Do You Hear the People Sing?

For my dad’s American service, some of his friends got together and made a little booklet of photos and essays and nice things about him. It was printed up and bound and distributed at the funeral. The majority of it’s in Chinese and even after six months of intense Mandarin study in Taiwan, I still can’t read any of it. If I were a different person, that would be a goal. To one day be able to read through this thing. I mean, there’s got to be a lot of anecdotes and stories in there, stuff I’d never hear anywhere else right?

Actually, from what I can gather, 90% of the memories and essays are about golf. My dad was quite the prolific golfer and had a hand in starting the Lower Handicap Golf Club — San Diego’s premier Chinese golf club, I’m certain — serving as its first president. Basically that’s why everyone in the community knew who he was. Most of the English words in these essays are a reference to a particular golf course or stuff like “double bogey, pitching, driver, greens.” There’s also score sheets I think, some possibly in my dad’s own hand.

(There’s also something in there about my mom and “surprise” being yelled out but again, I can’t read enough of it to figure out what the surprise was. My name wasn’t in that piece so clearly it’s not a “surprise, your son dropped out of school” story or anything.)

Also, there’s a page whose lone English word is “newsletter.” That made me recall that my dad used to write newsletters for the LHGC. I mean, I think he did. Well, I’m sure he did, because that’s the kind of thing he would do. Just like I keep overly detailed blogs for my fantasy leagues… I think we both just kind of like community and connecting, although he was more of a showman than I was. By a long shot. He was good with jokes and stories and seemed like he liked being on stage or performing.

Anyway, it’s fitting that this is coming in newsletter format. Unsubscribe at your leisure!

I saw on Facebook that a friend’s father passed away. My general rule of thumb about that kind of thing is to not say anything until I see them. Like I did with a friend in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I knew that her dad has passed away but didn’t want to bring it up until I was there, face to face.

I think coming from my perspective, it just seems like the last thing you’d want to do during that time is answer a whole bunch of condolence messages. Even just responding with “thanks” can seem like a burden. At least it would seem like that to me.

My friend in Taiwan, about a month ago, was sitting bedside by her friend (really, more a friend of a friend) when she suddenly passed away. Throughout the ensuing week or so of chaos, my friend took it upon herself to see to the arrangements. Like telling everyone what had happened (nobody really knew, as she had been in the hospital the previous day under observation and testing), reaching out to the family overseas (whom the girl had not been communicating with for years), and then organizing a donation campaign to cover costs. I guess that’s one of the perils of living in a foreign country without health insurance or your family/people around.

Anyway, my friend went through an unbelievable amount of shit that week, both physical, emotional, and spiritual. She broke down in tears multiple times, she sort of had her own life blow apart for a moment, it was kind of a mess, but through it all she was simultaneously so strong and so generous throughout. I know I couldn’t have done it. Be that helpful and generous. I would have been like “this is for her family (estranged or not) to take care of.” And ran out of there.

I want to reach out to my friend, the one whose dad passed away, to tell her that I know, and to offer up an ear if necessary, but I also don’t because I wouldn’t have wanted to hear it then. (Or would it be a nice gesture just to send a quick message, perhaps with a “no need to reply” line attached.) Even with my closer friends who have recently experienced parental losses, I haven’t really reached out beyond a quick text. What else is there to say sometimes you know? And I feel like it would be annoying to have to go through the next questions, which starts invariably with “What happened?”

Along the same lines, I had a really good friend who told me somewhat recently that her infant passed away. Just suddenly, in his sleep. Sure, loss is loss but that’s an incomparable loss right? I didn’t know what to say to her because “sorry,” while necessary, didn’t seem to mean much/enough.

In related news: People who put personal news on someone’s Facebook wall ahead of them actually announcing things themselves… Like wow, really? People do dumb shit.

[Cross posted from my Tiny Letter]

Ways and Means: Jul 2014 - Dec 2014

Let’s do this. A year end wrap for another year of spending. Who’s excited!? I already covered the first six months of 2014 so here’s the the last six (remember, this is variable expenses per month, not fixed):

• Jul: $2,450
• Aug: $2,100
• Sep: $1,990
• Oct: $2,100
• Nov: $1,400
• Dec: $2,100

In total, I was $8,000+ over my projected/ideal budget. That’s an ominous extra $666 a month on average. Overall, I spent about $39,000 in 2014, which translates to living roughly a $52k lifestyle. That’s with four months of no rent, lots of freebies, and well, who knows what other contributions. It takes a village indeed. It'll be such a proud day for all when I actually become an adult.

