Starting Weight:  201.2
Last Week’s Weight: 197.6
Current Weight:  196.8
Weekly Weight Change: -0.8
Total Change:  -4.4 lbs

Whoop!  Things are still going well which is encouraging.  I’ve had a horrible costochondritis flare up this week so I’ve missed 2 workouts due to being in extreme pain.  I am feeling better today though so I’m hoping to workout this afternoon and get back in the swing of things.

The money situation is difficult. I honestly didn’t realize how much I relied on credit until I closed all my accounts. There were so many times I would charge small things to get me through until my next payday and now I can’t do that. It’s an adjustment but it’s happening, just not as quickly as I would like.

On the other hand, I’m getting better at the couponing thing. Today I went grocery shopping and got $80 worth of groceries for $48.67 – not too shabby!

As far as the weight loss thing is concerned, things are going well. I missed my Weigh-In Wednesday post this week but I did weigh in. Here is where I stand:

Starting Weight:  201.2
Last Week’s Weight: 199.8
Current Weight:  197.6
Weekly Weight Change: 2.2
Total Change:  -3.6 lbs

Yay! Things really seem to be going well, though I have to say I am SUPER sore from my core workout yesterday – OUCH!

Anyway, time to go plan my meals for the week!

Speaking of exercise, I had my HIIT workout yesterday and it was BRUTAL!  I was so glad when it was over!

Anyway, without further adieu – here is the weigh-in for this week.

Starting Weight:  201.2
Current Weight:  199.8
Weight Change:  -1.4 lbs

Yay!  I was so worried that I wasn’t going to lose, especially after all the mess during Tropical Storm Lee.  This is encouraging  Now it’s time to go my my breakfast.

Motivation Monday – each Monday I will post something motivational regarding weight loss, dieting, and/or financial fitness.  Monday is usually the hardest day of the week for me so the goal is to start Monday with something positive and inspirational to get me going.

Weigh-In Wednesday – this will be my weekly weigh-in posting day.

Thoughtful Thursday – I will use Thursday as a day to post articles, etc that relate to my goals.

Financial Friday – this will be a day for mostly financial stuff, tips and tricks, articles, etc.

Super Sunday - Sunday will be a wrap-up day with weekly highlights (and possibly lowlights).

For now, I’m leaving Tuesday and Saturday alone because I think 5 days of extra posts is enough for the time being AND I couldn’t come up with anything for those days…  Maybe later.

So, as the first Monday since this began – I give you my first motivational post.

I’ll be back later for logging, etc.  Have a great Labor Day, everyone!

Things are mostly back to normal now so I will continue from today forward.

Breakfast:

1 bowl Special K with unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 cup of coffee with non-dairy creamer (ndc) and sugar

Snack:

2% Fage yogurt – strawberry.

Okay, I don’t always comment on food but I have to say that this yogurt was super delicious.  I really enjoyed it and it was very satisfying.  I’m definitely a Greek yogurt fan!

Lunch:

mixed green salad with half a cucumber, shredded carrot, and turkey breast with a lite vinaigrette dressing

Snack:

none – in a typical case of “duh,” I left my snack at the office so I didn’t have anything to eat until I got home for dinner.  I was pretty okay until I was driving back – then my stomach really started growling.

Dinner:

spinach salad with half a cucumber, shredded carrot, tomato, avocado, and lite vinaigrette dressing.

grilled chicken with sweet potatoes and a mouthful of mustard greens.

My husband was kind enough to make dinner tonight so I was extremely grateful for that.  Everything was good except the greens and even then, it was probably me and not the greens themselves.  I’ve tried them several times over the years and I just don’t like them.  I’ll take a bite to be polite but otherwise… blech!

Exercise – nada.  I was scheduled to do Turbo Fire HIIT 15, however the smoke from the marsh fire was really bad today and so I was very hoarse and having a lot of problems with my asthma.  I decided that I would move the workout from today to tomorrow as the wind is supposed to be blowing the other way and will hopefully lead to less smoke in the area.  I’m crossing my fingers because my throat is really irritated!

After dinner, my husband and I watched the news and then a bit of Troy (which was on Sci-Fy for some strange reason).  He left a little while ago to go to hang out with his buddies for Tuner Night and so I’m just doing my evening stuff, blogging, and getting ready for bed.

I feel better about my eating today – more veggies in there.  I have an apple at work that I will eat tomorrow – that was my intended afternoon snack for today – so that should help out too.

