Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Gone for a minute

now I'm back with....UPDATES!
sorry you guys. Things have been pretty busy these past couple of weeks. It's a busy period at work so I have been working 12 hours days. Unfortunately, I don't get paid extra for all these hours. The only upside is that the company buys dinner for us. This has been good for my wallet but so bad for my stomach. I think I have gained 5 lbs in the last two weeks!
In terms of spending, working so long has prevented me for spending any money for the last two weeks. I have not even had time to take out my weekly $10 allowance (for the last 3 weeks). I finally did yesterday and now I have $50 ($20 that I didn't spend last month). It seems like so much! It's funny because last year my weekly allowance was between $50 and $60 and sometimes it would be gone by tuesday (I take it out on Fridays). This "extreme saving" as I like to call it has changed my outlook. I have another example of how it's changed my mentality. My job is such that I work on different clients for a set period of time. Sometimes I work from the main office. In the past 2 months, I have always brought my lunch. I changed locations this week and brought my lunch on Monday. Imagine my surprise when not a single other person on my team did. It seemed so bizarre to me. That office didn't even give it's employees access to a microwave. I had to ask the deli guy to heat up my food! Anyway, I thought that maybe things were cheaper in this cafeteria because the office is not in NY. Tuesday, I was running late and didn't have time to make a real lunch so i grabbed 2 packets of oatmeal with the intention of having that for lunch. During the day, I started thinking about how much of a hassle it would be to make the oatmeal since I couldn't heat it up myself. I like my oatmeal just so and I didn't think the deli guy would take that much direction from me since he still had to make sandwiches and was doing me a favor. Long and short of it, is i decided since I had money in my wallet, I could buy lunch just this once. I got a quesadilla and a drink. It cost $10. I was so shocked and annoyed. It REALLY upset me to just hand over $10 to the cashier lady. I just kept thinking, now I only have $40. I know I will not be getting lunch at this office anytime soon. Thing is, before I wouldn't even have thought about it. The quessadilla was not even that good by the way.

I had a houseguest this week and he also did a lot in terms of me saving. Although I had to feed him and drive him around, he bought my groceries for the month and filled up my tank. He also paid for everything that we did the whole week! That's $90 that i will not be spending this month and splitting between savings and credit cards.

There is one bad thing to report, I got cable and internet over the weekend. There were two main reasons.

1. I was so busy at work, I no longer had time to surf the internet or blog. If I wanted to maintain this blog and keep up with all of yours I needed access to internet. I also need it to pay bills and just keep up to date.

2. Working so many hours was making me miss my fav tv shows (they are all on network tv) and I felt I needed DVR so i could record them. If i'm going to be saving money by going out less, I needed some form of entertainment. Problem is that it costs about $100 a month. I am going to have to use part of my tax refund to pay it otherwise i'd be in the red by june.

I'm sure I could have chosen to keep sacrificing but then i'd be really depressed and bored and I don't think I'd have the motivation to keep paying this debt off.
Anyway, this post is long so i'll write more later. I just wanted to let you guys know about another blog that's pretty interesting. Check out greenizblack.blogspot.com. It's an interesting read.
I'll update my meters this wknd.

5 comments:

  1. Welcome back!

    I understand with the busy thing - I had an event for work last night that I had to work and things have been so crazy that I've been eating out for lunch every day and not really taking care of myself.

    However, I did want to tip you on Subway - the $5 foot long deal is so good - either split it with someone and pay less than $3 for lunch, or buy the whole thing and save half for lunch the next day. It may not be the GREATEST lunch but it's healthy and satisfying.

    Oh, and thanks for the shout out :)

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  2. I have been really busy too...ugh.

    It hurts to spend cash, doesn't it? That's why starting in February I'm going to have cash envelopes for my groceries and gas. I know for a fact it makes me think twice. I don't think as much when I pay with a debit card (even though that's technically "cash" too).

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  3. I understand with the cable thing. I didn't advertise it, but we actually bumped a monthly bill up by re-subscribing to HBO. We don't go out; we don't do movie theaters. What else are we going to do if we can't watch our favorite shows???? If that's all the entertainment we pay for, I will not feel bad about it.

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  4. ooh long time!

    I think your 2 purchases are fine. I have them both. How did you live without internet at home all this time? I'm so attached to my computer. It's kind of sad.

    and DVR. I have one too. It's one of the greatest invention in the world. I have so much shows recorded and you know what, rather than going out on Friday and dropping hundreds, I can sit with a blanket and watch my shows and spend less than $5.

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  5. Wow, I can't believe an employer doesn't have even a microwave. That's crazy to me. That would make it very hard to live frugally.

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Hit me with some tough love