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Thursday, May 10th
May. 10th, 2012 12:10 pmThe Daily Report
After several days that were hot, overcast, and humid, today is the fairly glorious combination of sunny, cool, and dry. Yesterday I really found my stride for working here and getting things done. So, good things there.
In other news, I've discovered a new budgeting trick.
No advice is universal, of course, so this advice isn't for everyone. If you know how to budget, if you're good with money, then this is not a trick for you. If you are terrible with money, if you spend the same money two or three times because your brain has not caught up to the fact that it's gone, this could be a good trick for you. It requires that you have a way of removing money from an immediately spendable state... like, transferring from a checking account to a savings account. Or in my case, withdrawing money from my PayPal account to the bank.
It goes like this: when you spend money out of your ready money for anything other than rent/mortgage/other large unavoidable monthly living expense, you immediately put money aside. The same amount, if possible. Half, if not. A dollar, if that's all you can afford to move from the spending pool at the moment and the base expense is unavoidable. If the expense is optional and not time-sensitive, though, don't expend it until you can afford to put the whole amount aside again.
The point of all of this is threefold.
One, it makes sure you are saving money.
Two, it makes every purchase effectively more expensive, so if like me you can easily blow through a surplus of money because none of the individual amounts you're spending seem significant... well, now they're all twice as significant. And you have to think twice about larger purchases. If you can't afford twice the cost of a video game, you can't afford the video game.
Three... and this might not be true of everyone's brains, but for me, this makes the act of spending money stick in my head in a way that it doPesn't normally. This extra step fixes the memory in my head. Spending money has gone from being a thing that happens when I buy stuff to being a process.
It's a little thing that I've been doing for just a little while, and it's already making a huge difference in things.
State of the Me
Last night was another night of decent sleep. I did wake up around 4 again. I go a drink and took more valerian, though, and ended up going back to sleep pretty quickly.
Dreams From Last Night
Yes, first clear and memorable dreams since I've been here. The first one was another "can't get to the airport" dream, which was weird since I'm already here. In this particular version of that dream, I was trying to repair a bicycle I once had so I could bike from my childhood hometown to the airport in Omaha, and I had exactly two hours allotted to do so. (Spoiler warning: this wouldn't be nearly enough time.) The second dream I was some sort of law officer whose colleagues had pressed into helping them brutalize a suspected criminal who had been let off too easily. The criminal in question was an entirely inert upper half of a skeleton wearing a motorcycle helmet.
Plans For Today
Day 1 of the TOMU writing cycle. I'm going to be spending some time getting this week's newsletter in order and also doing a bit of work on encounter/monster design for A Wilder World. There may be a post about that.
After several days that were hot, overcast, and humid, today is the fairly glorious combination of sunny, cool, and dry. Yesterday I really found my stride for working here and getting things done. So, good things there.
In other news, I've discovered a new budgeting trick.
No advice is universal, of course, so this advice isn't for everyone. If you know how to budget, if you're good with money, then this is not a trick for you. If you are terrible with money, if you spend the same money two or three times because your brain has not caught up to the fact that it's gone, this could be a good trick for you. It requires that you have a way of removing money from an immediately spendable state... like, transferring from a checking account to a savings account. Or in my case, withdrawing money from my PayPal account to the bank.
It goes like this: when you spend money out of your ready money for anything other than rent/mortgage/other large unavoidable monthly living expense, you immediately put money aside. The same amount, if possible. Half, if not. A dollar, if that's all you can afford to move from the spending pool at the moment and the base expense is unavoidable. If the expense is optional and not time-sensitive, though, don't expend it until you can afford to put the whole amount aside again.
The point of all of this is threefold.
One, it makes sure you are saving money.
Two, it makes every purchase effectively more expensive, so if like me you can easily blow through a surplus of money because none of the individual amounts you're spending seem significant... well, now they're all twice as significant. And you have to think twice about larger purchases. If you can't afford twice the cost of a video game, you can't afford the video game.
Three... and this might not be true of everyone's brains, but for me, this makes the act of spending money stick in my head in a way that it doPesn't normally. This extra step fixes the memory in my head. Spending money has gone from being a thing that happens when I buy stuff to being a process.
It's a little thing that I've been doing for just a little while, and it's already making a huge difference in things.
State of the Me
Last night was another night of decent sleep. I did wake up around 4 again. I go a drink and took more valerian, though, and ended up going back to sleep pretty quickly.
Dreams From Last Night
Yes, first clear and memorable dreams since I've been here. The first one was another "can't get to the airport" dream, which was weird since I'm already here. In this particular version of that dream, I was trying to repair a bicycle I once had so I could bike from my childhood hometown to the airport in Omaha, and I had exactly two hours allotted to do so. (Spoiler warning: this wouldn't be nearly enough time.) The second dream I was some sort of law officer whose colleagues had pressed into helping them brutalize a suspected criminal who had been let off too easily. The criminal in question was an entirely inert upper half of a skeleton wearing a motorcycle helmet.
Plans For Today
Day 1 of the TOMU writing cycle. I'm going to be spending some time getting this week's newsletter in order and also doing a bit of work on encounter/monster design for A Wilder World. There may be a post about that.