It’s Friday night.  Work is over.  It’s time for the weekend.  Whatever shall we do, whatever shall we do…

I’ve looked all over the internet for something random to do — obviously not very spontaneous, but definitely random — and I’ve come to the realization that nearly everything we’d want to do taunts me so, either for lack of timing or lack of money.  $300 for an hour-long romantic boat tour, $1700 for an adventure of Night Fishing with a pro.  It’s night, the tour’s during the day; it’s sunset and the trip has started without us.

So I will relax, wait, and be tempted and taunted by the adventures that are trying so hard to lure me in.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get to go to the Science Museum and Planetarium, to the Seaquarium or Parrot Jungle, on a mini boat tour of Miami at Sunset, or maybe even fishing with a pro.

Tonight looks like a movie night!

Last weekend, we went to see Paprika, a great Japanese movie from the director of Tokyo Godfathers and the ever-so-disturbing Perfect Blue. This may not seem relevant to money-talk, but it is, I assure you. Our local movie theatre which is essentially a hole-in-the-wall theatre compared to the Palace/Premier where tickets are $10 for regular theatre and $18 for Premier (oh, the comfy seats!) has a promotion almost every time we go where, if you buy a combo, you get a free movie ticket. We usually want a drink and popcorn anyway, so why not spend an extra $2 to get a $7 movie ticket for free and some candy to boot. We used our free tickets Saturday in a spur of the moment moviegoing adventure, and got to experience a very interesting trip into a wacky world of dreams, broadening our cultural horizons just a little more and enjoying ourselves quite a lot in the process. (For anyone who likes movies that are just a little off, this one’s definitely for you.)

Lesson:

Especially when seeking entertainment, if you have the opportunity to save money or get future entertainment experiences at little or no cost, go for it. Then, some day later when you might be strapped for cash, you can still feed your entertainment needs.

Check out more about Paprika here!

…or plane or boat…

I want (paid off in full, of course) a small plane so I can take pictures from a different point of view, a small boat so I can take my fishing pole and boyfriend and get away from it all, a car I can use to help save the environment, and a 3000 sq ft house with my own big yard and a garage to put my plane, boat, and car in (the garage will be as big as the house!).

On my road to saving (and even just living paycheck to paycheck some weeks), I realize there are some sacrifices I’ll need to make.

One of them, and very sadly so, is not going to Las Vegas in August. I’ve never been to Las Vegas and would love the experience of going and enjoying the weekend there with my boyfriend and 5,000 other hacker-type-people. But the plane ticket is $300 and I’ll need spending money, and such is life that I make plenty of money to live on and spend just a little and save just a little, but not to splurge and spend $400-500 for a weekend in Vegas.

So maybe next year, Defcon. Maybe next year. (How depressing! Nobody ever said money was fun, unless they have a lot of it and more coming in by the minute!)

Lesson:

Save save save so when you want to make a one-time spontaneous $400-500 splurge, not only is it affordable, it doesn’t even affect your pocketbook greatly at all. ($2000 in checking, $2000 in savings would be a place I could do this at. Boy am I a long way away!)

I want a Chocolate Mud Pie Shake.

Léonie of paranoiaparadise.com fame stopped by my SU page to say hi today, so I thought I’d send a good word out here.

What a cool site!  They sell T-shirts, but the really cool part is the featurette box with original video clips showcasing the t-shirts they sell.  They’re “outragious stopmotion films for each shirt that you won’t see anywhere else”.

Check it out!   (link to the right >> in my Awesome Sites!)

If your child, at the age of 18, was leaving home for the first time (college, army, just getting away) and asked you for a few tips about finances, what would they be?

My answers:

1.  Save a little bit.  Have 10% of your check deposited automatically into a Savings account that is with a different bank or not immediately accessible by your checking account and forget that that money ever existed, except in case of dire emergency (car breaks down and is your only way to work to earn the money you’re saving would be an acceptable emergency).

2.  Your credit is your future.  Do not get more than 1 credit card to start out with and build that credit up.  As a newbie in the credit field, credit card companies will send you numerous offers.  Read the terms, read the percentage rate, read read read.  Know what you’re getting yourself into.  The best cards have a low interest rate (10% or less) and absolutely NO annual fee.  Accept nothing but the very best.

3.  Let someone else be the fool.  AVOID at all costs the “T-Shirt to fill out an application” credit card trap.  Instead, take 50 cents out of your pocket and hand it to the rep — that’s all he gets for getting you to fill the application out and trying to ruin your credit anyway.  Better yet, ignore the rep, keep your 50 cents and you’re already ahead of the game.

I have come across a site that I will be adding to my Awesome Sites list called midlifebachelor.com run by a gentleman named Greg.  At midlifebachelor.com, one can get some great advice, read some fun stories, and offer their own input. The site now also features a Women’s Input section, so women, head on over to have your say about men and the midlife!

