April 27, 2009
’tis back to the grindstone, m’hearties!
Glad to be bringing home a paycheck for another few (9) weeks, but not so much to have to actually do it. Here. With these people. You understand.
Had a wonderfully *waiting* weekend with the BFF et al. We’re anxiously awaiting her new bundle of joy and have bets going on how much he’ll weigh. Your positive thoughts are much appreciated, I’m worried that he’s been so quiet.
We had other good news to celebrate: her sibling is engaged and will likely be having an Aussie wedding. I promptly texted my congratulations and asked if I was invited to the shindig. 🙂 [Yes, I am.]
I figured that I should invite myself early on to guarantee that I can find a decent flight. I’ll be doing my travel research soon, it’d be so cool if I were, ah, still unemployed and able to do a NZ and Australia jaunt in the fall. [Cool minus the part where I’d still be jobless ….. priorities, priorities…!!]
Oh, and I just realized that this will be the first wedding that I’ve attended in years where I won’t be part of the ceremony. Oh, to simply be a guest and not a working participant! Fun!
Spent $6 on admission to the Fair on Saturday, another $9 on funnel cake (with powdered sugar) and roasted corn on the cob. Friends treated us to our demolition derby tickets ($8/each).
Overspending goes hand in hand with unhealthy fair food. Refrained from buying apple butter, peach butter, cinnamon apple butter, and apricot butter. Luckily, I really only had $20 in cash, so I put a couple things on my card, and stuck to cash only the rest of the time. Total spending was about $32.50.
I wanted to treat them to lunch on Sunday for putting us up and all, but didn’t get the chance to. I did run their dishwasher for them, though. Imagine that, an Asian using the dishwasher to wash dishes! Such a novelty.
The real plan is to trade them manual labor (babysitting, cooking and cleaning) later this summer when I have time on my hands. We’ve been such close childhood friends that we’ve never practiced such etiquettely habits as host gifts and bringing wine to gatherings before, I guess there’s no reason to start formality with practically-family.
January 7, 2009
There have been more careless spending times in my life, but the last few weeks have to be right up there with the best (worst?) of them. It looks like I’ve just been wildly swiping my credit card, always picking the one with the best rewards as applicable, of course, so I was a little spazzed about reviewing the totals. Looks like it wasn’t too bad, though, and most of the spending was really goal-oriented: work or health.
Many of the expenses were intended to draw down the remainder of my 2008 FSA account:
4 doctor’s appointments: $60
Prescriptions, new or refills: $19.90
Massage therapy for my medical condition: $55, I hate that stress costs me real money, but it sure teaches me to take better care of myself. And it was budgeted.
Actually, I managed to max out the 08 FSA before I was through. That bumped my eyeglasses replacement order to January.
2009 FSA:
New eyeglasses: $39, after my health care plan’s credit was deducted. Since I’m a novice eyeglasses wearer, and was too harried to properly measure my face, it was worth the time and money to go through my medical plan.
The optician spent a lot of time discussing the options: explaining that the polycarbonate plastic lenses are guaranteed never to break, that silicon nose pads were recommended and swapped them out for me, trimmed the length of the arms and fit them to my face. These were all services that a mail order store couldn’t have performed to my satisfaction. Heck, I didn’t even know to ask about adjusting the length of the arms in the first place! It seemed like a stupid question at the time, but it was even stupider not asking when the glasses were first scripted out.
Nyquil/Dayquil:
$12. Some virus is going around and the orange and green pills are keeping me functional.
Other OTC drugs:
$? Still need to stock up on pain relievers and probably some more cold/flu medication.
Clothing/shoes:
Suit: $11, best deal ever!
Shoes: $30, um, not the best deal ever. But it’s for a good purpose! Matching is a good purpose.
Tailoring: $?, will know the estimate once the jacket and two shirts are dropped off for nips and tucks.
Eating out:
Again, it felt like we ate out a lot. We did more frequently than I’m accustomed to, but it was a combination of eating away from home and eating out. The former was just eating meals at friends’s homes while visiting, while the latter probably consisted of 4 meals for a total of $25.
Just got another email asking if we’re up for dinner, drinks or pool tonight before the last friend straggles back home to NorCal, though.
Happily, lots of the fun stuff was free: hanging out with friends at their houses, watching shows and movies they already had, opening presents that we’d already spent on, etc.
Regardless of the intent, I don’t want to get in the habit of mindlessly spending. It’s way too easy to stop thinking about whether or not I need that item, and just buy ’cause I want it.
December 16, 2008
after tax and shipping.
I just bought this lovely thing which should be delivered in about a week:
A few specs:
15.4 inch screen
3 GB with capacity to upgrade to 4 GB
250 GB hard drive
4 USB ports
If I’d been willing to spend twice as much, I could have gotten a smaller screen size – 14.1 inches was my ideal, and a much lighter machine, but now’s not the time to be splurging that much.
I was swooning over the Lenovo U series — starting at 2.47 pounds? Yes, gorgeous, come along with me …… But I don’t have two thousand to spend on it.
Budgetary Note: That’s pretty much cleared out almost my entire gift/travel fund.
December 12, 2008
The feeling of material satiety has worn off with a vengeance. This feels a bit like a rebound from my “Simplify, simplify” mode and I’m not fighting it as hard as I should. The e-fund is still fine, but I hit a plateau when I got sick for two weeks. That meant no overtime. In fact, I had to burn some sick time. That’s what it’s for and I’m grateful to have it, but with the ability to overearn has gone my spending/acquisitive restraint and determination to build up the money reserves while I still can.
