Category Archives: Spending

The Money Offender: My 10 Worst Financial Moves

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Looking back over the past 5.5 years since I graduated college, I’ve made some good… and some bad money moves. In line of trying to figure out what wisdom I have to impart via this blog on personal finance and related, I’ve made a list I thought I’d share of the top 10 smart money moves I’ve made, and 10 things I need to improve on. First, the list of 10 of my work money moves…

1) My food spend is WAY too high!
I spend too much money on food each month, and I don’t even eat that well. I skip meals all the time and end up so hungry I overspend at restaurants.
GOAL: Spend less than $200 a month on food

2) I splurge when I’m shopping.
While I’ve been pretty good lately at avoiding the mall, I still have enough times over the year when I went to the mall, or even an outlet store, and spent $200 to $1000 in one visit, often on items that I wore a couple of times.
GOAL: Make an annual budget for clothes and stick to it!

3) Wasting my gym membership.
I’m paying $35 a month and… haven’t been to the gym in a year. Yes, I want to work out and be healthy, but I hate the gym and when I do work out I like to do so outside or with an exercise video at home, not at the gym.
GOAL: Either use gym 2 times a week minimum, or cancel my gym membership May 1.

4) I should spending MORE on seeing family and friends back east.
This is actually a place I’m saving money, because I go back to NJ (where my family is) from California about two times a year. The flight isn’t exactly cheap. But life is short, and I miss my family. The older I get, the sadder I feel missing the holidays and family get togethers. Plus, my father is ill with terminal cancer, and while we aren’t exactly best friends, I know I’m going to regret the infrequent visits. I think it’s worth spending $300-$400 every 3 months to take a trip home, even for a weekend, to see my family and friends at home.
GOAL: budget more frequent trips home and see if boss will let me work from east coast for one week a quarter (he already agreed to this, but I haven’t pursued it yet.)

5) I’ve Treated my car poorly.
Five years ago, I bought my ’99 Toyota Solara with 130k miles on it for $7k. Granted, it’s lated 5 years, so that’s not too bad. But along the way the car has collected quite a few dings, and most recently, had half of the front bumper ripped off in an accident that was not my fault, but also was not provably the other person’s fault. I haven’t brought the car in for super regular oil changes, and while it hasn’t had a lot of problems I can definitely feel it’s getting to the end of it’s life. It now has 182k miles on it, but if I treated the car better I probably could have gotten to 250k miles… now it feels like it’s going to die at 200.
GOAL: If / when I buy a new car, be sure to take better care of it, to get the longest life out of the car.

6) Spending too much on investing fees
The way I invest is pretty stupid, but I forgive myself because if I wasn’t investing the money I’d be spending it on #2 (shopping splurges.) My worst offense is my Sharebuilder account, which I pay $12 a month for to get 12 free automatic trades, and I often pay extra on that because I put smaller amounts into stocks each week. It’s kind of dollar-cost averaging but I do it wrong so it’s more or less stupid. My Sharebuilder account is up 10% right now, which is ok, but I could be up 10% investing in a mutual fund this year or one ETF this year, with lower fees.
GOAL: Pay attention to (and account for) how much money I’m spending on my stock transactions!

7) Outgrowing my clothes (due to #3.)
My weight is all over the place, and this requires me to go to the mall often which results in #2.
GOAL: Use #3 to Solve This Problem

8) Not cooking / packing lunch for work.
I spend too much money eating out (#1) because I rarely cook.
GOAL: find low-cost, easy-to-make meals for my bachelorette self.

9) Getting my hair cut twice a year… is not enough
Why is this in my “poor money choices” section? Because after a few months, my hair gets kind of gnarly. While I could get away with that in college, I’m now in a director-level role and need to maintain myself, and my hair.
GOAL: Get my hair cut every 3 months, not every 6 months.

10)  Paying things late.
I’m the worst offender here. I tend to pay my credit card bills on time, but I’ve missed a few there too. Like the one $10 account balance that ended up costing me $50 in late fees. Then there’s the late parking tickets, which add up fast.
GOAL: pay all bills on time, right when I get them.

What are your Top 10 Worst Money Moves, and what goals can you set to improve these in 2011?

