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. I'm hoping I'll be more interesting in a couple of weeks!
February 21 (Sunday)
One of the things I forgot to mention in last week's spending was my order of emergency food from Go Habitat. I ordered their two week supply at the recommendation of a coworker. He even provided me a discount code that gave me $38.50 off, so it cost me $143.20. I charged it to my Marriott Amex (the one I'm working to pay down, sigh), and after a couple of days decided to pay for it out of my short-term savings - that is more or less the point of that savings account!
I didn't spend any money today. Well, not entirely true. I had a minor freakout about our project deadline being in 12 days, so instead of taking a break to cook the soup I had planned (I had also forgotten to take the chicken out of the freezer), I ordered a bunch of Indian food. Work had given us DoorDash credit, so it didn't actually cost me anything out of pocket. It was about $60 worth of food, plus $10 in tip (I have DashPass through one of my credit cards so the other fees were minimal). I ordered vegetable pakoras, mulligatawny soup, saag paneer, chana masala, naan, cheese naan (my favorite!), and a vegetarian sampler that consisted of "half" portions of saag paneer, dal bukhara, and malai kofta, plus roti, spinach pakoras, a samosa, and gulab jamun. It ended up making about 8 meals - the soup and the pakoras/samosa, the entree saag paneer and chana masalas were two each, and the vegetarian sampler half portions were another three. I have grocery pickup scheduled for Tuesday, with a very simple crockpot meal in the rotation and a slightly more complicated recipe (egg roll in a bowl) as well.
Breakfast was oatmeal with egg, I finished off the last lemon chicken thighs with green beans for lunch and ate a cheese naan, a few pakoras, and a small portion of saag paneer for dinner. (I was pleased that I stopped eating when I was full. A problem I've had for a very long time is the inability to self-regulate an appropriate amount of food, so it was nice to do it even just this once.)
I spent most of Sunday working my tail off because of that freakout. It had the happy result that I felt much better about our progress by the end of the day, so all's well that ends well.
Day 1 total: $0
February 22 (Monday)
Another no-spend day. Breakfast was oatmeal and egg again, lunch was chana masala (spicy!) and naan, and dinner was mulligatawny soup and the remaining pakoras and samosa.
Work was good, and our status meeting helped me realize we were in better shape than I had thought the previous day. I went out for a lunchtime walk, my first in over a week, and felt much better physically and mentally for it.
Day 2 total: $0
February 23 (Tuesday)
Time to spend money! I did my laundry (just clothes) for the first time in over a week ($1.50), picked up my grocery order from HEB ($65.68), made a small donation ($10), and got my tax refund, so after topping off a couple of budget envelopes (my entertainment spending went a lil crazy last week with the tea and the gym program purchase), I put the rest toward the Marriott Amex ($276.13). I'm so close to being under $1,000 with that card! Once the short-term savings transfer for the emergency food posts, the balance will be finally be in the three digits. My Amazon Prime annual payment also posted ($128.82), that amount will come out of my annual savings fund. $482.13
Work wasn't super-productive. I think I swung too far in the other direction from Sunday's freakout and was just complacent and easily distracted. Breakfast was a jalapeno-cheese kolache from the grocery order and a banana, lunch was dal bukhara and more naan, and dinner was saag paneer. I made more naan (completely whole wheat) because I clearly didn't order enough. I'm a little nervous I'll eat it all instead of eating it with meals like I'm planning to, but this is something I need to work on.
I signed off my work computer at nearly midnight and went to take off my makeup with an oil-based cleanser, only after the application of which did I discover that the water had been shut off in our condos. I checked my email and saw the management company had sent out a notice saying they found a "major leak." This is crazy annoying because I've been using up all the water I boiled/bottled last week, so I only have a couple of bottles left, and they don't have a timeline for when they'll fix it.
