Confessions of a Spendthrift

I've been trying to figure out for the past couple weeks where all my money goes. Although my parents were very disciplined with money, the most advice I'd ever got from them was......"save your money"

Is it my parents fault I suck with money? I don't think so. Before the age of 21, I rarely heeded any advice from my parents.

But it would have been nice to know HOW to save money. I will tell my snot-nose children to save money by building a well thought out budget, withdrawing your planned savings from your account before you pay rent or buy anything, and learning to invest at a young age. And I will make them read The Millionaire Next Door.

Anyways, back to my financial analysis.

I've started building spreadsheets and charts to understand exactly which directions my money flows and in what quantity.

I've come to a very sad realization that my most expensive possession is the roll of fat on my waist. It's easily worth more than the book on my car, and over the past several years, I've contributed to building it much faster than I have to my 401(k) and my savings account combined. I'm estimating that I've spent close to 7% of my take-home earnings going out to eat(including drinks), probably another 7% at the grocer, and probably another 5-6% on drinks at bars. I'll let you figure out how much that is.

It's too bad that you don't get hangovers from overspending.

Three years ago, I went out to eat almost as or more often as I ate at home. My consumption has slowed, but not as much as it should have. Surely going out to eat costs 3 times what it does to cook for myself. Even worse, I hardly know HOW to cook outside a handfull of dishes , which are extremely simple & quick to make.

Perhaps even more depressing is the monetary effort I've gone to decrease it's size. A gym membership, 2 nice bikes and equipment to support them, health supplements, healthy food that goes bad in my fridge while I eat crappy stuff at restaruants......

Change is on the way, and I will be in better shape physically and financially in 2007.