Founder Files will be a reoccuring column (hopefully weekly). It is not an advice column, per-say. Just the perspective of one person – specifically HC Tufts’s co-founder and former Editor-in-Chief – on women’s issues, campus issues, and personal issues. As a blogger addict, I’m probably doing it more for my own sanity than yours. You can reach me at Ashley.wood@tufts.edu.
At the beginning of this semester, my mom decided it was time for a change. I needed to learn how to budget. I turned in my *cough* three credit cards, held on to the only one in my name, and was given a lump sum of money that should last me…well, until I get a job. The sum was budgeted to include my rent through August, groceries, two flights home, utilities, prescription costs, a spring break trip (am I spoiled or what?), public transportation, and probably more stuff that I’ve already forgotten because I conveniently left my “budgeting” book back home in California.
That’s when I realized…I’m terrible at budgeting. I mean, really atrociously bad. How many times did I buy something from the campus center just because Jumbocash wasn’t real money, not because I actually needed it?
How many times did I pay for a $2 cup of coffee, despite having my own Keurig machine at home? How often did I just have to have to have some $50 vintage dress that I would never actually wear but wanted to keep due to its place in fashion history? My life suddenly felt a little too similar to that horrible film, Confessions of a Shopaholic, where every designer item she purchased was bizarrely hideous but she kept buying anyways. I periodically imagine myself hacking at a frozen ice block holding my former credit cards.
And I know how bad this sounds. I give you full permission to hate on me for it. Oh, woe is me – the typical spoiled Tufts student now has to think about money. The thing is, I think I’m just realizing now, that I have never been good with money. It has always been my coping mechanism for all the times I felt socially awkward, embarrassed, tired, or depressed. I was the kid who would run up the street and buy a brand new beanie baby as soon as I had saved up $7, rather than put it in a piggy bank.
And that was okay for awhile because I was mostly buying cheap stuff like beanie babies or shirts from Marshall’s or CVS make-up. But then, after years of my mother struggling to make ends meet, she started making good money. Which translated to me being switched from public school to a swanky LA private school
where kids got beamers when they turned 16. Suddenly, make up couldn’t be Revlon, it had to be M.A.C. or even Chanel or just something purchasable from Sephora. Slowly, I went from being someone who would never consider buying a pair of jeans over $50, to someone who lunged at “discounted” 7 jeans. I began a long and still very steamy love affair with fashion. I developed “keeping up with the Jones’s” fever.
Before you start to hate me too much, I do have one redeeming quality. No matter how generous my mom has been, I have always worked really really hard to try and make up for my buying addiction. I got my first job when I was 15, at a restaurant as a hostess. And since then I have consistently worked just about anywhere that will pay me, from coffee shops to the dreadful summer I spent teaching women how to measure their cup size at Victoria’s Secret, to the less dreadful summer I spent working on an HBO set.
I mean, do you recognize my picture at all? Maybe it’s because for two years, I worked every big Tufts event as a staffer rather than actually attending them, or maybe it’s because I answer your questions at the Info booth in the campus center, or maybe it’s because you’re a freshmen and you remember me running around frantically as one of the main organizers of Orientation. I have sacrificed much of my college life working rather than going out or having fun. At the moment, I am currently juggling three jobs (one unpaid internship, one paid internship, one paid job) while taking four classes while maintaining an executive position on Programming board. Bleh.
Anyways, the point is, budgeting is still hard for me, no matter how much I manage to make each week. My savings account, considering all my jobs, is abysmal. No matter how big my paycheck is, I will always find a way to spend it all. So after all my rambling, here are 9 tips I’ve come up with, which I’m sure will seem painfully obvious to many, about how to not spend every dollar you earn and then some:
1.) Captain Obvious says pack a lunch. Seriously. – This one has been thrown around in just about any article about saving money and/or eating healthier. But it’s so true. When I was interning at Boston Magazine, I would buy lunch every day…from Whole Foods (!??! I’m an idiot) Now at my new internship, I bring a lunch and I’m probably saving myself $30 a week. I told myself that I didn’t have time to pack, which, for someone interning 30 hours a week, seems legitimate, but the truth is, it takes five minutes. As long as you buy groceries with the intention of packing lunches, it’s easy.
2.) Get rid of Jumbocash – Jumbocash never feels like real money. But it is. It really, really is. As soon as I stopped putting money on my student card, I immediately ceased to purchase water bottles (why why why), fruit, coffee and other over-priced items at the campus center that I can easily get at home and for much less.
3.) “Sell” at Buffalo exchange – I made like $50 and got rid of a bunch of clothes that were just taking up space under my bed.
4.) Buy off-brand items – No you don’t need actual Kleenex brand tissues. Or Charmin toilet paper. Or Heintz ketchup. Buy whatever’s cheapest and rid yourself of the mind control some of these companies have been holding over you for years. It’s all the same ish.
5.) Unsubscribe from all of your fashion emails (or whatever online store newsletters are your drug of choice) – Seriously, at my most fashion insane, I probably was getting thirty emails a day from various online retailers telling me about all their fabulous sales, new inventory, and secret discount codes. The amount of things you “just have to have” significantly increases when you’re viewing about fifty new products a day.
6.) Move your cash into your savings account so that you only have immediate access to a limited amount. Sure, it only takes two seconds to transfer funds, but that’s just enough time to re-think an impulse buy. Keep your extra bucks out of sight, out of mind.
7.) Don’t order take out or eat out too frequently (duh) but when you do, don’t order a drink with dinner – One alcoholic drink will inevitably add another $10 to your bill. Even juice will probably be pricey. It’s healthier and cheaper to just drink water.
8.) Only go shopping when you have a specific item in mind that you’re looking for. Not because there’s a sale or because you have a coupon code or whatever. Wait until there’s something you want without having to have seen it in a magazine or in an email and then go look for it. My biggest accomplishment with this was not indulging in this season’s LF sale, which I have consistently always gone to in Harvard Square since I moved here.
9.) Set a small challenge for yourself about anything. Then accomplish it. In my case, I did a four day juice cleanse (more on that later). Even the smallest step forward, like giving up meat for a week or completing a non-assigned book, will give you confidence to accomplish goals in other areas of your life. There are studies on this, I swear.
There you have it. In the past three months, I’ve learned what many of you have probably known for years. But try to be easy on me. I’m just the “victim” of being the only child to an awesome generous mom who tried to compensate for her divorce by letting me buy stuff. But that will all be coming to an end, and unless I shape up in the next two months, I’m going to be one very sad, broke college grad. Although a credit card company did just approve me for a $1900 credit limit. Idiots.