Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day. I ran off again to the GW National Forest on a camping trip.

$100-125 groceries (ice, beer, meat, etc.)
$55 chainsaw and oil
$50 power inverter
$30 grill top for campfire
$25 gas (at least what I paid. Boyfriend topped off the tank two other times)
$7 for awesome pizza (3 slices and a soda)
$5 car wash

There were three things making this trip expensive, one thing is that we took an off-road vehicle that takes a lot of gas. The forest has a lot of trails that are pretty rough terrain. Having an off-road vehicle makes a big difference on a trip like this one. We would have had to rent something or else suffered with a camping spot close to the main highway and not ideal. But you have to add on a car wash since there’s still a lot of streams to ford out there and the mud gets splashy. (in a fun way)

Second thing is that we generally like to eat well while we’re out there and we were there for an extra day because of the holiday weekend. We tend to get ambitious in the meal planning to make sure we get enough calories for hikes and activity. Therefore we usually get too much food. This time we made a supplemental trip for more beer and soda. But the food was awesome on this trip. Way better than the last time. Irish Stew, barbecued chicken, sauteed zucchini, and baked potatoes.

Third thing is that we tried out a power inverter with an electric chainsaw, but it was pretty much a waste of effort. The inverter we picked up wasn’t able to carry the peak capacity of the chainsaw so it didn’t work out. I think I’m going to have to sell the chainsaw if I can’t return it. But at least I didn’t pay for it. I used the rest of a gift card and spent $5 of my own money. (Boyfriend spent $3 for the oil it takes.)

We don’t really keep track of who has spent what. We do sort of an accounting of who’s spent what over the past week, but nothing really serious as far as going Dutch. It’s too much bother for either one of us.

Too bad it wasn’t as cheap as Tricia’s last camping trip, but you can’t have everything in this world, like flaming marshmallows. (I should convince my boyfriend to make s’mores the next time.)

Goal #1
Specific - Contribute to my 401k plan

Done. But I’m looking at my other goals and wondering if I should cut back on these contributions.

Grade: Pass

Goal #2
Specific - Reduce my credit card debt
Measurable - By 50% or $9,137 (rounded up to $10K)
Achievable - Monthly payments of $762

Miserable failure here, but we’re currently staring at $16,494 right now, which is an improvement of 4.9% from last year.

Grade: Complete and utter failure

New Goal #3:
Specific - Reduce my credit card debt on my highest balance card ~$13K
Measurable - By 50%
Achievable - ~$825 a month

On track. I even kicked over an extra $200.00 to it this month.

Grade: Pass

Hey! Thanks to some smarter investment choices and regular contributions, I’m back up over $30K for my retirement accounts! COOL.

However, even though I’ve rebounded, I’m still not yet at the peak of my net worth. I’m still a few dollar shy of beating my past highwater mark.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out my net worth graph. Just click through.

I bought some gas early this week so I could truck my butt out to the boonies for a corporate conference in the countryside. It was actually pretty great as I got some excellent training for my resume that directly impacts my project. All meals were paid for out there and I was covered for mileage and tolls. I’m about to get back $107 in reimbursement.

Yesterday, I spent $5 on coffee, a bag of chips and a lottery ticket for kicks. ($132 million jackpot. Why not?) My co-worker bought me a hotdog and a Diet Coke as a treat for lunch from Costco. (There’s a running joke in the office about buying one another lunches for losing bets. She was buying someone a hotdog so she said she’d get one for me too. She’s very nice.)

Today, I’ll be buying lunch on my way into the office. Then tonight, I’ll be buying groceries for a camping trip this weekend. If I am lucky, I will spend less than $50 total this week. Maybe beer will make it a few dollars more.

Not too bad this week. I was able to also kick over another $200 to my credit cards. That will be $1050 I threw at them for August.

Time to try something different with spending. Now that I’ve moved to mostly debit and cash for my daily spending on lunch, gas and whatnots, I’m having a hard time tracking spending again. I am going to have to write stuff down once more.

I can tell that most of what I’m buying is lunches out. But I’m not disciplining myself on it. Usually I can eat lunch for less than $6.00, but lately I’ve been lax in my oversight. I’ve had lunch for $9 one day and $7 another.

Part of the problem is dining out with other people and getting what they want to eat. The plethora of options out there is making sort of crazy. I thought I’d have nothing to eat around the industrial park I’m in, but slowly I’ve realized that there are lots of options, but many of them are much more expensive than I’d like. I can’t eat a $6 club sandwich or reuben every day from the delis around the office. Sometimes it’s so little that I end up with a bag of chips, which ends up being a dollar or more extra.

If you haven’t tried writing down what you’re spending, give it a try. I go through this exercise periodically when I’m wondering where the money’s going. It’s worth doing, even if it’s only a week.

I’m sorry I didn’t post earlier today, I’ve been in training camp for work and without email access during the day. I’ll probably be spotty on the posts for the next few days for that reason. I’ll be lucky if I get to post at night.

