Life Stuff: Resolutions

I'm not one to make resolutions every January. Sure, I'd love to get super fit and save the world but that's probably not going to happen this year. I'm always trying to maintain a healthy balance of fitness and will hopefully be kicking butt in cycling this spring but making some resolution to do x,y, and z isn't going to really be motivation enough for me. I laugh to myself (and sometimes out loud) when I hear my coworkers resolution. There was an epic conversation that revolved around balls this morning. Get your head out of the gutter, not those balls, I mean protein balls and whatever other disgusting fake food they could eat and get healthy with.

Of course I'm the one with a zip-lock full of knock off Lara balls in the fridge at work because rolling them was way easier than trying to get bars. Then again, I've been eating Lara Bars for a while now and it turns out it's just cheaper to make them myself, plus, I get to double the amount of lime I put in my key lime pie bars or balls in this case. I'm surprised that their resolutions have lasted this long, but honestly, I think there calories counting ways mid week and then alcohol bingeing tendencies on the weekends will probably counteract their weight loss efforts.

January has been a long month. I finally got my car back last Tuesday and it felt wonderful to finally be able to flip that page of ridiculousness. However, my luck didn't last. By Tuesday afternoon I had spent a good hour on the phone with my dad after my credit union realized that they fucked up my loan paperwork for my car back in May and were now trying to fix it. They had done some very shady things in attempt to cover their asses and luckily my dad read though the paperwork they wanted to be signed. While he has nothing to do with my loan, he is on my title, and they decided that 8 months after they gave me a loan that they wanted him to cosign it and date it with a day in May of 2013. Long story short, after a day of money talk and various opinions from my dad and Erik I decided it would be in my best interest to just pay off my entire loan and basically tell them to fuck off.

Actually, when I was on the phone to pay off said loan, I was offered a personal loan which wouldn't need a cosigner at 15% interest. That put me over the edge and I'm sure I said things that normally wouldn't come out of my mouth, but honestly, they had it coming. So as of last week I can add debt free to my list of things accomplished in life. Obviously, it won't last, as I want to upgrade my car and buy a house sometime in the future but for now it's nice. I'm responsible for my rent, heat bill, and Discover bill, but other than that I'm flying high. Of course I wasn't expecting to drain my account this month, so I'm working to save money anywhere I can without being too stingy.

I'm starting to do things like plan before I go to the grocery store and look through the weekly ads before I shop. Since everything is online now it's quite simple to go through them during my lunch break and pick out what I should buy where. Instead of solely shopping in one store like I was doing previously with Wegmans, I am utilizing a store that I am coming to appreciate, Aldis. Turns out Aldis has some pretty great produce options and basically that's all I buy there. When you are a octo-lacto-vegetarian (I think that's me) you eat a lot of veggies and buying produce at Wegmans was killing my budget. I know shop at Wegmans twice a month, instead of once a week, and just stock up on Goya products, Kashi cereal, and things like milk and dairy there and then buy produce at Aldis. So far it's been working great and I'm actually saving money which is a plus.

I'm also being a little smarter on cooking and I'm making some snacks I used to buy (i.e. Lara Bars) myself. It's not like any of the things I am doing are rocket science or anything, it's just the little things that add up and will hopefully save me a bit of cash over time.