Money reconsidered

[vaneramos]

Certain changes precipitate others. The act of decluttering my apartment over the past two months coincided with reading In Defense of Food (the previous change facilitated more consistent consumption of books), and led to an unplanned, healthy shift in my behaviour around meals and food preparation.

The next change, for May and June, was supposed to involve planning weekend hikes, however another change has rendered it unnecessary. Last fall I worked on developing a career plan, which turned out to focus on nature writing. As a result, during the winter I began walking outdoors after work several days a week. The original purpose of the hikes was to give myself more exercise, bring me closer in touch with the natural world, and provide meaningful material for writing. This is already happening.

So for May and June should concentrate on something more pressing: my spending habits need more work. Last spring I concentrated on refinancing my debt and developing a budget, but did not have enough time to work on my day-to-day behaviour with money. It improved somewhat, but not consistently. Most weeks my spending goes $20 to $40 over budget, which I simply can't afford.

I must review my budget to consider actual income and expenses over the past year. That will come later in the month. For starters I need to work at sticking to the budget I already have.

On Friday, as usual, I will withdraw my spending money for the week. That's all I get. This weekend will be a tough one, because I'm going to meet my daughters and take them to The Met Live in HD. Tickets are already paid for, but we'll have to go for a meal, which will consume a good chunk of my grocery budget. It shouldn't be a problem because I'll have plenty of food in the pantry to get through the rest of the week.

The real challenge will be emotional. I may not have an eating disorder, but a grocery disorder. Buying food makes me feel secure, for the moment. Meanwhile, overspending and waste consume my savings. This is the biggest foundation I have to alter between now and the end of June. Meanwhile I'll try writing about my relationship with food and money in my morning pages.

This afternoon I will create a new icon for this change.

Comments

[niyabinghi.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! Changing habits is often so hard at first, but so rewarding when they slowly take over the old habits and contribute to a better sense of well-being. (Not that I'm entirely there yet...still a process!)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

The neat part is when hard work on one habit brings about other unforeseen changes with seemingly little effort. More walks, more time spent on food preparation, and healthier meals have all just happened for me as side effects. It's encouraging. Good luck!

[niyabinghi.livejournal.com]

Yes!!! :D And for a brief moment one can almost think well gosh this was easy --- but probably best to keep in mind that concentrated efforts need continued concentrated efforts in order to not fall back into old habits.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

Pretty good results, I'd say. You are making changes that you planned on and also getting some serendipitous ones as well.

We're actually going to see Die Walküre Live on Sat. You and daughters are in for quite a show.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

We're actually going to see Die Walküre Live on Sat.

Yeah, I was going to mention that. We'll have to compare notes.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see you meant "live" live! That must have been fun. Danny and I saw Lucia there.

We took the girls to see Das Rheingold, so I'm committed to seeing the whole Ring with them.

So what did you think? I was not as amazed as with Das Rheingold. I did not expect to find it long-winded, but on a couple of occasions it felt that way. I thoroughly enjoyed Deborah Voigt for her personality as much as her voice. Needless to say, the Ride of the Valkyries blew us all away. I would like to have heard that live.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I already know the Ring quite well, so I knew it was going to be long-winded. :-) For the most part I really liked the production, although some things didn't work for me. I agree that Voigt carried off the role really well. I'm planning to post a review of sorts, with more detail, in my own LJ sometime in the next day or two.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Well, although I've never watched the Ring before, I have listened to it in different forms. A Detroit radio station broadcast an extensive series when I was in my teens, and my Grade 13 English essay compared it with The Lord of the Rings. I have a complete CD set, which Danny and I listened to on our road trip to Winnipeg last spring. So the length did not take me by surprise.

What surprised me was Das Rheingold did not drag at all. I found it completely gripping. The performance whizzed by. Even though the other three operas are longer, I assumed they would be the same. Now having seen Die Walküre, I'm of the opinion it could have been half an hour shorter.

On the other hand I picked up some interesting threads of the plot that had gone over my head until now, for example I had always assumed Siegmund and Sieglinde didn't realize they were committing incest.

[apel.livejournal.com]

I love how some of your positive changes lead to other, unforeseen positive changes. Makes me smile.

I obviously know nothing about your grocery habits but my experience is that it's easy to buy too much food. Some of that I've been able to help by investing in good quality containers for left-over food. I also avoid buying large packets of food that I know I will only want a little of, even if that means I get a worse price per weight or volume.

But I think the hardest part is to buy only food that I really, really like. For some reason food can seem perfectly reasonable in the store but when I'm thinking of eating it, I go "Umm, no". I'm a picky eater but I think I need to become a picky shopper too. Somehow leaving Whole Foods with only 3-4 items doesn't feel good. Not sure what that's about.

Thanks for making me think about this. I think there's something behind this.