I spend too much money on food...

...and that's sad.

So today, I'm at work, chillin out. I ran out of stuff to do, and remember that I was supposed to get paid this morning (since the job is new i'm not quite clear on the pay-shedule thing, but i've got it all figured out now!) so I trod over and check my TD Chequing Account. Yep, got paid. Woo hoo. A big 'ol $1,003.77 dollars. I feel very relieved since I can finally pay off my VISA balance that's been haunting me from the vacation. I now have a bank account balance that's in the green. Feels good.

I also got to put my original savings plan into action. I couldn't quite remember it, but the plan was, 80% of each paycheque into savings and 10% into emergency fund, with the remaining 10% being towards whatever I desire. Of course this deposit is a little small since, after paying the $454.59 balance on the VISA I only had $570.98 left to shuffle around. But that's better than spending it all and 'starting fresh next month' (a habit which I am horrible for...). So. 80% (around $458) was dropped into my newly-formed second ING Direct Account so lovingly named 'savings' which now holds a grand total of....$458.

The 10% (around $57) was kerpluncked into my existing ING Direct Account that has been renamed 'Emergency Fund' which now holds a total of about $117 dollars. I can't remember what my original goal for the emergency fund was, since all my dork-induced spreadsheets are at home, but I will remember that for tomorrow.

I also have a paycheque from Subway (the last one..sniff..sniff) that I have yet to deposit and will do on my lunchbreak today. However, i'm debating whether or not I should leave this one completely in the chequing account or shuffle it around according to the plan?

If I did shuffle it around, I would only be left with about $100 in my chequing accound to make do with until the 15th of next month. That would usually be just fine except that I have a very close friend's wedding comming up next month, for which I have yet to buy a gift for. Since i've known him for a long time and we used to be very close, I don't want to just buy him some tableclothes and a dishrack from his registry...I would like to buy a 'nice' gift - something in the vicinity of $100-120. So I may split the paycheque from Subway, throwing half into Chequing and the other half split between emergency fund and savings. That way, everyone gets a little bit.

Anyways! Back to the original point of this post (man...do I ever get off topic fast!). So, i'm looking over my online statements for my TD Chequing Account and think to myself 'I'm at work, printing is free, I might as well print them out!' (I hate printing things out at home, even though my printer is good for money, it just seems like such a waste). So I print out my last 6 statements (as much as they had on record) and leaf through them. All of a sudden I realize that there is a lot of debits on my account for food purchases. Fine, I think to myself, I do eat out about twice a week with friends, sure. So then, my super-anal-organizational side comes out and I decided to go through them all and categorize them. So, my friends, here you have it, my spending patterns for the last 6 months:

TD Chequing Account (Not including today's lovely shuffling-around):
Deposited: $10,803
Cash Withdrawls: $731.50
Bought EURO Currency: $2,178.92
Food: $195.25
Bank Fees: $37.62 (This is also larger than normal because of an accidental overdraft incident...stupid fees)
Transfered to ING Account: $100
Paypall (for Ebay Puchases): $685.18 (This is also larger than normal due to a puchase of a Chanel Purse....)
Bought for Self (Books, movies, etc..): $121.04
Cheques to pay off Amex: $480.72
Gifts: $100
VISA Payments: $7,620.41 (Eeek! I'll explain why this is freaking huge now)

Okay, now onto the VISA:
Tuition: $4,221.35 (school is so expensive!)
Flights, Eurostar, bookings, etc: $2,101.34 (This is unusual spending, I don't usually take trips all the time)
Food: $278.32
Clothes: $423.13 (This is also unusual, new job required buisness attire - old job got free uniform)
Makeup: $105.89 (Also uncharacteristic, but can't really blame this one on anything..heh)
General (including stationary, wallet, sunglasses, admission to things, etc): $738
Gifts: $264.50
Books: $17.35
Games (Yay Nintendo DS!): $43.45
Interest paid: $1.98 (not bad but it couldn't been 0 - my stupid mistakes!)

Okay, so, i've defended a lot of my spending. The trip was a once-time thing. I don't plan on taking another large-scale trip for at least a year or so. Until then no more big-trip spending. The clothes were also unusual spending. I rarely buy new clothes. Jeans and t-shirts work out quite well for me. However, new job required buisness-casual clothes, and although I wear jeans, they have to be 'nice' jeans and somehow I didn't think my 'Green Day' t-shirt was going to cut it. So I had to buy some blouses and tank tops and the like. Fortunatly I got a lot of this stuff during a scratch and save event so I did manage to save about 30%, which was nice.

$473.57 is the total amount i've spent on food. So about $80 a month. I think that that's quite large seeing as I don't buy groceries. I'm lucky enough that my parents still buy groceries for the whole household. So that money is spent entirely on fastfood and/or restaurant food. So easily that's 2-$20 eat-in meals and 4-6 $8 fast food meals. I think that's excessive. I started out here (I work downtown, in the abundance-of-fast-cheap-bad-for-you-food center) bringing my lunch a lot, but laziness did eventually kick in and I had to go roaming for food. I'm back to brining my lunch, in order to keep things exciting I'm going to try mixing it up and bringing interessting things for lunch. For now i'm very excited about my salami sandwhich (i'm such a dork - I love pre-packaged meats) and potato salad for lunch. But think about it! That's easily $1,000 a year on food that could have been avoided! Hmm...I wonder what that would be upon retirement if I saved all that money for this year... Hmm.

Now, of course, i'm not going to hermit-myself into my home and never go out, but maybe I'll have to rethink all of my eating out plans. I mean, I can get chicken, burgers, and all sorts of fried-goodness at home, why should I go out? I'll have to remember that.

Well, i'm off to have lunch. And it's sitting here in the fridge!