Monthly Money Check-In April '13

Hello. I'm sitting here eating my friend's half of a burrito left over from lunch. She was going to throw it away. I've become that girl. Don't worry, she was just eating it with a knife and fork.

Hawaii happened! We were there, I told my boyfriend I had a budget of $800. We were doing free or cheap stuff, like going to beaches, eating at little Korean dives, watching the sun set. Then came the volcano.

The volcano on the Big Island was amazing. BUT...you could not see the actual lava unless you spent $167 on a lava boat ride. What did we do? Well, we were there once, maybe for the one time in our lives. So yeah, I did it. Of course I was going to do it, this is me we're talking about. A "live for today" attitude was never a problem to conjure up. Overall I spent about $1,000 while there. That's a lot of money. BUT...I'm 30, I'm making good money, I don't have kids yet, and I'm free to do these things, perhaps for just a few short years.

Balance is key.

Now back to scrounging half-eaten burritos and shopping at the cheap Asian market that reeks of bleach. And that's fine. I've realized that people always think your level of luxury has to rise across your life, but that's not true. You can configure it. I like a lot of luxury when it comes to traveling, eating and experiences. That is to say, I like great, and sometimes expensive experiences, like snowboarding and seeing lava. That just means I have to tone down the luxury elsewhere in my life. So I cook, wear old clothes and shop at thrift stores, and I drive a 10-year-old car with three working windows. The point is consciously selecting the life you really want, instead of chasing what's been handed down by magazine pictures, across the board.

I even managed to put extra toward my student loans and emergency fund. Slow and steady. Ok, so I've been a little to much on the slow part. But I just got my new Dave Ramsey wallet I had made on Etsy, the one with all the little budget envelopes, so hopefully that will keep me on track. Plus, I did get this huge deal at work and I think I have a big commission coming, so honestly I might be slacking a bit because of that.

You'll see that it looks like I went down $4,000 this month! That is because the value of my house plummeted. Damn that four-walled hell hole! The good news is that I have a cash offer and that idiot Bank of America should accept soon, and that whole anchor that's been drowning me in red should go away soon!

If my house value had stayed the same, I'd be up $1,000.