I'm feeling some bizarre grown-up, responsible person urges of late. I'm not sure if it's the influence of those around me, the emails from my father about buying a home or something I ate.
But honestly I'm going with it. Here's what I'm trying:
- I moved my banking to Citibank (where B also banks, for easy rent money transfers). I opened a checking account, a savings account and a credit cart account.
- My clever new credit card (which looks very James Bond) has zero percent on balance transfers for 12 months so I bought a new computer on my WaMu card. I'll transfer the balance to the new card and pay off the computer quickly, with no fees.
- I bought a Refurbished Mac Book - the computer I wanted, but cheaper because it's a returned product, re-checked, cleaned up and resold. I saved 10 percent and got exactly what I wanted. I'm thinking of getting a pretty Speck cover to protect it - what do you think? Pink? Aqua?
- I'm really being a cheapskate. I'm becoming a coupon mogul, saying no pricey things and making sure to eat lunch at work every day instead of spending money. I'm hoping these little cuts will make a big difference.
- B and I are budgeting. We fill in our Google Doc Spreadsheet and discuss every penny spent. B wanted to round, but I said we should be exact. We're trying it - so far nothing too crazy, though I did splurge on a spicy ginger ale on a walk downtown the other day. I didn't feel so smart when I reported my spending. Lesson learned.
I'm hoping that these moves put me in a good position to look at a place to buy, goodness knows what, when or where. Every penny counts and this week I found one dollar, a quarter, a dime and two pennies on the ground. I'm on my way to riches, right?
2 comments:
Hey, you two should take a look at Xpenser. You can report your expenses via text message, there's a web interface, you can export to spreadsheet formats, etc. I've been using it for a while now and I'm really happy with it.
Michelle and I are doing the same thing. We downsized on the apartment, opened a savings acct on ING and generally will try to be more frugal. Hopefully by this time next year we'll be in a position to buy some property...in the city. It would have been nice to take advantage of the $8000 credit this year, but it's probably not going to happen. Hopefully it will be extended when we are ready to buy.
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