I promised myself that I shall make an effort to stop making emotional posts and posting songs (to convey my mood). Speaking of which, that Jay Chou song below is just a song I’m trying to memorize. Therefore, I shall NOT post anything emotional.
Instead, let me talk about my bank balance. What happened just now was, I was waiting for 4N to arrive, when my PDA-phone died. Again. Never mind, so I turned to my ipod nano. Headphones died, only the left side had sound. Never mind, I waited for 10 minutes (my friend’s bus arrived like almost immediately. Lucky bastard.), gave up and tried to withdraw money to cab home. TO MY FUCKING SHOCK AND HORROR, ONLY THE CARD CAME OUT. I thought, well, maybe the ATM machine was faulty, but just decided to check bank balance just in case. Amount left in bank? $19.21. Amazing.
Apart from trying to get my phone working again, I was trying to recall, how exactly did I squander $500 in approximately (slightly more than) 2 weeks. Anyway, just for self-housekeeping purposes, I’ll list down everything below:
$112 for the new pair of shoes (to claim from Dad)
$60 for transport (EZlink)
$42 for the pineapple tarts (Lian owes me $6)
$50 for school books (to claim from Dad)
$40 for the Eagles: Hell Freezes Over XRCD
$36 for the pink shirt (to claim from Dad)
$30 for Ken’s birthday dinner (including supper)
$26 for 2 cab rides (to campus and from jh’s house)
$20 for 2 movies (AVP2 and Vexille, including drinks)
$15 for Kbox (Crest owes me $5)
$5 for the Ipod nano DAC
Including the amount I have left in my bank and wallet (about $20 rounded down), that’s $456. Let’s round it up to $460. Taking away $10 for seeing the doctor, and another $10 on a Subway meal, it means I’ve spent a total of only $20 this week. Which sounds reasonable.
Assuming I claimed $200 from my dad, and got back all the money people owe me (those listed above), and add in the $20 remaining, I will have approximately $230 dollars left. Which means, I spent $270, not including the $50+++ dollars I spent on New Year’s Eve getting a headache.
To continue calculating, take away $60 from $270 because of transport (inevitable costs), it means I’ve spent $210. Deducting the amount spent on one-off goods (XRCD, tarts, Kbox, movies, cab, doctor, equaling roughly $140), it means I’ve spent ONLY $70 on food and drinks, including the $30 for Ken’s birthday dinner (and dessert), $10 for subway, eating the sze char at Bedok Interchange, eating at Macdonalds while having flu, eating 2 lunches in school, eating at Aston’s Express then chilling out at Red Dot Cafe, and eating and chilling out tonight. Okay, take out Ken’s dinner; a one-off affair too, so it means I’ve ONLY spent $40 on food since Ken’s dinner.
Given that I’ve spent a total of $60+$40=$100 on unavoidable items, it means I spent $170 on avoidable, one-off items. I thought I was a glutton. Wrong, I’m a fucking spendthrift. This does not include various other niggling stuff (which cancels out because my bank indeed had more than $500, about $550 in the bank then), and the $50+++ I blew on New Year’s Eve. If that is included, it brings the total amount to a total of $220 spent on avoidable stuff within 3 weeks.
I mentioned about revised resolutions. To make my life easier, I shall forget about the third resolution mentioned previously (to keep in line with existing principles), and substitute it instead with this new resolution: To cut down spending on avoidable, one-off items unless absolutely necessary, by at least 60%, which means keeping it to below $100.
I’m rather lucky I still have about $230 left for the rest of the month. I still owe Junming $86 (or $88 for PES 2008). I’m targeting a savings of at least $400 by the end of the semester (assuming I remain single, which is not much of an assumption anyway).
I’m still dumbfounded by the way I spend money. And wow, I’m not a glutton actually. Amazing!