Cutting out unnecessary purchases has made a huge difference in my money, and I hardly had any unnecessary purchases to begin with.  My rules are pretty simple.  The steadfast ones:

• Don’t exceed weekly/monthly budgets, which goes for dining out, groceries, transportation (both train and gas), and entertainment
• If there’s a store-brand option just go with it
• If I don’t fall in love with something right away, put it down and leave the store
• Spend the last of that Amazon gift card money wisely
• Put any extra or unexpected income straight into savings

And the flexible ones that I think I’ve just been following intuitively:

• If I can get home in the next half hour and find something to eat there, don’t eat out
• Order the cheapest thing on the menu (which leads to tea in every coffee shop, pasta in every restaurant, both of which are a-okay by my stomach)
• Take help where it’s offered, and only ask for it if I’m starving
• Don’t starve, no matter what the budget says

But even as someone whose material consumption is low for her demographic, sometimes, I really want something, and I can’t have it.  There are days where I can walk into a supermarket and walk by every single treat to head straight for the wheat bread, and then there are days where I stare resentfully at my precious quarters which I want to use on a Snickers bar but must save for laundry.  There are days where my face is very dry and broken out and needs good, proper exfoliation to look anyway presentable, but that’s a lot of money and it’s not going to happen.  Heck, I went through all of last year cutting my own hair with sewing scissors and a bathroom mirror, and practically cried with joy when my mom got me a salon gift card for this past Christmas.

Especially at my university, which is full of (mostly) well-dressed and pretty girls.  Even though I’m not trying to attract anyone’s attention, still: I spent all of last year feeling great about myself and the way I looked, and now I feel eyes skip right over me while I walk to class.  Sometimes that’s just fine — ya’ll know I hate BC social life — but sometimes it just pools into an overall sense of shabbiness, of being a cheapskate, of failing where other people aren’t.

There are just these little luxuries I’m extremely aware of now.  Not that that’s made me anymore worldly or appreciative of what I have in any kind of way.  Let’s not kid ourselves — I still want these things and think I deserve them.  But while the dress may look pretty and my ears could do with re-piercing, I can’t have it, and so I’ve got to suck it up.  Kick my heels into the ground, tug at my hair, and sulk at my lack of social options — do whatever I need to to make the jealous and covetous feeling pass — but I can’t.  Can’t, can’t, can’t.

And then hope that after a while, I won’t mind so much anymore.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve done something different with my website, but I felt it coming.  It’s a big work in progress, as it involves a lot of elements that may not look so great on some computers.  If the fonts don’t look fancy, check your browser for updates.  As always, let me know if you spot anything that doesn’t look right.

The change is partly because my whole life is about to shift and it’s time for a step in a new, possibly disastrous direction.  And I think the blog needs to come along for the ride.  I’ve been posting a lot less over the last year, mostly because a lot of what I do these days closely involves Someone else, and unless it has to do with me throwing up in the middle of the night while he sleeps, it doesn’t really have any business on the Internet.  (Oh, what strange times are these when my food poisoning is one of the only stories that merits publication.)

I’m trying to decide exactly how I’m going to approach the blog now.  Of course I’ll still write about myself, because I am and always will be a narcissist, but I’m leaning towards a money blog.  I haven’t brainstormed any fun budgetary experiments (yet), but there’s no question that one major theme of the coming year is going to be How to Make and Save Money as a Recent College Graduate during a Recession in a Completely Unnecessary Field.  So, after 10 years of personal blogging, I think it’s time I got into productive blogging: how can I make my struggles with money useful to everyone else?

Let the brainstorming commence!

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I’ll pour a little coffee before Christmas so I can afford the gifts I’d love to give.

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You want to go to grad school.

No, when I graduate this May, that’s it, I’m not a student anymore.

Oh, so you want to do a summer program abroad then.

No, I’d have to be a student to do that, and I won’t be a student anymore.  Besides, a summer wouldn’t be long enough.

Well, you could sign up for this program and it would give you four months in Ireland.

Mmm but that’s really not long enough.  I want to leave right after graduation and stay in Ireland for at least a year.

You could go to Australia for a year.  Or England for six months!

Sounds terrific, but they’re not Ireland.

Can I interest you in a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany?

Not in the least.  There’s a reason I want to go to Ireland specifically.  You should really read my blog.

Well, but work visas are hard to come by if you don’t already have a career.  You’d have to get a company to vouch for you over everyone else in Ireland.

I know, I know.  And like, I think I’m special, but probably not that special yet.  So I understand that, while not impossible, that’s extremely unlikely.  But!  Ireland and the U.S. have finally started a working holiday visa program.  Do you know anything about that?

…Summer program?

Nope, not a student anymore.  See, it’s a visa that lasts a year, and you don’t have to have a job organized before you arrive.  Except, I don’t know much about it.  Any idea who I should contact?

We have a great alumni program.

I know, so I’ve heard.  Do they know about this working holiday visa?  Loads of Australians take advantage of it, I met a really nice couple last year who were doing it and the girl was doing short-term contractual work at my magazine company for someone’s maternity leave.  That would kind of be perfect.

Short-term, eh?  Four months?  Lots of Irish companies want Americans, like bars and hotels.  There are even some secretary gigs!

Whoa, really?!  No.  Not a student anymore, ergo, not able to live off of my parents or my barista job.  I’d really like a year, and I’d really like a real job.  I just mean, I wouldn’t mind covering maternity leave here and there at publishing companies.  Enough of those back to back would be good broad experience with real world pay.

America has jobs too!  Maybe you could move internationally in a few years?

BUT WHY IS IT SO IMPOSSIBLE TO DO IT NOW.  SURELY THIS HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE.  RIGHT?  ANYONE?  CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP A SISTER OUT.