Lesson:

If you go to a restaurant in a “tourist” area in South Florida (or possibly anywhere else) whether you’re a tourist or not, beware that an automatic 17% gratuity may be added to your check without your approval or knowledge till the bill comes, because “tourists sometimes stiff the waiters, and that’s what they work hard for.”  (This happened to us last evening, there were only 2 of us dining there, and it was not disclosed in advance — as I believe the law requires — that this would be added to the check automatically.)

Don’t hesitate to put your foot down if this happens.  All customers have a right to decide the tip they’d like to leave, especially if this automatically added gratuity is added without one’s consent or knowledge.

Thanks to sites like roflbot ( RoflBot) , you too can create your own entertainment. Why, just yesterday, I came across a great image, and the first thing that came to mind, I put onto the picture via roflbot and here it is, for your viewing pleasure (please do not take this as religiously offensive, as it is not intended to be so):

Ahh, the fun of thinking random things when seeing random pictures (picture from FoundPhotos– also another great site for random, free entertainment!)

So I’m sitting here listening to this great song I came across called “Acceptable in the 80s” by Calvin Harris and I feel motivated to write.

I have come up with a fair few ways since the last time I wrote to save a little money here and there and still be able to maintain your sanity.

1. Buy your veggies from the local farmer’s market. This cuts out all the middlemen and not only does the money go straight to the farmer, ALL of the money goes straight to the farmer allowing you to skip filling the pockets of corporate investors, “transportation engineers” (truck drivers), and pesticide companies. Better for you, the economy, and your neighbors. (And it also plays into the Organic/Fair Trade movement a bit!)

2. Instead of going to get your hair done, get creative. Invest in a curling iron and some hairspray (half the cost to get your hair done once). Either way, it’ll take you 2 hours to do it yourself or have someone else do it for you, and it’s much more gratifying to spend the time doing it yourself, if you can get it to look right! (I did this last night and came out with a rather cute Mod-style bouffant and all it cost was a pack of bobbi pins which are completely reusable and a tiny bit of hairspray out of a can I’ve had for 2 years!)

3. Carpool carpool carpool! If you can’t carpool, use public transportation, ride a bike (doubles as free exercise), invest in a motorbike (a Vespa, for example, that may take an extra 10 minutes to get you there and can even be taken only when it’s not raining, but will be a considerable savings on gas over time.)

4. If you are considering purchasing a vehicle, look into going Green (A great resource for this is found here Yahoo! Green ). Hybrid vehicles are plentiful these days and run nearly the same initial purchase cost as your gas-guzzling luxury vehicles (if not substantially less). On top of that, they get a solid 10-15 mpg extra meaning for ever gallon of gas you buy, you’ll probably get to go 1 1/2 times the distance!

If you can’t go Green in the car you’re buying, look into buying a car that you can convert into a greenmobile for a couple grand, such as a diesel which you can convert to biodiesel. (Of course, if you go biodiesel or biofuel, make sure there is a biofuel station within considerable distance of your home/office or you’ll just waste all the gas and money you’re saving driving to the nearest biofuel station which would defeat the purpose of conversion or going green in the first place!)

5. If you are a fashion nut but don’t like to invest ridiculous amounts in clothes you’re only wearing once or twice, go to a store like Forever21 or Charlotte Russe where you can get awesome clothes for $10-30 and accessories galore. When they go out of style, there are many things you can do with the clothes:

a. Put them in a box in your closet and forget about them. Your kids will LOVE them when they’re growing up (dress-up, retrofests at school, getting a good laugh at Mom & Dad, etc.)
b. Cut them up and make something else out of them (quilt, tablecloth, placemat, dishrag, headband, etc.)
c. Donate them to your local Goodwill, Salvation Army, homeless shelter, etc.

d. Place them on an auction site like eBay. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as they say! Someone

will

want your junk. Why not get an extra $5 or $10 back out of something that’s just going to sit around and gather dust?

6. Instead of buying full albums/cds, find an online service that allows you to download the mp3s you like (legally, of course). Find a site that will provide you previews of them beforehand so you can be sure you’re buying something you like. Spend the $10 extra you’d have spent on the whole CD to buy a stack of writeable CDs that you can burn your mp3s to, or get an mp3 player that you can place them on and carry them around with you wherever you go (preferable). In time, the $200 you’ve spent on the mp3 player and 10 cds’ worth of songs will easily be savings compared to the 10 actual cds you could have gotten for that cost that you have nothing to play them in!

Checking: $200

Savings: $100

(Progress is slow-going, but I’ll get there eventually! Nobody ever said saving was easy! Life comes at you fast!)