I bought a Diet Coke fountain drink and a tank of gas in the last 48 hours. I suppose that I could have had a no spend day on Thanksgiving except I really wanted a Diet Coke while I was driving to my parents’ house. I also was an idiot and left a nalgene bottle in the freezer I was planning on taking with me. I should have just grabbed a can of Diet Coke when I had the chance.

Except a tank of gas to drive home, I spent nothing on Black Friday.

I knew it was foolish to try to stretch out $86 for over two weeks. I still have about $3 in my wallet though. I moved $50 to my checking account to cover myself for one tank of gas and a few small things like 9V batteries for my smoke detector and some Ticketmaster fees for hockey tickets someone was buying from me. That’s still pretty good for me. The key was bringing my lunch to work, cooking at home while dog-sitting, and the falling price of gas. (It’s a mixed blessing since it means less income for my parents.) It was a worthwhile experiment in artificial scarcity.

Before I explain the rest of my expenses I should first tell you that I keep two checking accounts. I pay all my credit cards out of the high yield one. So when I say I’m doing a ‘Paycheck Challenge’ it’s working primarily out of my brick-and-mortar bank. I ended up spending $100 on groceries one Sunday and $50 for the first of my Christmas presents. I put that on my credit card and turned around a payment for it from the high yield account.

I moved $100 more into the brick and mortar account for the rest of the week. I get paid on Black Friday so I am going to use the money for tanks of gas and about 3 lunches for the rest of the week.

I got over $400 in checks last week from my insurance company.

One check was a refund on my auto policy because I paid up the full year and then canceled it for a better rate with another firm.

The second check was for 69% recovery of my deductible from the condo owner above me. My homeowner’s insurance company was able to recover funds from the insurer for the unit upstairs. Yippee! That means my bathroom renovation was $345.00 cheaper than first reported. The final amount is now just a shade over $5000.

This means that I’ve got all the money I need for Christmas now and I can put my 401k contributions back in to place from the last two paychecks of the year. Woo hoo!

That’s not my address. Apparently people have been writing to someone in Ireland and she’s tired of it. My desire to thwart spambots is causing people to harrass her needlessly. So please don’t email her if you’re trying to reach me.

Please email me at
“full name of this blog, no apostrophe. Yes, all three words” at gmail dot com.

THANKS!

I have about $32 in my wallet today. I’ve been conserving my cash and cooking dinner at home. Things at work are hot and heavy and Thursday is breakfast day at the office if you like donuts, bagels, muffins, cookies or coffee. I’ll take my turn later on the sign up sheet. If I am lucky, I can make my $32 last well into Sunday or Monday. I doubt I’ll be able to make it last till my next payday because I figure I will need to fill my car with gas at least twice for Thanksgiving. Even with gas nearing $2, I don’t have enough in my checking account to cover a full tank without moving money from short-term savings.

I’m holding steady with everything. I’ve pulled back the 401k contributions to focus on credit card debt and a cash plan for Christmas.

I definitely go out a lot less than I did earlier this year. I’ve sold off 5 hockey tames so far, which helps. There is not that much to say about what’s going on, so I’ll be pulling back on posting. Work has been going crazy with deadlines and I just haven’t been very interested in other blogs or money articles.

Greetings and welcome readers of The Wall Street Journal’s The Wallet! Thanks for clicking through! I have to admit, I’m flattered and flustered at a link in the Journal. I used to subscribe to the paper version and I still read it when I can get a copy.

New readers can subscribe to my feed .

Navigating is best by Categories to the right.

Some highlights you might like:
Frumperella
ING Direct Referrals
Caveat Lector
Mapgirl, Inc.

Comment policy is basically be nice and say only things you would say to someone else in person to their face and don’t be anonymous because discussions between two anonymous people get confusing.

Thanks and say hello!

The market is down and I checked my 401k/Retirement balances today. I’m down by 1/3rd. LOL.

All you can do now is laugh, else you’ll cry. Plus I have 30+ years to go till retirement.

Save, Save, Save!

I’ve got about $25 in my checking account and $50 in my wallet. Normally I’d be going to about 2-3 hockey games in the next week and a half, but the Capitals are on a road trip and I sold one of the games off. Therefore, I don’t have to add much money to my SmarTrip card for a while.

I’m living a relatively stable home life this week, dog-sitting for my boyfriend. No shuttling back and forth from my apartment to my boyfriend’s place. This means I’ve stocked the fridge at his house with lots of groceries. Since I have to hurry back home after work every day to ensure there isn’t a mess waiting for me, I’ve killed all my social engagements this week. That’s good for the wallet. No dinner out of the house. (Oh who am I kidding? There was just one engagement and I’ll see my knitting crew soon enough. LOL.)

