That’s all, folks!

Anyone who’s reading this post should DM me on Twitter (or e-mail me) to get the password to the post “When Anonymity is Compromised.” I don’t want to repeat everything for the ones who have already read it.

Unfortunately, my plan to keep blogging here a while longer has been foiled. Not because of anything excited, but it’s difficult to keep posting here now that school has started. (So much reading!)

So I’m skipping out of here earlier than I planned. Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting and being a part of this journey with me. It’s been fun!

Take that, grocery store! 11 tips to help you save

I felt like a super star walking out of the grocery store last Monday night.

I budget for $100 in groceries for the month. (D and I keep our food separate. Our work schedules are not conducive to eating meals together often, and we’re both so picky that we hardly agree on food. So we keep it simple by buying our own food.) But I always hope for $80. This month… I spent $56.12!

I was on cloud nine. I’m sure my grocery store’s cashiers think I’m crazy, since I’m always cheering, “Yes, under budget again!” after I hear the total.

I think not buying soda this month has helped a lot. I’ve done so well this far! I haven’t paid for one soda that I’ve consumed since January 1. I have drank soda, but it’s all been free at the office. (Big shout-outs here to Mom and D, who have been generous when I’ve had a major soda-craving.)

Here’s what I bought on Monday:

Shredded cheese $2.65

Skim milk $2.58

Ground lean beef $5.26

Bagel bites (2) $3.99

$3.99

Chicken breasts $5.65

Mini yeast rolls $3.29

Chili $1.00

Chili $1.00

Wheat bread $2.00

Wheat buns $2.00

Refried beans $1.49

Refried beans $1.49

Taco dinner kit $2.45

Oreos $2.85

Sour cream and onion Pringles $2.79

Corned beef $4.89

Head of lettuce $1.79

Whoa! Just realized by listing out my groceries that I was charged twice for one can of refried beans! That’ll teach me to cheer for coming under budget. Next time, I’ll have to watch what is coming up on the screen more closely. D is shaking his head at me while I complain about $1.49, but hey! That’s $1.49 that I don’t have!

Something I learned on this particular trip was to pay attention to what the sale prices are compared to the regular prices. For instance, I had chili on my list to buy, and when I saw that they were on sale 10 for $10, I thought Alright! Big sale! I’m going to stock up! But when I referred back to my last grocery shopping receipt, I realized the chili was actually one penny less when it wasn’t on sale. Sure, I was only saving 10 cents, but it brought sales prices to my attention. Sometimes a sale isn’t a better deal. It’s obviously not a good deal when it’s not something you weren’t planning on buying in the first place, but it’s important to know how much an item costs when it’s not on sale too.

Here are 11 tips I’ve learned that have helped me when buying groceries.

1) Make a meal plan and grocery shopping list. When I would grocery shop before, I would go down every aisle and pick up everything that I thought looked delicious. Do you know what happened? I wouldn’t eat half the food! It would either be too much and would expire before I could eat it all. Or it just wouldn’t be something I actually wanted to eat. For example, I used to be in love with bags of tuna. I would eat it straight from the bag all the time. I still like tuna, but I don’t get in the mood for it very often. When I shopped, I bought it like I would eat it for a week. Now my cupboard is full of tuna!

Keep your list throughout the week, and write things down as they’re depleted. One of the worst feelings is getting home after a successful trip to the grocery store and realizing I forgot something important.

I use this meal plan spreadsheet that I first found on Unclutterer. I sit down the day that I’m going grocery shopping and plan out my meals for four weeks. (I shop once a month because it helps me to not spend as much money. Then I’ll make maybe one extra trip to the store for bread or cheese when I run out.) Then I make a list of all the ingredients I’ll need to prepare those meals.

2) Stick to your list! I’ve had plenty of grocery shopping trips where I go in with a list, but see something I like while I’m there and pick it up. Like chocolate chip cookies. Or an additional deli meat. Or potato chips. One of the biggest cost-saving measures you can take when grocery shopping is to create a plan and stick to your list.

