If you are familiar with who I am, I work a full-time job. Working full-time can be expensive; clothing, beauty, travel expenses, vehicle maintenance, daycare, and meals.
I work for a law office so my attire and appearance must be professional and show care. Especially when you are meeting with clients. I have tried to save money by maintaining my clothing and really paying attention to what I do with them. I don't spend a ton of money on dry cleaning, I use a store brand "dry cleaning" kit that seems to work just fine. My shoes I try to maintain by spraying them with protectant and taking them to a shoe repair place to have the soles re-done or the heals replaced. This saves me a few dollars; good shoes usually cost around $60 or more. Granted, they last for a few years but I have noticed that if I really take care of them they last a long while.
My makeup: well, if you knew me before I got onto the Dave Ramsey bandwagon you know that I was a purse and makeup whore. What does that mean? Every few months I would buy a purse worth half of my paycheck and I would go down to a high end makeup retailer and get a full makeover - and buy everything they used on me. Now that I've read Total Money Makeover? I use the coupons from the Sunday Paper to buy my eye makeup cheap, I get my face powder from eBay and I order kits with items I use from QVC through my MyPoints account so I get points for ordering and then I sell what I don't use on eBay. I can usually sell pieces of a kit and make more money than I spent on the whole thing, plus get the item that I wanted. Not bad, great bargain.
Daycare? Well geez, I can't do anything about that. They have me with my arms behind my back there...
My biggest work-related budget killer? LUNCH. For the most part I try to bring my lunch to work. Sandwiches, leftovers, maybe a can of soup that I bought in bulk. But occassionally I get that itch to go out and will call my girlfriends to see what they are up to. Now, they know I'm on a budget, some are single mothers, there is the girl who is expecting a new baby any day now that just bought a new house, there is one who lives with her boyfriend, and a few others that are married in various financial positions. And they know that if I go out to eat, it has to be cheap. I'm talking dollar menu cheap. But for some reason, we always go out somewhere expensive. Like $9.00 or more expensive.
Like yesterday, I asked a friend to do lunch since we had both realized around the same time that we had no lunch. And I told her "somewhere cheap". Where do we go? A buffet, that turned into $9.00 a piece. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!! Frustrating. That was my whole lunch/snack budget for the week!!!!!!!!!!!!! Including Saturday and Sunday!!!!!
So, I'm up, at 4:25, writing this post, about how much I spent at lunch, how much it is eating away at me since I did have plans with the kids this weekend and that was going to be my "behavior bribe".
Back to the drawing board. Oh, and as I'm typing I'm packing my lunch...
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