Net worth update: Month 1

This month was my first month of recording my finances. I've been separating myself financially since we split in April and it's taken me a while to get back on my feet. My goal for this month was to build up my emergency fund. This took priority over debt repayment. And it looks like I did pretty well.

	Start: 7/8/2015	7/13/2015	7/20/2015	8/1/2015	Month's Change	Year's Change
Checking	884.71	601.71	1,259.44	1,340.71	456.00	456.0
Savings	928.87	1,116.87	1,130.00	2,000.00	1,071.13	1071.13
Car loan (3.45%)	(21,682.00)	(21,691.21)	(21,691.21)	(21,325.73)	356.27	356.27
Paypal (0%)	(200.00)	(200.00)	(180.00)	(170.00)	30.00	30.00
Credit card (0%)	(3,000.00)	(2,975.00)	(2,975.00)	(2,975.00)	25.00	25.00
Student loan 1 (2.65%)	(1,510.81)	(1,510.81)	(1,510.81)	(1,510.81)	0.00	0.00
Student loan 2 (2.65%)	(4,845.64)	(4,845.64)	(4,845.64)	(4,845.64)	0.00	0.00
Car value	14,232.00	14,232.00	14,232.00	14,232.00	0.00	0.00
Car insurance jar	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Skis jar	0.00	0.00	0.00	27.60	27.60	27.60
Investments	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
	(15,192.87)	(15,272.08)	(14,581.22)	(13,226.87)	1,966.00	1966.00

My net worth went up by $1966.00 this month! That's an absurd sum, given that my entire budget after I pay the mortgage is $2500/month. Some of it was good saving. This past week I only spent $300. But mostly it came from cashing in my Health Savings Account refunds. I put all of that money towards my savings account. I don't expect to have this much of a bump again. I expect to be able to save $150 or so per week, or $600-$700 a month. There were also no disasters this month, and that's good.

Looking forward to another good month next month.

He's back, and so is the budget

The good news...

The Chief Engineer came back.

I won't go into personal details but the couples I know who separated and came back together are quite a bit stronger than they were before. Yes, it was very painful. But I knuckled up, took better care of myself than I have in ages during my nearly three months alone, and I think we came out better for it.

One improvement is that we will now and forevermore live with separate finances. Part of our problem came from the fact that I spend money like water and he holds on to it. That of course builds resentment. Having two incomes gave me a false sense of financial security. Now I live under my own income. I also bought a car. First car! I need a car now as he and I were co-dependent before and never did anything apart (no wonder we needed to separate!) We now both have activities at the same time in different cities.

After groceries and my car loan and my contribution to our mortgage I have $400/week left to spend on what's got to get bought. That should be plenty, I think. I hope. I'm not good with money so we'll have to see how it goes.

Now here's the bad news...

When we separated it was very quick and very dirty. He took one credit card and I took the other and the debt that came with it. Fortunately I managed to snag 0% interest on a new spare credit card. I got the spare card because when I went to rent a car back in May I found out that I didn't have the right brand of card (visa/mc/amex) and couldn't do the rental. I also feel that since the stripes on my cards die occasionally, it would be good to have a spare. Here's the debt.

Debts: $3220
$3000 at 0% for 16 months on credit card
$220 at 0% until September 2015 on PayPal credit

I've added bars on the right to track my progress. I've spent the summer contributing to an emergency fund for myself but not chipping away at the debt. That is in my name and is my responsibility. Let's see how I do. Hopefully money will no longer divide us.

In the meantime, check out my "Organizing $$$" tab to follow my progress!

How'd We Do That?! Fun With Spreadsheets, part deux

I've tracked our expenses since January of this year, even though I didn't implement any kind of money plan until this month. The red cells are the times when we went over the budget that I set for August. I can't complain about overpaying on my student loan, though. 

Impossible to read, I know. Click the spreadsheet to make it big enough to see.

The first block of categories is the "necessary" stuff. The second block is obviously the stuff we would instantly cut completely if one of us lost our job. I forgot the total for the second block -- it's a bit over $666. The green column is the average for the year so far. We had the best month we've had all year, spending a total of $2433.47 on expenses that aren't our mortgage or our condo fee. I'm still horrified, as I used to live on $1000 a month (including rent!) when I lived in Philadelphia. But this is DC, DC, DC and it's as bad as New York sometimes. 

