I'm getting the hang of this now.

This day did not start well. I slept right through my alarm to the tune of an extra hour and fifteen minutes. I'm convinced that I would have slept all morning if my mom had not come in and woken me up. I don't think I'd ever gotten dressed that quickly before and I was only twenty minutes late to work. What was strange was another co-worker of mine  also missed their alarm this morning and was late. Weird.

Parts of this day happened in slow motion. The hour between ten and eleven AM took at least three hours to pass while the hour between two and three felt like fifteen minutes. Time, you are a cruel mistress. Anyway, I was so sleepy by the time I left for class I was sure I would be napping through the entire thing. To my pleasant surprise, class wasn't boring. Wellllll, the first part was but after a certain someone stopped talking things picked up and the discussion was interesting.

After class, me and a friend sat in my car discussing life, the universe and everything and after promises of departing soon we ended up at Jimmy John's unable to ignore our talking stomachs anymore. In my budget I worked in that I can eat out twice a week and this was the first time I ate out all week, I'm proud of myself.

I'll be going out of town this weekend so I might not get to blog about the next few days. I'll catch you all up on Sunday, okay? DFTBA!

Purchases:
Store: Jimmy John's:
Items: 1 Veto w/ everything and a cookie. + $.50 discount for being a student (Woot!). $6.71

TOTAL: $6.71

Day Three. Seriously.

I need a new umbrella. The rain and wind and years has worn out my $3 IKEA golf umbrella. At least I need the umbrella I bought last week to be delivered so I can retire my $3 one. On the drive home I told myself I should research how to repair an umbrella but when I got home, what was waiting for me on the front porch? My much anticipated packages from Thinkgeek.com!

Now before you call foul and try to take away my two disc special edition of Casablanca, I ordered these items with a gift card I got for Christmas. No money out of the bank means no punishment. The one item I really could have used for the last two days was my super cool umbrella I ordered. Because I'm a proper film geek, I got this one:

Can anyone tell me what movie this particular item was in? Don't cheat and look it up! Oh you're just going to Google it anyway so I'll tell you. Blade Runner. One of my all time favorite scifi social issue movies. Cyber punks and androids who don't know if they are human or machine, what's not to love?  The only thing about getting this umbrella TODAY was the rain had stopped by the time I opened the package. Is it selfish for me to want it to rain some more so I can use it tomorrow? 

In other news, I came straight home after work even through I really, really wanted to stop at Target and see if they had jewelry on sale. Hooray for will power!

TOTAL: $0

Day Two, I Mean Three

I meant to write this yesterday but grad school takes up time. So does life so some of these post might be half a day late. Anyway, I was prepared to write about how this week would probably be boring when it came to post and I would probably end up talking most about why I decide to blog about this goal, the history of why I made this a goal, etcetera, etcetera when yesterday morning I opened the ridge and discovered I had nothing for lunch. It was a good thing my friend Kate gave me some leftovers, which were amazing by the way, or I would have to eat my snacks for the week for lunch yesterday. This would have left me snackless and prone to making bad choices when it came to spending and eating.

After school related meetings which had me leaving campus around 7:30 I braved the rain soaked traffic and stopped by my preferred non-Walmart store to get something for lunch. I have had salad everyday for the past week and a half and was sick up to my eye balls of salad. Also, I have a confession to make. I hate salad. Well, I strongly dislike it. Rarely do I ever go anywhere and say to myself, "I could really go for a salad right now."

In fact I don't like cold food with the exceptions being ice cream and potato salad. Which means I don't eat pizza or chicken cold, I always get my sub toasted at subway and hardly ever will you see me chewing on ice. I'm just not a fan. At all. But I will eat food I dislike because it's good for me so for the past week and a half, I have eaten cold salad for lunch. When I was in the store last night, I decided I was shopping for chili. What would be more filling on a cold wet day, or rest of the week as Greg on channel 8 tells me, than a too hot to handle, literally, bowl of chili?

I located sed cans, grabbed three if them and headed to the checkout. On the end cap at the register, there was a bag of corn chips for $.89 so I grabbed those too. Frito pie for lunch?! I didn't resist.

I spent less than six buck and was feeling pretty good about myself. It wasn't until I heated up my can of chili today that I thought about the calories I would be consuming. If you don't pay in one way, you end up pay in another. I don't plan on buying anything else today.

Purchases
Store: Aldi

Items: 3 cans of Chili, A meat snack stick, a bag of corn chips

Total: $5.75

2012 Mission = A debt free me

What I have just below my monitor. Cause I need reminding.

People make new year resolutions every year, usually with no real intention of keeping them. They get caught up in the euphoria of new year and all the possibilities it holds. Everyone thinks this is their year. The year they get that dream job or meet that dream person. No one going into the year thinking, this year will be painful and tragic and I will be glad to see it go. If they do have those thoughts, they usually keep them to themselves, hiding them behind the canned answers they give others when people ask, "What are your resolutions this year?"

I can honestly say I don't make new year resolutions. I set realistic goals I wish to complete by years end. Some are carry overs from the year before as long term goals, others are born out of that euphoria of possibilities and lifetime desires I think are ready to become realities.

My goal for this year, to be debt free. This isn't a new goal for me, not really. I was debt free before I started school two years ago. The only debt I have now, besides student loans, is my car. I owe around $5,500 and have four more years to pay it off but I don't want to wait that long. I calculated that if I cut out all unplanned spending and follow my budget closely, I could pay off my car by the end of the year. And that is what I plan to do.

No more trips to the Dollar Tree for one thing and buying $15 worth of crap. No more going to Walmart for three things and coming out with six bags of stuff I do not need. No more good deals from Woot or Amazon Gold Box. If I don't need it, absolutely and completely, I will not buy it.

A few rules to help me stay the course

1. I will post every cent I spend on this blog. At the end of the day, I will post each item that I purchased and a total of what I spent. If I didn't spend any money that day, my total will be zero.
   
2. I will post how much I have paid on my car and the total that remains monthly. If I pay on my car more than once, I will post that as well.
   
3. If I do buy something I don't need, I will agree to a punishment to be carried out in the form of surrendering something of extreme value to a friend or total stranger. This something of extreme value will probably take the form of a favorite movie or book I own. Details about surrender to be worked out later.
   
4. I have previous agreements about vacation/ travel that I already committed to for this year. Outside of these plans I will not be traveling until my car is paid off.
   
5. Once I have paid off my car, I am not obligated to obey these rules. 

That's it folks. I think. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to voice it.

Ready. Steady. Go.

I almost forgot. I bought nothing today.

Total Dollars Spent: $0.