And now a break from our regularly scheduled program. Otherwise known as the day I decided not to talk about FAFSAs, but instead about sofas. How does this relate to personal finance? Well, if you recall from my guest post about my New Year’s Resolutions over at Fit is the New Poor, Resolution #1 was find and furnish (in a financially responsible manner) an apartment.

Well, I succeeded at the first half of that goal and managed to find my own tiny pocket of Manhattan. I promptly moved in with an air mattress and two camp chairs. Seriously. It looked like a meth den.

Turns out my little meth den was really depressing. And, even worse, super uncomfortable. So I asked around a little and my mom and grandmother were actually happy to get rid of a few items from their own homes, including two folding dinner trays that my grandmother has had since the 40s (does that make them awesome and vintage now? Probably would’ve if my brother hadn’t used them to paint and repair his snowboard on regularly), two armchairs that my mother hates and has been looking for a reason to get rid of for years, and a table and chair set from my grandmother’s patio.

So now I look more like a really weird, small Goodwill store, but I’m really not complaining. This is a major improvement. However, this still left me with an air mattress. When I moved in, I didn’t think the air mattress would be a huge deal, because when I was 23 I slept on an air mattress for 3 months while I was getting my act together in San Francisco. Funny story though, 29 year old backs are apparently a little less resilient than 23 year old ones. Or I had a way better air mattress. I really can’t recall. Either way, I needed a real mattress.

So my first big furniture purchase of my life was done at Sleepy’s where I picked up a queen sized mattress and split box spring (so we could actually get it up the stairs into my apartment) for $660. Which, based on my research, actually seemed like I did really well. The mattress was on sale (apparently I accidentally picked a great time to go mattress shopping) and there was only one employee working in the store and we had to wait like an hour for him to help us after helping the lady he was working with when we came in, so he gave us a $50 discount for that too.

All around, I feel like I did pretty great with my mattress. My parents were happy to offer to let me take my twin mattress from the bed I’ve been sleeping in since I was 5 at home, but I was pretty sure my boyfriend didn’t want to pile on there when he came to visit. Also, this will sound like such a silly thing, but I’ve had AWFUL beds for years and one of the things I sort of daydreamed about while off on my crazy adventures was having a real, comfortable, normal sized bed. The ship and the train both just had full sized mattresses that had probably not been changed in a decade, they were so lumpy and uncomfortable, and when I went to grad school I rented a furnished apartment, but the mattress was ridiculously thin. I now have a super mushy, incredibly comfortable, giant-to-me bed that I can sleep diagonal in. As someone who regularly regrets any purchase over $100, I can honestly say I’m super happy with this one.

So I’m left with one key furniture piece missing, a sofa/loveseat. My mom offered me what we call the “cat pee couch” from our basement (because it does smell like cat pee – probably from my grandmother’s cat that lived with us briefly for a year around 2007), but I opted to just keep the camp chairs for now. They look a lot less meth den-ish with other furniture around them and smell a whole lot better. My dad wants them back when the weather warms up though. So I started looking around for furniture pieces to put there, because it’s an odd sized piece of wall and really, a loveseat would work best, but I wanted friends to be able to sleep on it too.

Then I found this (I actually blame my mom. She loves shopping and kept sending me all these links I just kept ignoring, because my mom has no concept of budget despite the fact I told her repeatedly I was hoping to just pick up a futon from somewhere like Walmart for like $200):

 

Do you know those cartoon moments where a heavenly light pops up and the chorus goes “aaaaaaaaaaaa”? That is how I feel about this futon/loveseat/thing-a-ma-bob. And it is the perfect size. And I love the color. Ugh. Thanks, Mom. Because I don’t love that it is not $200.  It is $499, plus $60 to ship it.

To add to that frustration, I actually made a very real and careful budget for the first time ever this month, pretty much down the penny (I know that’s horrible – especially since I spent a month writing about why people need budgets – but when you live on a ship and a train and your monthly expenses are like $500 and your income is way more than that… I just used to take %10 of what was left, throw it in my emergency savings, contribute about $400 to my IRA and then put the rest toward debt each month – so maybe we’re all wrong and not everyone does need a budget) and I forgot a category. Not so much forgot, as several family emergencies happened with my grandma this month, so I took the train back home to NJ way more times than I budgeted for already and the month is only half over. The reason I’m mentioning that is because that was my furniture budget I tapped to do that.

So, after some thought, I decided, screw it. I’m going to get the futon/loveseat/thing-a-ma-bob, but it does not get a budget line. It gets side hustled. And when I earn enough from that, I’m buying the flipping thing (this actually led me to a far greater idea to be revealed soon).

 

So I put $30 of my side hustled money aside to start the collection (yay, 8 hours of building giant, green leaves). The goal is to raise the money before my dad takes back the camp chairs. It’s going to be a busy winter.

 

And if you came here today looking for more info on college – I’ll be back to that tomorrow. But you can still enter today to win a copy of Debt-Free U by Zac Bissonette, a kid who managed to get through college without taking on a penny of student debt or costing his parents a thing. The giveaway ends on 1/31.

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And as if that weren’t enough, my friend Brian over at Debt Discipline is still running his giveaway, so you can enter to win that here too!
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