I went to Target with my $10 worth of gift cards (Harris Poll Online Surveys) and shopped for an hour and a half and spent $9.37. I just don’t have much of a shopping streak. I had originally been worried that I would spend too much splurging for my vacation, but I guess I was wrong.
I am not always sure how to count gift card purchases. I don’t want to count them as income, because obviously I couldn’t put it towards rent or utilities. However it seems as if that way I could “spend” $10 on clothes or something and not have it show against my clothes budget. Then next year, my clothing total would be falsely low by $10. Well, since it’s $10 I’m not gonna worry about it. If it was $25 or $100, I might need to look at a different method (not just for The Challenge, but for me on an ongoing basis. I’m into tracking my expenses).
I did end up getting Nair (will be on the beach), a journal (a must for travel memories), a tiny spray bottle (for Fabreeze) and a pack of disposable razors (vacation and getting pills of my sweaters). This was after looking at many items, and trying on eight bras. I have room left in my toiletries and clothes budgets, so I didn’t need to be so restrained, but nothing seemed right. I almost got two pairs of shoes, but the more I looked at them, the more they seemed cheap. I just don’t want to buy disposable clothing.
My reluctance to spend $10 on an item probably was enhanced by being at garage sales, where things are such great deals. My haul today totaled $4:
Two gifts - $1
Two wet/dry women’s battery powered razors, with batteries: $1
Necklace, I think it’s a silver plated chain, $1.25
shorts, needed for vacation, seventy-five cents
Brush/mirror travel combo-free
Plastic hanger-free
With the shavers, I’m planning on being decadent and putting one in the bathroom and one in my travel bag. On the chain, it is heavier than non-silver, but isn’t marked 925. I did a Google check and didn’t find any good tip to tell if it’s real silver. That’s okay; I needed a longer chain for pendants and I couldn’t return it anyway. It’s not like $1.25 for a chain is outlandish!
I did get my hair cut, though I didn’t get it washed and wet in freshly showered instead. I brought in pictures of my hair for the hair stylist; dorky but it helped her. It was $18; no Challenge would ever get me to be a bad tipper, and I tipped $6, although $4 of $5 would probably have been just fine.
And the last bit of money news: a whopping ninety seven cents extra income from recycling. (I had a lot of non-money stuff to take in, so it was a full trip, just not the good stuff.)
September 10th, 2006 at 06:48 am 1157867298
September 10th, 2006 at 10:02 pm 1157922169
September 11th, 2006 at 11:45 pm 1158014728