On the blog front, I think that I’m going to move weigh-ins to Wednesday so it can be “Weigh In Wednesday.”  This came up because on Fridays I want to do my fiscal diet update (Fiscal Fridays – ha!) and I didn’t want to over-post on the same day.  Because I just started yesterday, there will be no weigh-in tomorrow but there will be one next Wednesday.  The moment of truth, I suppose.

I’m also carrying a little notebook around with me and I write down my meals and any notes that I might have.  For today, the only note I have is that I need to get a water bottle so I can start tracking the amount of water I am drinking every day.  I already know that it’s a good amount because I drink a lot of water already, however I’d like to get an idea of exactly what my daily intake is so I know where I stand with that.  I actually think we have a bottle around here that I can use, I just need to find it!

Otherwise, so far so good – I packed leftover salad with chicken for tomorrow’s lunch so I’m excited about that.  Lunches tend to be the problem meal for me because I’m at work and I’m terrible about leaving my lunch at home or not packing a lunch at all.  I’m trying to solve that by making sure that I make my lunch right after dinner.

Okay, that’s it for me tonight – bed is calling my name!

Breakfast:

1 bowl Special K with unsweetened vanilla almond milk

Snack:

1 cup of coffee with non-dairy creamer (ndc) and sugar

Lunch:

chicken enchiladas

Snack:

peanut butter granola bar

Dinner:

mixed green salad with half a cucumber, shredded carrot, and lite vinaigrette dressing.

red beans and rice.

Exercise – Turbo Fire Fire 30

It was an okay day – I had a hard time getting through the workout and I was coughing and my throat felt weird.  I partially attribute this to the smoke we have in the area from a marsh fire that has been irritating my throat and making my asthma flare up.  I did a little more than half of the 30 minute exercise and then I had to stop to take my inhaler.

Lame, I know.  I’m hoping tomorrow will go better but we shall see.

I also took my before pictures which I’m not brave enough to share here.  My starting weight is 201.2 and my goal is 150.  I will be weighing in on Fridays and I will take updated pictures every 4 weeks.  I’m hoping to get measurements soon once I pick up a tape measure so I will keep track of those too…

And now, I’m totally exhausted so I’m going to go to sleep before I pass out.

But while I was in town, I made sure to get everything set up with the debt management plan, reduce monthly bills, and I recorded every transaction into my handmade checkbook register.  It’s not quite September 1st so I don’t have a whole month of data yet and I don’t have anything to compare to yet because I need two months of data for that BUT here is where things stand:

I made it through mostly okay.  There is still money in my bank account, I haven’t used any of my credit (largely due to the fact that I closed all my accounts) and I’ve reduced my junk spending.

In the not so good column, I over-drafted my bank account this morning.

Now, if you’re sitting there going “uh, isn’t the whole point of this NOT to over-draft your account?” you would be right on!  This is supposed to reduce spending and help me save money, not help me to spend more than I have available.  When I saw that negative balance this morning I was SO FRUSTRATED.

You see, I sat down and went through every single bill I have and wrote them down, made sure they were either paid or scheduled, and got everything arranged before we left for vacation.  The idea was that I’d come back without anything to really worry about financially.  That was true until this morning.  Apparently, one of my professional renewals came due this morning.  This wouldn’t be a problem except that instead of notifying me to pay it, they did an auto draw… from my debit card.  ::headdesk::

I don’t believe I authorized the auto-renew as that’s something I very rarely do for this exact reason, so I’ve put a few calls in to see if I can get something done about all that.  In the meantime, I transferred a small amount of money from my savings back into my checking account and deposited some cash on top of that.  Hopefully there will be no more surprise transactions!

Have I done the best ever?  No.  I spent more than what I budgeted on restaurants/fast food and that is my main “junk spending” category.  However, I did spend significantly less in that category than I did the past two months, at least from what I see on mint.com.  Change doesn’t come overnight and progress is progress.  I’m actually kind of excited to see how things go next month.

So that’s the quick and dirty update…  I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you about my physical fitness diet/regimen!

A big part of my spending and debt problems come from the fact that I didn’t do a good job of keeping track of my spending.  I’d pay bills when they came in, buy things whenever I wanted, and I never wrote down a damn thing.  Eventually, things were out of control and bills started conflicting and then suddenly my bank account was overdrawn.  I panicked and started looking at my financial situation and what I saw was NOT good.

