Falling Off The Wagon | brokeGIRLrich
Hi, my name is Mel and I have fallen off the wagon.
I couldn’t tell you where my money has gone this month if I tried, but I have gone shopping nearly every day after work for the last two weeks.
The primary culprit here is boredom, but I totally know who is to blame and it’s me.
Every item I bought can, and has been, justified in my mind, but frugal Mel seems to have gone on holiday, because I know this is not normally how I roll.
A lot of it has been stage management related. It’s been a while since I worked a job where my kit was just constantly raided. So most days my trips have been to the Dollar Tree or Walmart to pick up more pencils or bandaids or highlighters.
Then the tackle box that holds everything broke. Which stinks, but at least that sucker made it through 12 years before breaking… and if 19 year old Mel had her act together and had kept the receipt, it would’ve had a lifetime warranty. Unfortunately, 19 year old Mel did not.
I had been considering investing in a good Bluetooth speaker to use at work. I’ve been asked several times if I had one. I firmly hold that it is not my responsibility at all to provide one, but on my last two tours, my life would’ve been much easier if I could’ve just handed my cast a speaker to do their warm-ups rather than trying to hunt down venue provided equipment or their venue sound tech to play an iPhone through the house system. It got so irritating, that it was the main catalyst that made think I’d rather just spend $100 and not fight this fight every day. Well for my current show, I’d been playing sound effects in rehearsal through my lap top but they were all too quiet to be heard and the grumblings about that pushed me over the edge and into Best Buy (which, let’s be real, it rarely is) and now I own a Bluetooth speaker (and those sound cues rock the rehearsal room).
I joined a Planet Fitness down here in Virginia because I’m kind of socially inept and not likely to put any effort into making friends when I’m somewhere for only one month. This wasn’t my worst financial idea since it should be $11 for the month, but I’ve heard some things that make me nervous about trying to cancel my membership, so we’ll see how smoothly that goes in two weeks. The guys I talked to at the desk assured me it would be a breeze.
I’m studying to take the GRE because I’ve lost my ever-loving mind and am really considering going back to school – if some pigs fly and I can actually get into a program somewhere. GRE study books and software are not cheap, but based on my practice scores, I’d be lucky to get into community college with what they currently are. Turns out the kind of writing you train yourself to do to be a blogger is the antithesis of GRE testing prompts are looking for. :oP
And let’s not even get into how terrible I’ve been about eating out. I lived in a different area of Virginia for three years for school almost a decade ago, so I’ve thoroughly enjoyed eat at a bunch of regional places I’d missed (CiCi’s macaroni and cheese pizza makes my heart happy… and my gym membership necessary). My theatre provided housing is also in the heart of their cute little downtown area, so I’ve been eating at most of the little local shops too.
So money has essentially just slipped right through my hands all month. My only saving grace has been that I trained myself to pay myself first, so some of that money goes right into savings.
I’ve also taken a massive pay cut from my usual scale to do this job though the job is pretty easy and mostly fun, so I think I’ve developed some strange vacation mentality… not that my vacations are usually all about the gym and studying for the GRE and updating all of my stage management tools… but that seems to be the nature of this one.
These are some serious bad habits in the making, but can we talk for a minute about how I also see the magic of the 80-90% rule applying here? While I actively watch these weird shopping warily, I’ve still managed to pay off my credit card every week with enough money to spare that I’ve hit another yearly goal and finished saving up the amount I wanted to contribute to the new car fund.
Since 80-90% of the time, I manage to live well under my means and work my butt off towards hitting any financial goals early, the 10-20% of the time that I totally slack off doesn’t destroy me.
Could I do better? Yeah, totally, and I will keep striving too, but I’m also going to be a little excited about how far I’ve come.
A grad school personal statement is a place where you should show AND tell. Make a list with two columns. On one side, put the skills or characteristics about yourself you want the admissions committee to know. On the other side, list concrete examples of those things. Aim for a one-to-one correspondence: for every skill or quality, make sure you have a concrete example, and for every concrete example, make sure you tell your readers what skill it demonstrates.
Good luck!
Thanks!!
Not a PhD, but an MBA who also at one point took the nursing school entrance exam, the LSAT, and, of course, the GMAT.
My advice for studying: smaller chunks of time work better for retention than long study fests. Doing half an hour, every day, regularly, is way better than 2 hour cram fests.
Not sure I’m qualified about the “how to stand out” – but here are my 2 cents: remember that schools are looking to provide a diverse and enriching student experience, as well as building a varied pool of alumni for future students to reach out to. So don’t be afraid to be YOU and bring your personality and experience and history to the table as an asset.
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Thanks, Pia, that’s what I’ve been doing. I spend 30 minutes a day working through a sample section of the test and then reviewing my wrong answers. I also downloaded a vocabulary app that I use in small chunks while I’m waiting in lines or traveling too.
Mel @ brokeGIRLrich recently posted…Falling Off the Wagon
Love the 80-90% on track allowing 10-20% off track comment! Those who fail with money and with their finances are probably the reverse situation! I have a doctorate but took the GRE’s forever ago – and but I love the advice Prof. Provident gave. If you ever want to link up for a case study – would love to consider a joint post on making that decision to go back to school! I was looking for more on that topic!
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Sure – let me know!
For the tackle box, do you absolutely have to have the receipt? I ask because a couple items I own with a lifetime guarantee has been honored and the companies didn’t ask me for a receipt, just a model number. May be worth asking and explaining the receipt has gone missing, some of them are nice enough to honor it.
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Apparently, I also had to register the tackle box to qualify for the lifetime guarantee. So I think I’m out of luck, however, I have registered the new one and taken a copy of the receipt to file away with it.
It’s pretty inspiring that despite your feeling like a spendthrift, you’re still on target with your larger goals!
(It’d be doing the happy dance. I’ll do one right now in your honor.)
The best tip I had for GRE/GMAT was that I worked my way through the math pretty steadily. I felt like I had to completely relearn algebra/geometry before the test. I also bought myself a couple of magazines of logic puzzles, so training for the logic section really felt more like play than work. If the writing is an issue, maybe a session with a tutor would be worth your while just to figure out whay they want?
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I think I’m going to look online and see if I can get a test question properly scored so I’ll actually know if I’m on track or not – I feel like trying to sort it out myself doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence.
Fortunately, the math scores don’t count – thank goodness, because I appear to have forgotten everything from just glancing through that section of the test.
I had to take a qualifying exam for grad school, and found a used study book on ebay. I read what it said and did a few practice exams to find out what I didn’t know. Then I got books of logic puzzles, because that was not my strong suit. A little bit every day and much longer on the weekends was my study schedule. It worked. I got scholarships from my university and a local community organization.
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Awesome. I downloaded a free app that quizzes you on GRE vocabulary words that has been pretty good so far.
It’s not all that bad Mel, I go through cycles like that on occasion too. But like you said, the 80-90% helps make up for it. Keep up the progress!
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Thanks! And it is really exciting to see things start to work out even when I’m a bit off track – it’s wildly different from the state of my finances two to three years ago.
Mel @ brokeGIRLrich recently posted…Falling Off the Wagon
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