I’m not yet ready to budget (since I need more information) but I have noticed that I’m already spending less. It’s probably the act of having to put _more_ entries in each evening that stops me spending!

I had been meaning to upgrade the RAM on my computer for a while, because it was becoming increasingly clear to me that 512MB was rather obsolete (damn you, Mr. Palmer!).

Now, I’ve often had a yen to upgrade my computer. Usually this yen comes about as an impulse, but my computer genuinely needs these upgrades (well, in my opinion, anyways). I still want to upgrade my 40GB hard drive, my 1.4GHz CPU and my CD-RW/DVD drive, but those will probably wait a bit and are stories for another time (after I’ve bought the replacements, LOL!).

Anyways, within the last month, my laptop’s adapter broke. Being a power user when it comes to computers, you can imagine how annoyed I was at having to use Win98 (I couldn’t install any cool software! That made me a bit sad).

I bought a cheap adapter replacement for my laptop. It arrived, and didn’t work. One of the metal stick thingys was loose. So, I turned to Dell, since the adapter that broke was still under warranty. They said they’d ship it, no big deal.

During this, I was dreaming about trading in my laptop for a desktop. I ultimately decided against this because 1) dad would have to pay for a lot of the desktop 2) trading in my laptop for any money seemed next to impossible, since it’s “ruined,” because it doesn’t look so pretty and 3) I’m not willing to give up my laptop yet (I only get an allowance of $20 a week. I imagine that’ll be one of the things dad and I start talking about, when I start to get my “regular” paycheck (assuming one can have a regular paycheck when one is in retail).

So, I figured I’d look into options for upgrading the computer I’ve already got. Went to WalMart’s website, and they’re selling RAM for $9. “What a deal!” I thought. I went to go buy it, but oh, wait! No free in-store shipping brings the cost up to $16 or $17.

Yeah, not happenin’. As it turns out, I decided to sell a ring on Sunday last week (03/09/2008). I managed to sell it on Monday (03/10/2008), and had enough money from the sale that I decided to buy some RAM (I have yet to be able to control my money spending, otherwise, I could’ve bought more RAM aggges ago!).

So, since I had enough money, I toddled off to Circut City. Or maybe it was Circut City? Whatever, it was the red store.

Anyways, I discovered that I had enough money that I could by 1GB of RAM! I was all “:O WIN!” cause it was on sale. I looked to see if I had enough to upgrade to 2GB of RAM (because how sweet would that be?!), but I didn’t have enough.

That was fine with me, I was able to get my 1GB and I was happy with that. Come to find out though, it really is my CPU that’s a slow little bugger and the reason my computer kept freezing. Though, having the crapload more RAM does help, it doesn’t help half as much as I’d like (I still am able to get some unintentional lag times with some programs running, which is a bit of a disappointment).

I think my next upgrade will be the CPU, assuming Dell eventually offers an upgrade for it.

http://www.youneedabudget.com/

I’m currently evaluating it, and it’s proving worth the $39.95 to pay for it (my dad offered to pay for me =) I’ll have to hassle him about that after he gets home).

So far, it’s been useful in telling me how often I visit the same store/type of store during the course of one day, due to having no life (that’ll be rectified as soon as I start my new job! :D), and nothing better to do besides window shop and spend actual money (oh, and waste gas).

I had forgotten about the “tax yourself” thing. I think that outta help me stop spending as much money. I’ve decided to start taxing myself 15% on things, and I’m starting with all of today’s purchases.

For all of today’s purchases, I have $2.95 going to my “buffer” savings.

For Saturday’s purchase (gas), I have $5.19 going into my “buffer” savings (Saturday as in this upcoming: Sat/03/15/2008).

Currently, I’m below zero in cash at the moment, but I’m expecting money to come in (and that money is what’s going to fuel paying off the buffer tax and the gas =)).

Part of the YNAB plan is to put in the cost of what you need to spend money on every month (like you said). I looked at the gas prices last night (since I know I have to fill up soon), and I “jacked up” the price by 10¢, to count for a possibility of inflation.

I’m a new driver/tank filler, so to be honest, I’m not sure how fast inflation goes up/down, but I’m taking a guess that I ought to be pretty safe tacking on the 10¢. I have yet to figure out how much money I should be budgeting towards gas, since I have yet to have a “typical” tank, and thus don’t know how often I’ll need to fill.

I, too, have found comfort in doing huge wishlists. Mostly, I find that I really don’t want the item itself. I just want to spend the money. Yet, for some reason, I can’t just buy a 30¢ pack of gum every time I get the urge, in order to save more money, instead of wasting it on crap I want that I’ll never use. The idea of having a Smart Phone, iPod Touch or a Pocket PC is currently lingering on my mind. I’m mentally rolling my eyes at myself, because I logically know I’m never going to use it, or if I do, I’ll use it a total of 3 times, and then it’ll collect dust in some random corner of my room (assuming it doesn’t get destroyed in the process of collecting dust). At the same time, my inner whiner, is all “but I neeeeed it!!” and is ignoring the fact that when I get home, I don’t even bother bringing out my regular paper notebooks that have my To-Do List on them, and if I don’t use the cheap alternative, why bother buying the expensive alternative?(closet Luddite, ahoy!)

Damn that inner whiner for having no common sense (though, she’s rather amusing/comical, but only when I don’t give into her desires).

Avoid cash if at all possible. More debit card use = less paper need. As it is, my wife and I spend a certain amount of cash and have little idea where it went But everything that we can pay with plastic is nicely logged

The next step would be to only give yourself X amount of cash allowance for the month. If you get by with it, decrease it next month. Works wonders.

At the beginning of this month we started tracking again, but this time was preceded by several family meetings at which we discussed the year’s likely expenditures and the implications of those expenses. We were trying to draw up a comprehensive budget, but we knew we were missing some of the cash flow. So we agreed to start tracking every penny to find where that missing money went. This time we have shared goals of finding and minimizing expenses and maximizing net cash flow, we have an aim to “Get Rich Slowly”. I hope we’ll make it stick this time, because I know it will help us succeed in our goals.
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Wishing you a prosperous future
Daiko