Budget: The Breakdown

September is over and so is my first month's budget experiment. How did it go?

--I spent $99 on groceries. I originally budgeted $80 a month for regular groceries, since I don't eat much and I don't eat anything expensive. There's a produce shop around the corner that I have been visiting for fresh things to cook with. But I think the cooking has led to more money spent, on ingredients to make things instead of buying more simple things.
But look! My third try making cookies finally resulted in yumminess!

--At Costco I spent a mere $68. I used a debit card for that (at the end of the month).

--I spent too much on "fun" stuff out with friends: a total of $52 on a restaurant, bowling, a potluck dinner, a cab share, a snack for book club.

--Temping around the city, I needed to get around and thus spent $40 on metro cards. (For one week and a half, I am proud to exclaim that I spent zero dollars on transportation, because I biked to a temp job! A savings of $31.50!! Plus free exercise and fresh air! Win-win situation for sure. This means that metro card money will stretch into next month a little.)

--$10: I bought a swimcap to use the pool at our new gym (right now the husband is covering my share of the fees. Once I have a little more income I will pay for part of it.)

--I had to buy a read-aloud book for my class, and I couldn't help treating myself to a new MadLibs (it was on clearance!)(We hope to have some people over soon and that can make for some extra fun downtime!). That was $15 at the bookstore.

This past weekend we went to Target. I made myself a list of a few essentials that I needed, and I was able to stick to that list. But I also bought a blanket for $20. (We have a new bed and need more bedding for the colder weather. The husband bought a comforter too.) So the trip, including parking, cost me $55. Yikes.

(At one point I took out another $20 in cash because I thought I would need it for an outing, but then I decided not to go. That money still got spent, though.)

Grand total for the month: $340.
....

Overall, I did a fair job. At the beginning of the month I was a little more cavalier with money, spending more out with friends. That's the biggest spending piece that was "unnecessary." So in the future I need to find a way to reconcile fun with my very limited budget. I'm not looking forward to that. I hope that a few friends will understand and I can still have a good time. :)

Transportation was a huge cost and my budget didn't take that into account. I was still in summer mode or paycheck mode. The $25 I budgeted was for gas, which is actually very generous since I rarely drive and so only fill up every other month or so. All this year I got monthly metrocards at work pre-tax. Of course now I buy pay-per-ride metrocards out of pocket. I don't know why I forgot to take that into consideration. Next month's transportation budget will have to be $50 at least.

Groceries, like I said, was only okay. I didn't buy impulse fun food things, but that baking stuff meant that I bought three pounds of butter over the course of a couple weeks, at four dollars each. That's twelve dollars that seems a little extraneous. If I were smart and motivated, planning out meals and ingredients would be a good idea. I need to think harder about using what we already have, too, instead of always buying more. Like the frozen strawberries for smoothies. I like buying fresh ingredients at the produce shop, and so far it seems pretty cheap too (I bought two jalapeno peppers for our second salsa attempt--they cost eighteen cents!) in addition to being smart economically and environmentally.

Target and the bookstore were pretty much necessities, and unfortunately that kind of spending won't go away. I will try to spread out what I need over more time though, if that's possible.
....

Now for the emotional report...

On the one hand, it's been easy not to spend money on more things. I could easily have spent a lot more on going-out food/drinks/activities. I shouldn't have spent all that I did, but I did have a good time with friends. But in forgoing clothing, or more things at Target, I found myself thinking, "Oh, I'll just buy that next time." Which is dangerous and completely misses the point of the whole challenge by making it a temporary lark. I will probably not have any more money next time than I do right now! Oh god, this is so depressing.

BUT. It's a good learning tool in that it's easy to say no, to cut back, to ride a bike if it's nearby and the weather is good. Now that the weather has turned chilly, the bike will not be a viable option for much longer. With the looming holiday season, I'm already planning out homemade/handmade gifts.

Overall, I will have to revise my budget a little bit to make it more realistic, and I will also have to adjust a few ideas and habits. I don't think this is something I can keep up long term, but I think I'll do it again for October. I do like how using cash keeps me honest, and keeping track of every single thing keeps me thinking about what I'm spending. I can Just Say No!

...most of the time. :)

c(R)ash diet

I have a surprise for you. Are you ready for this?

Here it is:
When you don't have a job, you don't have money!

You're shocked, right?!

I'm not, because I did this already, a year and a half ago. I'm so over being poor.

I'm also a little restless and bored.

So I took on a challenge. It's not a unique challenge, and it's not even a cool and hip young-person challenge. Oh, no.

This is a challenge from the Guru of Greenbacks herself, Suze Orman!

Last December, she declared that to get back at rising credit card interest rates and fees, people shouldn't buy on credit anymore and just do cash: a Back to Cash Movement!

This summer she had a guest on the show who took the challenge and tried to only use cash for a month and felt successful in managing her spending. I found this intriguing, and so, knowing that I have a very limited amount of money to spend period, I would give it a try. Especially because the last of the wedding bills came through this month (on credit cards).

[I'm actually very responsible with credit cards. I almost always pay the complete amount. If that's not at all possible, I pay as much as I can (a big chunk, way way more than the minimum). My first year of teaching (classroom supplies, school clothes, rent, books for grad school) required so much money that I was in debt the whole time--somehow I had to keep charging as much as I paid each month off the balance. So it took a little more than a year to finally get rid of that. Early last year I had a huge car repair right after I got fired, and without a real job, it took three or four months to pay it off.]