But I'll hang onto the success. It left me wondering what went differently from other months and helped us to stay under budget?

• I watched our purchases like a hawk this month. Unfortunately, this also kept me very stressed. So next month I will total up purchases at the end of each week, but not look at anything money-related in between.
• We actively focused on staying home and entertaining ourselves there. We know that if we go out to do a single activity, say, go to a movie, it ends up turning into more than that. Dinner and a movie. Dinner, a movie, and ice cream for me. Dinner, a movie, and a swing by the grocery store for junk food on the way back. You get the picture.
• We actively tried to cook more at home.
• I focused on making money this month instead of spending it. I put a lot of energy into selling things on ebay. I earmarked all of those profits for my student loan so there was no temptation to spend the money. Ebaying stuff was an activity that took the place of some other spendy activities I might have done, like going to the bookstore.
• I looked at each purchase in terms of how many items I would have to sell on ebay to pay for it. I haven't made much money on ebay and it's been a lot of work. Am I going to go toss the $8 I just made selling a beanie baby on lunch out? No, I'm going to keep it and put it towards my student loan.
• We did not buy physical objects that couldn't be consumed, except for one item. I had some old, ugly jewelry Grandmom had given me melted down into a wedding band. My hands swell horribly in the summer heat and I can't wear the one the Chief Engineer gave me at our wedding for a good 2-3 months out of the year. When the ring disappears each year, people ask questions. I don't like it, so I wanted something I could wear in the summer. It was $75 for the labor -- but the jeweler asked me to do some artwork for his store, and I expect to make about $75 off the piece. It'll work out in the end!

Next month will be much more difficult as I know we have over $500 in medical expenses alone next month. I'll plan for that in the next post.

What would you change about my spending habits? Happily looking for suggestions. 

Diagnosis: Affluenza January 18th-24th

This week wasn't a total disaster. I spent $158, and slightly over 1/3 of that was for medical expenses. There was definitely room for improvement this week but at the same time I didn't buy a single object this week.

Green is purchases that were either necessities or purchases that I will only give up if I end up in serious financial trouble. Orange purchases were probably okay but should've been considered for longer. Red purchases shouldn't have happened. Asterisks indicate physical objects.

• Two prescription refills: $20
• Physical therapy: $35
• Tithe: $5
• Guitar lesson: $45
• Museum membership and lecture: $35
• Another Star Trek kindle book: $8

Total: $148 

($55 of that was medical)

• "No peeking" bonus (guitar fund): $10 = $158 total 
• Clutter tally: 0 objects purchased 

Bank account balance: $0.00. 

$44.75 still owed to the Chief Engineer for my ski boots.

I also started something new for myself this week. I have a very bad anxiety-driven habit of obsessively checking my bank account multiple times a day. Unfortunately my bank account's online system displays not just my checking account balance but also the numbers for my tiny little stock portfolio. So yes, every time I look at it, the numbers are different. Even when I check it eight times a day. Which I have.

It's easier to break habits when there's an incentive. My incentive is to "pay myself" $5 for every day that I don't look at my bank accounts or look up any stock values online. The money then goes into my guitar fund. The idea occurred to me on Tuesday, so you'll see two "no peeking!" bonuses for Wednesday and Thursday. Hopefully a few months of this should help me break my habit and help me save for a guitar (or knowing me, the guitar money will end up paying medical bills instead.)

The museum lecture and membership I shouldn't have purchased, nor the kindle book. Not right now, anyways. But given that the lecture is about space disasters and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 13's original co-pilot) is speaking I went mildly crazy at the opportunity to hear him talk. Between that and a Star Trek book and the amount that I spent, I think I'm living in a world of science fiction right now.

Reality better set in soon because I looked at my upcoming expenses for the first week in February: Two physical therapy appointments and one psychiatrist visit will total $210. Yes, I know I need a cheaper psychiatrist and I did just make an appointment with the only psychiatrist I can get to without a car who takes my insurance. I nabbed his first open appointment, in April. Until then this expensive psychiatrist visit is an important appointment that I have to keep.

I've been blabbing on a lot lately about money, when this is a hoarding blog. Are you enjoying the Diagnosis: Affluenza posts? I'll have more hoarding horror stories to tell this week. We're headed back to Pennsylvania to spend a day skiing, and that means (tada!) we have to stay with my parents. 

