Mid Week Update

Last Friday and the past two days of this week went by in a whiz. I was pressed tight at work and my migraines + nausea came out rather mercilessly. I felt shit last week to a point that my boss asked if I'm feeling unwell (well, clearly I was). Coupled with that was the crisis going on in the city right now - strikes everywhere so buses are cut. 

Now to give you a clearer picture, I don't live near a train station. So, for the past two days I've been WALKING to the nearest train station (sweated profusely may I add), take the train and go to work; take the train from work to the train station nearest to my home, and WALKED back to my place. Never had I seen SO MANY people on the street walking about, because the buses and the stuff are cut due to strikes. This additional time and effort in my daily commute for the past two days also come with a few cents higher in commute costs than usual. A few cents shouldn't be the cause of concern, but I'd rather not have that (plus the extra leg walk! This is lose-lose situation). 

Due to the strikes going on about the city, I had a panic moment on Monday on my way home. I thought "what if the strikes went on and the supermarkets weren't re-stocked properly?"And so off I went buying a few spring rolls from a noodle shop and mush them into the freezer. Yesterday I thought today and tomorrow will be a public holiday so I might eat one or two meals at home, so off I went to the supermarket and got some asparagus (not on sale, bummed) and peppered ham (on clearance price but not so much cheaper...). The ham will expire (tomorrow) before I can cook them all but I plan to stash them into the freezer for later use. Thus these spur-of-the-moment purchases bumped up my food spending (see last paragraph). 

Lesson to learn here: ALWAYS, ALWAYS have ready to cook/eat food in the stockpile. Be it dehydrated or frozen food, add in some quick-to-cook pasta or noodles and voila! This morning I cooked the asparagus with the ham and the ready-made pasta. To be honest the flavored pasta packets suck in flavor but they'll have to do. At least I don't have to panic at the thought of having no food!

At work, there had been a particular guy who just came to the office (but is not new to working in the department), he was being an @$$ to people who work around him, myself included. That affected me, but I wasn't the key to the solving of the problem either so there's not much I can do on my level. 

The tax notices came in on Saturday and I had a shock (a good one). I had been putting money away every week for "tax payments" and it looks like I'd be dipping into 5% of it. The remaining funds would be tucked away towards the savings pile or the "travel" fund (I don't have one set up). Thoughts??

I just calculated my finances for September, realizing I overspent in the beauty and clothes category. The food category was overspent but bear in mind that it covered my parents' birthday dinner. I'll budget for this come next year. I had stopped buying yogurt altogether, so that was quite a (key) change. Really need to work hard on trimming the beauty and clothes budget. In previous post I mentioned that I want to get a few serious jogging bottoms for the winter season. I did not end up getting any in September (indecision, indecision), please see the upcoming post for an update on this. I put aside and maybe dismissed the thought of renewing my magazine subscription as well, so that's money saved (for now)!