I spend freely: glasses of wine, books from Amazon, donations, face products from Sephora, groceries from Safeway, flavored teas, furniture, lighting. I buy rounds of drinks. I try the newest restaurants in the city. Everything gets charged to my credit card and I simply pay it. I don’t scrutinize the bill. I look for items over a hundred dollars as a double-check, but otherwise, I’m just not careful.
Well, those days are over. I’ve run the paycheck calculations. I now automatically deduct money from each paycheck into a savings account and the rest is now my budget. Kudos to Catherine because I’ve gone through my monthly credit card statements and they’ve all been within my budget. Hallelujah. So I don’t really have much to worry about except I’ve got to get my spending under control.
Starting a few days ago, I started writing down every single expense. I know this may sound like a lot to many of you, but it works for my lifestyle and wage: my budget is $100 a day. Now, of course, I’m not going to spend $100 every single day. But Monday, we had date night. Dean paid the bill and that was almost $100. Thursday we went out for drinks. Luckily, Dean paid for that, too. But Friday, I wrote down $7 for lunch and $43 for the half marathon I registered for. That was already $50 for the day and I hadn’t gone to happy hour yet. Thank God Daniel took care of the bill. Then today, I absolutely had to have this silk print dress I’ve been eyeing at American Rag. I willed myself to walk away from the store a week ago, but came back today. I had to have it. That was $250 right there. Yeah, as much as my wedding dress!
So here I am on a Saturday night, already used up my budget for the day and thinking of how I can possibly not drink when I hit the bars tonight. Sigh!
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