Trying to be smarter

I am trying to be smarter these days about food and money. As I'm sure you all know, both are so hard to be smart about. I am taking good steps forward. Now that we're mostly unpacked, Chris and I have been cooking dinner at home, and bringing lunch most days. We even stopped buying cookies. Instead, if we want cookies we bake them ourselves, but not the whole batch. We freeze at least half the dough so we can't binge eat cookies. So food is getting better in that sense...and so is money as a result.

Money is a touchy subject for me. I feel as if things are out of control...they actually aren't, but with the move, the new house and Christmas gifts just purchased last credit card statement, things can seem overwhelming. I did quite my big fancy $102 a month gym (and that was with a discount) and joined Curves, which is much cheaper and I can go during my lunch...it's that close to work. I'm still doing Starbucks only once per work week...I will occasionally have some on the weekend if I'm meeting a friend for coffee or something, but that's still saving me cash.

I don't think I'm doing the resolution thing this year...I find that I never fulfill them and I find that depressing. I do want to set goals for myself. One goal for 2009 is to cut my non-mortgage debt down by a minimum of 20%. This included student loans, credit cards (with home construction stuff on it), personal loan and car loan. That is a lot of $$ and if I can make some of it disappear, I am going to do it!