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I don’t really get jewelry.

By this I’m implying that I get most other things.  I get why an outfit is fashionable and how to make one similar.  I get why mixing old and new is the ‘it’ thing in interior design and why it’s okay to mash up patterns.  I get which song elements seem to rouse everyone who hears it, even if I couldn’t compose it myself.  Hell, I get why some event posters around campus are more effective than others (FONTS, people).

Maybe it’s because those things have been explained to me in one way or another.  Simon Cowell and Martha Stewart and Heidi Klum all make sure I get it, and that everyone who watches gets it, and now that’s why we all throw out words like “pitchy” and “fierce” and “neck elongation” and “make it work”.  (Although I don’t know where I learned so much about the personalities of fonts.)

It took me a while to get shoes, because I couldn’t understand who in this world would bother looking at other people’s feet.  Somewhere along the line, I realized I couldn’t STOP staring at feet, and that is when I knew I got shoes.  I get scarves and gloves.  Belts I’ve never worn, so I should admit that I don’t know much about belts.

But the item of vanity I know the least about is jewelry.  I don’t get it. The only jewelry I wear is a glass drop bead necklace I got from Silpada and a silver claddagh ring, both of which my mom gave me ages ago.  I put them on everyday without a second thought. That’s because they were gifts, and they mean something, and I love things that mean things.  But that stuff you’ve got to pick for yourself to show off some personality?  When I am in a shop and end up in front of the accessories rack, I have no idea what to think.  My eye is never drawn to any one thing.  I don’t know what looks cheap and what doesn’t, and whether at my age it’s okay for something to look cheap.  I don’t know what’s garish and what’s not.  I always end up panicking and foregoing any of it.

Something tells me I am not ever going to get a jewelry-making reality show tentatively titled Accessories Smackdown, and if it ever did come on TV I would absolutely not watch it because wow, BORING.  Instead, I am just going to have to figure it out for myself: sit down with it in all its pieces and put it together until I like it, until I get it.  As I determined for myself long ago, I need something to do with my hands to keep me happy, or at least sane, to steady my hands when neuroses get out of control.  Last summer I did jigsaw puzzles and counted change.  During the year before that I crocheted an afghan blanket.  I played instruments in the many years before that, and basketball.  These past few weeks I’ve been cranky, realizing that I didn’t yet have any new craft that really grabbed my interest, and I thought, terrific, now I’ll just be an irritably spazzy-handed nutjob with too much time and no money.

But then today I went to look at a room to rent that I really loved; it was gigantic, part of a nice Georgian house in a quiet and conveniently located area.  A large bed, a large wardrobe, plenty of shelf space, and in the corner I suddenly pictured myself crouched over the table with a string of wire and box of beads, watching Buffy after a long day at the internship and waiting for my boyfriend to come over so we can make dinner.  I realized that’s exactly the summer I want this time around, and that is the activity I want to keep me occupied.

And then if anyone asks me why I’m wasting so much time and energy on vanity, I’ll say what are you talking about, I thought I told you: I don’t get jewelry.  I’m selling this shit on Etsy to those suckers who do.  Get me a few bob.

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Hey here’s an original thought: money is the root of all evil.  It fills me with all of the deadly sins.  Greed for all the money in the world.  Pride for when I get a random windfall and stare at my bank account like it’s a mirror.  Envy for those who have money and I want it.  Lust for anyone who will spend any money on me.  Sloth for sitting around all day wondering why I can’t just get money for sitting around all day.  Gluttony for a chocolate Kimberley, but no money to buy some.

At the moment I feel WRATH.  WRATH FOR BILLS.  I had to reorder contact lenses (the daily ones, which cost twice as much and last half as long, because my eyes are too wretched to stand the fortnightly ones, and I thought, hmm, I should just get LASIK, but mother tells me it’s considered cosmetic, and I thought what!  but I don’t want it to look pretty, I want it to stop destroying my corneas with contacts!  and she said, well that’s what glasses are for, and I said, okay, number one, glasses do not provide peripheral vision which is why I’m always spilling things with them on, and number two, insurance also did not cover my glasses last summer, I paid for those, so are glasses now cosmetic too?  because if so, OMG, and if not, where my money.)

(ANYWAY.)

I had to reorder contact lenses, and I paid the extra $16 or so for the speedy international shipping, and that was a few weeks ago.  And so lately I’m crying at the sight of my bank account, they’re quite expensive and so is Ireland, and today I get a bill from the shipping company charging me extra VAT for shipping internationally.  Even though they didn’t do that for the last lens shipment I had sent here.  Even though I already paid shipping and handling, EXTRA IN FACT, and why is this coming after the fact?  And why does it have to be so fucking much?  It’s not like I’m shipping a bottle of whiskey to the States, I’m just providing myself with my very expensive but medically prescribed vision correcters and this is absolutely absurd.

This is purely a rant, I know, I know.  But it’s also the first time I’m really considering doing temp work while I’m here.  It seems to make the most sense.  I’m writing here to remind myself to go to the BC house next week and ask them if they think that’s a plausible solution.  I just can’t stand being so close to the edge of broke anymore.  I’d like to be able to provide for myself while I’m here rather than go crying to mummy and daddy every time my account drops below a certain figure.  I’m a big girl and for goodness sake, I’d like to enjoy a dinner every so often without playing the conversion game in the back of my head.  I’d like to be able to give gifts.

I’m also wondering if the magazine I’m interning for is going to pay me at the end of this?  They pay 15 cents per word, and I balked at that until I just did the math for how many words I’ve written, and WHOA THAT ADDS UP.  I could seriously do with that chunk of change, and I don’t know why they’d treat me different from other random contributors, so.  I’m really crossing my fingers on that.

Didn’t feel like going for writerly quality today.  Just needed to think out loud.

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