These diaries serve two purposes:
- They help keep me aware of my spending
- They’re great for those who, like me, are financial voyeurs
For reference, the goal is to live on $240 or less each week, though because of the cap, I don’t take amounts of more than $60 out of weekly funds.
So let’s see how I did this week.
Thursday
This was going to be a busy day.
I woke up at 6:20 a.m. — which my body didn’t like — to give Josie her second dose of gabapentin in preparation for her dental cleaning. She’s not an easy patient.
I had to close all the doors to various rooms and then still had to shoo her out from under her cat tree with a broom until I could grab her. Sigh. But I got the liquid in her and then got her in the carrier.
I got her to the vet at 7 a.m., then went home and got caught up at work. Before long, it was time to go see the new nurse practitioner to replace my arrested doctor.
Happily, she was willing to prescribe me an anti-narcoleptic, Provigil. I’ve been on it before, but I can’t remember if it just made me feel more alert or actually gave me energy. Either one is better than nothing, but hopefully it gives me a boost energy-wise.
I came home, finished work, then went to a beauty appointment ($40 after tip), then got a bunch of candy — both for me and for the next time Cute Trivia Guy comes over to hang out.
He and I have agreed to just be friends, making his moniker a little weird now. So I’ll just refer to him as CTG moving forward.
In the end, even just candy added up to a painful $19.57. That’s what I get for having a sweet tooth.
My Victoria Secret card company called me. Apparently, I hadn’t paid my bill? I was absolutely sure I had but… apparently not. Eek!
They got my permission to debit my account for $60.58. (Again, amounts of $60 or more don’t come out of my weekly funds.) I’ll see if I can get the inevitable late fee waived later. Most card companies will do it once.
I got home and started making some food. In fact, I reached peak adulthood that day: cooking chili in one slow cooker and cooking the chicken for that chili in my other one.
I also cut up the couple tomatoes I had left from the gyros, pureed them and added them to the pureed tomatoes I’d frozen ages ago. Along with a bunch of beans from the freezer.
I picked up Josie after that, paying $17.13 for her nail trim. Very overdue, so it’s quite a relief.
I got her home and rested, only really getting up to cut up the chicken and titrate the spices for the chili. Otherwise I just lay down and watched TV.
The chili turned out well, and I froze half (about two bowls’ worth) for later use. The fatigue was so bad that I had to spend the night lying down in bed.
The only upshot of my exhaustion was that I got to bed at a reasonable hour.
Total spent: $137.28 ($76.70 out of weekly funds)
Friday
It was another quiet day at work. While I enjoy the freedom, sometimes I also worry about whether this indicates a shrinking customer base. But my boss says we’re doing fine, so I try to calm my anxiety that way.
I cleaned up the mess from the night before. Thank goodness for slow cooker liners. (As an Amazon affiliate, I’m compensated for orders placed through my links.) I don’t know if I’d be able to handle cooking if I had to wash the slow cooker liner every friggin’ time. I know it’s small, but I feel like it’d just be the last straw somehow.
I made some lists of what items I’d need for my next couple of recipes I want to cook. I finished up my workday and then set out to run a couple of errands.
I needed to pick up some prescriptions at Safeway, and I needed some reading glasses from Walgreen’s. The dollar store ones keep snapping off. And/or getting lost. I can’t read my phone screen without them, and the last pair broke three days prior. So it was a priority. Especially since the store was having a Buy One, Get Two Free sale on Foster Grant reading glasses, which looked much sturdier.
I got those and a box of Milk Duds for a total of $31.30. But I’d spent so much time fussing with finding glasses I liked that I was a bit beat and feeling lightheaded. So I went home rather than also go to Safeway, where I’d needed to pick up my new blood pressure medication and the Provigil.
Pirate Party Guy (PPG) was coming over that night. So I asked if he could stop by the pharmacy and grab those (and the Provigil) and I’d pay him back.
He did, bless him, and I took the new blood pressure pill immediately. I Venmo-ed him the $36.18 for the meds.
We had a quiet, relaxing night as always, and he left around 9:30. I stayed up too late finishing Legion and then stupidly starting a new series. So I fell asleep around 3 a.m. D’oh!
Total spent: $67.48
Saturday
I woke up around 11 a.m., but I figure that’s the sign of a good weekend.
The first item on the agenda was catching up my spending diaries. Which were woefully behind. Like, 11 days behind. Life had just sort of spun out of control.
It took me two hours to catch up, since I have to put each charge in my Excel document for tracking spending, make a transfer out of the bank for each charge and then write it up in a spending diary.