There was a lot of debt, I had very little in my savings account, and by not planning, I had no idea where my money was going.  I took some time to break everything down into categories with the help of www.mint.com.  I was ashamed when I saw how much I was spending on fast food, entertainment, and other unimportant crap.  Was it stuff I wanted?  Yes.  But was it stuff that I needed?  For the most part, no.  I feel shame for that – it’s like seeing the unseen side of yourself.  I’d always believed I was above materialism but apparently I was driven by it, driven to the point of excessive debt.

So the first step is admitting you have a problem…  The second is doing something about it.  For a while, I thought I was doing something about it but I really wasn’t.  I was writing down every bill I had, the due date, and I would mark them off when I got paid, but I wasn’t really budgeting beyond simply knowing about how much my bills were and when they needed to be paid.  The rest of my money was being spent on whatever and that wasn’t helping the situation much.  From there, I started trying to think about what I could do and I started working on a plan.

The first was Plan A and it was very simple:  win the lottery.  There were two fundamental problems with Plan A:

1.  I never bought lottery tickets

2.  It was a plan based on luck and hope.

I say all the time that hope isn’t a very effective method of anything.  Yes, it serves an important fundamental process, however if you use hope to try and achieve anything, it’s hard – there has to be some action taken.  Upon realizing that Plan A would be nice, but was highly impractical, I started reformulating and coming up with new ideas and Plan B was born.

The first thing I did was call a credit counselor and talk to them about my financial situation and tried to find out what I could do to help manage my debt.  We were able to work out a debt management plan that will help to lower my interest rates and consolidate everything into one payment.  From there, I downloaded a budgeting software program called YNAB – You Need a Budget.  And it was true, I really did need a budget!

YNAB works in a different way than a lot of other budgeting programs.  With mint, I was able to see what I was spending and where, but I found the budgeting part frustrating.  I could see how much I wanted to spend in a particular category and then I could see how close I was to that line, but it didn’t seem to help me save.  YNAB has a system that is designed to help you create a “buffer” by budgeting incoming and outgoing money and then trying to save enough so that you can put it towards the next month’s bills.  The ultimate idea is that you will, eventually, get to the point where you are using the previous month’s income for the current month’s bills.  For example, if it was September, you would use your paychecks from August to pay your bills.  It’s a way to move out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle which is desperately what I want!

I also looked into ways to reduce my student loan payments because that’s really what’s killing me.  There isn’t a whole lot I can do beyond what I’ve already done, however I am doing some research on consolidation.  So far, I don’t have enough information to make a decision but I’m still looking.

The next thing I did was call a friend of mine who is constantly posting on facebook about all the stuff she gets for free by using coupons strategically.  I watched an episode of Extreme Couponing at her urging and then she told me about how she uses websites and newspapers, etc to collect tons of coupons.  I’d used coupons in the past, here and there, but I’d never done it strategically enough to where I’d saved more than maybe 5 bucks at a time.  My friend has often come away with a dozen items for free.  Most recently, she purchased several items at CVS and they actually gave her money back!  So not only was it free, she GOT PAID to buy that stuff!

I’m not going to get into the coupoining thing in detail in this post, partially because I’m just starting and I haven’t learned all the tricks yet.  If you are looking for information and tips on how to get started with couponing, I suggest you check out this guide to extreme couponing on www.livingwellspendingless.com.  I found it to be INCREDIBLY helpful and while I’m still just starting out, it’s beginning to make sense to me.  I’ve got my filing system up and running and I actually made my first couponing trip today.  We were running low on food so I didn’t just buy coupon stuff as is suggested in the guide, however I did manage to cut my bill down by about 40%.  I know that’s not huge given what the people on Extreme Couponing do, however I was really pleased with myself.

When I was thinking of ways to save money, I knew there were things we could do to our services to reduce costs.  We can’t do much about our rent – it’s about as low as you can get for what we want/need in the area we want to live, however there were other things that could be changed.  I cut down the minutes and data allotment on our cell phone plan because we NEVER used them all and were getting really ridiculous with the rollover minutes.  That alone cut the bill from about $140 a month to just over $110 a month.  I also called the cable company with the full intention of canceling our cable, and just keeping the internet because we both need it (me for work, him for school).  The customer service rep I spoke with asked why I was cutting the cable.  When I told her it was because of financial reasons, she put me on hold, and when she returned, she offered me the same level of services we currently have for the price of just the internet.  It’s a promo price and will only last a year, however that is still really helpful as the bill went from about $110 to about $65.

