Welcome To Earth David

I discovered something really cool today and I want to share my discovery. Today as I was finishing up in the bathroom after my shower I was putting on my deoderant and as it always happens I got to the bottom of the tube and the little bit that was left over popped out and fell onto the floor. Well I got mad and started thinking that there must be a way to save that little bit of deoderant to use instead of throwing it away time after time. So I did a google search and I found the answer to my problem here.

Who would have ever guessed that you can melt your deoderant in a microwave and pour it into another deoderant tube and that it only takes a few minutes to do it!? I can personally say that this works because I tried it myself. I use Axe Vice deoderant and it melted perfectly and poured into a new deoderant tube very easily. I do have a word of caution for you if your going to do this. Melted deoderant is very hot and that little bit left in the tube melts very quickly. Be very careful when pouring into another deoderant tube. I must say this is a very smart idea and I guarantee there won’t be any more wasted deoderant in this house…… Oh yes, and another word of caution for all of you people who may be a little retarded when it comes to using common sense….. this does not work with spray can deoderants so don’t be putting any spray cans in your microwave.

Well it’s been three weeks now since I started my crusade to get back on the money saving track and I am happy to say that I have been doing fairly well. I can’t say exactly how much money I have saved but I can say that I have cut back a whole lot on spending money in general. In three weeks I have only allowed myself to buy one or two used Nintendo Wii games, one or two t-shirts, and only one trip to the lake which is where I went today. I have a star system I go by on my wall calendar to keep up with how well I’m doing at saving my money. On days that I don’t spend any money at all I put a red star on the calendar for that day. I started this crusade eighteen days ago and I have thirteen stars on the calendar during that time period. These red stars also indicate days that I stayed home. Thirteen out of eighteen days is a lot of time for someone like me to be staying cooped up at home and not going anywhere. I have been making the most of that time however by finding things around home to do such as playing my video games, trying to complete things on my to do list, blogging, getting back into my arts and crafts, exercising and working out, going for walks, and watching television. Over the past three weeks I’ve started getting a little used to staying at home more and I am finding out that it isn’t all that bad as long as I find things to keep myself busy and keep reminding myself that the goal is not to get out and go somewhere where I would be tempted to make a lot of unnecessary purchases. I am also learning to feed myself at home and stop driving somewhere to eat all the time. I am noticing lately that the price of gas is coming down a little. Gas was $3.38 per gallon today. That is a whole lot better than what it has been costing most of this summer and that will help me save a little money as well. Anyway, like I said, I don’t know how much I have saved over the past three weeks and if I did I wouldn’t tell the amount here in my blog but I can say that I have saved a good bit compared to how much I wasn’t saving before when I was spending irresponsibly. Let’s see how well I do over the next three weeks.

This entry is all about my new goal to start saving money and how I plan to find ways of doing that.

Obviously the easiest way to save money is not to spend money, right!? Well for the last two days my goal has been to stay at home and find things to do so that I wouldn’t get out and spend any money. The reason for that is because over the past few months I have really been splurging on a lot of excessive spending and I have gotten way behind on my savings goal for this year. I mean I have gotten waaaayyyyy behind. It is sometimes very hard for me to save my money because over the past couple of years since I started managing my money a little better than before I have gotten into a bad habit of impulse buying and I have a bad attitude of thinking if I want it I should have it and then I buy it just because I want it and just because I have the money to spend at the moment. That isn’t always a bad thing most of the time if I have the extra money to spend because there have been times in my life when I couldn’t buy anything that I wanted and because of that I feel like I deserve to get anything I want anytime I want it. Right now however I need to stop splurging so much and get back on track with my savings before I end up in the poor house again like where I was two years ago.

Two things that are really eating my wallet right now is my addiction to getting outdoors and my Nintendo Wii. I love to go to the lake to enjoy the scenery and go for walks. The problem with that is I love it too much and it is a 40 mile round trip every time I go. I usually go twice a week. I drive a big 2001 Dodge 1500 pickup truck that is a gas hog and I can easily use up a quarter of a tank of gas or more going to and driving around to the different park areas around the lake that I like to go to. I’d say I average spending around $25 bucks a week on gas alone just going to the lake. That doesn’t account for the money I spend stopping at a fast food place for something to eat along the way and for the ice and drinks I buy to fill up the cooler that I keep on the back of my truck… you know I have to keep cold drinks with me out there in the heat or else I would thirst to death and I am one of those people who have to constantly have something to drink all the time. So that bumps it up easily to around $35 to $45 bucks a week just going for joy rides around the lake and drinking cold cokes and gatorade and eating taco bell or arby’s every week to get outdoors. Now add to all of that my newest addiction to video games since I bought my Nintendo Wii awhile back. I have already easily spent $450 to $500 bucks on the console itself plus extra controllers and video games. That in itself has taken a huge chunk out of my savings. I’m not complaining about it too much though because I have thoroughly been enjoying playing my Wii games. The only problem here, once again, is that I am enjoying my new Nintendo Wii so much that I don’t think about how much money I’m spending on the games and those games can be fairly expensive. I have thought about taking up a membership at GameFly to rent video games like I rent my movies from Netflix. Yes I know that would be an extra $22 bucks more a month that I would be spending but this would be a good way for me to find games I like instead of going out to buy games that I end up not liking, which luckily has only happened once so far.

So having realized what my faults are for not being able to save my money lately as I should be doing I am trying to discipline myself which isn’t an easy thing for me to do when it comes to splurging.

Yesterday I spent the whole day at home downloading some new remixes, playing video games and watching television. Yesterday was Monday so of course you know I watched WWE Raw which is my favorite show to watch. After that I watched Burn Notice and Monk and went to bed soon after. Today is Tuesday which is normally my favorite day to go to the lake. However I have been at home all day fighting the urge to get outdoors by trying to get some things done and scratched off of my To Do List which I started adding things to three months ago. If I can make myself stay at home and work on this to do list for at least three days out of the week and really focus my attention on not splurging on expensive games and other stuff then I think I can get myself back up on my savings. Today I just need to focus on staying here at home and not going out to spend any money.

I have too many goals and things I need that I’m not getting because of my splurging so I’m hoping my to do list will help me get where I want to be. It is going to take a lot of time and effort however. Things I’m talking about staying home and saving my money for are getting a new apartment, buying new furniture, paying off my truck, getting a new big screen television… you know nice things. I can’t get those things if I’m spending all of my money on lots of little things here and there. So it is my goal right now to spend more time at home enjoying the things I have now and hopefully get lots of things done on my to do list so that I can get a better home, some better and more comfortable furniture, a better lifestyle, and still keep up on my savings. I’m also going to make it a goal to blog about this and things I am doing to keep up on my savings. I might also create a new page with ideas I come up with to keep saving money.