3) Cut out the extraneous items. I read something a few weeks ago that jolted my system. “Food is for survival. It’s for making our bodies function. Stop thinking of it as anything more than nourishment for your body.” Am I the only person who never thought of it like that? I think of food as something fun! I get to eat something that tastes good! I get to go out for dinner with my boyfriend, friends or family! This is fun! Don’t get me wrong, I still think of food as something that tastes good, that I enjoy making time for each day.

But I learned that not everything has to be fun food. I started considering what I was putting into my grocery cart and body. Sure, soda tastes good but is it good for me? No. And it sure isn’t good for my wallet. Do I have to buy Fritos if I can still eat chili without it and can cut the calories in half by not including the potato chips? Nope! I’m certainly a long way from the being the health food guru I wish I could be, but I’m doing better than I was a year ago.

4) Save your grocery receipts and bring your calculator and the receipts with you to shop. I’m sure this makes me a nerd, but I compare prices from one grocery trip to the next. I pull out my receipt while I shop and compare prices. If it’s on sale, this helps me figure out just how good of a sale it is. If it’s good enough, I’ll stock up on an item. If it’s not a deal at all – like my chili – I’ll stick to my normal amount.

5) Learn where your food is in the store and only visit those aisles. In my formative years of living on my own, I dated a man who walked down each and every aisle while grocery shopping. It would drive me crazy, mostly because it wasted so much time. I’ve learned now that I buy a lot more when I go down every aisle. Now, I look at the signs at the end of each aisle and only walk down the ones that have something I need.

6) Get over your loyalty to big brands. Before I met D, I was the world’s worst for paying for the most expensive brand of milk in the store. “It’s what my parents used when I was growing up! It’s just better,” I’d pathetically try to rationalize. I’ve since accepted that store brand milk tastes just the same. And guess what? I spend 50% less buying the store brand of milk instead of the name brand. The savings aren’t quite as much on other products, like shredded cheese, but it’s still there. The only thing I’ve not bought store brand yet is cheese squares for my grilled cheese sandwiches, but I’ve also not needed to buy cheese singles for two months because I didn’t use them all the last two trips.

Question your loyalty to these name brands. Why do we think they’re better? Is it because you’ve tasted both brands and know the store bought brand tastes considerably worse? Then, fine. Buy the name brand. But if it’s just because it’s what you’re used to, give it up for one trip to the store. Try the generic store brand one time and see how you feel.

7) Clip (or print) coupons. This is one area I could definitely improve upon. Right now, I’m only saving coupons that come in the mail. But I’m going to try to be better! Here are some ways to master coupon using:

Buy the Sunday edition of your major local paper. You’ll usually find at least one solid section of coupons. Spend a few minutes on a slow day (probably Sunday in these parts) clipping the coupons and organizing them for your next grocery trip. If there is a product you frequently buy but there are no coupons in the paper, Google it! Within the first few search results, you should find good coupons that you can print and take with you to save some cash.

8) Eat less meat. I’m in no way a vegetarian, though I have mad respect for them and wish I had that kind of willpower. But it’s no secret that meat is more expensive than most anything else you buy at the store. You can still find protein in foods like cheese, eggs, peanut butter, beans and some fish.

9) Pay attention to expiration dates. This one almost got me once! I was buying a gallon of store brand milk, and it had a “Save $1 at checkout” sticker on it. I went to find D and brag when he pointed out to me that the milk was expiring in three days. “Why do you think it’s so cheap?” he asked me with a smirk. For some families (like mine when I had to young boys in the house), that gallon of milk would have lasted all of three days before being drained. (Oh, do I pity my parents now that I look back!) But a gallon of milk can last D and I anywhere from a week to two weeks.

10) Be sure to check the unit cost before buying a larger package. I’ve been fooled by this one so often it isn’t even funny. I look at the price, sure, but I don’t look at the unit price, which is much more important. Use your calculator to divide the price by the number of units (ounces, items, etc.) to get the unit price. Sometimes it’s cheap to buy a few smaller packages than it is to buy a larger package.