See you soon!

Diagnosis: Affluenza January 11-17th

I think I've finally figured out a format for this. As usual, I started the week with $250, $30 of which went into a brokerage account for me to invest. That left $220. I then got paid for some contract work ($100) and sold an old gift card I didn't plan to use to a friend for $80 which brought my total income to $400. I also had $184.25 left in my checking account from the four weeks since I started to use this money plan.

Here's what happened to that $584.25 this week. Our ski trip plus the computer repair took an incredible bite out of my budget and what I'd saved so far.

Purchases in green are purchases that I consider reasonable. Purchases in orange are purchases that I should've thought more about or prepared for but didn't. It would be good to avoid these purchases until I have more money saved. The purchases in red are purchases that I should be skipping until I have $600 in savings. I've picked $600 as a result of looking at previous months' spending. I noticed that I have a habit of making about a $300-$400 purchase on something unnecessary or unexpected every month. This month was probably the most unexpected and totaled $600, so that seems a good amount to aim for.

Anything with an asterisk is an object. So this week I acquired two things, well, I suppose four things. I plan on working to keep that number low. Four objects a week is 200 objects a year! And since we've got 1200 square feet to work with, that could be a problem! So let's go look at a "bad" week:

I can't legitimately expect anyone to read this chicken scratch, can I?

Starting bank balance: $584.25 Weekly budget: $220 Extra income: $100 from contract work Extra income: $80 from selling an old gift card EXPENSES: Mac repair: $290 Physical therapy: $ 35 Guitar lesson: $45 *Ski boots: $230 *Ski poles: $50 Lunch with friend: $30 Star Trek Kindle book (stop laughing!):  $8 Two iTunes songs: $3 Total expenses: $691.00 $291 over budget Bank balance: $-106.75

I should probably avoid iTunes and amazon for a while.  That's going to be a hard habit to break, but at least it's not expensive. Okay, just one book and one song next week. I'll try to get down to zero after that. For just a little while. Lunch with my friend Bret is does make me wince, but at least it's only once a month and friends are more important than money. We "treat" each other to lunch every other Friday, meaning we each only end up paying once a month. I may want to suggest a less expensive locale in the future. 

For the next couple weeks I'll have three regular expenses: $70 of physical therapy a week and weekly $45 guitar lessons. That leaves $100 each week. I'll need to be careful so I can pay back the Chief Engineer for my ski boots in the next two weeks. I was doing well for a while, especially the first two weeks. Time to hunker down a little more. 

In terms of our family spending, we've made another change: This month I don't get to look at our household finances except on the last day of the month.  The Chief Engineer and I temporarily changed passwords on our accounts to ones that only he knows. Why? Because I have a nasty, OCD-habit of checking our bank accounts and our credit card sometimes several times a day. It's a little (or a lot!) ridiculous. If I can't stress about my eating disorder, I stress about money instead. With food, when I angst over it I end up eating more. Maybe if I angst over the bigger picture of our family finances I end up spending more than if I just leave them alone.

In spite of the ski trip it feels like we've spent less money this month. I've spent more evenings consciously trying to do things that don't involve shopping, spending money, or planning to spend money in any way. I don't spend a lot of time spending money but I do spend a lot of time planning to spend money. I'm trying to distract myself and see if it makes a difference. Instead of planning to buy stuff, I've done some quilting, caught up on much of the Law and Order and Start Trek episodes that I missed while I was in college, read lots of free online fiction, and for the first time in over a decade I finally sat down and started writing some fiction of my own. It felt really, really silly good.

I'm quite a bit happier than I was when I was angsting about our money. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to wean myself of recording everything I spend out of my own bank account.

See you all for Dx: Affluenza next Saturday!

Back in business

But it's a good thing I'm not a business, because I'd be broke and out of business if I were.

Stop laughing! It's a ridiculous 
background screen and I LOVE it! 

My laptop made it back to me this week after a vacation at the Apple store. It completely died on me and ended up needed pretty much everything but the screen and casing replaced, which came to a whopping $290. I gotta admit I feel like I got a real deal though. Apple's flat rate service and labor for laptops covered a new motherboard, new trackpad, new keyboard, and new solid state drive for under $300. If I'd bought the pieces separately I would've come closer to $1500. Makes me wonder how I managed to break all four of those things given that only the keyboard has moving parts...anyways, I'm back to blogging again. 

