After not tracking my weekly spending for over a month due to vacation and quite frankly laziness on my part. I decided it was necessary to return to weekly tracking to ensure i would hit my goals for 2019. It is so easy to get out of the routine of expense tracking but if I ever want to be serious about reaching financial independence, i realized i need to be diligent even when things aren’t the status quo. It’s in the times of an atypical month that separates the true FIRE walkers from the wannabes. For the past month i was a complete wannabe but it’s now time to buckle down and regain my focus. Overall, this week wasn’t bad when it came to my spending so it was a good week to remind me why I am doing all of this.
Total Spending: $128.06
- $49.26 – Cincinnati Bell Internet
- $8.06 – Cane’s Chicken
- $8.35 – Chipotle
- $53.96 – Kroger (Only $35.82 was for meals for the week)
- $8.43 – Chick-fil-a
Meals: Spicy Orange Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry and Classic Sloppy Joe’s with Broccoli Slaw
- Total meal spending: $35.82
- Cost per person per meal: $5.97
Along with not tracking my spending also meant that I wasn’t cooking my own meals like I was regularly doing. Since making the lifestyle change to cooking the majority of my meals at home over the past 6 months I have found that I really do enjoy cooking, something I never would have thought I would enjoy. I have always liked eating all kinds of meals and whenever I would go to a restaurant I would try and order something I have never eaten there before. But now with Mealime I have been able to try all sorts of new foods all while cooking them myself, which has been a blast. I still wouldn’t consider myself an outstanding cook because some of the meals I cook still don’t look exactly like the picture but they still have all of the flavor which is more important in my opinion. This past week I kept it pretty simple with a spicy beef and broccoli stir fry and sloppy joe’s with broccoli slaw. I could have added more heat to the sauce of the string fry but it still ended up tasting great. One thing I still have yet to master is cooking the perfect batch of rice consistently. I have been cooking it old school without any fancy gadget but i think i might be time for me to invest in a rice cooker. Let me know in the comments some of the best rice cookers and your experience with them! As for the sloppy Joe’s I chose the wrong type of bun. The bun had lost all of it’s integrity and ended up being super flimsy, but that’s alright I just had to use a fork instead.
I was able to keep my spending pretty low this week which was fortunate. I still have yet to cut out all of my eating out habits but hopefully that will subside in time but who knows. I think I enjoy my Chipotle and Skyline too much to cut it out altogether. Also, one of my buddies was in town this week and I was able to keep my spending low due to having him and some other friends over my place instead of going out. We had a great time catching up and playing some games. This allowed me to not spend any money that day, which is a great way to end the week and to keep the momentum going into the next!
That’s all I have for now as I try to get myself back on the right track. Check back next week to follow my weekly spending.
Thanks!
Steven | RxforFIRE
Rx for FIRE 