Tracking

Is apparently my newest thing. In an effort to get control over my life and feel settled I have taken up/will be taking up two important things.

1. Weight Watchers. Gotta be real, celebrity endorsement works y'all. Because I know tons of people doing WW, and I've only heard good things (well except from Ash who didn't like it) and success stories, but as soon as I saw that commercial with JHud looking fierce I immediately signed up. Which rocks. And so far it's working, although working out helps significantly. I'm SO good at sticking to things and having self-discipline when I'm actually recording it. It's something about the visual that keeps me determined. And since you just track your points online, it's so so so easy to stay good. At least for me it is (so far). I am a creature of extreme self-guilt, and hopefully in this case it will pay off.

2. Money. Today I got a little ambitious and decided to make a budgeting worksheet. It started simple, just projecting how much money a month I anticipated spending once I move out...but it got elaborate fast. See SOME of it here.

Pretty much it's divided into several sections: Spending, which is broken up into projected spending (aka how much I'm willing to spend at most), and actual spending, which is what I'm going to need to keep track of diligently. I even have the food section broken down into lunches, dinners in (aka grocery money), dinners out (which I am PRAYING I have overestimated $60 a week on), and then alcohol/going out money ($50 a week...I'm just trying to be cautious, hopefully I'm not actually that crazy...).

Then I have the income section. Since I don't have a real job yet, and therefore don't know how much I'll be making, I decided to calculate 16 different income scenarios (it's fine). I took 15% out for taxes, divided that by month, and then deducted my projected spending to see how much I would save per month. Based on my spending calculations, if I earn $30K a month and never go shopping, I will save $10 a month. WOOF. At least I'm still saving a little. Ideally I'd like to make $32K at minimum because that would mean $150 a month, and I can put $100 of that into a retirement fund.

Yup. I'm talking about a retirement fund on a blog called Disco Anarchy. WHO AM I?!

I also did a second sheet that will track the year activity. I'm awesome.

But yeah I'm glad this is how I spent my afternoon because it's providing clarity! And will hopefully keep me grounded. And I'm going to get into the habit of it now before I move out so that when I live by myself I don't go wildly into debt. Hooray!