Opening the Wallet

Welcome to Diary of a Wallet! My name is Hannah and I'll be trying to take a daily tour through my wallet, checkbook and Quicken accounts included, to track my spending, allowing the world to see where I'm frugal, where I'm not, and where I go overboard in any one direction. What's my goal here? Well, I'd like to share my spending habits for two purposes: 1) maybe, just maybe, someone else who is also trying to save money and get (or stay) out of debt will find something worthwhile they can take away, be it an idea, a bit of inspiration, or even a good laugh; 2) I'll have a public forum in which to tell ALL (it's a diary after all) of what I'm doing financially, and readers will have the opportunity to tell me where I've gone wrong and where I've gone right. Why am I doing this? I want to find like-minded people, those of us that want to be debt free, that want to have wads of cash in savings, and fat investment accounts but still have trouble sticking by the decisions we know are the right ones. Who am I? I'm nobody, really. I don't have a degree in finance or economics, or at all for that matter. I'm a divorced mother of two teenaged daughters, trying like heck to make it all work for me and them. I work full time and try to keep up with their lives, while rebuilding my own after divorce. Why should you care? Really, there is no reason, unless you WANT to hear about someone else's wallet. So... stick around... come back tomorrow... maybe we can start a good conversation. Oh sorry. Maybe you want to know what's in the wallet today, huh. $10 cash 1 debit card Receipts for:

• $34.98 Dinner out
• $11.65 Smokes
• $102.00 Fillings for me and LG (LG is my youngest daughter)
• $100.00 Cash for the recent Arts Festival (this was a planned expense)
• $ 22.11 Gasoline

There are some other money things I want to share, but for today, opening day, we'll start with the contents of the wallet itself and move on in time.

Dinner out... I probably shouldn't have done that one, or I shouldn't have done it to quite that extent. But allow me to explain: there was this soccer game see, and the girls went into OT, and then on to Penalty Kicks to determine the game. (Sadly after all that time and effort, they still lost.) By the time they were finished, all three of us were hungry and I offered dinner out, knowing I didn't have anything planned to cook at home. I was originally thinking about McDucks or Rareby's but then BG suggested Panera... well, I'm not a huge fan of Panera, and it was a little higher up the price spectrum than I really wanted to go... so I suggested Pops. It's a one of a kind place and a fun little treat when we're up that way and we were maybe 2-3 miles away at the time. The really sad thing? We've been there twice, and I've yet to be impressed with the food.

Smokes: Yeah, I know there are savings galore to be had here if I'll only quit! The better news? I'm at half the daily consumption now that I was during 2008, so I AM working on it. You'll have opportunities to yell at me for it later!

Fillings: I'll see a portion of this money back as the Ex is required by the decree (and has complied thus far) to pay about 2/3 of any of LG's medical (and a few other) expenses.

Cash: A couple years ago I decided I was tired of going to community events and not having anything to spend, even to the point of picking the really cheap food and still feeling guilty about the $20-30 I had begrudgingly spent. So I planned ahead. I use Quicken's calendar feature to plan my expenses in advance, so last year, I put in a $100 expense for the Arts Festival, as well as one for the Medieval Faire, and one for the State Fair. I won't have loads to spend, but the girls and I can eat and drink without guilt about what it's doing to my finances, and maybe even get a souvenir* of some sort.

Gasoline: Self-explanatory, plus I'm not ready to ride the bus yet.

So that's it. Oh, the $10 cash is actually leftover from that $100 AF, so I'm stretching it out a while. And the debit card garners 1 point/$2 spent via signature transactions (aka use it like a credit card).

I think that's enough for today, but we'll talk more later, okay?

hh

*I'm not a big fan of souvenirs, particularly as they're usually just stuff that will grow dust later, but something like a henna tattoo or an addition to a collection work well as souvenirs too.