I have finally reached the point at which my pile of money has largely been depleted, and while I’m not (yet) in panic mode, I’ve had to shift to a different way of thinking about my budget.
First of all…holy shit, restaurants are expensive! I’m not at all opposed to eating with friends once a week or getting the occasional coffee, but I kicked the month off with 3 solo restaurant visits, totaling roughly $36, which can otherwise buy me the ingredients to eat breakfast for almost the entire month. I sat down the other day to calculate the cost of the ingredients I buy for my breakfast burritos and was surprised how much I can get for $20. Mind you, if you have an adequate budget for food, I’m not advocating for penny pinching as some kind of virtue, but whatever I can save is that much more I can set aside until I find employment. It’s important to think about now before it’s too late (I’m not super worried, but more on that later)
Also, I’ve kind of known this for the past few years, but minimalism really is the privilege of the wealthy. I have some oatmeal packets I wasn’t super excited about and I was going to throw them out, but since my last big cash withdrawal from my retirement accounts, it dawned on me that even mediocre flavors of oatmeal can still be nourishing, so…let’s hold onto those for now.
And when you’re in a situation like this with no income and you have a lot of available time, it makes even more sense to trade your time for savings, so packing the grocery basket with relatively expensive pre-made breakfast burritos doesn’t make a ton of sense – it’s not like I need to be somewhere at 8am and accidentally slept in – so if you have even moderate cooking skills, it makes sense to exercise them. Granted, I owe an old favorite Chinese restaurant a visit, so I’m not being religious about this, but it certainly doesn’t kill me to spend 40 minutes prepping the next 6 days of burritos. Not only do I save money, I also get more to put into each burrito.
I recently transitioned from coffee energy drinks to what I will call latte jugs. They’re still a lot of sugar, but probably way healthier otherwise. A $7 jug gets me through 3 or maybe 4 breakfasts, which is in sharp contrast to the now $4 canned stuff. A bottle of soda is $3 or $4, too, which buys me about 2 dozen eggs, or just shy of a small sack of potatoes. Who says you can’t eat for cheap these days, huh? (It might be wise to start asking…could I possibly make this coffee myself?)
Along with the time vs. money axis I mentioned earlier, I’ve also been cutting my hair. I gave myself a few lines I didn’t like last time, but overall, these years of practice are finally starting to pay off, and it’s really not half bad for costing essentially nothing (minus my initial investment in supplies).
I have been lax on the books, I really believe in supporting local there, so I’ve spent more on that than I really should have. But I did buy a used older edition of one tech book for less than $10, versus the brand new which costs $70. Good thing, too, as it’s kind of boring and doesn’t have all too much to teach me. On the learning front, I have access to a certain training company between now and December, so it makes the most sense to use their training for now, regardless of whether they are the “best”.
It only takes so many dreams about switching careers to realize God is trying to tell you something. These years have been a hugely beneficial, if not also weird, experience. But I did the stuff, I learned the things, I passed the test, and now it’s time to find employment, so I keep telling God, it’s time for you to step in now, while I do my part to apply for jobs, and try to keep learning during the day. It’s an opportunity to exercise some faith, but also, I can think critically about the little things, too.