Current Status - On Track and Sexier Than Ever

6000 hits on the blog! Hooray!

Can you believe it? I have been told that I should write my blog more than one time a week! The crazy demands that some of my friends have, let me tell you! I was recently flipping through blogger to see what all the other blogs were about and let me tell you, there are a lot of Christian-dog-enthusiast-gardener-baker-moms out there. I mean no offense, but I certainly felt a little bit special knowing that I’m doing something a little bit different from everyone else! Speaking of something a little bit different, I have managed to gather over 6000 hits on my blog! That makes me very happy to know that more than just the people I know are reading my blog. I think in this $hitty economy we all like to look for ways to not be stuck with a butt-load of debt, and hopefully this blog is a place of inspiration for you all!

As promised, I am writing my blog on a Sunday (sorry PostSecret, you’ve got some competition today) which means that I should have some free time to watch me a little “Gail” on the telly tomorrow. But alas, I have agreed to volunteer my time training a bunch of people how to clean a yoga studio so I will most likely miss out on seeing the show, but it might earn me a free meal or something. I know that training people how to clean sounds simple enough, but when you combine my obsessive compulsive behaviour with cleaning, my standards are really hard to achieve, but that studio looks damn sexy after I’ve had my way with it; just ask my latest trainees, right Andy? Look at that, a shout out to someone other than Caitlin!

This can earn you a free meal!

As mentioned in my last riveting blog entry, this week I have been challenging myself to stay on budget and not go overboard on my spending, and let me tell you, I feel like this week has been a little bit easy for me to stay on track. I needed to get this challenge on the go because I have definitely been a piece of $hit will my spending skills in the last month so let me tell how it’s been going thus far. Now remember, I start out my budget on Wednesdays. The week started off great because I didn’t even have to take out any cash which I normally do. No cash in hand means no spending for me! On Tuesday night, I worked and slaved on an apron for my boss. Every year, there is a charitable campaign that my work does to collect money for thousands of charities and each sector head serves food at a department-wide BBQ in an apron that represents their sector. Well let me tell you, I worked so hard on that mother-trucking apron until it looked phenomenal in comparison to the rest. I was able to decorate the thing with nothing but items I already had and a couple little things from the dollar store. With the risk of this turning into a craft blog (which there are bazillions of) I will stop here and tell you, my boss loved it. She loved it so much in fact that she bought me a ticket to the BBQ. Day one, free lunch; needless to say I was starting this process off perfectly. Later that evening I had my meal paid for me again by my partner. It’s looking really good for me so far!

Thursday was the day that I had to go and take out some more cash and really get the spending on the go. I didn’t bring a lunch as I had originally planned to do, so I ended up hitting up the local Thai restaurant for some of my favorite guilty pleasure. It was delicious of course, but I did feel a little bit guilty. It was no matter though because in the meantime, I helped organize a surprise party for my boss and it went off without a hitch! She was most definitely surprised and for an easy contribution of $10, I got to indulge myself in lots of delicious treats at work! There was cake, chips, and all that delicious birthday stuff. I ate so much that I didn’t even need to eat any supper; another successful spending day to add to the books.

Now Friday was a little bit cah-razy. So much so that I won’t go into too much detail, but I ended up with another free food day, sort of. Friday at lunch, I like to spoil myself, so I decided to grab some god awful sushi from the local sushi chain (why are all the non-independent sushi places garbage) and enjoyed lots of leftovers from the birthday party of the night before. After work was finished, I went to a happy hour party after work, which as usual, turned to be a bit out of control, but the food and booze was supplied, and it was really delicious. I always feel completely spoiled at those events!

Those Ikea instructions are impossible!

Yesterday, I crawled out of bed and made my way over to my volunteer shift and trained two new employees on how to clean a studio. Because I woke up so late and rushed to my training shift, I didn’t leave myself much time to eat anything substantial, so I settled for a scone and a coffee (not exactly nutritious) but it was under $5 so it seemed like a pretty good deal for brunch.  Again, cleaning isn’t rocket appliances, so the training went well with the exception that one of the trainees (Andy) was an hour late! After that, I caved and went with Andy (wow, 3 shout outs already) and got me some delicious and super inexpensive food at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant. I think the whole meal was under $20 for dinner, so no complaints here! After that, Andy (4) and I went back to his place and I helped him unpack and assemble all his $hitty Ikea furniture. Not to say that his furniture didn’t look good, but the thing with Ikea stuff is that you can never take it apart otherwise it never goes back together properly again! The rest of my evening turned out to be really inexpensive because I just had my beautiful friends Isha and Sam come over for some board/card games which doesn’t cost a thing, well with the exception that I bought a $10 walk in special large pizza (as usual). That pizza is always so freaking delicious.

Which takes me to today; Andy (5 shout outs Andy, what more do you want) was feeling thankful and treated me to a delicious brunch at one of our old haunts. The meal was fantastic with the exception of the pineapple garnish having mould on it (but for $5.75 who cares) so the waitress comp’d our coffees which was incredibly nice because I didn’t ask for anything, I just mentioned to watch the pineapple because it looked like hairy a$$. And now it’s supper time and here I sit with $70 still in my wallet out of my $140 budget that I started on Wednesday. The money that I have spent it was almost entirely used for food. In reality I feel like I should have spent on groceries and doing a bit of meal planning, but really, that’s almost 5 days of living and only spending $70 total! Imagine the possibilities for debt repayment or even savings if you are able to live on so little!

Now, since I don’t do enough blog posts (according to some people) I will be checking back in on Wednesday with a full report on how I did for the week including my shining Gail faces. Will I eff it all up and order Chinese food tonight? Will I lose my wallet with all my cash in it again? Or will I manage to save it all and not spend a cent until next Wednesday? Stay tuned ladies and gentlemen for the thrilling conclusion of this week’s episode of My Fight for Financial Freedom!!

P.S. Shout out to Andy! Hooray for Andy!