Comments (40) 
What are your tips for reducing spending?
Two Mondays ago, I mentioned that we cut back on spending in 2009, and Chez Julie asked me to share some of my tips. What a great idea!
I have a lot of tips and I bet commenters will too – so don’t feel bad if you can’t read them all – PLEASE SHARE your ideas!
I broke my tips into three categories: Shopping, Entertainment and General. Click “more” to read (skim, really) on.
Yeah, this is going to come off as cheesy, but I have to get it out there.
I had a lot of “how lucky am I?!” realizations this year. Without going into too much detail, I will just say that 2009 involved some changes in our financial situation, and I had a hard time adapting. Not that we were spendthrifts before… we weren’t. We just didn’t have to think twice about going out to the movies, to Subway, or where to buy groceries.
Now we rarely eat out, only see movies if we have a gift card, and do most of our shopping at a discount store.
And it’s no big deal.
But change is hard.
I am embarrassed at how long it took me to adapt to being more financially aware. And embarrassed at how long it took me to realize how lucky I am as it is.
I have a roof over my head. I can still afford to make payments on a luxury car. I don’t go hungry. I have a gym to use. I have a wii to play. We can still afford Netflix. We’re healthy. I can run!
And most importantly of all, I have wonderful people in my life. People who love me enough to come all the way out to the Chicago suburbs to see me. Friends who send me emails and snail mail. Blogger friends who actually read what I write and leave me wonderful and thoughtful comments!
And of course, my partners-in-crime – Steven and Data. I cannot even count how many times this year I have looked at my husband and thought, “How did I get so lucky? How is it that I ended up with him? How lucky am I that we ran into each other at that random party at college?” We have so much fun together. I think we help each other be a better person. We support each other. We let each other be themselves. We work through things the best we can. I just feel so lucky to have found a wonderful partner.
Yeah. I told you it was cheesy.
I don’t want to make resolutions, but this seems to be something I am thinking about a lot (last week too), so I’d like to work towards being more grateful and mindful in 2010. I want to live in the moment. No more looking forward. I need to be grateful for what is in front of me. What I already have. Aspirations and goals are great, but I need to keep in mind how lucky I already am.
Do you have the “how lucky am I?!” moments? Share them!
And how could I NOT be grateful for this little furball? He even helps me with blogging. Hmm, maybe that should be “help” in parenthesis!
Tell me all about your holiday gift-giving! To whom to you give gifts? Do you make them or buy them (in stores or online)? Do you have any gift-giving traditions? Do you participate in gift exchanges? Do you share a holiday wishlist with friends and family? Does all of this STRESS YOU OUT?!
We usually buy* gifts (in stores and online) for all of our immediate family and grandparents. But we are cutting back this year. In my family, my three siblings and the three significant others all drew names. Steven is buying a gift for my older brother’s wife and I am buying a gift for my younger brother’s girlfriend. Then, we are only buying gifts for our parents and Steven’s brother. I thought I would feel sad about this, but actually, I feel RELIEVED and not stressed at all. Instead of buying a lot of gifts, I get to focus on the one specific person whose name I drew! Edited to add: Steven and I exchange gifts every year, but have not decided if we will this year or not. Not because we don’t want to, but to save money.
And I am ALL ABOUT the wishlists. I created two separate wishlists this year for me and Steven – one for my family and one for his. And we asked for them in return, especially for the people whose names we drew! I know some people think having a wishlist means you don’t get to be creative, but I just think it means you know what the person actually wants. If I am spending money, I want to make sure it’s well spent.
I am participating in Morning Runner’s gift exchange. I got paired with RunningLaur and am sending her gift off today! Here’s a sneak peak, Lauren! You’ll have to guess if you are getting the gray item or the pink item.
*I do LOVE to make people’s favorite treats and give them to them as well.
What is your favorite (cold) cereal?
You know, the one you could just eat bowls and bowls of*?
I really like Barbara’s Bakery Shredded Oats. They are simple, crunchy little oat nuggets. I like to let them soak in the soy milk just a little bit, then bite into them when they are half crunchy/half soggy. Nom Nom Nom!
The unfortunate thing about this cereal is that it is EXPENSIVE, and somewhat hard to find. They used to sell it at Target, and would have it on sale from time to time… but you know how our Target is. They took it away.
Now I usually get it from my Grandma, who buys it in bulk through a co-op. I don’t think it is that much more cost effective for her, but it is for me – she gives it to me for free**! Too bad I only see her a few times a year.
*I apologize for ending a sentence in a preposition. Sometimes, I don’t know how to get away from it.
