Dramatics aside, that was quite the title, eh? Something I can picture Zoë delivering, wrapped up in a box, decorated with I hate you-themed wrapping paper and topped with a shiny you never let me do anything bow.
Really, everything’s fine, though there is a minor issue that I want to address: Telus, in their infinite wisdom, decided that even though Wednesday was deemed the day to switch my telephone and Internet service, they would switch the phone on Wednesday, and hold the Internet off until February 5th. I don’t know if I can handle that, really.
But really, I learned something with this move, already.
I have too many kitchen cupboards
I don’t know what to put into all of these spaces. So much of our food is bought as we need it, fresh and usually from the produce stand, and has been for so long, that I have at least two cupboards not being used at all.
Seriously. What should I put in those things? Extra dishes I don’t need or use? Appliances I have no reason to plug in?
I’m going to be broke as fuck forever
They say that the key to money management is to plan ahead and pay yourself first. Fuck that.
I budget like I invented it, and I have a really fancy, beautiful, self-design spreadsheet to show for it.
And every single month, I spend everything extra that we could have, so that by the end of the month, I’ve overspent again. Then, we still don’t have any of the extras that I actually do care about us having – like, bookcases for all of our books, or the money to redecorate the new apartment. Or a $0-balance with cable-television providers, just in case we actually did want to get cable. Not that we do.
This month, I had to take on an extra $500 bill, to cover the new apartment’s deposit.
That’s $500 that would usually disappear in chai, cigarettes and dinners out. There was still chai, cigarettes and a dinner or two out, but for the most part, I didn’t overspend because I already felt like I had. I was looking at the barrel end of the minimum amount of money we’d need to eat til the end of the month, having to stock up on apple sauce and flour and fruits and toilet paper and next months medications, while I still had the cash.
So I did. And then I didn’t have the cash. And now it’s a few days before the end of the month, and here I sit with $60 or so for the month.
Being broke as fuck kept me in line cuz if there’s anyone I can’t trust, it’s myself.
So, I have a new plan. Every month, I will pre-spend everything but rent and groceries. I will panic that I won’t be able to pull off both through to the end of the month, and then I will. And in the process, that pre-spending will go toward paying off old debts (mostly accrued when I lived with The Ex), redecorating the entire apartment, and hell, even locking into a savings account that I won’t have a bank card for.
So, lesson of the day: trust no ISP, buy more stuff to put in the empty cupboards and spend all of my money, so I’m not tempted to spend it frivolously.
It’s a plan, Stan.
