Posted on 08/31/2022 9:03:48 AM PDT by grundle
Standing in my kitchen on a recent morning, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch later that day, it occurred to me that what would appear to be a fairly mundane (albeit delicious) task was actually so much more.
Maybe that’s because, during the previous month, I spent close to $700 on restaurants alone. That’s like a million peanut butter and jellies.
It was that revelation that inspired a month-long no-restaurants-or-shopping challenge I assigned to myself in July. I could not continue to ignore my mounting bills, and I could not go on living with the constant reminder and anxiety of my $18,000 of credit card debt.
Looking at my expenses, I made the difficult-to-me decision to cut restaurants and shopping out completely for a full month. No shopping for non-necessities. No takeout. No dinners out with friends. No “Let’s grab a drink!”
Aside from the ubiquitous PB&J, I found myself trying out new recipes, like this miso-glazed salmon and a kale Caesar salad I cannot stop making. And, as an unexpected bonus, I feel... really good. It may not be sustainable to make myself every meal for the rest of forever, but having a basic idea of everything I was consuming for a month really made me feel like I was taking care of myself.
I’m not sure what comes next. But as this month comes to an end, I have spent over $2,000 less than the month prior. I paid $1,000 off my credit card balance, put money away for taxes, and felt no anxiety about what my balance was while handing my debit card over to pay for some essentials. I didn’t get sick of peanut butter and jelly, and I have yet to miss a restaurant.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
A lot of people would agree, Nancy definitely deserves to have something crammed.
I have known many very wealthy people who got that way working blue collar jobs all of their lives and just not spending much. Most were children of the Great Depression whose families lost everything when they were children and who grew up worrying about losing everything again.
Their children generally had no trouble spending it all after they were gone.
“it’s amazing how much money you save when you don’t spend money...”
like this is some revelation being brought down from the mount.
democrats really are the cancer on our society
I have no debt and live like a pauper. Where my government hand out???
6 years ago, we decided to get our personal finances under control. We we were putting some money into retirement accounts but also had some debt, mostly related to our (2) kids college but some credit cards and personal loans. Without any guidance from someone like Dave Ramsey but just nervous that an emergency might wreck us, we figured out that a snowball would work for us to pay off our debt load.
At first we were only semi-serious so the first year paid off about $8k, then about $10k the second year. About half way through the 3rd year a picked up the pace and since we started have paid off everything, mortgage included but have $10k to go on a car loan that we throw $1500/month at.
We put 40% of our takehome into 401s and 403s and ROTHs. That will go up to 45% in January. We went from having serious debt to having a debt to income ratio of 3% and will be debt free in January. We do not use credit cards at all anymore instead now we put about $1000/month into savings.
It is the absolute best feeling to have enough money in savings to pay for emergencies, we are pre-paying our heating oil for this winter, our RE taxes are paid for the year and we have enough cash on hand to pay off that car loan if we needed to. We have a budget and a plan, something we never had in the past. We have learned to live below our means and to tell the difference between wants and needs.
We are in the Big Valley and have a large backyard garden to help out.
But I think it’s inarguable that $700 of restaurant food per month is unhealthy.
Just cracks me up for some reason...
Where’s the Big Valley?
But in NYC you can not only down $700 of food in one meal, but you can focus on whatever version of vegan or organic or sushi or whatever you consider most healthy.
https://www.therichest.com/luxury/the-10-most-expensive-restaurants-in-nyc-as-of-2022/
I’ve got a garden myself and would rather eat at your place or mine, btw.
Kudos to this writer for learning a lesson.
Many, many, many years ago my wife and I wanted to travel from New Hampshire to California for a wedding.. We just could not afford to take that trip. So we cut out all non essentials. I can’t remember what they were. It was just when we had a urge to spend, we just decided not to make the purchase. In a relatively short time we had saved all that was necessary for the trip.
It is too easy to spend money, and it is usually on trivial non essential things.
Same here. I used to think the big spenders were foolish. Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm the foolish one, counting my pennies my whole life.
Some people always have debt, even if they earn a high income. They drive new cars, while I drive old clunkers. They wear nice clothes. They take expensive vacations.
They're always in debt, but they're happy.
You can't take it with you.
Especially when the government takes from you to subsidize their bad choices. Maybe we are the suckers, after all.
$18k? What a piker.
It makes sense if he was getting sick from the other parts of the PB not the oil. I love natural PB but I can never get the oil mixed back right.
You have to stir the heck out of it to get it to mix right. Really you should use a blender to get it back to the original consistency, but who is going to dump the stuff out of the jar into a blender and go through that mess?
Most likely
Well, look at that, an actual useful solution to a problem. Just gotta make sure you buy jars that thing fits on I guess.
How someone chooses to pursue their happiness is up to the individual.
As long as you don’t try to force others to live how you live.
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