It's Tuesday... Where'd my money go?

I realize that I intend to do this post on Sundays, but my parents were here for the weekend. So, I'm doing it on Tuesday instead. That makes this "week" long and next "week" short. Oh well, it's blog, I'll do whatever I want. Deal with it. =)

June 8 - 16, 2009

$7.01 - Walgreens - Drinks for at work. Grr. It's a dirty habit, but I need an afternoon drink at work. But, I got $2 cash for buying a drink for a friend that didn't go to the store, so really, it's only $5. We'll balance out the cash at the end.

$9.28 - Walgreens - UGH. Snacks and drinks for work. Seriously? I'm a snack-whore, I guess.

$23.44 - Groceries - Reasonable.

$15.60 - 7-11 - Gas for the car.

$13.31 - 7-11 - A drink for the road and two packs of cigarettes. UNACCEPTABLE! I'm shaming myself right now. Really? I didn't need to spend $10.49 on DEATH! Plus, now I know that I can get my drink from the grocery store at 5/$5 instead of paying $2.19 at 7-11. That's way better! Live and learn.

$31.13 - PetCo - My cat's not been feeling well, so this is extra cat expenses, but worth it if he'll just poop already.

$10.45 - Ikea - Probably unnecessary. $2 on lions (I would have bought more, but I only found 4 in the bin). Lions are a really bad habit I should break. They're only $0.49 each, but seeing as how I have about 400 of them... I've spent roughly $200 on little stuffed lions, and that's retarded! I also got some more hangers (8 hangers for $4, not a bad deal), but I've been living without these extra hangers until now, so I probably could have gotten by without them. But I'll use them. This is what happens when the driver of the carpool wants to stop places on the way home. I have no impulse control. I'd have spent $20 on lions, if I could have found 40 of them. Retarded!!

But that's it for Debit card transactions. Not bad for 9 days. ($110.22) Okay adding it up, it sounds like a ridiculous amount of money to spend on things, when really only $70.17 were necessary. I could have not spent $40.05. Again, something to work on.

Now for the cash. Per last week, I had $7 cash.

Cash In:
$45 - ATM withdrawl
$2 - from JP for a drink
$5 - from mother for airport parking

Cash Out:
$6.50 - Monday Lunch
$7 - Tuesday Lunch
$3 - Tuesday Drink ($2.33 $0.67 into change bucket at home)
$6 - Wednesday Lunch
$7.50 - Thursday Lunch
$4.50 - Thursday Airport Parking
$4 - Monday parking at work
$2.50 - Monday Airport Parking
$7 - Tuesday Lunch
$2 - Tuesday Ikea hot dog and drink

Cash in hand now: $3

TOTAL CASH IN: $52
TOTAL CASH OUT: $50

I should have only $2 in cash, and I know that I paid to park at work on Sunday (I don't remember how much). So, I'm off somewhere. I'm still not used to keeping track of cash).

TOTAL MONEY IN: $107.36
TOTAL MONEY OUT: $244.64

The totals reflect additions and subtractions from today's mail, and those transactions aren't listed above (mainly because I wasn't sure where to list them. (+$55.36 and -$84.42)

Seriously, no more frivolous spending. **kicks self in face** But really, June is more about keeping track of things so I know how and where to change things for July and the future.

An interesting day at the mail box.

So, I was planning on making some of my posts that I'm behind on tonight after I take care of some things. But I was so excited about the mail, that I had to share this before I did anything else.

At first I was worried, because I saw two envelopes from some random lawyerly sounding place. I immediately jumped to worry and dread, because I'm a very nervous and high-strung person. I opened the first one and this is what it read...

Dear Consumer:

The Federal Trade Commission...filed a lawsuit against...(long list of names). The complaint charged that the defendants were billing consumers without authorization for alleged visits to websites. Consumers saw charges on their credit card bills under the names...(long list of names). The defendants bought access to lists from a bank that provided the account numbers for more than 3 million valid Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Rather than use the lists to confirm that potential customers had valid cards, the defendants debited the cards for web site services the cardholder had never used.

The unauthorized charges were incurred by you many years ago, and you may no longer have the credit card that was charged. The enclosed check is your share of the funds collected.

...(more details that are irrelevant here).

At the bottom is attached a check for $27.68! And I got two identical letters! That's $55.36! And that's totally awesome. The sad thing is that I probably never noticed the unauthorized charges way back when. I had really bad habits, and even though I was scraping by to pay the minimums each month, I never took the time to look over statements too carefully. So now, I get a little extra money this month!

Unfortunately, this is canceled out by a third piece of mail. A statement from the city for 2008 taxes for $84.42. Luckily, the tax is based off of the value of your car, and I drive a piece of crap. So, the tax could be a LOT worse. And I have these mana from heaven checks to help offset the tax. So I'm only out $29.06 instead of the whole $84.42.

Plus, I got a late birthday present DVD from a friend, so it really was a banner day of mail today. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to some more posting tonight. I still did to do the "Where'd my money go?" and "History of My World Part III" posts. Fingers crossed that that actually happens tonight.