice latte is back and those are like crack but as one of those trips will require leaving at the ass crack of dawn I’m going to roll that treat into my travel “budget”).

I was also going to try to start the cash only diet this month and my intention was to spend $100 or less each week but that’s just not going to happen on the weekends I’m out of town. I will still have to buy groceries those weeks and gas and while I hope to still spend less than $100 those weeks I don’t want to deal with the guilt if I go over and have to pull out my debit card.

Because I shouldn’t feel guilty for spending money I do have.

I have apparently turned into someone who can’t not spend money. August 26, 2010

It seems that when one has a job and actually has a semblance of a social life one spends money. Who knew?

When my job future was less secure I would limit the non-necessary items I spent money on so I could squirrel away enough to live for at least 6 months. Now I have a more secure job and I can’t seem to stop spending money.

Some of those things have been unavoidable and unanticipated expenditures: things broke on my car at least once a month for 5 months. Some small expenses like replacing spark plugs and some large like replacing the radiator.

I did what I could to cut costs. I moved in with a roommate for the first time in 5 years. I moved to a cheaper neighborhood so that my car insurance and registration was significantly cheaper.  I applied for IBR to cut my student loan payments. Longer repayment time but more affordable.

My problem is I took the newfound savings as permission to spend more on fun stuff. Which is fine on the one hand because I spent the last 5 years watching my friends go on cruises and international vacations and buy new cars while I lived basically like a hermit so that I could set aside what is comparable to 8 to 10 months salary. Now I’m more secure in my job (though in this economy and considering I work for a non-profit I’m not making the big bucks and it could go under any time) so I’m not really saving just to save. I should also be more comfortable about doing fun things.

Except I’m always going to worry about money. It’s how I grew up. Only now I feel even more guilty for not saving every extra cent and that makes no sense. I have the money. I’m not living on credit or even living off my savings.

I still feel like I’m spending too much. I eat out too much. I buy too many unnecessary items for the home. I drive too many places and use too much gas. I don’t value grocery shop. I come to the end of the month and I realize that while I haven’t spent more than I earned it’s closer than I’d like.

I start off every month vowing to do better. I’ll eat out once a week. I won’t buy clothes. I won’t buy books. I’ll stay at home more. All the things that also add up to doing nothing fun. I need to find a balance. I need to realize that if I eat out for lunch then I should really say no when someone asks me to dinner or I should say no to eating lunch by myself in anticipation of going to dinner with friends. If I go to the movies I can’t buy a book.

I’ve tried making a budget. I just end up feeling guilty when I inevitably blow it. I track my expenses and that just makes me feel guilty for spending too much but doesn’t actually shame me into saying no.

My new plan: a variation on the Suze Orman Cash-Only diet. Unlike what she advocates I’m not doing it to stop using credit cards because I already don’t use credit cards (it’s true. I have one for Target and one for Kohl’s both of which I got to get an initial discount but haven’t used since). I’m doing it to see if the visible representation of what I earn will make me think more about that next unnecessary purchase.

I’m not sure it will. I obviously used cash only for years until I went to college and opened my own checking account. Now I’m a little afraid of cash. I feel like I spend it more quickly but I don’t know if that’s in my head because it is, again, visibly leaving my hands or if I actually am spending more quickly with cash. But I can try.

My intention is to withdraw $100 every Monday. This is based on previous month’s spending on everything but rent. $400 a month is actually less than I’ve been spending but that’s my goal. The only thing I will not use cash to pay for is gas because paying for gas with cash is a bigger hassle these days than it’s worth. Ideally I won’t spend $100 a week. But then again I don’t think I do now and yet when I average it out I am spending more than that a week even though I suspect I spend more some weeks than others.

$100 is a good round number. Theoretically I’ll spend $20 on groceries each week, $40 at the most. I’ll eat out twice a week or less (I used to eat out once a week for lunch. This was, however, less expensive to do when I worked nearer to more restaurants. Now I work near only a few restaurants and they’re more expensive so I should really only eat out once every 2 weeks. My problem is I get really bored of homemade lunches. Even when I switch up my options), and I won’t go to stores like Target where it’s nearly impossible for me to walk in and out of without tons of crap I don’t need.

I’m going to start this next week although I hope to spend no money Monday and Tuesday so I can start fresh for a new month. I intend to track things here because I’m not using this thing for anything else. I’m really scared of going cash only because I’ve been almost debit card only for so long.