Money Idea: Make money unavailable, to make extra activities attainable

ALRIGHT, 5TH TIMES THE CHARM!

Ugh, this post has been a disaster! 1st, space cadet, like, totally. 2nd, loss of direction. 3rd, Jack Donaghey. 4th, internet crashed taking the post with it.

This attempt is like having taken a trip through a field and having accidentally dropped some of your belongings along the way only to cross the field and be told that it’s actually a minefield and what you dropped is essential to life and now you have to go back and pick them up.

Maybe not that bad…. but it feels close.

Aaaaaanywaaaaay, we here at kitchenOCD do a lot of things. We are weekend warriors and not for home repairs. We do festivals, carnivals, fairs, community events, concerts, simple walks down untravelled trails, zoos, museums, and amusement parks. Considering our budget, this is a pretty damn amazing feat.

That we do it without ever using plastic, has me patting my own back at this very moment.

It takes a bit of planning and a lot of willpower. What we do is make money unavailable. It used to be that making it unavailable meant putting it in the bank. Well, now everything is electronic, and we pull directly from the bank for necessities. This makes keeping a certain amount of funds unavailable really tricky. Because it’s still technically there in your available balance, so accidentally spending it is really easy. Then you are shit out of luck the day before your mother’s birthday when you had this thoughtful gift all lined up, and you’re left giving her a fantastic phone call to make up for it </sarcasm>. I know. I have.

Then, I discovered this nifty and kind of retro currency called cash. A brief lesson on cash (k-A¯SH). It is printed on paper. It cannot, in fact, burn a hole in anyone’s pocket. Every other country’s paper money is prettier than ours.

It’s also really good at getting out of sight, out of mind. This is how I build an activity fund:

1. When we have money, we make it disappear (magic!) by pulling a few bucks here and there at the grocery store, gas station, or passing by the bank. Nothing big, maybe 10 here, 5 there. The important part is that it becomes part of the routine, so you can trick yourself into making it a necessity. I’m less likely to pull cash if I have to make an extra trip because then it feels extraneous.
2. Immediately after getting home it goes out of the wallet and into the treasure trove.
3. The treasure trove then goes out of sight on the fridge. Keeping the money from finding it’s way into my hands again isn’t hard because I start to feel this sense of accomplishment as the pile builds, like when I was a kid and did odd jobs for my mom to earn enough money to buy Christmas presents for everyone. (Sure she was technically buying them, but I’d be damned if I’d let it be a handout.) If you don’t get this sense, and need a little bit of help keeping away from the cash, allow Piggy to give a visual presentation on choosing an appropriate Cash Keeper.

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Hello, Piggy. Ready to help us choose a Cash Keeper?

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He may be the Rebellion’s new hope, but he borrowed 5 bucks from me to pick up some power converters and I haven’t seen a red cent since.

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Good idea, Piggy. Just walk on by.

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Cloning? Hmmmm… that seems like a risky venture. Heeey! Robots don’t need to be cloned!

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Now who is this fine fellow?

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Such a trustworthy face! With poison jab to boot!

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Krogunk, I choose you! to be my Cash Keeper.

The end.

What the buck: this week in groceries 8.29.09

What the buck? Try why the hell. As in why the hell can’t I get this out? WTH are my dishes still dirty? WTH do Mikey and I suddenly want a cat? WTH can’t I stay up past 9:30pm?

These are all pressing and valid questions, which I’ll attempt to answer right after this nap.

Seriously! The shortcake is gone and instantly it’s like that senior year of high school when your parents trusted you enough to behave like an adult and took that extended stay at your out of state grandparent’s house leaving you to hold down the fort. Only you don’t hold down the fort. You let it gather every scrap of refuse that manages to gather in you pockets, hair, backpack, and mind. Cleaning is a myth in the face of the utter chaos reigning from the mighty grip of “unaccountability“. This is no longer your parent’s home. It is your pad decorated with the friends who don’t know your name but can readily recognize the look of lazy confidence in one’s borrowed adulthood.

Yes, that is the state of our lives, our apartment. The child is the beacon around which our responsibility clusters to hold together the flimsy pieces of our adult behavior. Our bills are still getting paid, it’s just it gets really hard to remember why we should eat at the table. Why the bed shouldn’t be in front of the TV. Why birthday suit is not a perfectly acceptable alternative to bath robe. And why cursing at those damn forks for not putting themselves away is an overuse of the precious gift of foul language. We have forgotten these reasons. And it is time we remember. And we better remember fucking fast because our beacon of responsibility comes home on Sunday. (Ah, foul language… how I will miss thee in the bright light of day.)

Our menu is the biggest sufferer though. We’ve eaten out more times than I care to remember. The last time the waiter took his tip of cash and charged us an extra fucking tip that was more than our cash tip. It was like a little reminder that we only jip ourselves when the menu is neglected. So this week I’m only going to do general numbers not exact cents of what I spent. I really just don’t want to forget to get back into the habit of doing this for myself.

No picture either.

Lame.

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Menu:
Friday – Sausage and Eggs
Saturday – Eggplant Parmesan
Sunday – BBQ Chicken Pizza
Monday – Stuffed Baked Potatoes
Tuesday – Spicy Pepper Pork with Rice
Wednesday – Southwest Chicken Wraps
Thursday – Karaage with Oranges
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And the answer to What the Buck is…. $120.00. Minus restock items…. $130.00.

Where the Buck was it spent… $10 – meats; $30 – produce; $15 – carbs; $20 – dairy; $45 – miscellaneous; $0 – restock items (items lasting more than 3 weeks)

Wine and soda. Good deal. Those are the miscellaneous items. I’m sipping on the wine right now which may explain the long winded rant about parent and responsibility and glug-glug-glug. WTH did I forget to put in partying?

*The groceries I buy include lunches and snacks for a 3 person family. I had a tough time finding honest comparisons to what we spent on groceries while working on our budget. Hopefully this will help people trying to get that perspective, and help others trying to get a handle on spending, like we are.

What the buck: this week in groceries 08.01.09

Short, sweet, and to the point. I’m incredibly late on this post, and my reasoning is all selfish. I spent the weekend and yesterday shooting photos of my husband. YAY! I rarely get this chance as he gets reaaally nervous in front of the camera. How did I combat it? Over the weekend, he stood against a wall for a bit each day while I cracked my awesomest jokes and took pictures. By Monday, when we ran out to the greenway to take the final pictures, he was relaxed enough to give me real smiles and one hilarious picture with a stuffed Pikachu reticent of Superman.

Recipe: Roasting Veggies a must-have easy essential

Roasted veggies - my saving grace

Seriously, they are my saving grace. I may have mentioned before that it was from sheer desperation that I discovered how to roast veggies. A few months ago, there were sitting in my refrigerator, a few dejected russet potatoes (yuck), dry-bendy carrots, wrinkled onions, depressed green peppers, and almost-flowering garlic. All these had been purchased with the full intent of adding vegetables to the diet with the full knowledge that this wasn’t gonna happen.

What the buck: this week in groceries 06.13.09

Groceries for a week in June

Phew! Mikey and I sat down fully intending to eat a week of spaghetti. I swear it! Just the thought didn’t sit so well when I had an idea for pot pie I wanted to try out. Then, a bad lunch of nasty Mexican gave Mikey a need to erase it with some homemade bean burritos. Faye wanted some chicken, rice, and beans. What’s a Challenge that Food Budgeter contestant to do?!