Let’s dig a little. July was a hot mess of transportation, where I went 250% over. The category would have been fine except I rented a car that month to drive from New York to Ocean City, Maryland. That $350 pushed me over the July budget but disregarding the rental, I would have been fine.

For August, September, and October, I was only $280 total over budget, which is just remarkable! But, one major caveat: My budget was $1k a month up until June, when I stopped paying rent. So from July until October, I just basically doubled my budget numbers and upped myself to $2k a month. That meant that August, September, and October were all close to on target, with September even magically coming in at a sterling 99.7% of my budget. (I’m pretty sure I made that happen by avoiding doing anything for the last day or two, so that I could come under at least once in 2014. Go me.)

If I wasn’t paying rent for the summer, then where the hell was I living? Well, here’s the answer: With friends! I went back to my traveling ways and spent most of July meandering my way from New York to San Francisco. Upon arrival in the Bay, I spent the better part of August in my friend’s guest bedroom. Not a bad gig if you can swing it. Was I smooging off my friends (and family)? Of course I was. Thank you friends and family, for opening your homes to me. I look forward to repaying you, but most likely not in monetary form. Do you take goodwill?

I returned to San Diego in September and then promptly left on a ten day trip to Taiwan. The flight was financed by my friend ($1,400 value), and we crashed at our mom’s apartment/hostel for bad sons (infinite value). The total cost of that Taiwan trip was $450, as my friend and I tried to figure out why everything in Taiwan was so damn cheap.

My biggest expenses during that week was the cab from the airport, a roundtrip High Speed Rail ticket to Taichung, and a pair of pants and Chucks I bought for $50 apiece. Everything was just super cheap, which I’ll get into later. Wait, why delay, let's talk about my favorite subject, Taiwan, right now!

In October, after a swing through New York for a wedding, I moved to Taiwan permanently mid-month. That added a new column to my expenses, which was basically converting everything x30 for Taiwan dollars (NT$). Those first fifteen days as a Taipei resident affected my budget immediately in the food department, as for once I was way under in that category. Like waaaay under. It’s a magical place, this Ilha Formosa.

Unfortunately, my shopping went to 415% in October due to well, shopping. Things bought that month: $60 for two more white T-shirts from American Apparel (an important post about these tees coming soon), $140 for some books and another best portable Bluetooth speaker, $50 for one pair of black Chucks, and $180 for two jackets from Brooklyn Industries. The last two items were bought on a whim as I was sending my friend away on a taxi to the airport and just wandered into the Soho store because a bag caught my eye. Big mistake since I really shouldn’t have been spending any money on shopping at that point, but there was the perfect jean jacket I’d been looking for all year, plus this cowl front (women’s) jacket I just had to have. I justified the purchase by saying that I needed more outerwear for Taiwan's mild winters. American Giant hoodie, meet jean jacket and cowl front super awesomeness. Let's layer.

In November and December, I was in Taiwan full time, so the budget dialed back down, as I was paying rent again -- this time to Mom and she was charging me about $200 less than what I paid in NYC. In theory, I could’ve found a place for maybe half that, but my mom’s apartment is in a prime location and well, super nice. So, I was getting a deal. Even though my mom was not super delighted to have me living there. “But Mom, we have an empty apartment just sitting there!” didn’t go far. Neither did "And Jack Kerouac lived with his mother until he was thirty-six!" So yeah, $800 rent.

Somehow, despite living in a city full of cheap eats, my “dining out” category ended up being $500-600 a month again for some reason. That's about what I spent in San Diego during the early part of 2014. Of course, that amount in Taiwan represents eating out basically every meal. So that’s okay I guess. And of the meals that were pricey -- by Taiwan standards, which I’m marking off at $20+ -- it was basically all foreign stuff. Two American style diners, two Korean places, a Japanese hot pot, a brunch spot, and an Italian place. So basically I could bring my food expenses down to within budget range by just eating Chinese all day. Noodles, noodles, noodles!

