Monday, June 14, 2010

Responserbillery.

I'm all grown up now and as such, I'm taking, like, active control of the direction of my life and junk. Parts of it, anyway.

Goal number 89 was to keep detailed accounting data for one month. I've done better - at the beginning of February, I created a budget file in Excel, with two pages. One sheet functions as a checkbook for my debit card, savings account, and credit card, complete with formulas so that I don't screw up the math and a banner at the top that shows all my current balances. The primary sheet, though, I am especially proud of - it aggregates all my purchases into categories, on a week-by-week (and month-by-month) basis, and includes the rough estimates for my budget... because technically, a budget is a PLAN for your money, not just keeping track of where it goes after the fact. I made a category column in the checkbook sheet, so at the end of each week, I go through and add up all the "E"s and "S"s and so forth to track my expenses.

I set fairly liberal spending allowances when I established the budget in February, when I was going out a lot more. I underestimated my income (not by a lot, but about $100 a month at least) and overestimated food and entertainment expenses by a lot, so I could wean myself slowly down to a more savings-oriented fiscal plan (and thus move myself more expediently towards a responsible move to NYC). Here's what the original budget figures were:


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As you can see, I also allocated $70 per month for health-related expenses, which would basically encompass everything I would buy at CVS or Walgreens - razor blades are exorbitantly expensive these days. But I also wanted to set it that high in case I needed to go to the doctor and buy medicine in case I got sick, so that I'd know the money would be there without throwing the whole rest of the budget off. Getting my throat swabbed for strep does NOT count as Entertainment, you know? The last column, Leftovers, is additional de facto Savings. The Savings column itself encompasses my Keep the Change transfers, and a monthly $25 scheduled transfer from checking to savings that I set up to avoid monthly fees. SOOO all that money I'm not really spending on health gets saved up, along with all the other money I keep by underspending on food and entertainment. To the right of each month's leftovers, I set up a running "Total Savings" formula, which adds together that month's savings and leftovers and adds it to the previous month's total savings.

It turns out that increasing that single number has been the best motivational tool for me to 1) continue using this sometimes annoying system - Bank of America reformatted their website last month and it's an enormous hassle to do side-by-side windows to input the checkbook data - and 2) cut back my spending, the whole point of setting this goal. I didn't think to add that until mid-April or so, for a solely practical reason: I had too much data for one page and didn't want to have to be scrolling all the time; there is a huge corresponding jump in the amount of Leftovers between March and April, which becomes even more extraordinary when you factor in that I was in NEW YORK CITY at the beginning of April and I ate very well. Anyways! Budget working, ergo, budget goal OFFICIALLY COMPLETE.

Now, a completely different mechanism for getting my adulthood together: I took the LSAT on June 7th. (Goal number... TWO, for those keeping score at home. Yeah, that important.) I could pretend that the five weeks of grueling prep tests I did were the reason I didn't post so much in May, but we all know the real reason is that I'm tremendously lazy. Except for the part where I established a rigorous schedule for practicing, stuck to it, and saw real improvement in my (practice test) scores because of it. I don't get the real score back until the 28th, and I absolutely do not want to jinx it, but I feel safe at least saying that my goal of 167 was definitely reasonably within my reach. I think I qualified that enough to evade the wrath of the jinx demons. I hope.

Well, this is getting long, and I started it at work this afternoon and it is now approaching one in the morning, so, yeah, over and out. OH WAIT no, before I forget, I have another swingset - Colin Park, beachside in Daytona. Squeaky chains, really quite awful as swings go, but it was a clear night and the stars were delightful, making up for it a bit. A daytime picture will be taken sometime in the next three months. Deal. So, what is it, number 8 now?
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