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.

As many of you know, I love poker.

I can distinctly remember when my father taught me to play. This may date me, but who remembers when LifeSaver Holes were popular? They came in tubes the size of a roll of pennies. Anyway, those were our “stacks”, our chips. We would pull out the trusty TV trays and sit on the couch for hours playing 5 card draw. At the time, I had a problem with eating my own bets. Not so much anymore.

It wasn’t until much later that I began to appreciate the skills my dad had try to teach me at a young age.

During my sophomore year at Ole Miss, the World Series of Poker blew up, and I was introduced to Texas Hold ‘em. A quick run down of Texas Hold ‘em:

Each player is dealt two “hole cards” face down. A round of betting. The dealer turns over 3 community cards that each player can use to better his/her hand. A round of betting. The dealer then turns one card over. A round of betting. Finally, one last community card from the dealer is turned. Final round of betting. Read ‘em and weep.

I’ve played a lot since then. We would play at least once a week in college, and trips to Tunica, MS (local gambling city) weren’t as rare as they should have been.

I’ve won some, I’ve lost some, and most of all I love playing. I think there are a many things that draw me to the game: competition, exhilaration of the win, outsmarting your opponent, odds/probability, and the list goes on.

I wanted to document the play-by-play of a recent online hand (yes I play online poker).

I play poker online occasionally. I played for about 10 days straight when Virginia went out of town for 10 days. I started out around a month ago with a $150 deposit into my favorite site (rhymes with Rodog). I have systematically worked it up to quite a bit of money, and was “sitting at a table” last night where the blinds were $5/$10 – a table that I would never sit at live.

It was a six person table, and the average stack was about $1000. At the time of this hand, I had about $1200. I was on “the button” (was in the dealer position), which means that I’m last to bet in a given round when I was dealt 7d8d (7 of diamonds and 8 of diamonds), which I like. The action went as follows:

First to act folds. Player to his left raises the big blind to $35. Next player folds. I look down at 7d8d and smile, of course I’ll call this. I love calling raises online with mediocre hands like this. I may lose money on the flop when I don’t hit it sets me up perfectly for the situation I’m about to describe. Ok, so I call the $35. The small and big blinds both fold, leaving just the initial raiser, and myself following him.

What do you know? The flop brings 8s-8c-5h. So I’ve got a set of 8s and I’m thinking this guy has a decent hand (AJ-AK, 1010 and greater, etc.), but nothing that can catch up to me. Plus, how could he put me on calling with a single 8 in my hand?! So I’m sitting pretty. He’s first to act, and he takes a while before betting $75. There’s already $85 in the pot, so he’s trying to take it down immediately. I kind of laugh on the inside. I quickly call the $75 to try to play like I have something, (reverse psychology). The next card was probably the best card in the deck for me. It was the king of clubs. So on the board, we have 8s-8c-5h-Kc. It’s his turn to bet again. He waits maybe 5 seconds after the king fell before betting $185. So there is $235 in the pot when he bet $185. As I said before, this is a great card for a couple of reasons: (1.) If he has something like Ace-King, it allows him to hit his top-pair, (2.) if I raise, it looks like I have a king and he may call just to try to split the pot now that it’s so big. SO. I decide to raise to represent a king, thinking that surely he can at least tie a king. I raise to $695. This means that there is now $1115 in the pot. He waits for a long time (~30 seconds) before re-raising me all in for ~$200 more. At this point, I figure the only thing that can beat me is KK and, there is a slim chance (albeit very real with online poker) that he indeed has that. I mull over it for 0.5 seconds before calling the extra $200. That $200 call made the pot $2025! Low and behold, I played it just right – he flipped over AA. Pocket aces are a loser when I’m calling with 78 suited! The river was 10s; so he shipped all of his chips over for the $2025 victory.

The best part about this wasn’t the money. It was the fact that I outplayed and outsmarted that guy. I called when it didn’t cost me much, hit, and then played like I didn’t. I then raised precisely when I should have, (AA would love to see someone raise when a King hits), to take it to the bank.

That is why I love the game. It’s all in the head.