Financially the week has been a disaster. Last week I managed to twist my ankle and ended up at the doctor's with a $35 copay and a $55 brace. Add physical therapy for another old injury, and then the laptop....and would you believe the real stupidity hasn't even shown up yet?

The slopes around here finally opened and we went skiing for the Chief Engineer's 30th birthday this week. For what it was, it actually wasn't all that expensive. Middle-of-the-week lift tickets are $25 a day, or about 1/3 of weekend prices on the east coast. He's an avid skiier so he's had on his own gear for a while so there's no need to rent his equipment. We pack in our food so it just ends up being the cost of lift tickets, gas out to the mountain (which isn't much since we own a car with great fuel economy), and one night in a hotel. 

Except I can manage to make anything more expensive and I can always manage to acquire more stuff. On this trip I already had my own skis but didn't have boots or poles, which was fine, figuring I could rent boots and I've skied well without poles in the past. Apparently I was wrong. You can rent skis alone, you can rent helmets alone, you can rent poles alone. But apparently you can't use your own skis and rent boots anywhere. Ask the lawyers, because I don't understand it. 

I will *make* these worth it.

My choice ended up being, buy boots or don't ski at all. I ended up dropping $230 on these. They're quality boots and should last me over a decade. But to make matters worse, after the first day I ended up also spending $50 on poles.  I sat and beat myself up about doing something else that took us financially one step further away from going to Australia in January next year. I realized that these not-so-little sudden financial expenditures are coming at more than a financial cost because each thing I spend money on means there's something else that can't happen instead.

Then I went and skied the best two days of skiing I've ever had. So I stopped beating myself up. I just have to decide what's most important to me. In the YNAB book, the author said something along the lines of, "If you find yourself consistently blowing $100 on shoes every month, the solution isn't to make yourself stop buying shoes, it's to admit that you're going to buy shoes and plan/budget for them." That means doing the splurge/impulse/unplanned purchases in place of something else.  

Oh. I get it now. 

My goal of completing the kitchen and going to Australia within a year? I've let go of it. We'll do the bare minimum on the kitchen and then will turn our focus towards saving for the Australia trip. I am willing to let go of the desire to have a new cabinet, sink, countertop, and backsplash in exchange for being able to ski and to go to Australia. I've lost my desire for the earrings I wanted. A new guitar? I'll get it eventually. And kids? Kids can wait.

A kitchen or this? Easy choice. 
Happy 30th birthday, darlin'!     

I don't think it quite hit me until I took one of the exactly two falls I had during the last two days (yes, pun intended!) but skiing and being pregnant don't mix, toddlers and skiing definitely don't mix, and I've MISSED skiing. The Chief Engineer and I had our first real date skiing together. We had several not-a-dates on the slopes before that. In high school on wintery Fridays my uncle would pick me up at school and he'd take me night skiing in the Pocono Mountains. I ski enough to make the purchase financially worth it and I love every minute I'm on the slopes. 

I knew rental gear was poor quality, but I don't think I realized just quite how poor. I performed well and had a FANTASTIC time! My gear will pay for itself in about 23 more days of skiing, compared with renting. That's about two years of skiing for me or less if the weather is good this year. But I'm enjoying skiing so much more now with the new gear and I'm now willing to give up other things I want so that I can keep skiing. And going skiing and suddenly hardly falling anymore because my gear actually works? Priceless.

Unfortunately there are two more immediate problems: 1.) I suddenly own two very large objects (well, four) that I didn't own before. Ski boots and poles are not small! I'll need to declutter a few things to make room. Not sure what yet.  2.) I spent about $106.75 more than I had in my bank account by buying the ski boots. I had enough to pay for the laptop repair and the ski poles but not the boots. So the Chief Engineer gave me a one time "payment plan." He put my ski boots on his credit card and I have exactly two weeks to pay him back to keep me out of overdraft. This was not the way I was hoping things would go financially. Details and a plan to get out of "debt" and not get back into it will come in tomorrow's Diagnosis: Affluenza post. 