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Spending Habits of the Weak

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In my attempt to determine where my money disappears to, I’ve sought out the aid of online personal finance tracking sites. Those of you who have been following my blog know that I enjoyed the ease of getting my finance info up to the Geezeo site. I’ve actually had a bit of trouble with signing in to the site lately (I’m pretty sure I’m using the right password, but then even when I try to reset the password it doesn’t work.) In any case, given that I have little patience and quickly got fed up with typing in my June spending into Excel, I signed in to my Wesabe account and updated my info so I could track my spending…

Geez. I spent a lot last month. I knew I was spending more than I made, but it’s kind of painful to see how grossly I burst past my invisible budget. I spent $3559 in June. But I only made $2273 for the month. Actually, come to think of it that’s all inaccurate because I deposited my final paycheck (which I received June 30) sometime in July. So right now my July earnings are noted as $2466, but really that money was earned in June, and half of the money counted in my June income was really my May paycheck. Plus, some of that money was the $450 my friend paid me to live in my apartment for the month. Oy, my income is much harder to track than my expenses.

I do need to start keeping tabs on my income. While I’ll be making more money at my full-time gig (when I start in a week), what I really need to do is track the money I make working the small freelance gigs I pick up on the side. Whether that’s doing some copy writing for my uncle’s digital marketing company, or designing a basic website for a friend who offers to pay something for the work… I really need to figure out how much per month I’m making on outside projects. Why? Well, it’s difficult to figure out a budget when these extra projects become a consistent portion of one’s income. When I was making about $2000 a month after taxes this year, the extra $100 a month I made on copy writing for my uncle was really a huge bonus. But then one of the companies that I did work for (through him) decided they no longer wanted him to put together a monthly newsletter, so I was then out $50 a month. Considering how much I spend, that $50 isn’t worth that much, but it’s also worth a lot. That $50 covered one voice lesson and a cheese plate at Starbucks.

My general theory on spending (albeit an irresponsible one) was that if I spent slightly more than what I was making at $35k a year, when I received a raise or managed to land a job with a higher paycheck, I’d be able to live comfortably at a slightly higher salary. After all, I don’t overspend EVERY month. Just most months. But only by about $600 to $1000. I don’t think I’m the type who will start spending more just because I’m making more. Sure my rent went up $145 a month (ouch), and I might splurge on nice clothes and paying for a nice dinner with the bf more often, but overall I think my spending habits will remain constant.

One thing I’d like to spend money on… if I had more money… would be travel. I’d love to take a real adult vacation, like to Hawaii or someplace like that. Thus far my only travel during my full-time work years has been back home to New Jersey. And up until now, my parents have chipped in for my plane ticket back east. But that doesn’t really count as a vacation, despite the high cost of that ticket. Going home is something that I just have to do every once in a while, but it’s not a relaxing getaway.

Since my bf doesn’t work, I’d really love to be able to afford to take us both to Hawaii, or maybe Seattle, or even to some random small ocean-side town in Southern California. I’d love to be able to splurge on a massage every once in a while, or just while on vacation. A massage and a facial. And maybe one of those fancy foot scrubs. And then there’s the laser hair removal and teeth whitening that I want to be saving my pennies for.

So… there’s plenty of things I could spend any extra income on, surely. Would I actually spend it? I’m not so sure. I’m not a huge saver, but I’ve never been good about spending money on big purchase items that I actually really want. Like that laser hair removal. I have this syndrome called PCOS and one of the lovely symptoms of the disorder is having excess facial hair. I don’t have a full-grown beard or anything, but I do spend a ridiculous amount of time tweezing random hairs out of my chin line and sideburns. God, what’s I’d give to permanently get rid of those hairs! Would I give $1500, or whatever the cost is these days for permanent (and painful) hair removal? Possibly. I’m afraid if I did that and it worked, I’d be addicted. I’d have to get my legs and armpits done, and my belly and back. I’d give anything to be hair free in the places where hair oughtn’t be.

Anyway, what makes me sad about my spending habits is knowing that I can go and spend $700 on clothes and makeup in one month, but I’d never really consider spending that much money on laser hair removal at this point in my life. Even though obviously it’s one of those things that I really want. I think I need to go to spending school. I need to get my financial priorities straight. I’m not sure where laser hair removal would fall into these priorities (after all, the treatment would be a luxury for sure, but in a way it’s a medical expense because it’s not like I can live a normal life with a thousand hairs growing out of my chin). Too bad my health insurance doesn’t care about that.

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