Already Spent

I'm sure I've sung the praises of Quicken before, but lately I've been trying to reign in my spending and stretch my summer dollars a bit further and I found an area where Quicken can be slightly detrimental. You see, I enter everything into Quicken that I put on my debit card (which is most things, I'm big on saving receipts and entering them regularly) or when I take money out of an ATM. There are certain times, though, when having cash is handy or necessary. Toll booths are a good example. If you've traveled in New York by car, you know that the bridges in tunnels that connect Long Island, Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey are not something you can pay for with the loose change in your car's console. One usually needs foldable bills, and many of them (It cost nine dollars the first time I crossed the George Washington Bridge. Nine dollars! They should be able to buy a new bridge every few years with that kind of money!). The way I usually think of money that I take out of an ATM is that, at least as far as Quicken is concerned, the money is already spent. Because of this I tend to be a little more free with the money in my wallet when it comes to items under ten dollars or so, such as Starbucks, movie tickets or other small, consumable things. Now I try to think harder about the domino effect that this has. If I buy some Starbucks now, I'll have less cash in my wallet and be tempted to go to an ATM or get cash back on a debit card purchase sooner. (I love cash back, by the way. I use it a lot because I live about twenty miles from my closest credit union branch and it costs me a few bucks to take money out of other ATMs, and they don't charge the fee on debit card transactions. If you use this a lot, I recommend doing what I do and entering it as a "split" transaction into Quicken, so you can keep track of how much was taken in cash and how much was spent on whatever you just bought).

Now I try to spend a little time thinking and considering if I really want or need that few dollar item that I'm opening my wallet for. Last evening I was at the mall and had intended to eat some food there, but instead reconsidered, realizing I had a Healthy Choice meal still in my freezer. I not only saved the six or seven dollars, but I probably ate a lower-calorie meal as a result of my decision.

For all my fellow financial fanatics, Oprah is doing a series all week this week about going on a "debt diet." She's having three financial experts follow three families who are very much in debt and who are trying to get out of it. The only thing that bothered me was the statistics they rattled off at the beginning of the show about how many Americans are in debt and living paycheck to paycheck (%70 by their estimates), which goes against the statistics that I have read recently that says the debt problem in the US is not that bad, but the statistics are skewed by the outliers. In reality, I believe that most people are not drowning in debt, but probably plenty of us have a few thousand in CC bills we'd like to get rid of. Anyway, I'm going to record the shows and I'll post a reflection of what I think after it's all over. I'm leaving tomorrow for Florida so I may not be posting until next week.