I originally planned to do these like Refinery29's Money Diaries, but my life is not interesting enough to be broken down by times! Also, these days I don't do much more than sleep, work, and obsess about my finances.
February 14 (Sunday)
Ah, Valentine's Day, the scourge of single women everywhere. I woke up at like 10 am (I took NyQuil last night shortly before midnight) feeling surprisingly refreshed. I idled in bed with my laptop and my cats snuggled up until a little before noon. I finally got up to make toast because I was hungry, and the cats wanted their food. A friend messaged about doing a virtual Puzzled Pint meet up, so I spent a couple of hours with some friends doing the January puzzles. We got all the way to the bonus puzzle and then I kind of lost interest and remembered I still needed to do some work, so I signed off with my friends to switch to my work computer.
I got some quality work done! For dinner, I made pork loin from the freezer with lots of broccoli, which was delicious. I drank a big glass of wine and a couple of small servings of Bauchant, and I'm extremely surprised how it made me flush, but if I had to guess, I would assume it's the six weeks of no drinking.
My gym sent out an offer for a new program that starts the day after my current project ends, so I signed up for it! I did it in November and it was... moderately successful for me. I'm hoping that once this current project ends, I'll have more energy and interest in exercising. I think my schedule should be much better when I'm not working 12+ hours a day. For an eight-week program, it's only twenty dollars, so I'm hopeful it will help motivate me! $21.65
Netflix finally implemented the price increase they've been threatening, so my monthly bill is now $15.14 - and that also posted today. $15.14
Day 1 total: $36.79
February 15 (Monday)
Ugh - all the booze last night had me waking up before 5:30 a.m. I could not convince myself to go back to sleep, so I browsed my phone for a while and lazed in bed with the cats. I finally got up around 7:30 and got dressed in a ton of layers (did I mention that it snowed a couple of inches last night?). My condo seems to be on a section of the power grid that's not affected by the rolling brownouts in the area, but I still feel obligated to turn down the heat and conserve power. The local power company requested 68 degrees on our thermostats, which I was surprised to see was already the setting this morning, so I ended up turning it down to 56 as the day went on and more outages were reported.
Last month's spending credit card payment posted today - not counting that toward my daily spend since the money was already acknowledged earlier. (It was $1.3k - higher than the usual $800 or so because of my car insurance premium.)
I spent the day working in bed, since my bedroom was the warmest place in the house and my bed has good thick blankets. I got a really good chunk of work done, but I signed off “early” (around 7 pm) because what I did all day was repetitious and boring, and half my team wasn’t working anyway because of lack of power. I took a nap that somehow didn’t last all night, got up and ate dinner (both lunch and dinner were leftover pork loin and broccoli), then did the dishes and crawled right back into bed.
I wanted pizza for dinner again, but there was no way I was leaving my place, so I sucked it up. I did polish off the S’mores Girl Scout cookies (dang they were tasty!) and had some plantain chips.
I’m hopeful I don’t lose power the next couple of days, but if I do, I’m trying to think of how to feed and caffeinate myself. I have camping gear, so I can always set up my little aluminum side table and camp burner on the porch so I can boil water or heat up food (why didn’t I make soup?). I can make oatmeal for breakfast - or heck, even any meal, really - and I have Triscuits I’m sure I can do something with. I should make chicken broth in the Instant Pot tomorrow morning - normally I prefer to do 20 hours in the slow cooker, but I’d rather not try to count on consistent electricity.
Day 2 total: $0
February 16 (Tuesday)
Still cold! I worked in bed all day, since I left my heat at 56. I drank lots of coffee and tea. I made my chicken broth in the Instant Pot, and I'm obsessed with doing it now - the recipe I found online suggested putting everything in the strainer insert, and it made taking all the ingredients out super-easy!
I ordered tea from The Republic of Tea because there was a tea in the Resolution box I ordered from Sips By that I really liked. I ordered a couple other versions that also sounded good - I ordered Get Wellness (the one I got from Sips By), Get Some Zzzs, Get Heart, and Get Relaxed. I had a discount code for buy three get one free. $40.74
My monthly Hulu charge also posted, too. $12.98
Day 3 total: $53.72
February 17 (Wednesday)
Another day working in bed - it's the warmest part of the house. This morning I made some lemon chicken with green beans from the Whole30 Slow Cooker. Not my favorite recipe, turns out, but edible, and luckily it only made four servings that I have to eat. (Specifically, I didn't like the flavor the tomatoes imparted to the green beans, but it turns out enough salt can get me past it. If I make it again, I'll leave out the tomatoes.)
Today all my second paycheck savings went out - cat savings ($170), vacation savings ($300), and annual expense savings ($100). $570
Day 4 total: $570
February 18 (Thursday)
It's still so cold! I worked in bed again. I've been eating savory oatmeal with egg for breakfast the last couple of days. Lunch was the leftover lemon chicken, and dinner was leftover pork and broccoli. There's been a boil water notice since yesterday, so dishes have been tricky, but I boiled plenty of water and managed to hand wash a few things. The dishwasher has been full up already for a couple days.
My PBS donation ($5.15) and my iCloud storage ($0.99) charges processed today, and my Affirm payment ($109.27) and my Marriott Amex payment ($704.29) also posted. $819.70
Day 5 total: $819.70
February 19 (Friday)
A good day of work! I ended at 6 (instead of the usual 5) because I was on a roll, and then I watched Modern Family. I really wanted to order pizza, but the boil water notice is still on, so my favorite place is closed, and even most Pizza Huts were closed. I'm not quite ready to venture out on the roads, either. I ended up making a loaf of 100% whole wheat bread and eating almost half of it! I forgot to eat dinner because I was full of bread. I had the lemon chicken for lunch - just one more serving of it! I turned the heat up to 60 finally, because most people in Austin have gotten their power back.
My Discover payment posted today ($500) - I'm making good progress on paying that down. $500
Day 6 total: $500
February 20 (Saturday)
Slept in a bit, then got up and got to work. I ate the last serving of pork and broccoli for lunch, and worked til around 6 pm.
Last night was the final night of the 2021 Austin snowstorm, where it got down to freezing one last time. I was extremely lucky that I retained power and water the whole time. The worst thing that happened was I lost water pressure a couple days ago, and I kept the temperature at 56 to minimize my energy usage. My worst fear was that my pipes would burst - my house is full of crap that I need to declutter, and it would be so stressful to try to clean that up!
No spending today!
Day 7 total: $0
Weekly total: $1,980.21
Not too bad a week - mostly savings and credit card/loan payments.
- Credit cards: 1204.29
- Affirm: 109.27
- Savings: 570
- Entertainment: 96.65
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