Summer Costs

I have completed one of four pages of my essay. At least I wrote the introduction, which is generally the hardest part for me. I spent the last few hours cleaning my sublet. How did I accumulate so much stuff living here? I have no idea how I even moved all this stuff in here to begin with.

After packing up, I realized that it's July 31st. Which means ... I can finally make a chart of my summer costs! Which is something I've been waiting to do since summer ever started.

This took another half hour. I really want to buy a book on microsoft Excel and learn every little function that it can do. It was on my summer goals list, but I've basically done zero on my summer goals list.


Boo. The resolution went down. Anyway, if you start from the (pi/2) point, (I'm not a huge nerd I just don't know how else to describe it) the sections go in order of the legend from top to bottom. I sorted the data from smallest to largest and the numbers are dollar amounts of how much I spent. Travel was the smallest, and consisted of the Bart fares to go to Redwood Shores for work and random trips. Other includes shopping for myself, sometimes clothing, sometimes things for the apartment. Groceries means anything that I bought from Trader Joe's or Berkeley Bowl and did not consume immediately. Sadly, my groceries were just a little under the Food amount, which refers to all the times I ate out with people.

I rarely eat out, and only twice was it by myself. One was a week ago when I gave into cravings and bought some frozen yogurt at Yogurt Park after class. The second was today when I was insanely hungry but already ate most of the food in my sublet, so I went to Cheese N Stuff. Imagine how much more I would have spent if I ate out more often like the average American. My groceries bill is probably lower than others because the only things I buy are boxes of cereal, milk, bread, apples, and grapes. Which is really what I eat every day.

The meal plan is cheating because it qualifies as food but since my mom paid for it, I count it as something separate. I guess technically it would qualify under eating out.

Rent is over HALF of my costs. I read somewhere that you're supposed to spend 28% of your income on your rent. I say that I don't have an actual income, so this doesn't mean as much. I could be sad that rent is such a large percentage, but I think it's actually because I don't spend very much in other things, so that's why the percentage is so inflated.

I think the most interesting one is TMV. It's my freaking SECOND largest expenditure, and I counted it as any gas cost of traveling back home (since that's really the only reason I go home), ate out with TMV, or traveled with TMV. Damn. I realized just a few months ago how much money I spend with TMV, but that is a CRAP load of money when compared to the other numbers. $100 is for the cost of buying Lake Tahoe Rafting pictures, but at the same time, if I hadn't paid for that, I would have paid about that amount in gas anyway. So... wow. Maybe I should start spending less when I go home.

I really doubt you found that as interesting as I did. The sad thing is that I had taken the summer job planning to make a little extra money while offsetting the cost of living here. I haven't gotten all of my paychecks yet, but right now I've actually spent more than I've made. Which means I LOST money after working several weeks full-time and killing my eyes, sanity, and love for work. Hopefully when I get all of my checks, I'll at least break even.

I didn't realize how much money I lose from missing a day of work. I didn't go to work about five times, and that turns out to be like $500 that I didn't make, which is a lot for just FIVE days. Also, I hadn't really calculated taxes, which is a huge amount. >:O! Now that I'm paying for my own stuff and paying closer attention to the taxes the government takes out, I get super pissed when I hear about inefficiencies in the government.