- Owning and improving a home in the DC area is expensive as balls.
- I am spending enough money on fast food and coffee to lease a Kia.
The home improvement isn't that troubling, assuming anyone ever buys or sells a house again. Ever.
But the fast food spending is killing me (quite literally) in several ways. First, there are many better ways to utilize $310/month than Panda Express and Starbucks. Second (and I haven't done the legwork on this) I suspect there are healthier dining options extant.
Enter the magic of the internets. Starting Columbus day (no time to grocery shop before then) I will harness the self-improvement (and waist-line reducing) power of Joe's Goals, ING Direct, and self-loathing to banish fastfood and Starbucks from my (weekday) life. This should help me save money (for to pay off credit cards and buy a 40GB Playstation 3) and bring sexy back.
I typically spend ~$5 on breakfast/coffee and $10 on fastfood lunch and dinner. My thinking is that I can replace $125/week of fastfood with ~$50 of groceries, saving $75/week. Tracking my (hopefully) good behavior on Joe's Goals, I plan on dumping the first $35/saved each week into a no-fun ING account that will go towards credit cards. The other (possible) $40 will go to fun.
I'll check back in a month and let you know how it's going. If you don't hear from me, I'm probably at Pentagon City mall gorging myself on Kung Pao and Orange Chicken.