It's not permission for me to go crazy. I've just learned that my personal financial buffer needs to be about $600, or what I ended up blowing on unplanned expenses this week. It will take time to build that up and I'm sure at some point I'll decimate those savings again in a matter of days. Clutter-wise, I need to clear out more clutter because objects I truly want and use like ski boots sometimes show up and need permanent homes. It's all about getting my priorities straight. I'm incredibly lucky to be where I am financially and I was killing myself trying to do everything. 

Next up: spending less next week to be able to pay the $106.75 back to the Chief Engineer. After that: paying for any skiing until the end of the season. After that? The kitchen wall comes down. After that? Saving for Australia.  That's the order in which things matter to us. Maybe something will have to wait. I'm okay with that. One thing at a time. And in time, too. 

Diagnosis: Affluenza

Today's the first post of my now regular "Diagnosis: Affluenza" posts, where I take a look at my personal spending in the last week in an attempt to acquire less stuff, learn to need less stuff, and learn to be more respectful and grateful of what I have. You'll see them on Saturdays, so I can still do Friday Fashion Fallout. But because I'm crazy on brand-new ED meds, I'll do Saturday on Friday this week and Friday on Saturday!

I want to first thank I Should Be A Minimalist for introducing me to something called You Need a Budget, more commonly known as YNAB. Oddly enough it wasn't the budgeting and putting-things-into-categories information that was the most helpful. I do lousy with budget categories. It reminds me too much of the dieting I did during the worst times of my eating disorder. No, it was the YNAB book that was the awesome eye-opener for me.

YNAB is effectively a really fancy spreadsheet. But you can download a free copy of the principles behind the YNAB-budget lifestyle. (He also sells the same thing on Amazon, but I don't know why anyone who cares about their money would do that instead of just printing out the obviously free PDF. Anyways.) The YNAB creator, Jesse, said that one of the best and worst parts of a budget is the moment when it shows you a time when you know you are not going to be able to make ends meet or achieve a particular goal.

Sounds pretty lousy, right? Not for us. Why? Because it let us know that our goals were way too lofty.

I'm thrilled that I'm no longer living paycheck to paycheck as I did after college and in grad school. I am blessed to be well off. Except that my spending has risen to the level of my professional paycheck. I've always spent just about every penny I make that doesn't get sent to a retirement fund before it leaves my paycheck. My husband doesn't have this problem. Why? Because I have affluenza and he doesn't. I have a need for stuff. Let's take a look at my "needs" for the next 2 years:

1. Make three changes to our kitchen. $27,000 (within 18 months, the max allowed by our condo association.)  It doesn't have to be done all at once though.

• Remove the wall in our galley kitchen so there's room for both of us. Cost: $7,000
• Add in an island so that we have more than one counter to prepare food on. $8,000
• Replace the countertops, backsplash, the damaged ceramic sink, and fix the couple water-damaged cabinets. $12,000

2. Go to Glacier National Park: $4,500 (already planned for June 2013, $2,500 of it is already paid for)

3. Go to Australia: $12,000 (Dec 2013?)

4. Have a baby: $12,000 for start-up costs, hehe

• Temporarily ignoring the $250,000 it will take to raise this kid from diapers to diplomas, I'll have to take three months off of work with no pay. We'll need to save about $9,000 to make up for that. Plus the cost of pre-natal care, meds, delivery, and diapers etc. in the first year, I figure $12,000 would be a good number to aim for.

5. Build up an emergency fund of $25,000  (in the next two years) and then continue to fund it with $1000 a month every year after.

6. Go to Spain. $4,000 (within 18 months)

7. Replace our 20-year-old TV: $1500 (within a year)

8. Sell my old guitar and get a 15/16 size instrument that fits my tiny hands so I can play without pain (by my 30th birthday in April.) Net cost: $300.

Total: $86,300 of activities. 

That is frakking insane. 

I do not need nearly $100K of activities to keep me happy in the next year.

Gram would be really, really ashamed of me and that thought makes me sad. No, it's time to get my priorities straight.

So here's what we figured out. The emergency fund comes first. Baby comes...whenever I can get off my lovely new eating disorder medications that are apparently, well, really dumb to be on while pregnant (I know there are some that are safe to take...I'm just apparently still too sick for those to be enough for me). And everything else comes as the money shows up. I get to let go of my goals a bit and stop stressing. I can't do everything. Problem with affluenza is, I think I can do and purchase everything.