Oh I guess my December numbers were a bit skewed by being home for ten days for the Wedding of the Millenium. Budget Club had its first members’ wedding as Georgemeer got hitched in late December. And I did the ceremony, for free! Of course, I also have given them nothing yet for their big day. No contribution to their honeymoon registry, no envelope of any color (much less red), no sentimental item, nothing old, nothing new, nothing borrowed, and they purchased my blue Topman suit for me so really, let’s just call it even?

I’m gonna deep dive into Taiwan for a minute, because I think some people might be curious about the cost of living here. You can also check out this informative blog post I found at Thousandth Girl about the cost of living in Taipei.

For me, November and December worked out to this: $20 a month for subways, $180 per month for taxis (25 rides at $7 average), and $1,300 total used in variable expenses. About the same as when I’m in San Diego actually. The difference is, when I’m hibernating back home, I don’t really do anything. Here, I was doing everything.

Until Chinese school started in December, I was basically running around all day long. For about $150 a month I went out a lot, hit up lots of random art shows, sang a few times, paid for Sunday basketball gym fees, did a hot springs trip, went to Kaoshiung twice, saw a Hello Kitty exhibit (twice!), and threw in an outdoor music festival, an escape the room event, and had monthly wine meetings at church.

Oh yeah, let’s talk about drinking. I went out a lot but still don’t drink too much. And the place I mostly frequent has no cover, although all the bigger spots to go dancing have about a $25 cover for guys. Anyway, a typical drink might cost $7-8 if you’re going regular stuff, and that’s about all I do. No fancy cocktails for this lush. A Heineken at my most frequented bar is NT$250, roughly $9, which is expensive for here. And back home too I guess. My total drinking bill for about fifteen nights out was about $250. Not bad I guess, in the big scheme of things.

I do have to say that in the coming year, I’m gonna stop saying “I don’t drink” because clearly I do. My drinking bill for 2014 came out to a shocking $1,100. What’s funny is that from January through May, I was at $80 total for drinking. And then June and July spiked up to $200 and $300 respectively, coinciding with the months when I was on the go and hanging out with, you know, humans. (Strangely my drinking bill for August was very low, which probably means everyone just paid for my drinks. Thanks everyone, I’ll get you back, I promise.) Anyway, I am now a $125 a month drinker. Call me an alcoholic.

The biggest “play” expense that stays about the same here is movies, which still cost about $10-15 a ticket. Everything else is cheaper. For example, Internet prices are a joke. A year’s worth of home wifi costs the same as a month back home. And for $25 a month you can get a disposable SIM for your smartphone with unlimited 3G Internet -- but very little minutes or texts. You don’t really need to text or call much so that’s like all you’re paying anyway.

To wrap up 2014, I was only 126% over budget this year! Spectacular, right? Especially when I was at 138% in 2013. Plus, my actual expenditures were much less. The huge overage wasn’t in food anymore, but shopping, vacation, and transportation.

• Shopping: 185%
• Transportation: 145%
• Play: 115%
• Food: 110%
• Misc: 25%
• Vacation: 950%

Clearly that “vacation” category needs to be revisited as that’s where I threw in all the flights and stuff I took, which aren’t all necessarily vacation related. Plus, what vacation? I'm always on vacation! Also, my auditors and I will be taking a look at the budget for “miscellaneous” too. (For the record, I took seven or so round trip flights this year. Which pales in comparison to say, my cousin.)

And now, using our semi-new “tags report" feature, a brilliant addition by AMR for 2014, we can see exactly where my variable expenses went in sum, as expressed in percentages.

• Dining Out: 25%
• Travel: 18%
• Shopping: 11%
• Taxis: 7%
• Play / Snacks: 5%
• Drinking / Gas: 4%
• Online / Movies / Misc: 3%
• Car / Grocery / Household / Public Trans / Beauty: 2%

Last note before I go. It’s been a banner hair year for me. I let my hair grow like a bush or five months and then went to a salon -- for the first time ever -- pre-Memorial Day. After getting the hair cut that changed the rest of my 2014, I then proceeded on a magical journey called “hair game.” I went from a good hair cut and buying some newfangled hair paste to somehow dropping $500 total for the year on haircuts and assorted products. Before this I’ve basically been cutting my own hair for the past fifteen years, with no product whatsoever. So the price differential between alternating between shaving my head and clippering my own shit was basically $60 a month. Pricey, no?

