Blogging About Money

I love reading about blogs and the New York Times had this story today about bloggers who blog about their personal debt. I decided I'd make my own contribution to money & debt.

I am thankful that I have recently landed a new job and I got paid on February 15. That money, which covered only my first week of employment, went directly into my savings account. I'll get paid again on February 28 and that will cover a full 2 weeks. I literally have stomach aches when it comes to dealing with finances until I get all this under control.

It's amazing how much self-discipline you can have when you are in a penny pinching position. As I've posted before about riding the bus to work, I won't dwell on that topic except to say I love it. And for $10 a month it can't be beat. That's 400 miles of travel I get every 4 weeks for ten bucks.

We've also eliminated most of our dining out expenses. A few years ago we were eating out for lunch AND dinner. Something prompted us to reconsider. Probably the $700-$800 a month we were spending in that particular category. We started cooking during the week and only eating out for lunch on the weekends. Even that can be expensive. A quick glance at my Quicken software tells me we were averaging around $300 a month, including margaritas.

Since January 1st, we probably have only had one or two meals out, all of them in that first week of the year, and both were cheap meals. And since I started working at the new job in late January I have taken leftovers to work most days. A couple of times I've had to run to Whole Foods and pick up something for lunch, and I've developed a particularly nasty habit of going over there around 10:00 to purchase a cup of coffee, and on the days when I don't have a muffin of my own to take to work, I'll buy a muffin or scone.

Nevertheless, the two of us spent only $63.00 on "dining out" expenses in January. What's more astonishing is that I expected our expenses for "groceries" -- which are tracked separately -- to increase somewhat. It didn't increase much at all, despite the additional cooking.

The really weird thing about all this is that I don't miss the eating out experience as much as I expected. Sure, I'd love to go to a restaurant at least once a week, but right now I'm in major conservation mode and it feels good. And cooking can be a major stress-reliever in and of itself.