11) Stop using and buying paper products, or anything that is disposable. On the surface, this sounds difficult. My life revolved around paper plates before. I only brought out the real plates for nice sit-down meals with D. (Read: Rarely.) But when I stopped to think how much paper I was throwing in a landfill simply because I was too lazy to wash a dish, not to mention the money I was wasting, I felt pretty silly. Now I use real plates for all my meals. We also stopped buying bottled water. Instead, we invested in a water purifier that attaches to our faucet. It saves tons of plastic and money throughout the year. The same applies to soups with microwavable containers. You’re paying extra for that disposable container. Buy the regular can and use a dish instead!

Becoming environmentally-friendly in the office

I often find that it’s pretty easy for me to be environmentally-friendly at home. When I’m home, I think of things like using towels instead of paper or not printing things out that I don’t need to. (Heck, we don’t own a printer anymore, so that part is really easy.)

At work, it’s a bit more difficult. We’re so concentrated on getting the job done that sometimes we forget about bigger things.

The corporate office I work for has made a few changed this year, and I thought it’d be important to share them. Surprisingly, not everyone in the office is supportive, but I think that’s probably just how people are. It’s hard to change our habits when we’re used to doing things a certain way.

1) Recycle, recycle, recycle. I can’t say this one enough. Before the president of our company decided to make these changes, we had a rather dedicated employee who would cart our aluminum cans, plastic and paper off to the recycling center herself. Eventually, she was able to convince the president that changing our garbage collector would not only save us money but also provide us with more attractive containers, one of which is dedicated to all kinds of recyclable materials. Research your garbage collecting options. You may be able to save your company some money while furthering an environmentally friendly.

2) Use less paper. This is something I think we especially do out of habit. We have desk calendars we rarely use. We have day planners when we could more easily use an online calendar. (I’m guilty of that last one.) This year our vice president of finance forbade the head of administrative assistants from ordering desk calendars. We’re also encouraged to not print things like e-mails or spreadsheets out. Why not refer to them on your computer instead? In addition, we’ve been encouraged to not write down phone messages or notes to other employees. If you do these things by e-mail instead, you have proof that the message was sent, and you’re saving paper. Our billing department is looking into e-mailing invoices instead of mailing them, which saves paper and postage! Look into implementing a company policy that employees attach a signature to their e-mails that reads, “Save paper. Do you really need to print this e-mail?”

3) Bring reusable bottles, bowls, etc. to the office. Ditch those foam cups! Don’t spend extra on microwavable bowls for soup. (Check out 27 and Frugal’s post on that here.) Invest a couple bucks in a reusable plastic bottle for work and fill it up with water (or coffee) through the day. Use a reusable bowl or plate for lunch instead of costly styrofoam or paper plates. Our office just bought reusable bottles for each employee at our corporate location so we can stop spending money on plastic bottles. (D and I also did this at home by purchasing a purifying faucet attachment and using 2-liter bottles for all our water needs.) The office is also stocked with real dishes in our break room.

4) Turn off equipment that doesn’t need to be on when the office is closed. Keeping computers and the heat on all night eats up electricity and costs your company money. Turn off (and unplug, if you can) any equipment that doesn’t have to run through the night.

5) Consider your commute. Many employees who live in areas with decent transportation systems still drive to work. Talk to your supervisor about implementing a rewards system for employees who take advantage of public transit. See if it’s feasible for the company to pay a portion of subway or bus passes. Companies are realizing, little by little, that being environmentally friendly not only saves a company money, but it also makes them more attractive to other businesses.

These are just five tips that our office has thought of to promote environmentally friendly policies. If you’ve heard of or participated in other environmentally-friendly policies for an office, please share them in the comments! While not always the most cost-saving measure upfront (Like my recycled-notebook I bought for African American studies this weekend. It was about $1.75 more than the non-recycled paper.), it often saves money in the long-run and helps us feel good about doing something to make a difference.

Week of spending

I had the no-spending work week last week. This week, I had a week of spending!

I have to say, using cash only has completely changed the way I handle money. Now I know exactly how much I have to spend – because it’s right there in my wallet – and when I run out, I run out! I have a day planner that I carry with me everywhere – it’s more important than my purse – and I record expenses in it every day. It’s kept me on track very well.