You should see my array of hair stuff now. It’s not just the three step hair dry and product use. There’s brushes, combs, plastic hair bands, elastic hair bands, hats for days you don’t want to do your hair, and most importantly, the hair dryer. Last year, my friend with always great hair asked for (and received) a $400 hairdryer for his birthday. I didn’t get it at the time. But now I do, I totally get it. The hair dryer is so key. And hair spray, my goodness, where was I in the Eighties when this stuff was all over the place?! Hairspray I love you.

I can't wait to shave my head.

Ways and Means: Jan - Jun 2014

A triumphant return to posting! Okay, not really. My newsletter idea went nowhere, and now I’m back for your favorite type of post: a budget recap. No, please, hold the clapping. While I’m no longer doing monthly recaps, I figured I better look at how the first six months of 2014 went. During the first half of 2013, I said I was living a 75k lifestyle (which dropped to 60k by the end of the year). Well, since I am making much less in 2014 -- no book money -- I had to adjust my budget accordingly. Basically I dialed down to a lifestyle that had me spending like I made 50k a year. A couple of years ago, during a conversation with friends in which we named our “ideal lifestyle price,” I said that I could live on 50k annually for the rest of my life. Clearly that’s not true.

Anyway, fixed expenses for the first half year came out to about $7,500, including $1,000 for rent, $250 for phone, $12 for Netflix, and um, that’s about it.  Also, that phone expense gets reimbursed from work, eventually. With about $1,000 left over for variable expenses, I distributed to my broad categories like this: Food ($500), Play ($150), Transportation ($150), Shopping ($100), Misc ($100).

Unfortunately, and without much big surprise, I overspent every month. Somehow, living at home didn’t even save me that much money. Or actually, it didn’t save me any money at all! Here’s the month by month breakdown. I’ll let you guess which month I made it back to New York. Also, these numbers don’t take into account about $2,000 in the Annual tab, which consisted of flights, a vacation to Palm Springs, and renewal of my MoviePass and Citibike.

• Jan: $1,350
• Feb: $1,400
• Mar: $1,000
• Apr: $1,700
• May: $1,650
• Jun: $2,400

If we go according to my budget, I have $8,000 to spend through the rest of 2014. Considering my last two months were both $2k+, I don’t think that’s going to work. The relative good news is that I’m not paying rent anymore, but that just meant I threw that money into my variable budget, as I’ve been traveling and hopping around a lot.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t food that’s been killing me. January it was shopping, which I exceeded by 200%; February was 150% over on shopping and play (a trip to Sea World, a new router for the house); March was shopping again when I got another tattoo; April was a doozy as I vaulted over in transportation, food, and shopping, which basically was due to a ten day trip to San Francisco; May was a disaster for shopping as I went 450% over with expenses such as clothing, a Costco run, a salon haircut that cost a pretty penny, and Electric Kittiez glasses. And let’s not talk about June, which was the month I was in New York, when I went over in every category, including huge in both food and shopping. Not to mention a crapload of transportation costs which was taxis and Ubers.

The good news is...well, there is no good news. The news is that I need more money, but then again, who doesn't?

Budget Club Mega-Recap

OVERVIEW
This is it, the moment we have all been waiting for. A year’s worth of data to go through and analyze. Budget Club Year One is over and in the books (archives here). It’s an exciting time for everyone, right?! The other day AMR taught me some fancy Google Doc moves, like double sorting and stuff like that, and now I’m ready to use the updated and revamped 2014 Budget Club spreadsheet like a pro. That’s all stuff to come though, in a separate post . This mega-post is all about 2013 and how much damn money I spent.

First off, 2013 was financially a banner year. I had normal job money, I had book money, I had various random income drop in here and there. The last time I felt this rich was on unemployment, when I was paying no rent and grabbing that taxpayer cash. Basically I lived like I wanted and while I didn’t have all that much, I was able to not think a lick about money. That’s the dream right? To not have to think about money?

