This is certainly not a personal finance blog, but I’ll admit that I’ve been struggling a bit lately with managing my money. It’s not that I’m deep in debt or unable to pay rent or anything like that, but I’ve been spending outside my means – for dumb reasons. Looking at my spending more carefully, the biggest culprit is going out to eat. Until a few months ago, going out to eat (on my own dime, not counting business meals) was a rare event. Now, I eat out quite a bit, because that’s where the majority of my bookclubs, meetup groups, and general friendly get togethers are held.
Now that I’ve identified the problem, I can certainly address it and catch up to where I’d like to be fairly quickly – probably within the next month or so. My apartment lease is up for renewal and I’m getting a $150/month drop in what I pay in rent, and I’m also going to be finishing off payments on one of my college loans this month, which is another $300/month in savings. I’m not going to cut back on my marathoning, because I look at that as a very worthwhile commitment to pursue a big goal, but I’m going to try to eat out less. I realized I didn’t update after the initial question, but Boyfriend did end up taking the apartment a few blocks away from me (yay!), and now that he has his own place, he’s a bit more inspired to cook. In fact, last night I made this recipe for chicken Scarpariello (note: not a great recipe, but it was whipped up in short order without having to do an ingredient run to the grocery store) and he was constantly asking questions about why I use certain techniques or how I know when things are done… progress! If we can manage to do this more often, it will make a huge dent in my financial situation.
And if not? There’s always the mortgage apple cake!
I’ve been battling this a little bit lately too. I just bought a house, so the expenses are starting to add up – quickly!!
I’ve actually looked into trying to be a pacer (to offset the cost). Any advice that you have there would be super valuable!