**I keep trying to pay her for it, but you know how grandmas are…
I don’t know what is wrong with wordpress, but the first two times I tried to post this, the comments didn’t work. Here we go again…
My office’s Biggest Loser Challenge ended today. It began on January 21st and 22 people participated. There was a $12 entry fee, and $2 fee per missed weigh-in and per each pound gained. In the end, the money pot was $428! Do the math on that one!
First place received 55%, second received 25% and third received 20%.
I came in second place with a total loss of 14.17% and won $107. First place was 14.54% and third place was 13.99% (very close!). I stayed in second place almost every week of the competition, except for a week in third, and a week in first (after I was sick).
Now it’s time to stuff my face again!
Just kidding.*
Participating in this was interesting. It brought on a lot of comments and questions about my weight and appearance, which is not something I am used to. I felt uncomfortable at times, just because I was unprepared to react to that kind of attention. I wonder if that will all stop now, that it is over?
Overall, I think the Challenge was helpful with keeping me on track with my healthy eating. I didn’t feel restricted by it**; it was kind of like a friendly reminder. And I’ve mentioned a few times how this made my relationship with the scale so much better – it taught me that the periodical ups and downs don’t mean that much – you have to look at the big picture!
*Although, I did save myself a homemade cookie to eat on my lunch break, and I was kind of “meh” about eating it. I thought it would be orgasmic or something, after not having sweets since 2/25. Guess not!
**Although a few times, I did ask Steven if we could not eat out.
What’s with the SUPER long posts lately? And having more than one post in a day? I think what I really need to work on is my blogging addiction!
Well, it’s Easter, so it must be time for the big recap post on Lent.
Basically, you can read this list here and just imagine that all it says is “give up sugar treats,” because that is ALL that I was successful at for Lent (since 2/25 – I didn’t cheat on Sundays). I did have a few granola bars with bits of chocolate, and sports beans, but other than that, I completely gave up cookies, chocolate, soda, muffins, candy, and so on… and I feel GREAT!
I am about to spend the day making cookies, but I don’t think I’ll eat any. I am probably going to wait and have a sweet treat after my office’s Biggest Loser Challenge ends on Wednesday (there are 3 boxes of Girl Scouts cookies waiting to be eaten in my house). I plan on staying off the soda, and only having it on special occasions.
As for the rest of the list? A lot of it had to do with attitude and communication. I didn’t progress very far, but I DID figure out a lot of what is bothering me and why, and I tried different ways to handle it. I think I am getting there! Already I have tried to tackle my frustration this weekend by communicating better.*
And the “frivolous items”? Well, I DIDN’T buy a single magazine or book, which is what I had in mind when I wrote that. But uh, yeah, I did buy new clothes (twice), running outfits, a new computer, and… a new car. Good thing I wasn’t buying any magazines, right? Jeez.
We cut back on eating out, not that we did it much before, but I think that can be attributed to the fact that we are so conscious of what we put in our bodies now.
What did I learn? I learned that I CAN reach a goal, but that it can be too overwhelming to try to tackle a lot at once (perhaps I should follow Nilsa’s “challenge a month” lead?). Upcoming goals for me include really committing to cutting out swearing, and trying veganism, and apparently, working on my blogging addiction (any tips with that?).
Unrelated topic: My sister, Christina, was inspired to make a rainbow cake after seeing this set on flickr. Check it out, it’s pretty cool! Here are her photos below. I totally thought of Tori’s rainbow cake when she told me about this!
It looks like you just use yellow cake mix, then separate it and add food coloring to make the fun colors! Or maybe not food coloring? I am not sure what’s in those little white tubes.
Doesn’t it look so fun?! Christina’s so fun.
Yummy! I hope everyone enjoys it!
Christina made this cake to share with my family for Easter. They are all together, with my mom’s side of the family. I decided not to join them this year, so Steven and I are going to take it easy at home (If you can call him running 12 miles taking it easy! HA HA! I only have to run 6 today.).
I hope everyone has a wonderful day!
*”What’s bothering me?” you ask. Well, how nice of you to ask. Thank you. 1. My face is STILL numb and it’s bothersome to eat. 2. The kids in our neighborhood were damaging the trees in our yard yesterday, playing in the street, and harassing a goose. I went outside to talk to them, calmly and nicely, about all three things. I wondered why their parents were no where in sight, letting them play in the street! 3. We saw Fast and Furious last night, and once again, there were a bunch of very young children in the theater. One woman sat down and let her toddler climb up and down the stairs on his own. Well, of course he fell and started crying. There were 5 or 6 kids that probably got up at least 10 times (no, seriously) and literally ran up and down the stairs, very loudly. And the kids behind us would not shut up the entire time. I finally asked them, again, as nicely as I could, to please be quiet so the rest of us could enjoy the remainder of the movie. It was a fluff movie, but that experience really put me in an upset mood last night. 4. My frickin’ cat keeps waking me up at 6:00 am, and I can’t go back to sleep, and I am lonely, up by myself. (Data just goes back to bed!)