Things change when you live in New York though, plus that paying rent thing. For the first six months or so of 2013, I lived recklessly. Rent, bills, food, shopping, whatever. I felt buoyed with cash cash everywhere. It was the go go months and I literally took a screenshot of my bank account back in March or April because it was the highest number I think it’s ever been. I can’t find the screenshot now but it was something like $15k. Fast forward to later in the year, like a smash cut from Wolf of Wall Street and there was a moment there when my bank account was in the single digits. Ah the highs and lows. If only that “five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred” from Rent referred to dollars and not minutes…

EXPENSES
During 2013, I spent roughly $47,000. (Shockingly, this was just $200 or so off from what one of my co-budgetters expended. We are excited to compare notes because basically we lived the same gold plated life, apparently.) My 2013 budget should have had me spending around $34k, which means I actually went 138% over budget for the year. If you will recall from my six month recap, I was headed in this disappointing direction already. I was actually surprised at that +38% number, I thought I was much further over.

The good news is that I cut my spending by 33% for July through December and went from living the 70k lifestyle to the 55k lifestyle (I’m just multiplying how much I spent by 133% to get to those numbers, which is a rough take home estimate post-taxes). Overall, my 2013 was spent living like I made about $62k. That doesn’t take into account any savings, any hospital bills, any pre-existing debts, etc. Also I have no dependents, no student loans, no car payments, and don’t pay for my dental or health insurance. Let me remind you that the median household income for 2013 is $51k. How do people live? Hell if I know. I felt like I lived pretty basic but damn, 60k+ is squarely middle class right? I may have to revise my life goal of making 50k from here till eternity. Clearly I better up that number so I can continue sipping on champagne when I'm thirsty

My fixed expenses included only rent, phone bills, utilities, and Netflix. All of that basically stayed steady at about $1,250 per month. Also I got a reimbursement for some of those phone bills from work. So basically it’s just rent and streaming movies for stuff I gotta pay down each month. As for my variable budget, I adjusted it as the year went along, from a high of around $1,800 to the year end cut down mark of about $1,300. Average variable budget for 2013 was $1,600.

So that’s what I budgeted. How much did I actualy spend? Well, I averaged out to $2,700 per month for variable expenses. (Where did this extra grand come from? We’ll address that below in the income section.) Last January was a doozy as I spent 250% of my variable budget, which started the year off on the wrong foot obviously. I wish I knew what all that money was spent on but sadly I only started the monthly Ways and Means columns in February. My best guess was money used to break my phone contract and get on Verizon post-mugging, plus courtside Celtics vs Clippers tickets. Maybe I also went on an online shopping spree. How many hoodies can one person get though? Whatever, January 2013 cost me $4,500 in variable expenses and that was by far the high mark of the year. April and June were high spending months, and my best non-spending months were September through November, which coincided with when I realized I was running out of money. For the record, I only hit my budget allocation once, in October, coming under by three dollars.

The rest of my year-to-date expenses, well, it wasn’t pretty. I averaged $3,950 spent per month. My low was about $2,600 and the high was, well, more than double that. I wish I could tell you that my expenditures was a downward trend but it’s not like that. I guess the good news is that I spent $20.5k over the last six months as opposed to $26.8k the first six. Progress!

It helped that I basically I stopped going to shows, musicals, concerts, etc. by about mid-summer, instead settling into lots of movies and um, lots of movies. Also, it must be said that having a girlfriend was a great help. We traded off paying for lots of meals, she paid for many fun activities (Wicked musical for one), lots of leisure time was spent just hanging around, and when in doubt we could just lay around and read/watch things. I don’t know how much more or less it costs to be single but being in a relationship sure can have some financial advantages — a compelling number one reason to marry! By the end of the year I was definitely asking “how much is that?” a lot more, and declined lots of events because I was brokeness.

Play and travel came in neck and neck with about $4k spent in each. Play encompassed too many categories for me to accurately dig into. Anything that remotely had to do with “playing” I slotted in this category. Movies, nights out, museums, video games bought, whatever. Play is the stuff that life’s made of so it’s hard to turn too inquisitive an eye toward the stuff contained within. But travel, goodness! I didn’t budget much travel at all in the beginning of the year but now I see that it’s a necessity. Even though I stayed in New York most of the year, and didn’t live bicoastally or tri-city, I somehow dropped four grand on travel. Somehow that’s all from nine months too, as from January to March I only spent a paltry $160 in the travel category.

