So last night, we met PW briefly. She goes to the same hair dresser the past..... 18 years but her hair dresser moves about; perhaps relocated a few times over the course of 18 years. Currently, her hair dresser is at the East, so she comes here when her haircut is due, and she would call us for dinner or coffee or whatever, just you know, see each other in the flesh as I would put it.
PW invited us to join her at Gili Islands, she's going there sometime end July for about 2 weeks.
(photos not mine; Googled from Gili images)
It felt lousy to be turning her down. I would love to go! Although I don't scuba dive, I would have loved to snorkel. Some more its underwater inhabitants are still in abundance.
So what happened to me?! I am short of free-spending money and that is not a nice feeling. That's not the end of the world lah you know. It's just not a nice feeling.
I had a wake-up call regarding money. It is running from one hand to the other, still, it is not enough. Had been eating into my reserves until I had to cash out my $1 gold coins last month to give Maricar an advanced salary as her hubby was relocating to Dubai to work and her kids' new school term began. Imagine I used my year end BD present of $700 to pay her salary. (no, I didn't pay her in coins, if you're wondering. I banked in the coins and gave her cash). I will have no gold coin for myself this November and that would be a first in my 12-year-long tradition. What's happening to me!
I hate to budget. I am a free spender. Is that so wrong?
Perhaps not wrong but surely something's wrong now isn't it? And I would surely need to be more conscious of my spending.
So I check my big bill items and aim to strike of unnecessary stuff.
Turned out there's not much I could strike off.
What?
School fees, school bus fees, helper salary, levy, insurance, enrichment classes, utilities, grocery, transportation; exceeding my monthly salary. I might be scaling back on one Chinese class but that's about all I would scale back. Haven't even include some allowance for my mom, and all sorts of occasional occasions like BDs and condolences.
Bren has two more modules at ITE, completing end of this year. Meantime the market outlook is gloom. Still, he is taking up another security supervisory course now as we're talking. He says he can go work at the airport.
So as I was mulling over how to execute an overhaul of my budget, I came across two bloggers who have had some success with their budgeting projects.
The first is by a 30-year-old lady, she banned herself from shopping for ONE, WHOLE, YEAR. Plus, she gave away all the things she had over-bought. Her idea is to be a conscious consumer and to be free from materialism. The first habit she kicked was takeout coffees (like Starbucks). It was really tough for her in the beginning.
The other blog is about a couple with a
baby, they say if they could figure out their freaking budget and still
go on holidays, so could anyone.
So how now brown cow? What can I do?
Let's start by........................................(shivers) ** DRUM ROLL PLEASE! ***
Stashing my credit card & bank card in my office!
Let them not see daylight at least until the break of a new moon.
(shivers and bites fingernails)
Stop shopping one whole year only? I think I stopped for years. What's Starbucks?
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