I had been planning for a while to try an enchilada bake. Flour tortillas are surprisingly high in sodium, so I thought I’d just put the ingredients of an enchilada into a pan, cover it with the sauce I’d make, then bake in the oven.
But I’d found an easy-looking recipe for low sodium tortillas. So I was tempted to try that. Problem: I didn’t have a rolling pin. So on my way to the grocery store, I stopped at a thrift store to see if one was being sold there. Nope (sigh).
However, I got sidetracked and left with a couple items of clothing, which came to $5.98.
The rolling pins in the grocery store were around $22, so I just bought a decent-looking silicon one on Amazon for $9.76 after tax. (As an Amazon affiliate, I’m compensated for purchases made through my links.) Besides being very affordable, I liked the silicone cover, which would be easier to thoroughly clean/disinfect compared to a wood one.
I got the ingredients for the enchilada sauce and some tomatillos to help mellow out the tomatillo sauce, which had turned out a bit too jalapeno-y. The total was $9.75.
I came home and rested for a bit before starting to cook. After roasting the tomatillos, I put them in a blender then added some lime juice, then poured in the original sauce and had the blender stir it. It got the sauce to the exact right flavor. Hooray!
The enchilada sauce called for no-salt canned tomato sauce, but there hadn’t been any at the store. So I pureed some tomatoes, pulled up an image of the back of the Hunt’s can online and threw in my best-guess amounts of the spices listed on the back. Turned out pretty well.
The enchilada sauce turned out well. I put it and most of the tomatillo sauce in the freezer. Then I watched a bit more TV and relaxed. I fell asleep around 1:30 a.m.
Total spent: $25.50
Sunday
I woke up and worked on the blog briefly.
I checked the leaked Black Friday ads and found that Target was having some Black Friday deals already.
Thankfully, that included a box of 15 containers and their lids for $8.99. I got two of those, for a $20.15, but I have a gift card balance in my Target account, so nothing came out of weekly funds.
I picked up the Target order, then came home and relaxed since the previous day had been somewhat busy by my limited exertion standards.
I placed an order at CVS for some hair dye and an e.l.f. eyeshadow palette to replace some colors I was nearly out of in my current one. With the $10 credit from my CVS CarePass and a 40% off coupon, I paid only $2.32 for both items.
I did start working on an overtime project. It’s very boring — essentially checking the company’s many, many links and reporting non-working ones. But at least I could do it in front of the TV. Plus: overtime.
I called it a night around 11 and was asleep not much later.
Total spent: $22.47 ($2.32 out of weekly funds)
Monday
The day was pretty quiet. I’m once again catching up on this spending diary and remember absolutely nothing except:
- I went to Walgreens and picked up a couple things, including snacks for $12.99.
- I had therapy after work.
- Normally, I go to a board game event on Monday nights, and I didn’t feel up to it.
- I sat around eating junk food, watching TV and, eventually, going back and putting in a few more hours on the overtime project.
So all in all, a pretty restful (if boring) day.
Total spent: $12.99
Tuesday
The workday was pretty quiet.
A pair of jeans I’d ordered on Amazon — to replace the ones that are developing holes — came in the mail. Those fit (yay!) so I’m keeping them for $33.12.
I ran to Fry’s to get yet more things I needed for meal prep. Having to cook everything from scratch means I have to go to the store a lot to get produce. I’m afraid to get it too far in advance, lest I have a bad couple of energy days and the food goes bad in the fridge.
I spent $28.03 at Fry’s.
One of the things I bought was a pack of disposable gloves. Guillain-Barre Syndrome can be caused by eating un/undercooked chicken. So I absolutely hate handling raw poultry and have avoided it as much as possible in the past.
But all the frozen chicken breasts I’ve seen are ones that have had broth injected into them (to make them look plumper). So that raises the sodium level from about 50 mg a serving to around 220 mg a serving.
So… raw chicken.
It’s highly unlikely I’d ever get GBS again. But PTSD hypervigilance lingers. So I got a pack of disposable gloves, which I’ll do my best to wash (thoroughly) and reuse since I’m trying to be at least somewhat eco-friendly.
If you try to freeze chicken in a bag, they end up frozen together, so my solution was to take some of my new, handy-dandy food storage containers and store two to three servings in each container. Since I try to always use multiple servings to ensure I have leftovers, this way I could just dump the whole frozen lump into the slow cooker.
