Budgeting

[pktechgirlbackup]

I went through and categorized my spending with gnucash. By far my biggest expenses are rent and medical. Neither of these have much room to cut: I have a long term plan to downsize my stuff so I can move to a smaller place, but when I move I want hardwood floors (partially for medical reasons), and I get a great deal on my place now. Short of getting a roommate, which is extraordinarily unlikely although I suppose I should be open to the option, there's nothing to cut there. I mean, there is, but I don't wanna.

Given that I can afford it, the stuff I spend on medical issues- including vitamins and body work- seems extraordinarily well spent. My next biggest expense is food, which again seems worth investing in. And the number for my sample month was artificially raised by the failed CSA experiment.

The number for dining out seems inherently large to me, but it's small compared to my total budget. What's weird is how differently I view stuff when I frame it as "percentage of monthly budget" versus "hours I would have to work to pay for this" (I'm paid by the hour and have some flexibility in the number of hours I work, so this is very easy math). Some of that arises from treating my marginal tax rate as my total tax rate, but not most of it. Once you've added up rent, medicine, and groceries, the additional money I'd save by threatening to leave comcast seems trivial. But if you compare what I'd likely save/time to do so to what I earn working, it's actually an excellent financial investment. Yes, talking to comcast is aggravating, but it's balanced out by that smug sense of pulling one over on them.

Anyways, on restaurant dining: I don't have a good sense of what I would gain if I ate out less. It's always a social thing (so I could try to steer us downward or to home cooking, but I already do that quite a bit), or a time saving thing (which, if I then spend the time at work, gains me money, so that's not where I should skimp), or that one delicious frozen custard place that is really not that expensive and has nothing I could replace it with. And given that I'm going through an pfft-food-who-needs-it phase, this is probably not the ideal time to be making cuts in that area.

The cat's food is guilt-inducingly high quality. Hunger is not the cause I am most drawn to, but I feel like I might have to donate to some anti-hunger charity to buy off the fact that my cats eat raw rabbit and venison. But it's not an area I'm willing to cut, and it wouldn't necessarily save money if it increased vet visits. Darwinfail cat especially soaks up a lot of money in vet visits, and I could cut those, but I don't want to.

The big surprise is that I spend almost nothing on entertainment. My only recurring cost is $10 on Netflix (which will either go up to $16 or drop to $8 in September). Library fines + interlibrary loan costs average $12/year. I bought a $9 video game the month before, and there wa my nook for Christmas, but I only use it with library books. Arguably, you could count my regular internet ($70) or phone internet ($24) towards this, and I'm going to do so, but only because putting those in a subcategory they dominate gives me the motivation to call comcast.

Large parts of the motivation to this math came from figuring out whether I deserve an XboX 360. I want one. But I wanted a Wii, and I hardly ever use that. But that was in large part due to the failed hypothesis that I wanted to move during video games that were not DDR. Yes, I have a PC, and yes there are at least a dozen excellent old games I've never played, but I spend all day in front of the computer and I think consoles are easier on my eyes and back. Yes, I have a PS2 on long term loan and it also has many excellent games I have never played, but... if I get a 360 I can play the arcade, which I think might be more my thing, plus I can play with friends. Okay, I can play with the one friend + her husband, because few of my close friends game, but I would definitely play with her. Plus, her husband buys all the latest games so I could mooch off of them, and only have to buy new games when we wanted to play together (Left 4 Dead! Resident Evil 5! Possibly some games that do not involve zombies!), or the arcade games that are 1. comparatively cheap and 2. take up no space and thus do not hinder long term goals. I could use GameFly, but I believe it will be cheaper to just borrow + buy (given my slow play speeds and long periods of not playing, friends with well stocked libraries, and the fact that used games are cheap).

Also, it turns out the M$ company discount on an xbox is almost nothing. Poo.

I'd like to fix or replace my busted DS as well, and play the existing games I have for it, but maybe I should just spend that money on games for my phone instead?

So take home messages: maybe eat out less, definitely waste less food, threaten comcast into lowering my rates.