We will be paying attention to our finances but we've discovered that locking ourselves into budgets (eg. $300 on food a month) just makes us both insane. Over the last few months we've tracked all of our  spending as a couple on things like gas, food, eating out, and day-to-day fun. The numbers are pretty consistent. It's a level we're content with. My husband's spending on stuff he wants is quite low and very fine. The point is just to pay more attention. If we don't have money for something, then we don't do it. I may have to give up or trim down Australia or Spain, or put off the kitchen as long as the condo association will let us. When we have $7000, we'll take the kitchen wall down. When we build back up and have $12,000 again, we'll get tickets and hotel reservations for the Land Down Under. Then Spain. Then the kitchen. And a little bundle of joy whenever that gets to happen. It's like debt snowballing without the debt.

But as we know, my spending on stuff is just stupid. I'm really the only one who needs to change. My erratic, impulsive spending is making it hard to plan what we can do when (this is a bit of a problem when you're trying to buy plane tickets to somewhere halfway around the world!) To help us know when we can afford to do one of the items on our two-year list, we've set up four accounts:

1. checking account, with enough to pay the bills in it
2. an emergency fund
3. a future expenses fund
4. a checking account just for me. It gets an allowance of $500 twice each month. Of this, $30 a week goes into a brokerage account so I can learn to invest (literally) in my future.

I can hear almost every one of you saying -- how is $220/week not enough for me?  All it takes is one $140 visit to my psychiatrist, one monthly $50 copay for the antidepressant that keeps me from injuring myself, and two $35 physical therapy appointments for me to blow $260 in two days. That's what last week looked like. It was a good thing I cancelled my guitar lesson last week because that would've brought me up to a total of $295 of expenses for that week and I only would've considered the guitar lesson optional. Healthcare in my town is boutique-style. Most providers around here don't take insurance. The ones who do are either hours away, are lousy providers, or have 3-month waiting lists for new patients (as is the case with every psychiatrist in a 10-mile radius who takes BlueCross health insurance. Bloody hell.)

But we know I like to spend for fun even beyond that. So the Chief Engineer helped me figure out the first of many changes that we'll have to make to keep me from spending and slowly teach me to stop wanting to spend.

The first step we took together was removing my online access to our joint checking account.  We've also taken away my credit card. In the event of an emergency I can call the bank and get access or visit the branch around the corner. I'm not brash enough to take money from the emergency or future expenses funds for myself. There is one exception, though -- my Renfrew eating disorder treatments go on our joint credit card. It's on file with Renfrew so I was actually able to destroy my plastic card so I can't use it. Ultimately, if the money is not my checking account I can't spend it. I don't have a credit limit on my debit card.

A cute money journal, just like in grad school

Something else we did came from an idea the Chief Engineer had. When I lived on $100 a week after paying my rent in grad school I kept a log of every single little thing I bought. The Chief Engineer thought we might gain some insight from those logs but it turned out that I'd trashed them in one of the five moves I've made since grad school. Silly me. But instead we started a new one. It worked in grad school.

It seems to be working now. We started this experiment two weeks ago and at the end of two weeks I had a little over $100 left in the bank. I just got my paycheck today and now have a little over $550 to get me through the next two weeks. Oh, and I have four physical therapy visits alone in there. Let's hope I can keep from running over to Guitar Center for this baby in the next month or two. I need to build up savings in case I, say, need another $800 crown like I did three years back.

So how do I build those savings and resist the long-practiced temptation of spending everything I have? What did I do in grad school that let me live on $100 a week and still buy the occasional expensive piece of jewelry? Patience, it turns out. It's something I've lost. When I wanted a $200 piece of jewelry in grad school, I stuck pennies, dimes, quarters and single dollars into an old coffee tin for six months before I finally bought the ring (and I still have it, love it, and wear it often.)


Say hello to the guitar fund! It's no longer a coffee can but it'll do. What can I say, I like fruit, even when it's plastic. I thought about pitching $20 bills into the sound hole of the guitar I have now, but somehow I think that might make my playing sound *so* bad that I would immediately rush out and buy a new instrument.

I've now told myself that I can have the guitar. I just can't have it now. That's a feeling I haven't felt in a while. But it's a good feeling. I will be able to have the guitar, I will eventually have enough saved to know that I can pay for a personal emergency if I need to, and I am learning to deal with the long-term ups and downs of stock market investing. It feels like a good year. I just need to be patient and relax. It's going to happen this time, because I've done it before.

