March Goals... Yeah, about those...

Only a 50% Success Rate this month. And I was supposed to be all ambitious with the Guy living remotely for a work project this month. Turns out, I'm NOT more disciplined on my own. In fact, when he's gone, I'm so bewildered that I end up doing strange things (strange for me) like staying up late and watching very bad TV. Did you know Bret Michaels has ANOTHER reality show, and it's on a BUS?? So I won't blame the Guy anymore when I miss my gym workouts or eat out too much. Looks like I'm part of the problem too.

>Absorb $500 of my $1,000 business school tuition deposit in March expenses
FAIL. I only reduced my expenses by $200 this month.

>Finish all content for my brother's advice-journal gift
CHECK

>Do 30 min of Wii Fit 5 days/wk and Do 1 hr of Wii 2 days/wk
FAIL. I am lazy??

>Write 2 more pages of my story.
CHECK

Studying up on my Student Loan Options

One of my 2009 annual goals – given the fact that I’m going back to school this Fall was to become an expert on student loans and secure a really great package. Based on my financial aid package, I will have to secure between $12,000 and $30,000 in additional private loans in addition to the federal loan package I already received from Stanford. While the approval process will generally be short for private loans (between 48 hours and a week), the becoming-an-expert process will take a lot longer. I will probably wait a little later in the summer to understand if Stanford has preferred lenders set up and if I will want to simply pursue additional funding from the same institution that my GradPlus Loans will be coming from, but in the meantime, I have narrowed down a list of 14 other private options to explore (with the help of finaid.org) – whew. I have a heard the most about CitiAssist and US Bank’s No Fee Loan, but I want to do lots more research to understand which might have the best terms and most competitive rate. And in the meantime I got to refresh myself on what the LIBOR acronym stands for. Good fun for a Monday afternoon!

March Networth Update

This was a rough month with $1,000 tuition deposit and $650 housing deposit due for Stanford in the same month. Oh, and a huge dip in our company stock… still, less than a 1% net worth dip isn’t so bad. I’ll take it!

And updated my sidebars... sigh. Don't you wish you could hit fast-forward sometimes?

Expanding the Scope and Range of this Blog...

Ever since I got into school I’ve been thinking a bit more about expanding the scope of what I write about here on Bookish Budget. When I first started blogging, the spirit of undertaking it was all about learning – learning how to be more responsible and principled about my finances, yes, but also learning how to be more worldly and thoughtful about everything that I do. I

I will always be Bookish, looks like for sure I’ll always be On a Budget (of some kind), but there are other areas and places where I would also like to expand myself – especially as I’m now planning on going back to business school!

Some avenues I’m interested in exploring initially:
Learning about potential career paths
Clean tech / green energy / etc.
How to be more ecologically savvy?
Entrepreneurship

And I'm sure many other bits of trivia will find it's way in, as usual... but from now on, I'm hoping to expand this into almost a personal research tool. And then, when I actually get closer to school, I may either alter the content or hit the delete and begin again at another site. Somehow I'm guessing my student debt may not be as interesting to talk about on a weekly basis, so we'll see. :)

Itemizing the Wedding Budget

I’ve decided to update my sidebar to include a specific target for my wedding fund. I assigned a pretty arbitrary number as my goal… and my total wedding costs will far exceed $9,385, but it helps me to break down my goals a bit, and I decided I could itemize that amount, so it will motivate me to contribute more money. I researched on theknot.com and several other non-pf-friendly websites to get these estimates, so I may be able to do better than this on all of these, but I figure I will keep them aggressive for now, until I actually get further down the road, and actually start talking marriage with the Guy, let alone laying out our budget.

The Itemized Wedding Specific Goals:
Personal Training for one year: $1,000 budget (certainly not a wedding essential, but this has always been a dream of mine to do, and wedding's probably as acceptable an excuse as I'll ever get!)
Dress incl. alteration costs: $4,500
Save the Date Cards: $400
Wedding Invitations: $1,625 (based on 6.50 per card for 250 people)
Postage: $310 (based on save-date, invites & reply cards for 250)
Wedding Cake: $2,000 (based on $8 per slice for 250)
SO FAR: $9,835

In the future, I will take on thinking about costs for: Photographer, Flowers, Wedding Party Gifts, Favors, Venue, bridal accessories, hotel rooms for wedding prep, wedding food & Open Bar, band cost… so much more to think about…and such a ways to go with the savings! Good thing we're a long ways off!

Eating Down the Fridge

A few days ago, Washington Post food blogger Kim O’Donnel’s publicized what she called the “Eat Down the Fridge” Challenge – i.e., skip grocery shopping and just eat what you already have on hand*. I try to practice that somewhat regularly anyway, and am doubling my efforts while the Guy is out of town (he’s usually my major roadblock on this front). The Double Challenge – I’m also trying to eat *healthy* this week!! So let’s see what I’ve got and what I’m doing with it, hopefully as inspiration for something you have in your fridge/freezer/pantry:

Leftovers:
Party Leftovers: Limes, Salsa, Tortillas & Chips
Perennial Ingredient Leftovers: Craisins, Flax, Tomato Soup, Chicken Broth, Canned Tuna, Pasta, Puff Pastry, Filo Dough
Veggie Leftovers: Corn, Broccoli & Cheese, Peas
Freezer Leftovers: Two Chicken Breasts
Random Pantry Side Leftovers: Potato Pancakes, Spinach CousCous, Sweet Potatoes

Recipes:
Lime Chicken Quesadillas
Chipotle Corn Salsa over Baked Chicken served with Peas and Potato Pancake
Cranberry Flaxseed Muffins
Mini Margherita Pizza with Broccoli and Cheese

YUMMY! After just a little creativity...

*I am actually not counting all of the frozen entrees I have in the freezer right now, because those I can eat anytime, and aren’t as much in the spirit of the challenge!

A Fantastic Discovery

In my city there is a beautiful public library, designed by a famous Argentine architect… I used to live in walking distance and I loved climbing up all of those stairs to browse through the stacks and look out on the city. But after walking over this past weekend and they didn’t have ANY of the books I was looking for… I decided to make a journey to a different library. One of the other suburban libraries on the other side of the city, which is run-down and looks shockingly similar to my elementary school library. And they had ALL of my books, plus some awesome ones I had forgotten were on my to-read list. And I was in, out, and back in my car in 10 minutes. Nice. Not so attractive, and yet efficient. Good moral lesson, I do believe… saving money will never be the intuitive choice, it seems. And fantastic discovery, given books are one of those small purchases that really do add up for me! Totally worth the extra time shlepping it to the suburban library!