How to Save More Money for Buying Backpacks.

About a year ago I got a decent salary bump because I took on a whole lot of extra responsibility during something of a crisis time at my work. The jury is still out on whether or not I made the right choice. Anyone who is familiar with this blog or my FB or my ever-thinning hair has heard me complain about the stress of my job, however it was a Faustian bargain and one that I entered into freely. Well – believe it or not – I did one smart thing when all of that happened: I opened a savings account.

Yes, yes, I should have done that years ago. I know. Let’s get past it.

Also, around that same time, I had developed a pretty aggressive budget for myself. Not just a “budget” in the theoretical sense. I actually built my own Excel spreadsheet where I have been tracking EVERY SINGLE purchase I have made for almost the last two years. It is an exquisite spreadsheet, BTW. I am very proud of it and if any of you out there are Excel-o-philes you should let me know and I will send you a copy!

Basically I started making a little extra money at the exact moment when I was able to take real grown-up control of it. For me this was a pretty big deal. I have been chronically bad with money over the years and it feels better now to have it under control.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not rolling in dough or anything, far from it. But once I started saving and budgeting I started to get more and more wrapped up in how much MORE I could save and budget! Put it down to the addictive traits of my personality.

Lately this has all manifest itself in my nightly reading of blogs and articles about how to cut spending and manage money (ironic since I push around other people’s money all day, but I contend that personal and business finance are completely different worlds). The problem is that I already do, like, 90% of the stuff that they say to do! I don’t have any credit cards. I buy almost all my clothes at thrift stores. I am cutting down on “empty expenses” (a term I keep seeing, derived from “empty calories” and meaning money you spend that doesn’t really get you anything; think Starbucks, cigarettes, crack cocaine [regular cocaine is a whole different story, obviously, because it is so good for you!]), I plan what I am going to buy before I go to the grocery store (mostly), I research big purchases before I make them (no one alive can obsess and anguish over the buying of a backpack more thoroughly than I can), and I have cut down my purchasing of lottery tickets to only 600 a week!

The point is I am running out of new ways to cut down on spending! There are two or three things left that I still need to do; I still have cable TV (which I split with roommates) and need to get rid of that. I need to learn to make a proper salad rather than buying these pre-made bag-o-salad bags. I need to cancel my membership to that website based in the Philippines that allows me to bet on box turtle races.

I need to find ways to enjoy my life a little more without spending any extra money. This is why I go to the library so much; did you know that you can check a bunch of books out of a library FOR FREE and then just never return them! It is amazing and completely true! You should try it.

Thus far I have not taken up trolling Freecycle for fun new junk, but that is mainly because I am lazy, but I’m sure that I will get there. I have also stopped myself from constantly buying notebooks. I used to buy every notebook that I saw. I have found that one or two good Moleskins will last a good long time.

Currently I am trying to do this thing where I eat all the random food I own. Remember those cans of creamed corn in the back of the kitchen cabinet? I am trying to eat the stuff like that. I want to get to the point where I don’t have any of that stuff around. I want to be able to open the cabinet one day and be all like, “Huh, I don’t currently own any food.” (HASTAG: firstworldproblems) That way I can start over from scratch and will – from then on – only buy the stuff that I actually need.

I’m discovering that there is something freeing about needing less and using less. This isn’t to say that I’m going crazy about it. If we go out to dinner I’m not going to be all like, “Just some water and saltines for me, thanks” because I have come to realize that when I do go out to dinner or spring for some French fries or a good cup of hot chocolate (damn you Starbucks!) that those things seem to taste better. In my brain I think that they LITERALLY taste better, but perhaps I mean that those things are more satisfying. Because they are. Because they’re rarer and they’re more special. Specialer!

The moral in all this is that I’m not happier because I have some money in a savings account, I’m happier because I have taken better control of my life in this small way. I am happier because it is something I have done. It is feeling a of accomplishment. And I don’t know about you, but those are few and far between in the grown-up world.

Now having said all of that, I am going to Google this $130 backpack I’m planning on buying. One day.

P.S.

Here is an interesting article  about three people who live on less than $20k a year. 

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Sad Excuses for my Absenteeism.

Oh dear blog, how I have missed you. I’m sorry that I have been away for so long. I am not mad at you and I did not forget about you.

The truth is that I just haven’t been feeling zesty and zany enough for you lately. I have just been sort of emotionally exhausted as of late. So I have turned somewhat inward. I have been reading a lot and I have been doing a lot of research for the story that I’m working on.

The book I’m reading right now is called “Drood” by Dan Simmons and it is a novel that seems to be about how Charles Dickens went all crazy during the last years of his life. It is dark and very interesting so far. Strangely, as I’m reading it, I keep picturing my Dad as Charles Dickens. That’s weird, right? My father doesn’t really look much like Dickens and as far as I know there isn’t any Freudian significance to this. I have gone as far as to google image Charles Dickens just so I have a better idea of what he looked like, but it still doesn’t seem to be helping. I have to say that, thus far, my emotional experience with the novel is probably far removed from what the author had hoped for.

Otherwise, I have been on a financial adventure.

You see, I have worked out this beautiful little personal budget in Excel. It is simple and elegant and reasonable. I gave myself January and February to cram my life into it, but alas, some things went haywire and I couldn’t do it. So I christened March “No Money-Spending March” so that I could get a better handle on everything and be perfectly on budget by the beginning of April. This has been interesting and I encourage everyone to give this sort of thing a try because it really does give you a clear idea of what you spend money on and what you don’t. See, if you limit yourself to purchasing the bare essentials required to get through life, you start to realize how much you normally spend money on that which is frivolous. And in doing so, you develop a profile of yourself as a person and as a consumer.

For instance, in this month of austerity I have spent exactly as much on fishing supplies as I normally do, which is to say, absolutely nothing. Ergo: I am not a fisherman or fishing enthusiast. If it was ever unclear before, I now know that about myself.

However, I have had to curb my purchasing of books and cool clothes from the Goodwill. Which means that I like owning books and cool clothes that were previously worn by strangers who are probably now dead.

Also, I have stopped myself several times from buying weird food at Trader Joe’s. Instead, I have been raiding the freezer and actually eating the weird food that I had previously purchased from Trader Joe’s. This tells me that I - like so many others - am afflicted with what psychiatrists call “Trader Joe’s Blindness”. The shrinks say that when confronted with all the strange and delightful stuff that Trader Joe’s sells, we often forget our own eating habits and purchase odd and obscure types of fish or couscous that we would normally never consider consuming. For instance, why did I previously buy two different kinds of eggplant parmesan lasagna when I have always preferred regular lasagna? I have no good answer except for the “Trader Joe’s Blindness” which caused me to become schizophrenically separated from my awareness of my own eating habits.

I should also mention about “No Money-Spending March” this is not an endeavor that I am setting off on because I am necessarily broke, but rather, because I am trying to bring some kind of budgetary order to my life. I have spent a lot of life being very broke and I am not that way right now (I don’t have a bathtub full of razor sharp $100 bills either though) but I’ve gotten to the age when not having any real savings is embarrassing. So I figure I should get to work on that.

That is pretty much it for me lately. Just feeling sort of introverted, confusing my father with 19th century novelists and not spending any money.

Maybe my life has been too lame lately to be blogging about.

Though that has never stopped me before …


BTW, here is a pic of my Dad




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