I know I haven’t written on here in forever. It is partly due to me not wanting to post from work, and partly because I have this feeling that if I do post something (after this long) it has to be really worthy and relevant. This post is neither.

I continually find myself interested in reading new books, and learning about new things. But, I lack the discipline to finish one before either purchasing another, or actually purchasing and starting another.

For clarity, I have decided to post the books I am currently reading, and that portion of each which I have already consumed:

The Black Swan, 60%.
The Reason for God, 45%.
The Shack, 8%.
Blink, 25%.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1%.
How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs, 75%.
Blood Meridian, 20%.

From this, you can see that I actually do read books (or at least I read?). I can’t seem to finish a book.

I think that the problem lies in the fact that I am convinced that I just HAVE to get the next book and read it.

What do you think? A deeper problem with satisfaction? Perpetual grass-is-greener mentality? ADD?

Let me know if you too have problems with this.

*N.B. Since writing this draft several days ago, I have purchased 3 new books. Surprise, surprise.

Virginia and I recently went on our first extended vacation since we moved down to Corpus Christi, and I must say that it was wonderful. Since it is almost impossible to get anywhere quickly from south Texas, it’s always an adventure planning the flights.

We decided to reward ourselves (more on that later) by spending some extra time in New Orleans on our way to Seaside, FL. We ate very well, and all in all had a great time. While in Seaside, we decided one night to commence with the July 2008 Craig Family Financial Overhaul.

For a couple of months here and there we have been able to add considerably to our savings account, but we decided that our inconsistency was more than an annoyance, it was a problem. The ultimate problem, it turns out, is our nonchalance and indifference to the active management of our finances and the rationalization that comes with spending hard earned cash on wants.

I decided to dive a little further down the rabbit hole. I decided to build a spreadsheet that would track and label our spending according to category. I used the following categories to break down the expenditures:

• Insurance (Renter’s and Auto)
• Cable (TV, Internet)
• Car Maintenance
• Cell phone
• Credits (Could easily have been lumped into deposits category)
• Deposits
• Eating Out
• Entertainment (Renting movies, going to movies, going out)
• Gas
• Groceries
• Home Maintenance
• Miscellaneous (Cokes at the gas station, etc.)
• Personal (Clothes, gadgets, Woot! stuff, etc.)
• Rent
• Savings Deposit
• Tithing
• Travel
• Utilities

These may not work for everyone, but they fit for me. I have Bank of America, and they make it pretty easy to manage your stuff online, but I wanted to export to Excel – which is a great option.

Once I exported the file to Excel, I selected everything and sorted according to date so that I could compare month to month expenditures in each category.

Could you guess where we were spending most of our money?

It was on eating out. We spent 8% of our income on eating out. It may not sound like a lot but when compared to 2% spent on groceries; it’s sick! If we flip-flopped these categories we would save a ton of money, because groceries can feed you for a fraction of the price. If this is the case, why do I continue to eat out so often? Here are a few thoughts to consider:

• I feel like I have a refined sense of taste, or that I’m “kind of over that eat at home biz, I mean, I’m not in high school.” What a joke. I’m no connoisseur or anything of the sort, so why try to convince myself and others that I am?
• I think I deserve a nice meal for having a hard week. Or weekend. This fallacy is hard to overcome sometimes. It’s like going up to someone and saying, “Hey, I’m feeling underappreciated, so I’m going to burn this money.” Double-whammy.
• Feeling like breaking a weekend tradition of going to the sushi place will literally end my life. We go to the same sushi joint every Saturday night when we are in town, and drop like $80 bones. Don’t get me wrong, the sushi is the best I’ve ever had, (check out my post on SushiBar), but can I really afford to eat there so often? No! Rationalizing is the enemy.

Some practical solutions we’ve started implementing:

• Sit down Sunday afternoon and plan out the meals for the week. We try to pick meals that will carry over so that the leftovers won’t be as redundant. For example, this past week we made some homemade spaghetti sauce and added some ground beef. We got enough for spaghetti Sunday and Monday nights, and then used the rest of the ground beef for a hamburger grill out with friends Tuesday, and then got a $3.00 pre-made pizza crust which allowed us to use the rest of the spaghetti sauce.
• After the meals are written down, make a quick sweep of the fridge and see what you need. Before, we would get home and realize that we already had a bunch of the stuff we just bought. Make the item by item list of stuff after the sweep, and avoid generalizing – it only aids rationalization. For example, don’t write ‘Salad Stuff’, you’re just psychologically positioning yourself to say, “Yeah, those organic-fat-free-vitamin-infused-live-active-soy beans are what I was talking about,” write what you need. Lettuce mix, carrots, cucumber, celery, dressing.
• Only buy what’s on the list. This is hard to police on yourself, but easy when someone else is with you. That’s why we go to the grocery store together.

I’ll update you later on the success (or failure) of our attempt to narrow our margin. I’d love to hear some tips you all have on saving with respect to eating out, or any of the above-mentioned categories. Post some comments.