jennings rampage

A financial diet.

Holy fucking shit.

I just sat down with my online banking statement, curious about how much I spent in the past month on restaurants, bars, entertainment, and convenience food. I knew I had a spendy month — there was the small matter of an international improv festival in my backyard, I’ve picked up a few checks, impressed people with my superior tastes and educated palate, kept myself busy, remained lazy. Still, I sort of wanted to know why I’m not especially flush with cash this minute.

The answer is $865.01. That’s obscene.

I like to think of myself as frugal — I do a decent job watching my spending, I make smart decisions and get good deals on big things, my revolving credit is manageable and under my control, but at the same time I don’t mind spending a little money for the things I enjoy. Still, pumping a substantial proportion of my post-tax income into restaurants, bars, entertainment, and convenience food might get my frugal card revoked, so it’s time for aggressive action.

I’m a fan of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and Get Rich Slowly, and it’s time to stop pretending that they’re talking to other people. They both counsel gradual changes to your financial habits to make things less painful and more easy to see as routine, but screw that, I want aggressive action. On New Years I stopped kidding myself about my diet and started going to the gym five or six times a week, and I’ve already lost as much weight this year as I did for all of 2006. I say what’s on my mind, I let you know what I’m thinking, I’m honest, I kiss girls. I will take the aggressive path, thank you.

These are the immediate changes:

• My current favorite bad habit is to stop at Whole Foods on my way to work and spend $15 or so on the breakfast bar and the salad bar for lunch. No more of this.
• Likewise, I’m a huge fan of pulling over at the Weaver Street Market in Southern Village on my way home to get a carryout dinner. No more of this.
• Netflix is gone. It’s a great service that I never use, and I’m spending $20/month to keep Grizzly Man and Akeelah and the Bee in red envelopes on top of my television.
• GoToMyPC is gone. I’m smart enough to figure out port forwarding on my router and make VNC work, I don’t need to pay $20/month to postpone learning elementary network configuration.
• Vonage is gone. Never use it. My cordless phone has needed a new battery for at least six months and I’ve never done anything about it other than piss away $20/month on a phone number I never use.
• Drunken carousing really isn’t a hole in my game, but still, let’s call it a $15 bar tab, maximum. If I want to get drunk, then I’ll pregame like an American, or stick to PBR like a fucking hipster douchebag (that I secretly envy).
• Let’s see if I can keep eating out to like, twice a week. Here’s where I’ll be realistic — I enjoy my friends, I enjoy restaurants, I enjoy going to restaurants with my friends. Twice a week seems reasonable. But the catch is: I have to go out with someone else, if I’m going to eat alone I have to eat at home.

These are the subscriptions I get to keep:

• satellite radio
• gym membership
• far too much television (HBO, Showtime, HD Suite, DVR)
• cell phone

I’m very lucky that my non-food expenses (rent, utilities, car payment and insurance, gas, student loans, credit card minimums, allowed subscriptions) only chew up about two-thirds of my income, even with the luxury of living alone. My problem is what I’m doing with that last third.

So the overall goal for that last third: spend half of it on food and incidentals, save half of it. I’m retarded to not have a Roth IRA, it’s time to fix that. If I’m serious about making this area my long-term home, then it’s time to be serious about saving for a down payment on a house — let’s toss some cash at some aggressive mutual funds while the Republicans are still in charge. I got a raise when I came to this new job, I just need to live like I didn’t.

If you see me throwing money away, you may ding me in the balls.