The title of this post underlines pretty clearly my current lack of creativity (being that it’s stolen from Lena Dunham), but it’s also a perfect opening for the most abused topic somebody could ever write about: new year’s resolutions.
I don’t want to annoy you with the complete list of things I’d like to get done this year (which, if you insist, includes stuff like learning how to play the ukulele or visit Belgrade) but I’d rather focus on a concrete, adult and important goal: taking control of my financial situation.
Since I moved here, everything that happens between Yay! I got paid!! and Shit! I have 5 Euros left! is a blurry place in space and time. In the beginning it wasn’t actually difficult to track everything down: my first salary was hardly enough to buy me a Club Mate and a chocolate bar.
Now that they pay me more (and still every month I risk bankruptcy) , I’m researching online some new ways to manage your money. There’s this online platform that basically allows you to have an overview of everything that goes in and out your bank account(s) and to divide your expenses in categories.
I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it turns out – surprise surprise – that I spend dissipate most of my money in food and alcohol. I don’t really buy clothes unless it’s absolutely necessary and I’ve drastically reduced the outcomes for concerts and cinema lately, so it really looks like everything I spend ends up around my hips.
It’s not my fault if unagi-maki softly whispers in my ears every time I walk by a sushi place. And it’s not my fault if things in the fridge get wasted without me knowing. And It’s definitely not my fault if I live in a city where you can order delivery food online for 4,95 Euros (plus 5 cents to tip the delivery guy). That should be illegal. I took the Kinder Menu (pizza, orange juice and a little toy surprise) at Joey’s Pizza so many times that my flat looks like a toy factory.
I feel fatfatfat, like Jenna Maroney after she had to play every night in the Mystic Pizza Musical, but it’s time to stop this. Since I’m clearly spending too much money in restaurants and grocery shopping, the logic solution to this is to be more careful when shopping at the supermarket, avoid delivery food and going to the restaurant only once in a while become anorexic.
Eating disorders are so gonna pay that trip to Serbia!
Don’t do a food diet or you will look like Patty of Ab Fab (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3-OT8vaOEtg/Tvl7JjA80SI/AAAAAAAAAfs/GV0DzoVVeyk/s1600/PATSY%2BSTONE.jpg) !!
I am also in the process of optimizing my financial situation. My problem is different: I call it ”viciousness of local companies”. It is like they get the right to suck your money unless you are super scrupulous.
They send you boring emails entitled in a neutral way (”latest information”, ”offer”…), which turn out to be consisting in a compulsory change of the price of your contract. Unless you saw the stuff telling you to react and express yourself against it within 4 weeks right at the bottom of a mail which sounds like the whole chapter of a book in German. In a mail that disappears among 100 other spam mails from them. For French people the word ”offer” means: ”offer”. Not ”price change”. Got trapped once this year by this small interpretation problem._.
The bank tried as well, but I blocked it- I am a warrior now.
Then I am sure my main problem is called chocolate. Did you try cutting expenses there? I looked into the costs: it infers. In fact, chocolate is really expensive stuff, including Milka.
Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t give up on chocolate, it would be like stop breathing.
Anyway, I didn’t know about the viciousness of local companies….I guess I’ll have to start reading those email!