Spend slowly. Save slowly. Think slowly. Change slowly. 

And stop buying cute Jordi LaBanda notebooks. 

(I must have 15 of these things. It's just glorified hoarding.)

My ovaries are screaming

You know you want a baby when some royal gets knocked up and you suddenly become insanely jealous.

I turn 30 in April. Yes, I know, I'm not old! I know! But the biological clock is ticking.  My parents spent years trying to have me and apparently I was finally coneceived in a petri dish. This could take a while. But before any of that happens, there are a few things that I want very much to do, because these things will be very difficult or impossible with small children.


When did my uterus decide
that this was a good idea?!

1.) Travel to Australia and snorkel in the great barrier reef. That unfortunately means we have to go during the one time of the year when it's warm enough to do that.

2.) Renovate part of kitchen (wall and new cabinet) so that the Chief Engineer and I can both fit in it!

The kitchen seems optional at first. But Fairy has seen first-hand that there's a bit of a problem with the kitchen. When she and her husband took their Great American Tour earlier this year, the three of us plus the Chief Engineer tried to stand in my kitchen. We managed it for about two minutes before we all got claustrophobic! There's definitely no safe space to put a baby where I could see him/her and still cook, so that needs to come before a kid.

About Australia. My mother suggested that we just leave the kid with her and my dad for three weeks while we travel (and leave my kid in the hoard?! I could come back and find my child buried under a pile of diaper boxes full of photos from when I was an infant!) I almost considered it though. But apparently I know nothing about mommying because I had to look up on a baby blog that no mom would want to leave her kid while she's still nursing! So no Australia post-baby, either.

Point being, those two things are going to be insanely expensive. But we've done the math, and getting it all done and paid for within the next 13 months means one scary thing: we need to trim $1000 per month off our expenditures, or we have to wait an extra year to have kids.

I need to get over my eating disorder so I can stop spending upwards of $300 a month on treatment. I've wanted to go to Australia badly for years, and the kitchen currently isn't conducive to family life. So I have to stop buying crap so I can buy the work on the kitchen. I have to stop shopping to soothe myself. I am not bringing my kid into a home where two serious mental health problems aren't under control.

And it's my choice, so I don't get to complain!

First month - June overview

Finding the Resources

 For me the most important part of doing more of the things that I would do if I won the lottery is to free up as many of my resources as possible. This means wasting less time, energy, and money. I've started writing down everything I spend to help me track my financial waste.

 I used June as my baseline month. I didn't try to restrict my spending or even evaluate it much. I just did what I wanted. What you'll see here is my spending just for me, not for my husband, so you won't see much by way of housing, groceries, gas, mortgages, or utility bills on here. This is just the stuff that I've purchased for my own wants and needs. I've always had trouble with spending so I warn you, this is an eyesore.

 

What Do We See Here? 

I spent a lot more on clothing this month than I usually do. It's a hefty amount, almost $600. This is because I purchased my final set of good work clothes. I've been in treatment for my eating disorder for 2.5 years now and finally have a stable, healthy weight. My psychologist, dietician, psychiatrist, and I felt it was important that I buy myself good clothes that I will love. And since one of my Lottery Project goals is to dress nicely and wear pants with creases, I bought nice pants that also have spectacular creases. This meant I went to Brooks Brothers during a 60% off sale. At this point I don't need more clothes. 

Books are something I need to stop buying. I spent $75 on e-books. I'm a librarian, for goodness sake. I will learn to use the library.

I eat out a fair bit. Lunch at work can cost $10 or more. Can I save a bit of money by buying TV dinners instead of meals out? It doesn't help me live mores sustainably, but it does help me save money and gets me in the habit of not going to restaurants. 

My eating disorder therapy is expensive. There's no getting around this. Being sick means being miserable. These visits are going to cost what they're going to cost. 

My wants exceeded my needs. I spent over $800 on "wants" this month and $500 on "needs." My husband has given me the challenge of staying on an $850 budget. If I trim down my "wants," this shouldn't be too hard. But what if my "wants" are related to my Lottery Project goals? One of my first goals then will be to make sure that my "wants" purchases are restricted to Lottery Project goals. 

So, can I pare down my "I'm a spoiled brat" lifestyle in July to keep it under $850 a month? Let's see if I can. Any suggestions on how?