Cooking for one is riduculously wasteful. Of time and resources. Making two meals of every cooking session is a great thing to do. Dinner is also tomorrow's lunch. That's making the best of a poor situation.


Alas, a live-in LOVER is also the better solution to the meal and cooking dilemma.


Where in God's Name are all the suitable, sexy, homo domesticated lovers?!?!

Sounds like a good start.:cheers:

Writing down what you spend can be a real eye-opener but it sounds like you already have a good idea about that. I bring my own lunch to work and don't eat out as much as I used to. I do that more for watching what I eat than for watching what I spend. If you like to eat out, keep doing it but only half as much. Every little bit helps.:)

At home, waiting for someone to show up for dinner.

I don't know if this would work ... but for someone who has literally frozen his credit cards to restrict access, it just might.

Someone mentioned earlier (was it Dread Pirate Roberts?) that we all adapt to the level of income we have, and keep adjusting as that adjusts. Any increase in income is matched by a natural increase in expenses.

I used to live on giant bags of rice and huge bags of popcorn that I swiped from the movie theater I worked at. And at each progressive step of more income since then, my expenses have kept rising pace.


So ... what if Gemini Cricket freezes some of his money (not literally this time). Socks it away, diverts it before it even hits his bank account. I believe Alex suggested this earlier. Perhaps if you can fool yourself, and more importantly, fool the universe into believing you have less money than you do ... maybe you can live just fine on less money (if "less" is your new income), and use the diverted funds to pay down the debt you'd like to see paid off faster.



It's very tough to fool the universe about money. Just as it always sees that your expenses match any rising income ... the reverse is also true. Ever notice how any windfall is quickly taken away by, oh, a car repair suddenly necessary, or a health issue that didn't exist the day before the windfall? Oh, the universe knows ... and is not fooled too easily.


But it might be worth a try.




OR - - you can forget the live-in LOVER ... and go for the SUGAR DADDY!

Apparently there is a Sugardaddy.com somewhere on the internets. I should check it out. ;)

My workplace allows us to divert our funds to many different accounts. I may just do that.

I'm thinking of doing that once one of my student loan payments goes away in a couple of months. It's a low interest loan, so I haven't been in a hurry to pay it off more than the regular payment schedule, but when it goes away, that's about $70 a month.

I do!


Yes, I've been hand tracking just my daily spending. I keep a notepad in my purse. It's amazing and quite an eye opener how much $$ can flow through your hands without even thinking of it. I'm budgeting too, GC, so I know what you are going through. Now that I am watching the cash flow, it's amazing how long a $20 can sit in the wallet. Of course, bringing lunch to work really helps too!

If you are trying to pare down your cc debt, simple rule of thumb that is working for me. Line up your cards by amount owed and by interest rate, pay on all of them, but on the lowest card, pay it off as fast as you can. Then, take the $$ you were paying on that card and apply it to the next one up on the list, and so on. I'm still a mess, but I've pared 20k of debt down in 2 years to 5k now. So it can be done.

Exactly, keep your mind in the land of plenty mode. But, I also do not use credit now unless I absolutely must (like the car thing earlier in the year). If I do not have the cash on hand, I'm not going to buy it. You do not have to sacrifice everything, simply not going to Starbucks once a day during the work week saves me $20 a week, which in turn allows me to go out to a movie and dinner if I want to or a lunch out with the gang at the office. A fair trade, to me.

I feel your pain and am rooting for you too! I can see the end of the tunnel when it comes to my cc debt, you can get there too. As the not always so wise Mr. Micawber said, "Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds, result misery, Annual income 20 pounds, annual income 19 pounds, result happiness" Of course, he didn't take that advice to heart, he only gave it to David Copperfield. It's advice I've been trying to take to heart.

I'm doing this now with the $$ that was diverted to VA for the car payment. Except, I am trying to save it. Like it's not really there. I really should burn the debit card for that account.

Why did you divert funds to Virginia?