Week 1 Results: Money Saving Experiment

Total spent, budgeted: $517.70/$516
Rent, $459.
Gas, $29.12 Over by $14.12, as I had to make 3 trips to and from OKC in 2 days for work.
Coffee, $5.75.
Groceries, $23.83. Included a spaghetti dinner for a date I had.

Total spent, unbudgeted: $83.66/$96
Dinner at the Wedge in OKC, $27.89. I'd forgotten that we had a Levate team dinner out planned. I put the appetizer on my tab.
Donuts, $1.12. A late night moment of weakness.
Box wine, $25.50. For upcoming date nights. Surprisingly good. Cabernet Sauvignon, if you care.
Gym, $20. An expense I'd forgotten to include in the monthly budget.
Postage to return item to Canada, $9.15. I'll be getting a $40 refund on the item so this will turn into a net positive expense!

Thoughts:
Tougher than I thought it would be. It is hard for me to be that guy who says, sorry, I can't go out tonight because I'm trying to save money.

I feel embarrassed that I basically blew through all of the unbudgeted emergency money in the first week. Proof, I suppose, of a variant of Parkinson's Law: expenses expand to fill the available budget.

I've noticed that I plan my days much more carefully now. I think carefully about how I'm going to get all three meals, as well as which meals I need to pack. When I go out with friends, a small flask accompanies me so that I don't need to buy overpriced alcohol at a bar or restaurant. When I go to a coffee shop to work, it is for a long stretch of time at a place that has free refills so that my caffeine addiction doesn't break my piggy bank.

After travelling to and from OKC three times in a row, and blowing through my week's gas allowance, I've noticed that I'm much more conscientious about when I schedule meetings. But it was also an expense I was happy to make, along with the dinner at the Wedge, because I'm not willing to jeopardize the progress of my startup, Levate, to pinch a few pennies. That to me would epitomize the saying Penny Wise, Pound Foolish.

Late last week, my computer wouldn't start. It looks like a boot file is corrupted, as the computer won't get past an error on the initial boot-screen. This is a problem because I need my computer for work. The alternatives to getting it fixed or replaced (spending money) is to work from a public computer lab (which is where I'm typing this post), or try and borrow a computer.

I lucked out, as a good friend of mine has his old computer after he bought a new macbook. He is willing to let me borrow it for now. In the meantime, I can try and investigate how to repair my computer on my own.

Modern technology is great- when it's working!