Health + Fitness, Life, Rants, Recipes + Food
| 
attitude, Biggest Loser Challenge, Catholic, challenge, Children, Clothes, Communication, cranky, dentist, Easter, Fast and Furious, frustration, goose, Lent, Money, moody, New car, new computer, Nilsa, office, parents, radioactive girl, Rainbow, rainbow cake, Recipes + Food, Religion, sore, sugar, sweets, Theater, Tori, Vegan, Vegetarian, Work + Design
If you could “fast forward” through something in life, would you? What would it be?
Have you seen that Adam Sandler movie, Click*? Adam Sandler buys this universal remote and finds out he can use it to fast forward through all of the un-pleasantries in his life. He uses it joyfully, to skip the hard work required for his promotion, but discovers an awful side effect – he misses out on what is going on with his family during that time. He becomes distant and removed and ends up losing them.
I used to want to fast forward through all the time and hard work it takes to lose weight and just get to the “after” picture. I felt like I was stuck in “before” land.
But then I realized two things – that once I got down to my “goal size”** I would have to work hard to maintain it anyway. and that arriving at that “goal size” didn’t guarantee my happiness.
So I got over that. But I still fantasize about “fast forwarding” through things. That’s me, always looking to the future, struggling to live in the moment.
I have scheduled pay increases that would be great to fast forward to – not because I am struggling, but because I am greedy. It would be great to fast forward to the summer and some frickin’ warm weather. It would be great to even fast forward to our half marathon day, because I am so excited about it!
But I think I would rather live through the struggles… even though I continue to fantasize about skipping forward.
*One of the few Adam Sandler movies I can actually stand to watch.
**Not even sure what that is anymore, or how it could possibly exist.
I’m not an economist, but I’ve been making my own internal speculations about products and services that may be affected by the current economy. I figured activities like library visits, grocery store shopping and working out from home would be up, and eating out, going to the movies and getting haircuts would be down.
The Sun-Times featured an interesting article yesterday on the same topic (click here for a visual version of the article). Their lists of “ups” and “downs” reinforced some of my assumptions, but shattered one of them (okay, and some of the things on their list are just silly).
UPS:
DOWNS:
What do you think of the list? Have you been making any speculations of your own?
(I hope this post doesn’t offend anyone or make anyone think I am not taking this very seriously. I just found the article interesting and wanted to share it.)
Would you open a department/specialty store credit card just to save money on a purchase? How much would it have to save you – $10, $50, $100, $500+?
I am annoyed by the sales clerks at Target / Macy’s / wherever that continually ask me to open a credit card, and try to entice me by saying, “It will save you $20 off your purchase today!”
Guess what? $20 isn’t enough for me. It’s gotta be at least $100. And even then… I’m not so sure.
My sister worked at Sears for awhile and was required to open a certain amount of new credit cards a month. Any insight into this?
Tonight is our “Progress Check” at the dance studio where we take classes. That means that Steven and I will demonstrate three of the dances we have been learning to the owner of the dance studio, then she will pull us into her little office and try to sell us 50 more dance lessons at over $75 a lesson.
We will sit there, and tell her we have decided to end dance lessons to save money, and she will sit there and try to convince us that it is “worth it” and we can afford it.
Steven and I started dance lessons in August to prepare for our wedding dance. We had fun with the lessons so we signed on for more. But once we signed on for more they started pushing us to buy all of their dance studio paraphernalia.
For about three months they have been telling us that we both need to buy $100 dancing shoes. We still haven’t bought them. And we won’t buy them. We tell them “no,” then they act like we can’t dance without them, and that we will never advance to “bronze level” (the 50 lesson level) if we don’t have them. We still say no.
They get upset when we can only schedule one lesson a week. And we have to rearrange our schedules and leave work early just to make it to that one lesson! We never look forward to it anymore because we don’t want to waste what little free time we have with being pressured to buy new dance shoes.
I have a feeling that trying to terminate dance lessons is going to be like breaking up with that persistent boyfriend who keeps calling and saying “are we still broken up?” (Yeah, that happened to me. Did it happen to you?)
Hi! I'm Kim, a 34-year-old living in Chicagoland with my husband, Steven, and our cats, Khali, Apollo, and Starbuck. I work in the design industry (architecture), follow a vegan lifestyle, am addicted to running, and am an ACE certified personal trainer (working at Essential Fitness, LLC ("Efit"))! I write about a variety of topics, and consider this a "life" blog - a place I can share anything that's on my mind. Please visit the "About" page to get a better idea of who I am! :-)
Panorama Theme by 
Themocracy
