Shout out for grad student cooking!

I have an analytical brain, and it likes to organize things, keep track of junk, and generally fixate on the future and planning ahead. It's fairly good at all of these things, but I'm a creature of my impulses and I tend to loose track of the many threads in my life, which tends to lead to problems. One of the things I started doing a while ago was keeping track of my expenses in spread sheets, which is good for my brain and for my wallet.

Well, maybe not for my wallet, but at least I had to acknowledge the over spending I was doing on a monthly basis. I'm actually really lucky and got to figure out my bad habits in a low stakes situation, but I'm on a fixed income now and I have to figure this stuff out for realsies.

When I started tallying up my spending the vast majority of it was going to food. While I was a little indiscretionary with my personal spending as well, it didn't even come close to the eating out and grocery bills. Since making the move to grad school I've had to really wake up the reality of my income, and start figuring out how to live within a budget that's going to let me do awesome things like skiing and traveling and whatever.

The biggest thing I've done since the move is absolutely slash my food budget down. Instead of indiscriminately shopping for whatever sounds good I'm like a girl on a mission. I have $25 a week to spend on groceries, plus a little extra for eating out - $50 a month or so. Booze is separated, cause lets be serious. That's the easiest way to blow a budget, and I want to keep that in it's own separate category. It's a little challenging, and I'm still getting used to giving up novelty, which can be difficult. I definitely have some meals that I just don't make any more because I don't generally have the ingredients just laying around.

But I am impressed with the experiment so far! I'm actually eating fairly well, I'm eating flavorful and decently healthy foods, and I don't have anywhere near the waste that I used to - there are no more forgotten zucchinis rotting in the back of the fridge, or excess dried foods taking up cupboard space. The amount of food I gave away when I moved was shocking, I'd rather keep on this minimalism thing I've got going. As it is right now I'm scraping through the cupboard in these last couple days before I take off; I'm going to have a mostly clean slate when I'm done traveling.