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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Thursday, August 30, 2007

"She worked really hard to look that good, and people just don't appreciate that kind of effort."

still 170 with no respite in sight. how despressing. but i look adorable today in my new shoes so i guess i'm happy and depressed. 'course buying expensive ass shoes means you need to, like, pay for them. it's not that i can't afford them, it's just sort of a bad time for affording. instead of a fancy vacation i'm getting new shoes and two nights in beautiful new brunswick. this makes it an excellent time to play a round of "no more groceries!". especially since we'll be away for part of next week. i'll pick up some meat for matt and some veggies, but otherwise i'm buying no groceries. i'm going to try to make it last two weeks, if not longer. cutting down the food budget always saves me a fortune.

one of my co-workers asked me yesterday if i've noticed a change in my spending habits since i've come so close to being out of debt. am i spending more just because i can. answering is sort of difficult, it's a yes and no thing. i'm not completely out of the woods yet so there is a certain amount of ingrained restraint. the place i'm least restrained is the grocery store. one of the things i avoided most when i was my brokest was fresh fruit, it was too much of a luxury. i bought some vegetables because my mother taught me that i would die of scurvy without them. i didn't buy the amount of fresh vegetables i buy now, you know, enough for every meal. i wonder why i didn't look into frozen back then but i think i had a theory about spending the least possible time in the store. the less time i wander, the less i spend. it must be true because i take my sweet time now and i spend plenty. it is very safe to say that i spend more money on food than i used to. i didn't buy organics, i didn't buy meat, and i had pasta for dinner about 9 out of 10 nights. i have no desire to go back to that way of life so i don't worry over spending more on food.

then there is everything else. i recently upped my netflix subsription and i now pay about 25 dollars a month. less than cable, less than a dish, less than a phoneline and still every month i think "is that too much?". as far as spending habits go i guess this means i loosened my grip on the entertainment budget a little, one point to the big spender column. i always thought i would definitely add the landline and the internet service as soon as i could afford it but now i'm not so sure. that i'm putting in the "still a tightwad" column. that one evens out i guess.

the one spending habit i don't feel great about is how much i spend on clothes. i know i spend more than i did last year. 80 percent of that is because my clothes got too big and i had to replace out of necessity. the rest of those percents are vanity. i'm feeling particularly spendy in the clothes department lately because this has been a huge month for clothes buying. you know how some seasons the clothes suck and you can walk through store after store and then you get ice cream and go home. this season has been an i love everything i see season. i probably bought more than i normally would because i don't feel as pressured not to spend. i also bought more because everywhere i went things we 50 percent off and why should i pass up 6 dollar shirts only to buy them full price out of need in two months?

so, my spending habits are definitely changing. my life has changed too. i have very some different priorities now. two years ago i would never have bought organic yogurt to eat everyday, i couldn't have afforded it and i wasn't thinking about a balanced diet either. i definitely spend more on things that are worth my money. my goals are still the same though. i never want to be in debt like that again. i never want to live beyond my means and still have a crappy life. i want to be in control of my life and my finances and my future and i know i can't do that by spending all day at the mall or eating out or driving a flash car. i learned that lesson the really hard way. the way that changes your whole life and how you look at money and pretty things and dealing with stress. i think more about what i'm buying and why and i'm sure i always will.

3 comments:

Jennette Fulda said...

It's surprising what you can learn to live without. There was a time when I thought it would be *horrible* not to have cable TV, but I haven't had cable for over a year and I'm just fine. I download shows off the Internet though, so maybe I'm cheating :)

Amy said...

nah, if it means you don't spend hours sitting watching law and order reruns it's not cable.

MayQueen said...

I'm having the opposite sort of season. I hate everything in all my usual clothing stores. My biggest buy of late was a sweater and three tank tops at the Old Navy outlet in North Conway.