Day 18
“To this point, I’ve been a vegetarian for the entire month of November…While wandering around the grocery store comparing the cost effectiveness of rice versus beans, I came across some hotdogs. They were 88-cents. They were also labeled in Spanish. I paused for a minute to consider whether I was really ready to eat a 9-cent hotdog. I was.”

Start reading from the bottom.
http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_hungryforamonth_archive.html

In the past few weeks I’ve noticed more than usual the general impatience of people around me. More than the usual horn-honking, cutting each other off in traffic, shifting restlessly in line, etc.

The post office next to South Station is always busy around lunch time. If you need help from someone behind a counter you can expect at least at 20 minute wait every day. They even have a ticket system so you don’t have to wait in line, just stand around until your number is called. While I was waiting to mail a package a few weeks ago, about 15 minutes into my 20 minute wait a woman was called up to the counter and had a box full of full-page-sized envelopes, probably about 15 of them, which each had to be weighed for postage. Another woman who had just walked in and seen a 20 minute wait estimated on her ticket almost immediately started sighing impatiently. A few more minutes and she muttering under her breath, though loudly enough that I could pick up a few words from across the room: “… honestly, some people have to …”, “… can’t you just …”, “… incredibly rude…” and the like. In between mutterings, at approximately 15 second intervals, she’d release either a sigh, or that hissing/popping/clicking sound made when you open your mouth while it has just a little bit too much suction in it, used to express general disbelief.

It’s this kind of person that really gets to me. The one who believes that the world ought to provide convenience to her at the expense of everyone else, and who by extension makes the world more of an inconvience to everyone else. She’s the person who huffs and walks out of places when the line is long. She’s the one who lays on the horn the second the light turns green. She’s the one who runs the red light while simultaneously cutting across three lanes of traffic to make an illegal left turn.

Last week at Au Bon Pain in South Station I saw, within moments of each other, a clear distinction between this type of person and a much more reasonable one.

As I was ordering my coffee, a man shouted over the counter, “Excuse Me! There’s NO CREAM in this” holding aloft an empty self-server pitcher labelled ‘Light Cream’ and waving it with such force as to indicate that the lack of cream was a personal affront to him that would not be taken lightly. The woman behind the counter apologized and took the pitcher while the man huffed angrily on the other side.

About 30 seconds later, as I was putting my own cream and sugar in my coffee, a woman who had just ordered a tea, looked confusedly at the counter, taking in a row of coffee dispensers and not seeing one marked “Hot Water”, quietly asking herself, “Now, I wonder where…” As I shifted my weight to the side, I moved just enough for her to see the hot water dispenser with the napkin dispensers bucket of sugar, and cup of stirring rods all sitting in front of it, at the very end of the counter, pretty well hidden. She said, “now that’s a silly place for it” as I stepped out of her way and threw away my stirring rod.

I glanced back as I walked away from the counter and saw her, having filled her cup, neatly stacking the napkin holder, sugar containers, and stirring rods back in front of the dispenser as she had found them.

In a fit of madness, and a shameless copycat of jacob, I have added another to the list of websites I will rarely update. The gimmick with this one is that it’s in Italian — or something not entirely unlike Italian, at least. My plan is to update that livejournal more frequently and with less interesting (if you can believe it) stuff than this one — you know, real “what I had for lunch today” type updates.

If you’re interested in the minutae of my life, or in Italian, why not take a look over there and criticize my obvious lack of confidence and ability with the language and ongoing faltering over even the simplest grammatical constructions.

Also: As soon as I get around to getting myself an hour alone with Illustrator, I’ll be posting a mix cd I made a few months ago. I post this message mostly to inspire myself to make time for that hour.

About two months ago I started reading Get Rich Slowly. A month ago based on something I must have read there, or through there, I put a small notebook in my back pocket to find out just where all my money was going. I mean, I knew, or at least had a pretty good idea about, the the big expenses: rent, utilities, student loans, etc. But what about that sub I had for lunch at work from the deli downstairs? What about playing pool with Chris every Tuesday night? What about the $15 here for a cd or $9 there for a book? Surely that must add up…

It does. Some of it more than you might think.

For the last month I have been recording in that notebook the cost and purpose of every cash transaction that leaves my pocket. This afternoon I labeled and sorted all of those entries. I also went back through my last month’s bank account and credit card statements and labeled and sorted the last month’s transactions.

I grouped all of my expenses into 5 categories: Primary Expenses (rent, utilities, student loans), Food (groceries and dine/take out), Transportation (public transportation and car costs), Entertainent (media, going out, etc), and Misc (everything else) with subcategories under those. For one-time transactions, I grouped and counted them as they appeared in last month’s expense report. For less regular monthly expenses, like groceries, car repairs and parking tickets, I averaged the last 6 months’ expenses. I religiously pay for these expenses using plastic (and, like a good boy, almost as religiously pay them off completely every month if that plastic happens to be credit), but Bank of America’s online transaction history only goes back 6 months, and I didn’t feel like going through my pile of old, unopened paper statements. For large regularly recurring monthly expenses like utilities and loan payments, I averaged the complete history of monthly costs made since moving into this apartment for each, using the utlity companies’ websites online payment and statement history.

My spending breaks down like this:

• 36% rent and utlities
• 10% student loans
• 19% food
  • 41% grocery
  • 30% eating breakfast and lunch during the week
  • 29% eating out/take out/delivery weekday dinners and weekends
• 13% transportation
  • 15% MBTA
  • 85% Car (insurance, repairs, gas, parking tickets)
• 14% entertainment
  • 39% media; books, cds, dvds
  • 61% experience; concerts, games of pool, netflix, air america podcasts
• 8% miscellaneous
  • 70% Credit card interest and late payments.
  • 30% Other misc expenses.

My actual entertainment spending may be higher than it is here. These expenses should probably be amortized over the year, but I frequently pay for these things (concert tickets especially) in cash, so I don’t have a years worth of payments quite as handy as I do for groceries and car repairs. Also, the amount of money I spend going out may shift somewhat dramatically month-to-month and season-to-season depending on when bands tour and other factors. This is a subject for further inquiry.

Despite this potential innaccuracy, there are some observations and lessoned learned to be culled from all this:

1. I’m spending more monthly than I did last year, but I’m living more cheaply. Based on an estimate of monthly spending using last year’s income and savings at the end of the year, I spend about $150-$200 more per month, which is slightly less than the increase in the amount I’m paying for car insurance and rent since last year.
2. Being lazy about cooking dinner isn’t costing me as much as I thought it was, though it hasn’t really decreased the cost of groceries, somehow.
3. I should bring my lunch to work far more often than I do (but I knew this already).
4. Having a car is expensive, and getting enough parking tickets that their cost actually figures into your monthly budget doesn’t help. It might be time to play the cost/benefit game with Zip Car.
5. Paying off the credit card is good. Paying it on time is better. (I paid twice as much in late fees over the past year as I did in interest). Though neither cost broke the bank, it could have bought a handful more CDs instead of nothing.
6. In the grand scheme of things, paying for the wash/dry/fold instead of spending time at the laundromat is a good choice for me. With free time valued at 150% of work time it comes out about even to not have to sit at the laundromat or fold clothes.