Give Me Back My Five Bucks

On Wednesday I tweeted about how angry I was when I had to wait over 60 minutes on hold with Marriott in order to talk to a customer service rep. Well, yesterday someone from Marriott International called to personally apologize. I liked that, so I took to Twitter to thank them. Still, nothing will give me that hour of my life back … but the bonus Marriott rewards points they credited to my account sure helps ease the pain. :) Speaking of hotels, I’ve finally booked a place for my upcoming trip to San Francisco. I scoured VRBO and AirBnB … Continue reading →

On my last trip to the grocery store, I spent $45.67, and here’s what I bought: Produce (Asian grocery store) – $15.81 – 4 bananas – 2 peppers (red & green) – 2 onions (red & white) – 5 oranges – 1 peach – 1 mango – 2 cucumbers – 2.5 pounds of potatoes – garlic – mushrooms – 1 bunch of carrots   Safeway – $29.86 – 1 loaf of bread – 1 bag of chips – 6 spinach wraps – 1/2 dozen eggs – 1 jar of pasta sauce – 2 bags of bagels – 11 chicken thighs … Continue reading →

Brace yourself (hahahaha)! I’ve decided to put myself out there and post photos of myself AND my braces. I’ve had multiple requests for photos, so here they are. You all know where I spend every last penny, so you might as well know about the metal in my mouth as well. All $6,890 of it. These were taken yesterday morning – sorry if I look a little sleepy! Not the greatest quality photos (I was just using the webcam on my Mac), but I’m far too lazy to re-take them or use Photoshop to clean the images up. You can … Continue reading →

Monday 11th No Spend Day! Tuesday 12th + $389.12 freelance/side income No Spend Day!  Wednesday 13th No Spend Day!  Thursday 14th No Spend Day!  Friday 15th No Spend Day!  Saturday 16th + $300 freelance/side income $40 Vancouver Folk Fest $28 food & drinks at VFF Sunday 17th $4 Croatian Flea Market $44.48 gas $45.67 groceries WEEKLY EXPENSES: - $162.15 WEEKLY SIDE INCOME*: + $689.12 TOTAL: + $526.97 Well, Wednesday-Friday I was in Las Vegas, so I had no expenses. On Saturday, I went to the Vancouver Folk Festival. We waited until after 5pm to get the cheap tickets (before 5pm and they were … Continue reading →

I recently received a comment on my July 2011 Monthly Goals post, where I talked about wanting to slash my grocery budget in half for the month (from $200 to $100). I was originally going to respond to it in comments, but I think it’s important enough to talk about. Especially because for some reason, I’ve been getting a lot of traffic to that post from people who think I’m unrealistic and crazy. Here is what one person had to say: Between your cell phone, internet and entertainment you’ve got $300/month budgeted and you want to cut your food bill … Continue reading →