$28 a week and failing miserably
for all of you who have been inquiring about my $28 a week post, please cease with your pitying glances and offers to take me to lunch/donate leftover pita bread and hummus to me (unless it’s edamame hummus – my fave!)
i am happy to report that i am now gainfully gainpartly employed at codegreen solutions, and not so happy to report that i have been going over my allotted budget for 3 weeks straight now.
although it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly has been putting me over the edge, this 14K gold melting love ring that i bought from yayoi forest may be a clue. (in urkel-esque voice) did i do that?
in fact, i am ashamed to say that i have been relapsing to my piggish ways quite a bit since finding a new job. is it possible that what happened to alternative energy as soon as gas prices came down is now plaguing me on a much smaller scale?
luckily, although there were a few splurges here and there, i was able to eat nothing but 99 cent cans of corn and soup for about 3 days. note to anyone who is seriously strapped for cash – 1 can of soup can go a loooong way. don’t allow campbell’s to tell you that you can only make two servings. i successfully squeezed 5 large bowls of soup out of one tiny can by just adding water and salt. just be prepared to divvy up the already meager 7 pieces of carrot that come in a can a bit further.
in any case, i am going to do my best to get back on track being a responsible piggy. that being said, i’m amending “$28 a week” to “$33 a week.” wish me luck!
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check yourself before you wreck yourself: the neutrogena wave exfoliator
our country is probably the easiest country in the world to sell things to. why? americans are naturally innovative, and need to have the newest contraptions to make life simpler and easier. we have a love affair with shopping, and even use it as a form of therapy - do you remember that scene in clueless where cher and di go shopping to cheer themselves up after a bad day? i’ve lived that scene too many times.
in many cases, frugality is not seen as a positive thing like it is in other cultures. for example, one of my former colleagues was horrified when my other colleague (of chinese descent) asked for her leftovers to-go after a business lunch. “you just don’t do that,” she said. i agreed that it probably wasn’t the norm for most businesspeople, but wondered why. as people who understand business, shouldn’t we try to be more frugal than anyone? why is it such a faux pas for a cfo or other person who is in charge of saving a company money to take home half of a $50 steak? the richest people i know are relentlessly thrifty and not ashamed of it at all (insert warren buffett comment here).
that being said, the check yourself before you wreck yourself series will focus on examining products that are on the market that you probably don’t really need. i like pretty packaging as much as the next piggy, but i’ve had to throw away my fair share of junk (damn you, mix n’ chop!), and am looking to be more selective with what i spend my hard earned buckage on.
this week, we examine the neutrogena wave power-cleanser.
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according to reviews, this thing makes your skin feel silky smooth and, in the words of one youtuber, eliminates the need to wash your face because “it does all the work for you.” i don’t know about you, but i never found that moving my hands up and down my face was all that strenuous. or could it be the lathering part that is so labor-intensive? i’m lost.
other than turning our nation’s teens (who this product appears to be marketed towards) into muscle-less, noodle armed wimps, there is another major problem with the wave. it comes with disposable pads that you stick onto the electronic base and are supposed to be disposed of once a day (or as said youtuber recommends “two times a day because i don’t like leftover oil and dirt in the morning). that means that you use 7 pads a week if you follow the instructions on the pack. sounds like a lotta cashmoney and waste to me.
my solution for someone who wants the exfoliating power of the wave, but doesn’t want to shell out the loot or create the waste? if you have an electronic toothbrush like the oral-b professional care 8950
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frugal friday
in an effort to curb my spending now that i am no longer employed full-time, i am putting myself on a strict $28 a week budget.
if i am able to pull this off, i’ll have made it through the year on $1,456*. i’ll also be able to prove to many of you that being eco (that’s what the japanese call it) can actually save you money rather than cost you money.
today’s lunch (mooched off my mom):
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this week’s summary
monday: $15 for sul lung tang at gahm mee ohk. paid for by albert (is it fair to say that he owes me money and is paying it back?) total for day: $0
tuesday: worked from home and ate a can of corn and piece of onion bread that i already had. attended the yelp inaugural ball and had to give a $10 donation that was also paid for by albert. he still owes me money! he also paid for my basil chicken at lannam. gosh, how can i make this look less gold-diggerish?!!! oh i know, i paid $6 for coatcheck for both of us. was that as pathetic as it sounded? total for day: $6
wednesday: worked from home and ate another piece of onion bread, some pretzels that i found lying around and rotting potato salad. made a dinner of cut-up hot dogs (i can always count on you, hot dogs), a quarter bag of frozen mustard greens, parmesan cheese and pasta. fried up a leftoever bag of okonomiyaki mix that was half-spilled in cabinet. total for day: $0
thursday: rode bus to office, $2.50. scored 7 saltines, a bag of salt & vinegar (my fave) chips and a banana at work. ate leftover udon with leftover curry and leftover tofu (all old) for dinner. total for day: $2.50
friday: the day is still young. so far, i ate a piece of toast with questionable mozarella melted on top. i’m meeting the lovely kelly (also jobless at the moment) for dinner, and am nervous about being penurious. i have $19.50 to spend…wish me luck!
* does not include housing or trips, which i am not sure what to do about yet since i have 2 big mandatory ones coming up.
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why drinking bottled water is just not smart
imagine that your cell phone could use either the rechargeable battery that is inside of it right now, or AAA batteries that you purchase from the store. you’re a busy professional with lots of things to do. your cell phone runs out of battery. do you plug it into the charger you have connected to an outlet in your bedroom? or do you leave your house, walk or drive to the store and pick up a 20-pack of batteries for your phone on a sunday? now imagine that those batteries weigh about as much as a bag of rice and are just as annoying to carry. oh, i forgot to mention that the store-bought batteries cost about 4000 times as much as the electricity to simply charge your phone at home. one more thing - the batteries are really bad for our earth. would you still do it?
if you consider yourself a smart and savvy individual, you probably wouldn’t, and yet so many americans do something very similar in their homes. for some reason, we’ve been taught that tap water is bad and we should go out of our way to go to the store and pay a 4000x markup for bottles of water that either are tap water, filtered tap water or either about as good or worse than tap water. why? many of my friends majored in finance and pride themselves on being informed consumers, but they still lug home bottles of water from the store. it’s like something out of a twilight zone episode. what’s even weirder is that at restaurants, most of us choose tap over sparkling because we know that we have to pay extra for sparkling. if we are smart about it when we go out to eat, why do we all of a sudden lose that insight when we return to our own homes?
now, some of the smartest people in the world drink bottled water (i glimpsed some super intelligent scientists drinking it the other night at a panel discussion on clean energy!) so don’t feel too bad. sometimes we just don’t want to be rude by refusing it, or we’re outside of our homes, thirsty, and there is nothing else to drink. but next time you’re at the store, why not do your back, your wallet and the earth a favor and skip the bottled water. all three will thank you.
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why is this a site?
swyyne has always been an experiment for me. with all of the other super eco sites out there, i've been feeling like i want to contribute something just a bit different. so for now, here are my random musings.
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feed yourself