Distractions and Dissapointments

The past couple of weeks I've been really distracted from my goal. I had fallen back into my old lifestyle of spending nearly every penny I had and living from paycheck to paycheck. My savings has actually gone backwards! Fortunately it was partially due to real life issues that needed to be taken care of. I have fairly bad eye sight and needed to get new contacts, unfortunately I don't have insurance for that. There goes 150 bucks from my already inflexible budget. My car needed a little love too, and since it gets me to and from my job, I figured it deserved it. Money has been tight, but I should be back on schedule now, albeit a couple hundred behind but back to budget anyways. In order to regain my missing money, I've devised a plan! Big surprise there I know, I mean I have plans for everything, getting a boat, how I'm going to get the boat, how I'm going to save for it, what I'm going to do with it, what features I'm going to put in it. But, that's half the fun isn't it?

I went surfing the other day and some of my friends and I decided that the beach we were at wasn't all that great, and the beach across the inlet was a better break. So what do a couple of surf bums do? We paddle across the channel. About halfway across I was really feeling it, and by 3/4ths of the way I was exhausted and actually starting to be swept out to sea. I obviously made it back to shore, and even caught some waves, but more importantly it taught me something. I'm really out of shape compared to just a short while ago. I once had a plan that I followed as far as weight watching and exercise, and in this plan if I did my goals for the day I put X amount of money into a jar. The idea was to save up for something you wanted over time, while getting healthier. I liked the plan, and sitting on my desk next to me is the jar with the proceeds from the last time I did it. So I figured I would kill two birds with one stone, as the proverb goes. I am going to set up about 5 daily goals for myself, and 2 or 3 weekly ones, assign a value to each and deposit money into the jar. Not only will this help get me back on track with my finances, but it will also help get me back into shape so perhaps I can enjoy surfing a little more next time.

I devised yet another idea along the same lines as the previous example. I swear to much and I don't really like it. I may be a sailor, but I'm also educated to some degree at least. There is no reason that I should have as foul of a mouth as I do. I created a "swear box" and will deposit a quarter for each swear word. Now this might sound like a good reason to swear more, but this is coming out of my very meager spending allowance. Trust me, I don't like giving up leisure money anymore than I like giving up a kidney.

As for distractions, the other half of this week's title, work was an excuse for several weeks, but now it's moved on to going out with friends, and it's taken me a huge amount of self restraint to stop doing it so much. I've also been a little liberal with my money too. This is bad since most of my hobbies now cost quite a bit. I no longer have a surf board of my own, and it's really hard for me to fight the urge to go out and buy one. I love kayaking, but I have nowhere to store a kayak and I really won't when I get the boat. All in all, I just need to get back into my routine, cut back on the beers, exercise more, save more, and maybe land some kind of second job since the one I thought I was going to get fell through. Looks like I've got some work to do.