Anecdotal Evidence Exhibit A

This isn't necessarily evidence, but it is anecdotal. Being as I have recently quit my dayjob, it seems as good a time as any to give free reign to the Neuroses That Be, the hidden urges plaguing my daily life. I'm aiming for a gradual loosening of the apocalyptic hordes of pennypinching thoughts that are ready to crowd my brain; I'm unemployed and thus could do with keeping to a budget and even though this means I become a progressively less pleasant person to be, let alone spend time with, sometimes one needs to let the hordes gallop onto the plains of rational thought.

Enough analogizing?

Monday's expenditures:
grocery store: $46 (I loathe grocery shopping, so this was long overdue (meals were down to the two remaining ingredients) and included 100% recycled toilet paper, frozen veggies, garlic, bulk rice, emergency mac & cheese (emotional emergencies, not food emergencies), milk, dish soap, canned tomatoes, rice cakes, other food, and lots of tea (to decrease desire to go to coffee shops (which also serve tea))). I had finally purchased the Blue Sky Guide a month ago (coupons for local and organic and other happy hippy stuff) so I even had coupons like a bloody adult and I "saved" $10 (i.e. I paid $46 instead of $56 but none of it was going into my savings and therefore was still more than $1, and oh! the pain!).

Tuesday's expense report:
coffee shop: $21 (That makes me look terribly decadent, but I wasn't, I swear! It was just that I had a bagel with extras and two beers during happy hour and two teas and my father stopped by sans wallet so I got him a scone and a lemonade and then I tipped (because not tipping is wrong if you are in the U.S.)).
fast food eatery: $5 (Sometimes after two beers and lots of walking and potato salad, you get a bit hungry for things that have been deep fried in unidentifiable liquified fat.)

Wednesday's outflow of my precious precious money:
counselor: $15 (such a deal for minor sanity!)
gas station: $3 (lemonade and a bag of chips for the beach!)
So far I am blowing through my money like a snow blower blows through snow. Will this continue? But of course not! I couldn't be Tightwad, Daughter of Tightwad, then. The perhaps minor issue is that my savings during my tenure as a member of the 9-5 working class came about sans any budgeting or internal reckoning of money because if I pay attention to what I'm spending at all, I freak out.

I've already let Tightwad win the internal arguments against Desire, Common Sense, and Humanity a couple of times. In the gas station, for example, I went with the less tasty Sun Chips ($1.29) over the baked Cheetos ($3.79) though if it had been the baked sour cream and cheddar ruffled chips, Desire would've laid the smack down. At the coffee shop, I abstained from having additional food. I (forgive me, children of Earth, for I have sinned against the environment) asked my brother to help me install my window air conditioner in my room in order to lessen the pull of the coffee shops (I swear I will be judicious in its use, though I am not pregnant or old or in ill health and have no excuse for it (absolve me! absolve me!)).

Other things that I do for either environmental, health, or social justice reasons that don't hurt the Tightwad Revolution:
1. Reuse dental floss (it comes in too much non-recyclable plastic packaging, even when you get the largest roll they sell). I tried using shorter lengths for a while, but I have trouble if I can't wrap it around my fingers.
2. Avoid meat. I used to call myself a vegetarian until it was pointed out that if someone handed me a pork eggroll and I ate it, I couldn't really do that in good faith. So now I am either a fallen-away vegetarian, a lazy vegetarian, a freegan (you buy it, I eat it), or a don't ask don't tell vegetarian. Although honestly, most meat has a texture I find unappealing. And it's expensive.
3. Buy frozen veggies and fruits instead of fresh unless I know I'm going to use them; I hate wasting food, esp. expensive food, esp. food that I am lucky to have because it's so tasty and healthy and wonderful. Frozen veggies are also an easy and relatively cheap ($3/bag) thing to throw in with something fatty and bulky (ramen? brown rice with oil?) to call a meal.
4. Make my own yogurt. Individual containers that cannot be recycled in this town: $0.70 usually. A half-gallon of happy cow pasture milk which makes about nine-ten servings of yogurt: $3.50. Plus unsweetened yogurt makes an excellent substitute for many things for the tightwad who hates grocery shopping. Try it in place of sour cream! (Only not on burritos; that is wrong!)