Savings and Rant

I'm on this "egad my Visa bill arrived and it's high - like on drugs (and bucks) - so I'm never going to spend any money again or until next month, whichever comes first" kick.

You know, a month is a long time.

Some efforts I've been making:

• Bringing certain foods from home to supplement the breakfast and lunch I buy at work. Yes, I know, it's financial suicide buying your breakfast and lunch, but it's the way I (harried working householder and mother) get out my door every morning with time to walk to work. And I do have strategies for buying v healthy and less $$ lunches. Gist is, I've cut my daily food budget in half for the foreseeable future. And while that isn't cold turkey (hahaha - get it?), it's an adequate start in my books.

• Not buying discretionary items: No checking out that new B Brown gel eyeliner till the restriction lifts, using my "no longer fave but still in the medicine cabinet" face products because the fab ones have run out recently, avoiding the cheese boutique with the awesome imported things from Italy.

• Not going out for dinners out (at least not $ ones)... Friday night restaurants with friends will be replaced by at home dining with friends. It's a lot more work but the food is generally better. And the atmosphere rocks.

So, I've been going along like this for a while - a few days now - and it's good. I'm one of those people who likes to spend up to a delicate tipping point (until she feels like she's losing sight of the financial picture) and then pulls it back from the edge. I think of myself as someone who spends hard and then saves hard (oh, who are we kidding, maintains the accounts as they must be maintained hard) but when I look at some of my blog friends (Enc, Sal) I recognize that my hallmark is not doing anything particularly extreme. In as much as I will retreat from the spend, I don't like to give it all up.

Intriguingly, that's my approach to eating too...

Soon, you're going to see a post in which I show you a great lunch I bought (fear not, it's a take out salad) and a new item of clothing. I'm not on a ban, as I've advised, though even if I were, it wouldn't make me an evil failure to buy when I'm trying not to. I carefully weighed the implications of each purchase, and I am entirely comfortable with the cost to benefit ratio. I paid cash and I will consider foregoing something else for the pleasure of having purchased these things.

I mention this, in part, because I've been stunned to learn that my blog friends who have undertaken the "long term ban" methodology - a worthy and challenging one indeed - have been occasionally harangued in commentary for having "admitted to" their lapses.

That blows my mind. I mean, I love hearing about the exploits of others - the fun challenges to which they subject themselves, the lessons they learn, the wisdom they can impart. It's how I live a whole bunch of experiences without having to go there myself! I like to think a couple of you may do the same when hearing about my trip to Mtl or cooking a new meal. (And might I say that I am blessed in that, to date, my every commenter has been lovely and positive.)

What I can't imagine is anyone offering up judgment and criticism to someone who's been open enough to share his or her methodology. It's pissing me off.

I suspect that hundreds of people have found subtle (if not gross) ways to reconsider and amend their acquisition habits for having read the "shopping ban bloggers". That's a public service peeps. These are real people with real lives, not paper doll role models.

That's the problem with being good. People judge you every time.