I don’t think I planned this week as well as I meant to. I withdrew $575.86 on Sunday, after adding up how much I would need for the personal loan repayment and other expenses. Now I’m down to $3! If I intended that money to last only this week, I would be patting myself on the back right now. But I had planned on stretching that for two weeks, and there’s no way that’ll happen with Mom’s birthday coming up in a few days.

Here’s the breakdown:

Sunday

$6.75 at McDonald’s for dinner

Withdrew $575.86 for the week

Monday

$57 groceries

$8 Papa Murphy’s pizza

Tuesday

$60 car registration renewal

$400 personal loan to parents

Wednesday

NO SPEND DAY!

Thursday

NO SPEND DAY!

Friday

$6 for laundry

$30 gas for the car

$7.64 cat food

Saturday

$5.43 at Wal-Mart for a birthday card for Mom and a recycled-paper notebook for my annoying African American Studies professor

Two No Spend Days out of seven… Not good! But they were all expenses that I had to incur, minus the Papa Murphy’s pizza and dinner at McDonald’s.

Obviously, the personal loan ate up the majority of my cash this week. But it does feel good to owe $400 less this week!

The only expense I should have next week is birthday dinner for Mom. She’s getting Army Wives season three as a gift, but it’s not out yet so I have a few weeks – and another paycheck coming in – before I buy it. I’ll transfer whatever is left in my bank account over to my savings when I get paid on January 26.

It’ll be a lesson to me… Be diligent about birthdays! If you forget, it can cost you!

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First day of school

There’s something exciting about the first day of school. And something even more exciting about not having morning courses.

For the first semester in my life, I made a course schedule based on what I think I can do instead of what I should do. Every semester, I’ve told myself, “Hey, you had to be at school at 8 a.m. in high school. You can do it in college too!” I didn’t factor in the powerful feeling of being able to sleep in if I want to, skip class if I feel like it and eat at Pizza Hut every day of my life. (Seriously. I ate at Pizza Hut every day. It’s amazing I didn’t gain any weight until starting my first ”real” full-time job.)

I have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:40 p.m. to 4:55 p.m. (and 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday because of an exciting evening English class).

The only negative about the semester thus far – not counting the back and forth hike I’ll be making because of my stupid class on the outskirts of campus – is an African American Studies professor who hasn’t accepted the changing times yet. And by that, I mean he’s not allowing me to take notes on my laptop, and he’s going to kick anyone out of the class if he even sees a cell phone with them.

I do understand that it’s hard enough to keep our attention. If we have the Internet at our fingertips, it’s virtually impossible. But I operate under the belief that, even though we may not act it all the time, college students are adults. We are responsible for our education and our success in college. I want to say, “You worry about teaching the class, and I’ll worry about how I take notes.”

The cell phone policy is a bit extreme. Even if class hasn’t started yet, he will kick out any student who has a cell phone out in the classroom. If you have one in your hand when you walk in, you get kicked out. It has to be put away at all times.

I’m mostly worried about buying a notebook for one class and throwing it away at the end of the semester. It’s a waste of $3 and paper, even though I’ll be sure to recycle it.

I’ve been taking notes on my laptop for years. It’s more convenient than lugging around notebooks for each class and textbooks, which are rarely cracked open in class – unless you’re in a math course. And it saves paper and money. Let’s face it, students need to save all the money they can.

Of course, this professor also requires us to purchase a Green Book for every assignment we turn in. At more than 50 cents a pop, those will add up as the semester continues.

Yes, I’m cheap. I was excited that the only thing I’d be carrying around was a lightweight laptop (much lighter than my eight pound Gateway that I carried before), and now it’ll be a lightweight laptop and a lightweight notebook, which totally adds up to too heavy! :)

One bright point in my day was the Deviance and Persecution in Medieval Europe class I’ve signed up for. Not only is the teacher good-looking (I’d call him “smoking” actually.), but it’s one of those classes that I imagine will be interesting the whole semester through.

And the teacher is funny! He was explaining the root of the word “deviant” and drew a road on the board.

“People who are part of ‘the norm’ walk on this road,” he said before drawing one arrow to the right and one to the left. “And people over here watch Fox News, and the people over here watch MSNBC.” Ha ha! Political-news jokes are my weakness. He also called himself a “flaming liberal,” so I think we’ll get along just fine. (I would consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.)