But I've been really good about not putting things on credit cards (other than wedding stuff), and it's easy to keep those pretty clear. So my motivation with this challenge wasn't fighting debt out of desperation. It wasn't about drowning in credit card interest. (Thank god.) It was more about freaking out that I still have regular bills to pay (cell phone, car insurance, other things), in addition to things like FOOD, and only what was left in my bank account. If nothing goes into it, how long will that last? How smart am I being with what little I have?

I do get reckless when I have a job. I'm not talking dropping hundreds of dollars on useless toys, trinkets, toys. But I won't say no to a reasonable urge: I'll buy a book or two here. I'll buy a few clothes there. I'll have a few drinks out with friends. I'll buy a plane ticket! (For a vacation, not just any old time, obviously! :D) I spend money because I have money. (I also save it, of course. But naturally, saving is the first thing to go when I don't have an income. I can't spare anything for later if there's not much coming in now!)

So, back to the plan. First I reviewed my spending on mint.com and then set up a very spartan monthly budget plan. I decided I would only use cash for everything possible--groceries ($80 regular plus $100 for Costco), restaurants ($30), transportation ($20), and miscellaneous/shopping ($50). So that's a grand total of $260 to last me an entire month.

I have one week left and less than twenty dollars to get me there. There's no way I'm going to make it.

I'll provide a full report once the month is over!

Dude, long time no posting.

Sigh. I'm not motivated lately, for much of anything, really. Except, as you guessed, pictures.

We have less than one month of school. This is terribly exciting and strange and quite a relief.

Our big trip, that I have been planning ALL.YEAR.LONG is at the end of this week. I am very proud to announce that EVERYTHING is all lined up and ready to go. Again, such a relief. I'm now looking forward to reaping the benefits of my labor and worry--FUN with students and colleagues in a different city.

Today was a half-day. ROCK. That means I only saw one class, and I let them watch Indiana Jones, because they've never even HEARD of it. Can you imagine? On the bright side, many students did vote for the Princess Bride, because they enjoyed it when the grade watched it earlier in the year. Hurrah for giving them 80s movie cultural knowledge! I realized that next on the list must be Goonies, which I don't think I own.

I have owned my new pretty camera for just over two weeks, and I have taken over seven hundred photos already. I showed it off today during a baby shower, and people were very impressed with it, and I got to gush about it. Man, do I love this camera. I bought a spare battery this weekend so I won't have to worry on the field trip. I really do miss the ease of AA batteries and stowability of the old camera, but the niftiness and skill of the new one are worth it.

It's JUNE, people! How did that happen?

This morning one of my students suddenly called out, "Miss! You put 2004!" I looked over at the "Today is" part of my board, and sure enough, I had written, June 4, 2004. I suppose because I have no subconscious and I'd already written a 4. Oops.

This date in 2004, I had not even quit my temp jobs to move to NYC. Weird. And now I've been here three years (officially next Saturday) and am a real teacher and, like, I'm an actual adult and stuff. How time does fly.

Erm. Is it summer yet?

God, I hope the next few weeks aren't too difficult to get through. Give me strength to deal with hyper and obnoxious children.

Um.

So, like, I was totally meaning to write something. I swear. But...

I did laundry and I took pictures and then I had to keep checking for comments, and then finally eat something and then remake my whole bed and half-watch a movie, 3/4 watch a sitcom, and catch up on the Heroes recap before watching the new episode, and keep checking flickr...

and now it's already after ten!

Today I gave a quiz on the poetry stuff from the last two weeks. Even after all my prompting last week about studying, methinks they all bombed. Again. Whatever, dude. It's called LEARNING from your MISTAKES. Look into it, kiddies.

I introduced the final project for this unit, a poetry book. The last two years I've done a group book, but they no longer sit in groups and they can't really be trusted to work together very much, so I'll have to bite the bullet and grade one hundred books of fifteen poems each. Egads.

The rest of this week we'll be learning some new and interesting forms of poetry. Today was tanka, which is similar to haiku but expanded in form and in topic. I handed out old nature calendar pages to give them some inspiration, and they wrote a poem in groups, and then some had time to begin their own.

Later we'll do some odes, and cinquain and diamante (I know, but it'll be something new for them...), and perhaps something called hexaduad (six couplets that tell a complete story! interesting, right?).

The end of last week, we did simile and metaphor poems. To warm up, they had to list five things they felt strongly about and some traits of each. I put a poem up on the overhead and asked them to identify what tool the author used. They got that it was a bunch of similes, and we briefly talked about how the author felt about the topic, and how they knew. Then I put up another poem called "I am a Sword." It took awhile for them to realize that the topic of that poem was not, in fact, a sword. But they did see it was a metaphor.

Their task was then to begin writing simile and metaphor poems of their own. Easy peasy! It continued into the next day, and some of the kids' work was amazing. I really want to put some up here, but this great work doesn't always get collected, and I have next to no memory.

The field trip is coming together really nicely and we're all relieved and happy. We've already got transportation and lodging arranged and paid for, and this week we'll pay for our dining and tshirts, and that'll be just about it! Hurrah!

Last night I had this very long complicated dream that a bunch of mobsters were chasing me and trying to kill me. I kept hiding and running away, but they were everywhere. I/we could also somehow fly in the treetops. I got caught at one point and was injected by a bright blue tranquilizer. While I was nearly passed out, when there was a quiet moment the bad guys weren't paying attention, I somehow got the strength to run away and escape.

I think the alarm went off while I was still in mid-dream, so it was another very sleepy morning today and maybe that's why this stupid post is so disjointed and poorly written. At least that's the excuse I'm claiming for today. As always, check out the flickr for some neat photos.