As far as our other bills…  There’s not too much we can do about the electric at the moment.  We keep our A/C turned up higher than a lot of people I know and we’ve switched almost all of our lightbulbs to those energy saving ones.  We’re not big on running the lights when it’s not necessary, however with the summer as hot as it is, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot we can do.  During the winter time, our bill is almost nothing – we wear warm clothes inside and bundle up in blankets and snuggies (I know people have strong opinions about snuggies but I think they are fabulous if you are looking to get work done at home while you have the heater off and it’s 29 degrees outside!).  But until the weather gets cooler, we’re stuck at least running the A/C enough so that we don’t die of heat exhaustion.

The last key point is to reduce “junk” spending.  Junk spending is a term I use for any spending that is not necessary – grocery costs are not included, even though sometimes we buy stuff (e.g. ice cream) that we don’t really need.  However, we need groceries in order to eat so I give them a pass.  Junk spending includes clothes, entertainment, eating out, etc.  Yes, sometimes you need to buy clothes – if you don’t have any pants to wear and need some new ones, I don’t consider that junk spending.  However, you should be smart about it.  I’m not going to go out and buy a pair of designer dress pants.  Usually, I’ll look for a good deal through Old Navy or Target.

Our primary “junk spending” is in the eating out category.  We eat far more fast food than we should and we also go out to eat and order in a lot.  We both agreed this has to stop.  It’s not that we can’t have a night out every now and then, but we have to cut back to a reasonable amount.  I also have a tendency to make impulse purchases.  Usually this is a book or a CD or maybe some clothes…  Typically I do this when they’re on sale, but it’s still a “junk purchase.”  My newest attempt to quell this is to wait at least a day before I make a purchase so that I have time to think it through and decide whether I really need it or not.  Unfortunately, this also includes things like haircuts and the like.  Oh well, there’s always groupon, right?

So in summary, this is Plan B:

1.  Start debt management program to handle out of control credit card debt.

2.  Look for ways to decrease monthly student loan payments at least until I can either make more money or get my other debts paid off.

3.  Use a budget planner (YNAB) to make sure I know where all my money is going.

4.  Reduce monthly bills as much as possible.

5.  Utilize coupons to lower the monthly grocery bill.

6.  Reduce “junk” and impulse spending.

That seems simple enough and so far, so good.  However, it’s only been a few days since this plan fully went into action so there’s going to be a major adjustment period and some painful moments I’m sure.  However, I am hopeful that I will have a better handle on my finances by the beginning of next month and be on my way to true financial health.

Next time on YBB:  The Game Plan, Part Deux!

But, regardless, I will be talking about my weight, food, exercise, and the like.  However, I also will be talking about a very different type of diet.

The money diet.

I will give you the short version of the story:  I have two Master’s degrees and those don’t come cheap.  I am also currently in the process of working on my professional licensure, something that requires me to work for low pay while also paying someone else to supervise my work.  If that sounds backwards to you, don’t worry – I thought the same thing.  In the midst of this, throw in a wedding, some various problems/emergencies, and a recession and wham!  You have a broke girl with tons of student loans to repay and other debts to deal with as well.

Let me make something clear – I am not at all trying to shirk responsibility.  I took out each and every one of those student loans and, for the most part, I think they were worth it.  My education is very valuable and, someday, I will finish my internship and be a licensed professional which will offer many more career options and (hopefully) more money.  The credit card debt… eh, not so proud of that.  I should have been smart enough to realize that was a stupid thing to do but it seems as though the bills were sky high before I even realized it.

As a result of all of this, I now have a 40+ hour a week full-time job and a 20 hour a week part time internship (which does pay… a little).  I would cut my hours at my job, however I need the money in order to work on repaying my debt.

So when I was sitting here thinking about my food diet, I thought “why not do a money diet?”  After all, much of my spending is “junk” like the junk food I eat – we can cut both out.  The idea here is not to never spend money, that’s impossible, but I am working to spend as little as possible in order to repay as much debt as I can and to put money towards my savings.  There are times when I look at what I’m up against and I think “wow, I’m going to starve – in more ways than one!”  However, I think in the end, the diets will pay off in a healthier, wealthier me.

Next time on YBB:  The Game Plan.