Truly, the moral of this week’s personal experiment – in which I decided that I would go cold turkey on my takeout habit, in an attempt to (a) save money and (b) in some way improve my health – is that, in my case anyway, the money finds a way to spend itself.
I remember when I gave up my 20-a-day cigarette-smoking habit (the true love of my life): I thought to myself, I’ll be rich! I was smoking when a pack of cigarettes cost €11.70 and allow me to take a moment to use my calculator to tell you that’s €350 a month! On cigarettes! I couldn’t wait til the end of my first smoking-free month when I would have a cool €350 to spend on whatever I chose.
SPOILER ALERT: that €350 was nowhere to be found! Just like this week, wherein the money that would otherwise be spent on takeout got spent on other, less enjoyable things, my smoking money found a way to disappear itself.
My own personal conclusion is, therefore: hold on to your vices. Not smoking, because that’s objectively terrible for you. But if regular takeaway meals make you happy, I am here to support you in ordering and eating said takeaway meals. (You’re welcome.)
Monday
My darling baby has finally recovered from his cold, at least in spirit if not quite in body; he’s still sneezing enormous snotty sneezes all over whoever’s in range (mostly me) on a regular basis, making me glad that I postponed his six-month vaccinations to later this week.
While I’m being sneezed on and otherwise entertaining Atlas, one of my Target Pay in 4 payments comes out. ($20.11)
Remind me, please, when I next get paid, that ‘tis a far, far better thing to pay for things upfront than to be paying for them for weeks afterwards. I barely even remember what I bought in Target! (Baby stuff.) I am resolved to pay off all of my Pay in 4 debts at the earliest opportunity.
In other news, Atlas has started to take long, two- to three-hour naps each morning, in his own crib! which means that I can actually do things with my time, like work on my book!
I am delighted to tell you that I have finally made decent headway on the book, have just the intro and outro left to write and can see a day when I will no longer have to think about any of the awful men I’ve dated, unless I see them pop up on Facebook which is thankfully getting less and less frequent.
However, the knock-on effect of this flurry of book-related productivity is that my money diary is, you may have noticed, woefully late.
If it’s any consolation, this probably means you’ll get two money diaries in a row?! How exciting!
We were supposed to have a meeting at the bank this evening but decide to call and postpone it for a weekend when we don’t have the boys; when Brandin gets home with them after work everyone seems a bit frazzled so it feels like a relaxing evening would be better for us all.
We make pasta and tomato sauce for dinner and watch a very annoying science show that is, at least, educational but no less irritating for that fact.
Daily total: $20.11
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