Day 3 total: $482.13
February 24 (Wednesday)
I let my annoyance at the water situation get the best of me this morning. I went to the local grocery store to buy water (I haven't been in a grocery store in months!), and also picked up instant coffee and some Coke Zero ($8.76). Then since I was already out of my house, I mobile ordered Starbucks and went to pick it up. I had to reload my Starbucks balance ($15) to cover the cost of the coffee, but I decided it was worth it. Then I subscribed to the new People Royal magazine because I'm low-key obsessed with the English monarchy, and I wanted a little treat to make me feel better ($20). I moved money from my car envelope to top off the entertainment envelope again to cover these expenses - the only driving I'm currently doing is to and from the grocery store. $43.76
The water came on again around 4 pm, which was a relief. I'm skeptical it will stay on, but at least I have supplies to deal with it if necessary.
Day 4 total: $43.76
February 25 (Thursday)
I woke up before my alarm, which was not ideal given that I went to bed after midnight. I do think I would function well with 7.5 hours of sleep generally, but for some reason I insist on attempting 9 hours.
I ended up having a terrible time focusing on work today. Eight days til we're done with this project, but most of my part is done. I got a reminder email that I had signed up for Austin Monthly's Front Porch Session, the virtual version of which comes with a free cocktail kit that you have to pick up from Still Austin the day of the show. While I was picking that up, I impulse bought a bottle of their gin and a bottle of their whiskey. (I haven't even tried their gin yet; it was the sample in the cocktail kit yesterday but my cocktail shaker is currently occupied with leftover tea from the storm when I had no other containers.) $77
I was supposed to make soup for dinner, but I talked myself into getting pepperoni rolls instead. I'll have to make the soup for lunch tomorrow, but it's a pretty simple recipe. Pepperoni rolls were $8.65, but I round up for a tip (even though I always order carry out). $10
And of course, today is the day my Chase minimum payments post ($345 total). The short-term savings transfer for my emergency food hit as well, so I threw that at the Marriott Amex ($143.20). The balance is finally under $1,000! I'm so close to paying it off at last. $488.20
Day 5 total: $575.20
February 26 (Friday)
A decent workday, and I signed off at 5 pm (for 5 o'clock Friday!). Breakfast was a jalapeno kolache and a banana, lunch was cabbage egg roll soup I didn't make last night, and dinner is pot roast (literally just a pork roast with cream of mushroom soup and onion soup mix) over egg noodles, with a side of Italian green beans with olives. I spent the evening watching Modern Family and reading on my Kindle. (Actually on the Kindle webpage.)
Today my private student loan posted ($55.43 + $21.94), and I sent $5 to my short-term savings account from the unallocated envelope in my budget. $82.37
Day 6 total: $82.37
February 27 (Saturday)
Ugh, I drank too many bee's knees cocktails last night (I drank three total). I also dropped the shaker while making what would have been my third one, splattering gin, lemon and honey all over my kitchen - and naturally I didn't clean it up while I was inebriated, I just cleaned the shaker and made another one. I slept terribly, too - ever since this year's Whole30, booze hits me so much harder than it used to. I woke up three hours after I went to bed (I'm already sleep-deprived because of work!) and couldn't go back to sleep for a while, so I played on my phone a bit. Then I only got another three hours of sleep, so my day started earlier than I would have liked. More phone time before I got up (it's such a bad habit).
I was going to go start doing some laundry I'd been procrastinating, but I overheard some neighbors mention that there were supposed to be plumbers on site from 10 am to noon, and I didn't think I'd be done with the washers by then, so I just didn't start. Instead I got onto my work laptop a little earlier than usual for a weekend.
My Fire TV remote stopped working a while back, but the box was still working, so I had just been using the app on my phone as a remote. (Technology is wonderful.) Tonight, though, I'm not sure what happened, but the app couldn't connect to the box. Hulu played on for a while, which was perfect, but eventually I got the "Are you still watching?" message and had to set up my Fire TV Stick.
Day 7 total: $0
Weekly spend: $1,183.46
Mostly credit card payments this week! I'm very stoked about my Marriott Amex balance getting below $1k.
- Credit cards: 764.33
- Entertainment: 250.82
- Student loan: 77.37
- Groceries: 74.44
- Donation: 10
- Savings: 5
- Laundry: 1.50
No comments:
Post a Comment