Tuesday, March 13, 2007

how to live in salt lake city on 130 dollars a day

So Maria and I have been wondering where all our money has been going. Each of us decided to keep track of our own money for a week. Here's my personal report:

Monday, 5 March
$95.46 -- cable/internet bill is due!
$22.95 -- I got an email from amazon informing me that the ridiculously expensive deluxe cd/dvd reissue of Depeche Mode's Black Celebration just went up for pre-order. I got 20% off, but after shipping it still came to the aforementioned price. I love their music, but they can really really skewer their fans. I've thought about making that a post in itself after also buying the re-issues of Speak & Spell, Music for the Masses, Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion.
$21.46 -- gasoline
$25.85 -- Smith's grocery shopping. I think I got aluminum foil and eggs.

Tuesday, 6 March
$420.00 -- rent (one day late)!
$12.00 -- solo lunch at Red Robin (souper sandwich combo (whiskey chicken and tortilla soup)). I love eating solo, but I hate tipping solo. What really sucks is that usually the server doesn't know that I have guilty solo tipping feelings, so they don't go out of their way to serve because they think I'll only tip 15% on an eight dollar meal.
$65.00 -- Monica's birthday dinner at Ichiban. It was Maria, Monica and me. We split three sushi rolls: the X96, the lotus and (I think) the dynamo. We also had them specially make us some katsudonburi which isn't on the menu anymore. The service was exemplary and Monica took us to Hard Rock for dessert later that night.

Wednesday, 7 March
$198.20 -- while driving to Provo my front passenger tire exploded. I strangely fixed it all by myself. I was wondering when a cop was going to show up and help, but it's a good thing it didn't happen because surely the authorities would have found all the illegal fireworks in my trunk. Anyway, I had to get a new tire at Big O and asked them to re-align. Apparently they didn't do a good job last time because I was feeling a lot of vibration which, in hindsight, must have been the bad tire rubbing up against the car somewhere.

Thursday, 8 March
$1.00 -- went window shopping at the Gateway Mall, but mistakenly gave the parking guy one my spare movie validations instead of a normal validation. The movie validations only reduce
the parking fee to a dollar. As usual, I felt too dumb to hand him another validation so i coughed up the dough.

Friday, 9 March
$0.00 -- stayed inside all day, afraid to spend money.

Saturday, 10 March
$1.77 -- after helping someone with a stinky cat move, I had to curb my coughing with a bottled o.j. at the local gas station.
$25.31 -- local gas
$6.78 -- quick Smith's stop to nab sandwich turkey, Swiss cheese and Ritz crackers
$3.00 -- in a car making a McDonald's run. I get something small: 6 chicken mcnuggets. Doing the math I discover that it's 50 cents a mcnugget.

Sunday, 11 March
$0.00 -- fortunately I was sick in bed. Otherwise the Church would have milked a few pretty pennies from me since both tithing and fast offerings were due.

2 comments:

Rhett said...

So where is the total for the week?

joN. said...

i added everything up and by my calculations i got a grand total of $898.78. or you could get roughly the same number by multiplying the $130 from the title by seven days. strange, i figured if would be an easier task than actually bothering to ask.