Financial Strata

For most of my adult life I have reviewed my finances at the turn of the year.  In recent years my primary online bank account displays an ongoing pie chart of what it thinks are the categories of my expenditures, which is not very helpful nor amusing.  I still keep paper receipts, and after each real life shopping trip I sort my paper receipts by vendor into piles of financial strata, oldest on the bottom.  At year's end, I start with a thoughtful review of these paper receipts and then I consider my online and auto deduct expenditures such as rent, utilities and insurance.  I am remarkably consistent from year to year.  I have taken no vacation in the past decade, unless one considers the move I made from Illinois to live in Maine as vacation.  Which I do not.

What I found was:

• I fill up my old car, a 2003 Hyundai Elantra, every other week at about $30 per fill.

• I pick up fast food less than half a dozen times a year and I never eat in restaurants.

• I buy deli food at grocery stores a couple times a year, but it is costly and disappointing.

• To my regret, I shop for almost everything at Walmart, or online at Amazon, because this is expedient.

• I return purchased items about two times per month, and often the vendor tells me that they do not want the defective, worthless stuff returned to them, I can keep it.  I would pay twice as much to have the useful household items that I want.

• Rent, utilities, food, insurance, and car maintenance are the big ticket items each year.

• I have no subscriptions.

• I buy four $100+ HP printer cartridges each year, even though I almost never print anything, because the cartridges dry up sitting in the printer, and then the scanner (which uses no ink) is programmed to not work unless viable cartridges are installed.  Shame on Hewlett-Packard.

• Twice a year I shop for clothes, and I hate every minute of it.  There is no attractive, comfortable clothing in what they used to call ready-made, off-the-rack clothing.  Sometimes I shop at the Goodwill which is surprisingly satisfactory.

• I typically have very few medical expenses as my myriad ailments were diagnosed decades ago, and there is no reason to see a doctor when there is nothing they can do for my chronic ailments that are exacerbated by  Old Age.

• I never buy toys or entertainment, other than digital devices.  I now have several tablets where I happily play free games each day.

Financial Strata

by Annmarie Throckmorton, copyright 2024