Coming from the African American Studies course (I’ll have to give these professors nicknames soon!), it was jarring to see the contrast between one teacher and another. One treated his students as high schoolers who needed to be babysat in class. The other took the complete opposite approach. We don’t even have a reading schedule! (Which, ok, I don’t like. I need structure and plans.) The history professor expects us to keep up with reading on our own and – I happily noted – doesn’t care about using laptops to take notes.

Still, with the good comes the bad. I’m in another law class, one I thought would be easier because it’s a suggested prerequisite for a course I took last semester. Then I find out we’ll be writing briefs on Supreme Court cases all semester. It’s just a wee bit intimidating.

I’m still most excited at the prospect of success this semester. My work schedule isn’t going to change. I’ll have all day after 12 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to study and stay caught up on my reading. I only have a year and a half to go! But instead of looking at my three remaining semesters as something to barrel through, I’m going to take my time to learn and soak up as much of those college smarts as I can before I graduate. (After all, I’m paying for it!)

Going against the financial gods

Well, I know what I’m about to say makes little financial sense, but I’ve decided to pay the personal loan from my parents before I pay my student loan interest.

I know what you’re thinking. What!? Your parents aren’t charging you interest! Avoid paying them back as long as they’ll let you.

But if I don’t pay them back before I graduate, I won’t be able to pay them very much after I get our of school. Because I’m planning to throw everything at my student loan repayment, I won’t have a spare cent to give them for my personal loan. And I cannot imagine halting all loan payments until I pay off my student loans. After all, Mom didn’t pay cash for the bedroom furniture. She just charged it on her store card because it has 0% APR for a year.

I paid $400 on the loan Monday. That brings the total down to $1,300.

Under my previous plan, I was going to alternate between paying the personal loan and the student loan interest until they were both paid off. Then I’d tackle the principals of my student loans.

But now I think that if I go ahead and pay off the personal loan I can focus more of my energy on the student loans. I’ll be getting the $1,000 deductible soon and applying that to the loan would bring the total down to $300. If I scrimped the last month, I could finish paying off the personal loan completely either by the end of February or the beginning of March.

It could actually give me more time to pay back the student loans. If I alternated, it would take six and a half months to pay back the loan to my parents. That would only leave 11 months before graduation to pay on the student loans. If I pay the personal loan off early (March), I would have 13 months to focus entirely on my student debt. That’d be two extra months of payments.

The main reason I want to do this is that I like the idea of retiring one category of debt before starting on another. When I do start paying back student loans, I’ll be paying the ones with the highest interest and balance first.

It gives me peace of mind to know that I wouldn’t owe my parents anymore. My grandmother disagreed with me. She said that my parents wouldn’t care how long it takes me to pay them back. But I don’t like thinking that there is potential for my parents to struggle because of money they loaned me for furniture I didn’t really need.

I’ve already made up my mind about it, but feel free to throw your two cents in there. I know the most productive strategy would be to throw all of my free change at the student loan interest and principal now and wait until I’ve paid them off to pay my parents back. But that strategy doesn’t give me peace of mind.

In the Red: Grandma is in deep with credit card debt

Before I say anything, I want everyone to know that I love my grandmother to pieces. She was my co-conspirator all through high school, took me to get Happy Meals as a child and let me rent scary movies when I was too young to watch them. But my grandmother is over her head and deep in the red.

Back when my mother was young, my grandfather got a raise at his job. The grandparents went crazy, buying a home and cars and luxuries that they weren’t able to provide their children before. They even bought their daughter a red Mustang. (Not Mom. She drove a Ford Pinto!)

Pretty soon, they had racked up a hefty amount of credit card debt. And what do you know… Papaw had a heart attack. Mamaw worked but didn’t make much, and before you know it, Papaw was going back to work – two months before the doctor’s recommended it. They filed bankruptcy not long after that.

I’ve always suspected my grandmother bought things as a kind of therapy. She uses credit cards like they’re cash, spending spending spending. Even when she already has nice things, she wants more. We recently visited her house – a small single wide trailer that they own – and found out she had two complete living room sets in her den. Why? She just likes to collect nice things, apparently.

