Da Curious

ive pretty much decided that it's damn near impossible for me to curb my spending every month. for those who know me pretty well know that i keep a detail excel spreadsheet tracking all my expenses daily broken out into categories. there's a section for monthly fees like rent, car payment, utilities, cell phone and then another section for your normal everyday expenses. so far that's been broken down into gas, food, play, public (transportation), shopping and other. and each and every month, it's always food, play and shopping that gets me. one would think that could be easily cured because uh duh, just eat in more and don't shop but i can't do it. ive really made such a conscience effort to watch my spendings last month but inevitably there will be a purse that i have to buy or a sale that i must go to or what not.

i started keeping track of everything in 2000 right after college and it's become an obsession now. i always find myself carrying around little slips of paper and a pen to write everything down but even though everything is tracked and i can tell you exactly how much i spent on what, it hasn't really curbed my spending very much.

i really don't see how anyone can save living in the city these days. for instance, this past weekend, went to dinner at a normal restaurant, nothing fancy, ordered one appetizer, two glasses of wine, two entrees, no dessert or anything and bam just like that, the bill for two came out to 100 bucks. 100 bucks! and the food wasn't even all that great from what i remember. i mean seriously. and then of course it was macy's friends & family sale last week so had to go to that, the opening of h&m so went to that, then there's two sample sales coming up this week and then another one the week after, i mean what is a girl supposed to do? i can't keep up with all of this.

i already feel like i eat in more and have even been known to bring my lunch once or twice a week but it's not working. im still over my budget every month and i guess i could just start contributing less to my roth and my other retirement accounts but no i can't. that's a definite no-no in my book but man, if that money wasn't automatically transferred out every month...the stuff i could buy/do.

i know this is an issue or ive lamented about this problem enough times to everyone when i found out today that i was automatically not even considered for a day trip to vegas because my friend knew i would say no due to my "financial" woes. and he was so right.

but hey at least it's the beginning of a new month and there's nothing like starting out with a clean spreadsheet every month but oh wait, i forgot i went to macy's just a couple days ago. darn it.