Taming The Spending Beast

My budget has gotten pretty tight recently, now that I've resumed paying back my student loans. At this moment, I cannot say with confidence that getting my MBA will be beneficial to my salary-earning potential as most jobs out there require something called "experience", whatever that is.

To be able to pay all the bills and still save money, I've had to cut back considerably on frivolous purchases. Instead of just making a temporary adjustment, I'm viewing this required change as an opportunity to examine my spending behaviors to find out why I buy the things I do and if those purchases can be curbed. For example, growing up I was a huge music fan, and I got into the habit of purchasing a new CD or record almost every week. Nowadays, I don't really care about the "next big thing", and I find myself listening to the same five or six artists 90% of the time with the other 10% filled in with a mixture of other stuff that I have. Now, I only venture into a record store when I know exactly what I want instead of aimlessly walking around the shop looking for something to buy.

I love RSS, but...

I'm an avid blog reader and I love to use an aggregator such as bloglines.com to read all my favorites in one place. I was looking over my list of blogs recently and I realized that the majority of them are about "stuff" a.k.a. things I don't need. I've decided a purgin' is in order.

Winter Jams

I'm very seasonal when it comes to the music I listen to. Summer time means straight forward rock 'n' roll, usually with a southern tinge. Winter is inevitably of the mellow, folky, singer songwriter type with some jazz thrown in for good measure.

Here are the 5 albums I'm digging this winter:

1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
2. Daniel Martin Moore - Stray Age
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billie - The Letting Go
4. Patty Griffin - A Kiss In Time
5. Bowerbirds - Hymns For A Dark Horse

Shivering In A Starbucks

Right now I am holed up in the Madeira Starbucks wasting a few hours as I catch up with the internet. This 'bucks has a lot of windows and a lot of in-and-out traffic, contributing to an uncomfortably low temperature in the store.

One of the five tabs I have open in my browser at the moment is www.solbeam.com. Sol is a world traveler aka vagabonder who left her dotcom job back in 2001 to travel the world and has been blogging her experiences for eight years now. I'm envious of her life of travel, but I know I could have done the same thing if I truly wanted to back then. I don't know why, but I've been bitten by the travel bug recently. Something is calling me to see the world. How I make that happen at this point is still under question.

Quote of the Day

I'm on Yelp!

I've created an account on Yelp! and have started writing reviews of my favorite places in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio as well as places I happen upon in my travels.

Check it out!

Hello 2009

2009 is going to be the year of new experiences. I've already got a few things lined up, including a couple of classes and a road trip down south. One of my new habits is to be more aware of opportunities that exist in this world for people to have fun, learn, meet new people, etc. and I think I'm off to a good start.