The Good News and the Bad News for my Budget

The good news
I started using cash to take care of all my discretionary spending. This is my first month of tracking my expenses and I realize that I am not to be trusted with a debit card!
So I took out $40 and told myself that this will be what I have to spend on fast food and friends for the rest of the month.

The bad news:
I spent all but $4 in two days. I ate waaay too much fast food. I spent the weekend in my home town and I drove back to college since I still have one more session of summer school left. I had McDonald's for Breakfast, Burger King for lunch, and I ordered a pizza for dinner because I was waaaaaay too tired to make anything for myself.

I felt worse do to the fact that I spent $150 for books. One of my professors did not put in her requests for books until the very last minute, so I couldn't have ordered from amazon.com or half.com because I needed the book the very next day and the library was out of the books. I could have helped one book though. I ordered all my government books but one, and I thought I would do it later, when I got to it...well I never got to it, and ended up paying $25 extra for it.

Also, I didn't account for a huge amount of spending I didn't plan for. I went to the dermatologist for a skin problem I had, and I had to spend $53 for an eye cream I didn't plan on buying and the $150 extra for books also messed me up. Though, I had a lot of room in my budget, I thought that I wouldn't need the extra money, so I spent it on things that I wanted such as a wallet.

My Silver Lining:
I felt discouraged about all of this, but I'm still learning and I know I am making mistakes, but I will be sure to change my eating habits. I have been trying for years to make myself stop eating fast food, now that I don't have the financial means to, so I will stop this.

As for the books...I will never procrastinate ordering books when I can help it.