So today I want to talk about…
On Thursday I wrote in my journal about how I misspend my money. Then later in the day I went on to misspend my money. Yes. I started the day saying I need to spend less and ended the day spending £50. I bought shower gel, from Lush, a Thermos, and some food.
…thermos, meaning hot, if you don’t drop it…
Michael Flanders (Introduction to First and Second Law)
The shower gel is a luxury item as I could pick up something cheaper. I like Lush, not sponsored, but I could save on that. The Thermos is more of a necessary item. It means that I can take a hot meal to work. I have another one but it never held heat between making the meal and eating the meal. I now realise that that might have been due to my lack of understanding of thermodynamics and having insufficient liquid. The last part of the £50 was spent on food and this is my Achilles heal.
Ah, beer, my one weakness. My Achilles heal if you will.
Homer Simpson (The Simpsons)
The problem with food is that it is nice. I admit it might also fill a void but I don’t want to talk about my mental state. So having a treat of one sort or another seems like such a small thing. It is individual but have you ever sat and thought about it collectively?
If I spend £20 a week on unnecessary food that is £1040 over the year. When you are standing at the pretzel shop, about to spend £3ish, that figure seems so far away. It is true though if I ditch the teats I could save enough to go on holiday. Travel is going to make up the vast majority of my bucket list. I could practically list every county in the world on that list. So why don’t I do it? Why don’t more people do it?
…because it is such a nebulous future. Incidentally the picture above isn’t a nebular but look pretty lights. The pretzel, doughnut, chai, or milkshake can be in my mouth now. The holiday will be a year away and it is difficult not to equate the deprivation of a treat now to seeing something amazing in the future. On Thursday I failed to follow through. Will tomorrow, my next day off, be any better? I can’t say. It may only result in me eating the same stuff only this time feeling guilty about it. Only time will tell. Perhaps I just need a budget.
I am obviously not the first person to put forward this idea. Some people, I am sure, spend a lot more than I do. For the time being I will probably just be feeling guilty. Still I hold this fact in my mind. Even spending just £0.30 a day on a doughnut or some such thing would be £109 over the year. That could be put towards a flight to somewhere. So can I avoid temptation no doughnuts and a trip instead? Well not so far. I need to work on it though.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
I have a Patreon page. I hope you will consider supporting this blog: https://www.patreon.com/unstableorbit
Unstable Orbit 