The upside? I’ll have three No Spend Days. (Well, almost. I did fill up on gas on Monday night, but arguably that is mileage expense reimbursable this week, same for the tolls I spent.) One of the great things about training events are that meals are provided.

The other upside is that I got an iPod shuffle for free. It’s too bad since I hardly ever use the Nano I won as a blog prize a few years ago. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl and see if this suits my lifestyle any better than the Nano. I like that it clips to my clothes while I’m running.

Now, to respond to Deepali’s comment:

My problem is getting to the actual cleaning. I always find something else to do. How do you get ruthless about doing it?

I use a trick I learned from Stephanie Winston’s old book Getting Organized. I’m surprised it’s still in print, but I read it in high school many years ago and I still use this one trick all the time. I highly recommend this book for anyone who needs help getting organized.

She says to set an egg timer for 15 minutes. Clean hard for the full 15. If you want to stop when the timer goes off, then stop. If you want to keep on going, then keep going. I find that I can kick off a good solid 30 minutes of cleaning this way, if not a whole 60 minutes. It works for me because I can do the 15 minutes and stop guilt free, or keep going once I’m started. I used this religiously when I was an admin assistant because I hated filing. I would file in 15 minute increments once or twice a day and usually, that got it done. I even told my boss to try it since I wasn’t going to file his stuff for him. And it worked for him too.

DC’s District Sample Sale. It’s Tuesday, September 9th.

The District Sample Sale is Washington’s biggest and best high-end bargain shopping event. The evening features 20 of Washington’s best designer clothing and shoe boutiques selling their end-of-season wares at liquidation-level prices, with many previewing their upcoming season looks at exclusive event prices. The DSS also features cocktails, hors d’oeuvres from our participating restaurants, a fashion-focused silent auction, raffle, goodie bag (with VIP tickets) and more.

We’re an all-volunteer organization with 100% of our profits donated to our chosen charity each season.

This fall it’s the DC Rape Crisis Center, but past charities have been Martha’s Table, Suited for Change, and Miriam’s House. The sale’s organizers are committed to helping past recipients as well as the current selection. I think it’s great that they’re making a long-term commitment to support these charities.

I’m not really in the mood to buy high-end clothing right now, but a little mix and mingling might be good for my soul at the moment. Plus I really need to get out of the house for a sophisticated evening. There’s only so much grungy hipster a person can take. Factoring in food and drink, $40 doesn’t sound so bad. The opera always costs more than that.

Greetings and welcome readers of Broke Grad Student! Thanks for clicking through!

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A couple more tips:

1. If you have a junk mail email account, use it to sign up for free events with free food, drink, entertainment. I went to an art gallery party with free drinks, good music, decent art for the price of a subway ride to and fro. All I had to do was get marketing email from Toyota about their hipster cars. (Which I’m rapidly falling out of their demographic, but they don’t need to know that! Or maybe I’m already out of it…)

2. Get an old bike and ride it everywhere.

3. Give up your car. My best friend from college is a ‘professional bus rider’. During her post-college courtship, her husband called her this because she hadn’t had a car since she left high school. She walked, took the bus, got a ride or rented a car. With new car sharing programs like Zipcar, she didn’t get a car till she got married, i.e. shares her husband’s. My friend was very creative and went through the university’s program to certify drivers for student events. With that, she’d ferry people around on student activity events like dim sum in the local Chinatown district, trips to nearby cities, etc. The student activities budget of the university paid for the van, insurance and gas, so all we had to do was buy our own food on trips.

Greetings and welcome readers of The Frugal Duchess! Thanks for clicking through!

New readers can subscribe to my feed .

I’m in the midst of a project today so I wasn’t going to post, but I couldn’t ignore The Frugal Duchess. I am a long time admirer of Sharon’s and had the wonderful opportunity to meet her in DC this summer while she was on book tour. I encourage everyone to go to a reading and meet her in person. She is wonderful and kind.

Sorry for the dry reports. I’ve got the summertime blahs when it comes to blogging.

I ended up with nothing in my wallet on Friday afternoon. I admit that I went to the supermarket to buy some groceries for lunch on Wednesday and used my debit card. But I also ended up skipping lunch on Thursday and just snacking on stuff I bought the day before. That will make money go further.

Thursday night:
Dinner at Austin Grill $15.

Friday:
Boyfriend bought dinner at Chevy’s for us. No idea what the check was.

Saturday:
Boyfriend bought me a bagel and cream cheese with ice tea for lunch
Dinner at home
Gas for $31 - Filled boyfriend’s car with a half tank since he drove us to an event in the burbs just for my friends and he picked up dinner the night before.
Evening - Metro $2.70 round-trip, free vodka drinks at event in exchange for marketing information

Sunday:
Lunch: Boyfriend bought us bagels and drinks and we ate in the park with the dog $14
Dinner - wasn’t very hungry, ate leftovers

The only bad thing was that Thursday night I was really car sick going to Austin Grill and never ate my dinner. I did a take out box and the food sat at home, uneaten for the rest of the weekend. I picked at it when I was feeling sick on Sunday night just to put something in my stomach. I think the rest of it will be edible on Monday night.