I actually had to stop at the supermarket this week before work on Monday and bought a few things to eat for lunch at work. It’s saved me quite a bit of money. I got a little pint container of chili on Monday and two multigrain rolls for about $5. (Of course there was also the emergency acid control drugs I bought which will likely be spun out into another series of medical posts. HEEE-LLLLOOO Endoscopy!)

I hardly doubt my $75 will last till my next payday, but I’m curious how long it can last. I need at least 2-3 tanks of gas because of Thanksgiving.

ps- Tuesday was a No Spend Day! I had a lunch waiting for me at work from the day before and I ran straight home and finished a red wool/silk shawl. Go figure.

Everywhere in the blogosphere you’ll see people writing about finances and couples. The advice is the same, to be honest, etc.

Here’s the thing. How can two people who spend lots of time together, NOT talk about their finances?

My boyfriend can read about my finances just by reading my blog. That’s an unusual case to be sure. It’s not something to mention on a first date. But even if I didn’t run this blog, I think he’d have a pretty good idea of where I stand. When I look around my apartment and see the repairs I have to make on the place, I generally wonder out loud how I’m going to take care of it and ask his input on some of my ideas for fixing stuff. Usually he’s got an idea of what stuff costs and his own ideas about what he’d do if he were me.

Generally speaking, I probably overshare about this subject because usually my significant other has a clue about my state of affairs. I need to bounce stuff off other people to get different perspectives. I guess I’d trust my boyfriend about this sort of thing because I usually date someone financially responsible. (And the current boyfriend thinks I obsess about finances. I laugh and tell him he should be glad, else I’d turn all my obsessiveness 100% onto him. He laughs, but perhaps slightly nervously.)

The only time I really didn’t share was when I was embarrassed about my credit card debt about 8 years ago. Even then, that boyfriend wheedled it out of me because we were talking about being serious and where we stood with our student loans. Eventually, that information was going to come out anyway. I suppose the lesson learned there is that I don’t want to be blindsided by dating someone with lots of uncontrolled debt either.

The only other serious boyfriend with whom I had real difficulty discussing this topic didn’t have a job. And that squelches just about all conversations related to money. Even so, we still talked about it but in different terms. He’s one of the people who encouraged me to start this blog as a outlet maybe as a deflection from himself. But also because he didn’t have anything to offer me except to get out of credit card debt. (He had none, but only because his parents made a clean slate for him and he never bothered with credit since.)

I guess a lot of my discussions about money with boyfriends have been problem solving sessions. Not so much geared towards how to cover all my bills, but how to get special projects paid (Vacations, renovations, etc.). I’m not looking to have my boyfriend fix my problems, but help me brainstorm a solution that’s workable and be supportive of my goals.

Is it because I work daily in a collaborative environment that I don’t think hiding information is a good thing? Is it because I have no shame? Is it because I’ve seen what ugly things money secrets do to families? It’s probably all those things combined. Maybe I have less fear about other people’s judgments now that I’m older and maybe I have less fear because I’m not as bad off as I was before. But either way, it’s still unfathomable that someone picking a life partner wouldn’t have a clue to these sorts of things.

In near-criminal fashion, the basement of Macy’s in downtown DC has Christmas decorations already up (10/26). It’s nuts, but at least it’s localized. They do have all the mannequins in the fancy dress department in red satin. But since their logo is a red star, I guess we can call them Communists and keep on shopping.

Since my mom and pop are taken care of with the ridiculous Christmas present, and I’m taken care of with buying myself a trip to California to see my family. There are really only two remaining gifts to give. One for said family I will visit and for boyfriend. I have a good feeling of what I will spend for both.

The last two gifts I need to get are not really Christmas gifts, but I’m biting the bullet and including it in the budget. It’s a wedding present for my younger cousin who got married this spring in Korea and moved to the US. I feel it only right to pony up some cash and get her the equivalent of what we got for her brother last year. (We, meaning me and my older sibling who are honor bound to give them a gift. Trust me, the amount is a lot cheaper than flying to Korea for the ceremony.)

I have one more gift for my pregnant cousin, which will be a gift card to Babies R Us.

There are a few lingering presents I should buy, like for the friends who got married this spring, but I couldn’t go because of the collapsed bathroom ceiling. Somehow, I’ll fit that in before their first 12 months of marriage pass. And then maybe some small presents for the ladies in my knitting group. (Small means token-small, like $5 each. I’ve thought of making stuff, but I usually feel too busy, not everyone shows up week to week, and I can’t figure out what to get this year.)

Oy vey. Looking at the budget, I’m not sure how to squeeze it all in. I’m liquidating my cash savings down to bare bones to cover my own plane ticket to CA and buy a few of the gift cards I need. I’m considering cutting back my budgeted credit card payments to the bare minimum to meet my revised goal. (And save the extra $400+ to buy gifts with cash instead of credit.) oy oy oy.