1. The dental visit made me feel like I should check with my dentist friend about whether or not he’d recommend getting a new electric toothbrush. I don’t want a single additional cavity, and since the current dental care regimen is evidently not doing the job, something needs to change. New electric toothbrush: ~$100?
2. Flat iron for self, friend (X-mas gift): $150?
3. Laptop: $650?
4. Boots: My older pair are too worn and, most importantly, hurt my feet. Winter weather always makes me long for comfortable boots to keep me warm, and browsing online hasn’t helped the neediness: $50? $70? Meh.
5. New towels: I’ll use a gift card.
6. Interview suit: I keep thinking that I can just wear my old one but let’s not kid ourselves — I couldn’t, er, latch the hook in July and I won’t be able to now, either. There’s an odd feeling: $200?
7. New coat: The thought of moving to a place that has Real Winter scares the bejeebers out of me. That’s probably why I can’t stop dreaming of new puffy coats, gloves that actually fit, scarves, hats and vests. 40 degrees is COLD, people! Frigid! Unbearable!
Where do I think this money is coming from?? Nuts. I’ll pass on the boots, coat, and the flat iron for myself. The travel/gift fund can take care of the flat iron gift and part of the laptop, the rest will have to come out of my expenses. Er, the suit? Well, let’s see if I can cobble together a sharp enough outfit from my regular business clothing to get by. Otherwise, I might try the (new! local!) H&M for separates to be tailored. I don’t want to cheap out on an interview outfit but I shouldn’t bust into the savings, either. I need that for rent! (Then again, I need a new job to pay the rent, too.)
Oooh there’s that “I hate spending money” feeling back. Whew, I thought I’d lost my mind there.
Is anyone else self-gifting this season?
December 11, 2008
As it turns out, going to the dentist IS better than going to work. The experience, I mean, not the paying seven hundred dollars instead of getting paid a fraction of that price tag. (Not that I paid $700 — I paid $78, and thank goodness for the dental insurance that picked up the rest! Can you imagine a routine visit costing that much money?? Do they have COBRA for dental? Eeesh.)
What I mean to say is: I spent 2.5 hours at the dentist having 4 almost-cavities drilled and filled, and I was much less stressed than I would have been at a comparable time in the office. It was a very scientific study.
Other things I accomplished in one day:
Dropped off dry cleaning before their one-day cutoff time.
Lovelied up the eyebrows. ($15)
Lunched with newly employed friend and caught her up on sad news. ($7)
Met with two old friends I haven’t seen in months, played with baby.
Picked up dry cleaning. ($10)
Picked up doggy ashes, chatted with old friend.
Dropped off doggy ashes.
Ok, see, my day seemed a heck of a lot fuller than that list shows. Really! I drove all over three towns to accomplish as much as … that. Thank goodness for sick time. I feel like there were a thousand other things I should have gotten done today because I’ll be busy all weekend, but I won’t undo all the good relaxing by stressing about what-should-have-beens. Oh I remember! I wanted to see if I could get my eyes checked today too, but oops! Forgot. Oh well, I have a clean trenchcoat! And isn’t ten dollars ridiculous for dry cleaning a coat? I should have read the tag before buying. Unless it just didn’t matter because I have the hardest time finding clothes that fit.
September 30, 2008
It’s not like this is a new phenomonen, but I’m sad that I have only a few dollars left in my wallet after the weekend.
BF actually looked at me like I’d sprouted a new head when he realized I’d paid:
$4, movies on Saturday – they requested CC use only for transactions over $5 and since they’re an independent and I want them to thrive …..
$5, tip/part of the bill for lunch on Sunday
$15, dinner at a cash-only on Sunday
all in CASH. And now I’m back to a few dollars and jingling coins.
August 27, 2008
*looking around*
Is it really Wednesday? The last Wednesday of the month? Already?
Geez.
I feel like it’s been ages since I last blogged, and it’s probably due to the action-packed-ness of life. Let’s see. When we last met … oh, that was yesterday? Good grief!
Well, since yesterday I’ve:
~ discovered that I would need to make 81% more money than I do now to be “equally comfortable” in New York.
~ forced myself to go to a networking event in the downtown area (I hate driving in downtown, especially during high traffic), exchanged business cards with two people, and got out of the scary dark neighborhood safely.
~ met with NY friends who were in town for a couple days, and recommended that they try public transportation to get back to the airport. Happy to report that went smooth as silk, and they enjoyed not sitting in traffic greatly.
Spending since Friday?
~ we had a mandatory work event on Saturday so I combined a help-a-coworker-out situation with the work event so we could carpool part of the way: + saved on a little gas.
~ went to tea with a coupla the gals: – $14
~ visited a comic shop: priceless (and I didn’t spend anything): $0
~ bought ten pounds of pork shoulder ribs (that’ll last our family a good while, we cook it various ways and I like pork): – $10
~ did my “home”work at Borders: free air conditioning! and made money, of course.
~ brother actually paid a bit of money towards household bills: + $100
~ missed a friend’s 21st birthday party because my train was late: $0
~ went to the networking event at a bar: $0
~ went to another bar afterwards to meet up with my friends: $4 for a burger I bought before getting TO the bar. Tacky? Only if the staff were around. We hung out on the patio after 10 when drinks were no longer allowed outside so there were no witnesses, and their kitchen was closed by the time I got there anyway.
My car is being a brat and celebrating our fifth year together by falling apart in tiny ways:
1. The auto lock on the driver’s side doesn’t work.
2. The window on the passenger’s side doesn’t work.
3. The “cabin” light switch needs strange toggling to work.
4. The heater went out this morning.
