Thursday, September 16, 2010

Last Chance for Great Savings

“Last Chance for Great Savings.” So said the e-mail I received from Garnet Hill late on Sunday.

It’s the kind of e-mail I get from retailers every day, but this one made me anxious. It is almost my last chance, I thought. My last chance to buy anything not in New West! I panicked. I felt I must go online right away and buy something, anything. I wasted two hours online “window” shopping, seeking out bargains—a $29 sundress, $9 sandals, $18 pillowcases—I wanted it all. In the end, I bought none of it. I didn’t need any of it, and thankfully, my rational side prevailed.

I’m trying to shop as normally as possible before Oct. 1. I don’t want to buy a bunch of stuff I usually wouldn’t. But on Wednesday, I could not pass up Living Social’s deal of the day —a microdermabrasion treatment at 61 per cent off. I’ve never tried it before, but as I understand it, microdermabrasion is basically like sandpapering your skin, scraping off the old, sagging, wrinkly layer and revealing the fresh, glowing, youthful layer below. That’s what I’m hoping happens anyway. Besides, it turned into a nice parallel in husband/wife spending—the same day I spend $59 on microdermabrasion, my husband (unbeknownst to me at the time) spends about $59 on Halo Reach.

Here’s my spend report for the past week, without any foolish online purchases, facial sandpapering excepted. I can spend my money foolishly enough without the help of the Internet. That is something I am learning from doing this blog: I spend too much money.
(I can just hear what my husband will say when he reads this. “I could have told you that, you didn’t need to do a blog!” Yeah, yeah, yeah.) This blog just might turn out to be a great budgeting tool. But, as you will see, not yet.

Spend Report #2

From Sept. 8 to 15, I spent approximately $1,100. (Holy crap! I know once my husband reads this post, he’s going to ask me, “Are you independently wealthy and hiding it from me? Or do you have a second and third job I don’t know about?”)

I spent about $350 in New Westminster on:
curling lessons for my son, sushi, coffee, groceries, a birthday present and toiletries at Wal-mart, loading up my New West Fitness card, and more coffee.

The rest, about $750, was spent on: (and in)
carpet cleaning (done in my home, but the cleaner was from Burnaby)
SPUD groceries (delivered to my home, but SPUD is based in Vancouver)
Photos, a duvet and groceries (Costco, Burnaby)
An Editors' Association of Canada seminar (bought online, seminar is in Vancouver)
Halo: Reach (Vancouver)
A gift certificate for microdermabrasion (bought online, will be used in Vancouver)
Raffle tickets supporting KidSport (at an event in Burnaby)