Once I started flying around though, it was big dollops of money everywhere. Puerto Rico in April, Vegas and San Diego in June, plus a short jaunt San Francisco for summer camp. September was another trip to SF for a variety of things, including a flight that I didn’t take and couldn’t get reimbursed. To end the year, there was a flight home from New York in December and another trip (one way driving) to the Bay for New Year’s. That’s actually a pretty small travel size for me. Just five trips or so. Aha, I see what I did here, I added the fees for Camp Grounded and houseboating to “travel.” In the future those type of things should go into another category. I guess it could more accurately be filed under “play” or maybe “vacation."

Let’s talk about transportation and all those taxis and subway rides I took. One of the main reasons I wanted to live in New York was to be away from cars and while I accomplished that, there was still some $3,700 spent on shuttling around. That’s about $300 a month and likely equal to a car payment I guess. Well, minus insurance or parking spaces and gas and maintenance and all that jazz. Okay, I don’t feel so bad about dumping all that money into taxis, as ridiculous as it sounds. Used as a car replacement, it’s almost cheap. Almost.

I spent a mysterious $2,150 on “miscellaneous.” I don’t even know what that means. Next year I should aim to have as little miscellaneous as possible. The 2014 budget sheet will help with that. Hint: category tags are coming for the new version. Get geeked. And looking into percentage overage, “gifts” was the winner here with 515% overage. I think that’s because I expected/budgeted out $300 but somehow spent over fifteen hundred dollars. What did I end up giving people? I have no idea! Apparently some people received things from me, sorry it I didn’t get you anything. Next year?

I’m feeling very transparent right now so here’s the basic chart of what my expenses broke down to, the variable ones anyway. As you can see, dining out took up the majority of my money. It almost eclipses the next three categories altogether. Yes, eating out cost me more than play, travel, and taxis combined. Also, a quick look at the chart reveals that I took more taxis than I bought things. That’s pathetic. You can’t wear/read/keep taxis. You can forgo the easy transportation and buy a Macbook at the end of the year. Then again, the taxi is just soooo convenient.

Also, I added up dining out, groceries, and snacks. Here’s what I came up with: over 365 days, it cost me $35 a day to feed myself. That’s outrageous. If I could halve that number I’d be so loaded. It seems like I should have eaten better for $35 a day. Hum. Oh well, I guess expenses are done here. It’s making me sick. Let’s take a look at how I funded all this excess.

INCOME
The first three months of the year, I made around $3K, then it dipped to half that for two months, before stabilizing at $2300 for the rest of the year. How can one live on $2300 in New York you ask? You can’t! Haha. Basically my year-to-date income versus expenses resulted in a deficit of $19k. “Wait so you spent more than twice what you made? What is going on? Please tell me the secret!” The short answer is: book money (and other sources of income). Between last year’s book deal, a bestseller bonus, a few websites I did, and a year end bonus from work, I am basically at zero dollars for the year. Also there was a small tax return stuck somewhere in there.

My “budget” wasn’t really accurate as my income did not equal my expenses. Basically every month I was drawing from my savings. That’s the entire crux of the argument we’d been having all year. My normal income is from my jobby job, and then there’s income on top of it that I don’t really record as it just goes into my bank account. Auditor George has a huge problem with this, as it seems to defeat the spirit of budgetting but I assured her that this is a foolproof system. My old accounting strategy used to be “Is there money in my account? Check ATM for yes and cry inside for no.” I haven’t had a credit card in years, don’t have savings stashed away anywhere, so it’s WYSIWYG for my finances. Simple! I guess it hasn’t evolved much past that, but at least Budget Club has helped me track every penny.

Projecting into next year, my salary will stay the same but there’s no boost from outside income unless I can do something about it. Thus I need to get a book or something sold, as well as look for some other monies. Oh I could also try to grow the business too, that might be smart. Do more work at my current job, what a novel idea!

Things to Be Proud Of / Things to Work On
From January to December, I slashed $500 off my monthly variable budget. It seems somewhat conceivable that I could live on that lowered budget too because most of it is dining out bills. Time to learn to cook, or to just revert to eating corn/rice/tuna/pepper again. No, I must not do that, I’m a grown ass person who should eat things I enjoy. Bring on the Chinatown noodles and cheap dumplings. Five for a dollar!

