Book Sales and Budgets
Posted by Jay on August 20th, 2008
A couple weeks ago I wrote about how book sales had slowed down for me. I don’t know what happened over the past week, but someone turned on the spigot and I’ve been selling 30 books a day since Saturday! It isn’t easy. I work till 8pm, then come home & pack books till 11. I’m not complaining though — it’ll be very good for my monthly income.
Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about my budget. I used to spend a lot of money, less so over the past few months, but I still have a couple areas where my expenses are way too high. I eat out and order in too much, and I spend (or did until last week — am on the wagon now) way too much on wine. $15-$25 per bottle, and 3 or 4 bottles per week. This adds up to $80 or so per week, or $360 per month. Food costs are even worse. For example, I blew $15 on lunch today. I probably do that 2-3 days per week, and then spend another $30 one or two nights per week ordering out. Add in dinner with friends once per week and I’m looking at $150-200 per week spent on eating out. That’s $600-$800 per month. Add that to the wine expenses and I’m up over $1000, which is almost a quarter of my take-home pay. I’m so good on other things; clothes, household stuff, groceries, but it all goes out the window with food & drink. Well, I know where I need to concentrate my budget efforts.
My goal is to have $15,000 saved by January. This will give me 5 months living expenses so that I can feel comfortable quitting my job and running my own business. Once I quit my job I’ll have to be very careful about my budget, so to get where I want to be in January, I have to change my habits now. I’ve already eliminated the wine expenses; now I have to crack down on the food expenses.
btw I weighed myself tonight, and for the first time in about 5 years I’m below 230 lbs. 220 here I come!
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August 21st, 2008 at 8:50 am
Hey Jay, I know the pain when it comes to the food and drink those were the two items on my budget that were way too high. I’ve toned both of them down to the point where I’m able to make ends meet. A little bit more and I’ll actually start making a dent into my debt. Good luck cutting down on the wine and eating out - don’t loose sight of the goal. That will make it easier when you start to miss them, I know I was missing the lunches when they vanished.