I finished up my workday and relaxed for a bit. Then PPG came over for a nice quiet evening.
Total spent: $61.15
Wednesday
I woke up and dealt with emails. Then, around noon, my energy flagged
It didn’t make sense since I hadn’t done much of note. But I rested for a bit until I felt well enough to run to CVS to pick up my order.
But when I got home, the fatigue hit full-force.
I muddled through the workday, but after that I just lay down and tried to move as little as possible. I had to cancel trivia. Even if it had been close by — and this time would’ve been 25 miles from me — I couldn’t have left the house, let alone been helpful with answers.
I spent the rest of the night in bed as much as possible, watching TV and being annoyed at the whole situation.
Total spent: $0
Total spent: $326.87 ($246.14 out of weekly funds)
Ouch, high spending hits again. But outside of candy, not much purchased was frivolous. The prescriptions, reading glasses and jeans alone were almost $100.
Even the Victoria’s Secret stuff I’d purchased was necessary, since I’m having to replace all of my bras with ones in the new size. And with the sales and coupons, the prices I pay at VS are the same or less than department store options.
How has everyone else’s spending been going?
Related reading:
Happily, I was able to pick up some holiday gifts throughout the year and cash in gift cards from rewards programs to pay for the others. (Or serve as the others, since some people like getting cards.) So I haven’t spent much more than anticipated — especially since my very kind daughter paid for groceries when I visited.
Donna Freedman recently posted…Black Friday serendipity.
I should’ve been more on the ball this year, but I honestly didn’t even think about the fact that I’d need to buy presents for anyone other than you now. Definitely spending a bit more than is ideal, but sometimes the perfect present is closer to $40 than $25. Le sigh.
Ehh forget the eco friendly and if you’re touching raw chicken just throw the gloves out and replace ‘um. In the grand scheme of it all it’s better for your peace of mind. How did the food turn out? I should look into getting a crock pot. i never got into them even though i love my air fryer
I looooove my slow cooker. And if you’re unsure, go to the thrift store where there’s usually one pretty cheaply. Though there are plenty of sales this time of year, too.
The enchiladas were a bit too dry. I hadn’t made enough sauce, or they’d probably have been fine. But the chili and soup I’ve made with the enchilada sauce as a base has been quite tasty! I’m calling the soup “Lazy Man’s Tortilla Soup” because it’s pretty close, minus the fried tortilla strips. As with most cultures, a lot of Mexican food revolves around the same ingredients and spices. I’ll try to do another cooking update since I’ve tried more recipes, and it’ll include the sauce (and soup I made from the sauce).
Or be fancy and call it “Deconstructed Enchiladas.”
Donna Freedman recently posted…Black Friday serendipity.
You did a whole lot of cooking here! I focused most of our Black Friday shopping on the Lakota families but we spent a LOT on one big ticket item, and then a slew of smaller necessities. Socks, shoes, underwear woo!
There was a sale on one of the big tech items I wanted to get but we couldn’t decide on what power station to get in time, and there was no sale on the other item so we “saved” a few thousand dollars. We’re going to be mighty annoyed during the next power outage though.
Revanche @ A Gai Shan Life recently posted…Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (130)
If you are adamant about not touching raw chicken barehanded, I would not wash the disposable gloves. Just don’t—they are not made to be washed in the first place, you probably can’t do it at a high enough temperature to kill bacteria and soap may not remove bacteria as well as it does from your hands. Just toss, or maybe use metal tongs.
Good point.
I unfortunately can’t use tongs only because I have to slice up the chicken breasts. I’ll just give up and be not so eco-friendly.
Those crock pot liners are worth every penny. Saves me from picking up the crock multiple times to wash and dry it, and drop it. I do pick it up to make sure nothing spilled underneath the crock onto the metal heating portion of the crock pot, but that is it.
Dollar Tree has some packages of disposable gloves. I think there are eight in each package. They are designed for single use, but are pretty sturdy. I have been using them for painting window frames, and them turning them inside out to dispose of. Have not poke a hole in one yet. You could use them to handle the chicken and then throw them out.
For some dinners I have put all of the ingredients, including the chicken, into the crockpot liner (bag), used a twist tie, and thrown it into the freezer until ready to place it into the crockpot. Gives you one less chance to touch the raw chicken.
Good idea on the gloves! It’d certainly be a bit cheaper at the very least.
The dinner bags are smart, but having frozen 2-3 in a container, I can just turn it upside down and let the meat fall in. Then put the Tupperware into the dishwasher. But I’ll keep your method in mind for the future