She also likes to be generous. In one awful story she told us, her sister used Mamaw’s card to buy a new television set at Wal-Mart (one of the worst credit cards you can get – just stay away from store cards) and was paying Mamaw back by cleaning her house.

About five years ago, Mamaw finally came to my mother with her problem. She has no job and is on disability at this point. She had amassed $10,000 in credit card debt and needed help. Mom paid the $900 to get Mamaw current (She had missed quite a few payments.) and consolidated the credit cards to a Capital One card at 2.9% APR. Mom told her, “Do not miss a payment on this card. If you need help, come to me.”

Mamaw wouldn’t let us cut up her old cards – foreshadowing! – but kept them in a locked box that Papaw had the key to. Of course, Papaw can’t say no, and she’s charged God knows how much on those cards again. She’s also defaulted on the card that had a $10,000 balance – five years ago.

We don’t know what to do now. Mom has told her numerous times that they need to file bankruptcy again. Mamaw is ignoring the creditors’ calls. She’s getting phone calls from the companies at Mom’s place of employment. I would give her my advice from my guest post, but she’s too far gone to negotiate now. Capital One said they would accept $6,000 to clear the debt, but she doesn’t have that kind of money.

And I hate this, I do, but part of me just wants to scream at her Don’t you love your husband?! What is wrong with you? My grandfather is one year from retirement age and has no idea about Mamaw’s credit card debt. And she won’t tell him.

The worst part is I can understand being in this place once. I can understand getting in over your head because you live above your means. We see it happen every day. But after they lost so much in the first bankruptcy, how could she do this to them again?

My advice, as you could have guessed, is that she needs to file bankruptcy. There’s no way she’s going to pay down what probably amounts to $20,000 or more in credit card debt in the year before Papaw retires. And once he’s done working, it’ll be her disability and his social security paying their bills.

Because the debt is in her name, I think she could file bankruptcy without him knowing. (Though I have absolutely no idea. Any bankruptcy attorneys reading this?) Mom and I both think the only way to convince her to file is to sweeten it by telling her that Papaw wouldn’t have to know. She could file, ruin her credit, and Papaw would be none-the-wiser.

Of course, the  bigger issue is getting her to change her spending behavior, and I don’t know how to do that. Because only Mom and I know about this debt – and haven’t been hounding her about it because she gets depressed when we do – we suspect Mamaw is living like it doesn’t exist. She’s ignoring their calls, not telling anyone else about the debt and still buying $150 dolls like it’s no tomorrow. (She told me about that expensive collection today. I wanted to smack her upside the head!) Part of me thinks sitting down with her to show her what they could have if she’d just stop using credit cards would help turn a lightbulb on for her, but I’m not sure.

So what do you all think? What can grandma do to get back on her feet? Mom and I are spinning our wheels here. We want to help, but beyond bankruptcy or taking care of her debt for her (which I offered to do before I went part-time at work), we don’t know what to do.

No-spend work week

I had a no-spend work week last week and didn’t even realize it until it was over!

Last week, I didn’t spend any money at all from Monday to Friday. I think a big factor in that was my decision to finish my groceries. I’ve had a wide array of food this week, including waffles, tuna, chicken nuggets, three bagel bites and taco salad. (Though it was all yummy!) I have a large supply of dessert because of stocking stuffers and leftover Halloween candy. (Mom gave me a huge back of Warm Mini Delights!) It’s also easy to avoid spending money when you’re thinking I only have $29 to my name. I cannot spend a dime. Granted, I had more money in the bank, but I’m not allowed to touch that until I make my weekly withdrawal tomorrow.

Conclusion: No spend days are fun!

My weekend spending was not nearly as pretty. I paid $26. 20 for chinese for D and me on Saturday. Then I spent $6.75 on McDonald’s tonight when I didn’t feel like eating yet another bag of tuna.

Total weekend spending: $32.95

I’m thinking… Why not up the ante? If I can do so well with not spending through the week, why not have a complete week of no spending, all seven days? Yeah, I’m hardcore!