I also think the best thing to do is to only do fun things when I make the extra money. My work salary should cover living expenses and stuff like that, while side hustle should fuel everything else. Vacations, shopping sprees, trips to the Equestria, all of it should come from an external place. Also: savings. I guess in theory I should try to save some money. They say that even saving $50-100 a month is something but I’ve always maintained that a thousand dollars won’t cover a catastrophe anyway so why not eat that double dessert now? The thing not to do is spend 25% of your expenditures on dining out though. I seriously spent just as much on eating out as I did on either play/travel/taxis or shopping/misc/grocery/gifts/household/subway/snacks/gas combined. Take your pick which option you’d prefer. I guess there’s a reason why the first tip for saving money is to start cooking. Sigh. I love eating out too.

Overall it was also good to have a sense of what I could be saving, or what a cut back on say, shopping or household might result in. It also helps to think that if I could make an extra $500 on something, what that could directly translate into. All in all, Budget Club was a fantastic experience and I loved recording every transaction. I started off using a combination of the Google Doc plus Mint but soon left Mint by the wayside to just use the Google Doc. It was more precise and easier to customize, plus having other Budget Clubbers be able to look at it was motivating. Here’s to another year of “better log it!” and keeping each other accountable for (over-)expenditures. Budget Club forever!

Ways and Means: December

Before I do an end of the year mega-recap, I thought I’d better get December down for posterity. Basically I blew through a wad of December money, despite being home in San Diego for half of it. All in all, the 165% over budget I went was higher than any month since June. And even though some of that change can be accounted for due to my lowering of the budget, the actual expenditure was still higher than any month since August. It would be nice to say that it was the holidays and gifts and all that, but I’m a Grinch and don’t exchange presents with anyone. So that extra +65% didn’t exactly go anywhere

Apparently I did a lot of playing in December as it was just "shots shots shots shots” all month long. Okay not really, but there seem to have been a lot more alcohol consumed this month than in the recent past. List of places I apparently paid for drinks: Brooklyn Bowl, Summit Bar, Pour George, Ippudo West, R Bar, Sugarland, Dada. I wonder how many Pepcid ACs I took…

As usual, dining out slayed me, to the tune of 170%. I also went 130% on snacks, but made that money back by only spending 45% on groceries. Regardless, that dining out number was super high, spinning me back to the days of mid-summer where I went over 1K on food regularly. Ouch. While I’m here, let’s talk about this food replacement thing. Soylent is a nutrient drink that's designed to replace your regular meals, all at the cost of three bucks per shake. I have long said that I’d love to take a food pill and this looks like the next best thing. Is it safe, effective, useful? Who knows. Should I find out in 2014? Probably. Clearly this is an idea that strikes the fancy of many, as their crowdfunding campaign raised more than one million dollars.

During December, I also went 200% on travel, most of it caused by a horrendous trip to the airport that ended up in the cabbie trying to take me for a ride. Seventy five dollars later, we settled our differences and I’ll know to stick to the Filipino company forever -- my normal Brooklyn to airport cab ride is half that. Arecibo, I don’t know why I ever left  you. Also, since I barely was going to make my plane, I paid ten dollars to jump the security queue at JFK and then my huge second bag of check-in luggage was another forty bucks. When you fly, those baggage fees are nasty and I kind of forget to account for them. Lesson learned.

I spent over 400% on both taxis and miscellaneous. The taxis were unfortunate, but December got a little cold for bike riding so it was taxi there, taxi there. As for “miscellaneous,” most of it was just a Time Warner bill that needed to be paid off, so while the percentage overage seems high, it wasn’t all that big. At the end of December, I gave up my apartment in Brooklyn, which should result in lower household expenses. I’m paying rent in Chinatown now, albeit at a lower fee, which means more cash to spend next year! Anyhow, onto the end of year review, which I'm super excited to do.

Also, I have no idea which of us Budget Clubbers won December as everyone fell apart in recording due to the holidays and we haven't had the chance to compare notes. The exciting news is that we're about to head into a new year and hopefully another year of spreadsheeting!

• ATM Visits: Nine, once with fees
• Dining out: Thirty eight times, high of $60, average of $22
• Snacks: Sixteen, high of $24, average of $8.25
• Cabs: Eleven, average of $18.50
• Shopping: Globe cruiser skateboard, website URL renewals, Hello Kitty USB dongle, a graphic novel, one book
• Play: Six or seven nights out, one karaoke, a NYE party ticket, three movies
• Biggest Expenses: Costco ($105), Cab to JFK ($75), Southwest ticket ($75), Sharaku Japanese dinner ($60), skateboard ($55)