Of course, I have some “major” purchases I need to make in the coming few weeks. I need to renew my car registration, which will cost $60. I also need to buy a car tag for university parking. That’ll cost me about $80, but my financial aid reimbursement will not be coming in until Jan. 20 so I have about a week and a half before I pay that. I also need – and I mean really need – to put gas in the car tomorrow so that’s $30. Probably not the best time to have a no spend week.

Notice how all of those expenses could be averted if I didn’t have a car? Yeah, it sucks. But my parents and D refuse to let me take the bus this semester. They found out I would be dropped off about four blocks from the office, and since our office isn’t in the safest of locations, they didn’t think walking four blocks at 7 a.m. in a shady part of town was the best idea.

I’m also paying back $400 of the personal loan this week. It’s a huge chunk of my account balance, but I feel good about hitting the ground running with this. Once it hit me that my goal is to be debt free four and a half years from now, I realized I need to get on the stick!

But I’m going to have a no-spending week soon! I’ll show the weekends I can have fun without spending money!

De-cluttering meets personal finance

I read a lot of personal finance blogs detailing ways to save money. And a lot of you aficionados out there recommend buying in bulk.

I was never so excited as when I found out that Amazon sells grocery in bulk for cheaper than my local grocery store. And, the best part, I wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store to get them!

So I thought and pondered and stewed on ways to make online grocery shopping work for us. But then I realized…. We just don’t have the space.

In our town, apartments are not expensive. We could afford to upgrade from our 640 square feet apartment, but why pay more when we don’t particularly need the storage space.

One area that we are sorely lacking on storage space is our small kitchen. We have adequate space for a month’s worth of groceries, but we don’t have space for three months’ worth of groceries. That’s probably how long those bulk packages from Amazon would last us!

So I gave up. I would just have to live life without buying in bulk.

Imagine my surprise when I happened upon this sight in our even tinier bathroom. No, I didn’t have to buy in bulk. I already did it five years ago.

You see, I was a bit of an obsessive planner in my teen years. I had a job at CVS, and I put every penny I earned toward buying things for my future. I would be leaving for college in a year, and I really needed those 30 bottles of hand sanitizer, right?

Well, those bottles of hand sanitizer and lotion and disposable razors (I don’t even use those!) have been occupying space in a rarely used bathroom drawer.

Since beginning my de-cluttering mission, I never really feel at rest. I’m constantly thinking I know there’s more stuff you could donate or sell, and you’re just not seeing it! Maybe this drawer is the culprit!

Really, I appreciate my former self’s consideration, but I don’t know if I’ll ever run out of hand sanitizer at this rate! I could be 40 before I need to buy another bottle.

And therein lies my problem. The de-cluttering side of me thinks Your space in this apartment is too valuable to be taken up by hand sanitizer and 20 different fragrances of lotion while the PF side of my brain says Yeah, but if you donate something that is totally useful now, you’ll be wasting money later when you need to buy its replacement.

I ran into this problem time and time again when sorting through clothes and movies and board games. But with all of those things, I was able to convince myself that they wouldn’t be needed again because they wouldn’t be part of my lifestyle change. However, I really want hand sanitizer and lotion to be part of my new life!

I was reminded of this conundrum while reading Secrets of a Secondhand Shopaholic yesterday. Brenda knows how to get a good bargain on clothes, but she buys a lot of them! (If you haven’t read her stuff, I highly recommend it. You’ll be laughing and shaking your head in disbelief!)

My mind just cannot reconcile de-cluttering with personal finance. I want to shout, “Woo! Brenda saved $60 on that jacket by buying it secondhand instead of buying it at Banana Republic!” But the de-cluttering side of me is screeching, “She bought another jacket!? How is that even possible? Her closet must be the size of my apartment!”

I’ve always thought de-cluttering and personal finance would go hand-in-hand. If you’re selling or donating things, you’re making money either directly or by getting a tax deduction from donations. If you’re getting things out of your home, you’re saving space and de-cluttering your apartment.

When I have to make the choice between saving space now and spending money in the future or saving money now and cluttering up my space for the foreseeable future, which do I choose?