Happy Wednesday, friends. Let’s talk about some of my recent demerits (areas of my life that aren’t going so well right now) and gold stars (personal wins). I got this idea from Elisabeth who got it from Gretchen Rubin. It’s time to get brutally honest here.
DEMERIT | Spending too much money on Cooking Fever tokens.
I’m embarrassed about this demerit because I am in my flipping mid-30s, what am I doing spending money on in-app purchases?! Alas, the Cooking Fever gods have gotten me. This game is essentially impossible to play without spending money; that’s how it’s designed. The premise of the game is that you own a restaurant and are responsible for cooking all of the food for customers in a timely manner. As the game progresses, you cycle through all different types of restaurants (Italian restaurants, coffee shops, sushi restaurants, fine dining restaurants, etc.) but in order to pass each level, you need to spend tokens and gems on different items. For example, buying a pan that cooks your food faster so your customers don’t get angry at you and leave without buying anything. You can also engage in playing and betting on games like slot online, with the opportunity to win substantial prizes.
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IT’S RIDICULOUS, I KNOW. But I am so sucked into this game. It brings me great joy to play it, which is part of the reason I’ve been okay with spending money on the game. We should spend money on the things that bring us joy and happiness, right?! Well, to a degree. I am spending too much money on this game and I need to establish some boundaries, like setting a limit for how many tokens/gems I’m willing to spend in a day. So if you want a game that can help you earn instead, then sites like bro138 is definitely for you.
GOLD STAR | Writing down my schedule on a daily basis.
One of the things I know about myself is that I need a strict schedule. When I just let myself go with the flow, that’s when I end up spending 30 minutes playing games on my phone while lounging on the couch instead of getting dinner started. So I have started sitting down every night to create a schedule for the next day. I write down what meetings I have that day and any big to-dos I need to get done, and then I create an hour-by-hour list of my day. This has been working SO WELL for me! And since every day is different (some days I have zero meetings, some days I need to run errands at lunch, etc), it allows me to create a schedule that works for each day and keeps things interesting. I feel like I am so much more productive and just feel so much better about what I’m getting done each day. Making a strict schedule like this has felt more freeing because I don’t have to battle with myself about what I’m going to do: I know exactly what I need to do, and I do it.
DEMERIT | Not following a budget.
This is a near-constant demerit for me, especially now that I’m not providing monthly or quarterly budget updates. I used to be so good at checking my bank account and itemizing all of my purchases on a regular basis, but I got very tired of this system so I stopped doing it. Instead, I created a loose budget for myself but haven’t been very good about following it closely. Checking my bank account and updating my numbers hasn’t become a part of my routine, and I need to figure out what to do about that. (And before anyone suggests Mint or You Need a Budget – those systems just don’t work for me. I’m glad they work for many people, but my brain just can’t compute.)
GOLD STAR | Eating 3 or more servings of fruits/vegetables on a near-daily basis.
One of the biggest changes my dietician wanted me to make to my diet was eating more fruits and vegetables. Before I started seeing her, I would go DAYS without eating any fruit or veggies. Well, I’m pleased as punch to say that I’ve been eating three or more servings on a near-daily basis! (I struggle with eating healthy on the weekends. I’m a work in progress?) Typically, I have a piece of fruit with either my morning or afternoon snack, as well as a serving of fruit and a serving of veggies with lunch. So far, I’m digging grapes, pears, green apples, and clementines for fruit. And I love doing a raw veggie like carrots or broccoli with a dip (the Boar’s Head Tzatziki Greek Yogurt dip is amazing). I’ll also usually have some sort of veggie (like green beans or roasted broccoli) with dinner, too, but that doesn’t happen every night. I’m proud of my progress so far, though!
DEMERIT | Being on my phone too much when I’m watching TV.
Ughhh, a constant demerit for me! I spend way too much time on my phone when I’m watching TV. It doesn’t make me feel good. I always feel the need to be doing something else while I’m watching TV – why is that? It’s not as if I’m doing anything productive to “make up” for the time I’m spending watching TV. I’m just on my phone, either scrolling through Instagram or playing a stupid game. For a while, I was using the Downtime feature to turn off my ability to access all of my apps (except for a select few) at night. I probably should turn that back on. I also used to color while watching TV; if I had to multitask, at least make it something that didn’t involve a screen! Maybe I just need to put my phone on the charger in my room in the evenings so I’m not tempted to use it. There are a lot of options here—I just need to get strict with myself! Sometimes a little tough love is needed.
GOLD STAR | Saving money by making it a game.
I have many skills, but saving money is not one of them. While I have a few automatic deposits set up for certain savings accounts (like my car insurance fund, my Christmas fund, etc.), I have always struggled with saving for long-term purchases or socking extra money away in my emergency savings. So I decided to make it fun! I downloaded this worksheet and every Friday, I pull up a random number generator, set it to give me a number between 1 and 52 (the number of tiles on the worksheet), and then whatever number it gives me, I count down to that corresponding tile. Whatever number is in the middle of the selected tile is the number I have to put away into savings. (So, for example, if the random number generator gave me “14,” I would count to the 14th tile, which has the number $40 in it. So I would put $40 into my savings that week.) After sending the money to savings, I color in the tile to show my progress! I’m using this system to add extra money to my emergency fund and to save up for a big purchase (right now, it’s my ladder bookshelf!). In one month, I’ve saved $153 in my emergency savings and $118 in my bookshelf fund—the savings aren’t extraordinary, but they truly do add up and allow me to make progress on my financial goals without feeling like I’m depriving myself.
Any demerits and/or gold stars you want to talk about?
What a fun list to read! Your saving game sounds fun, and go you for eating those fruits and veggies, and to making a schedule that works for you. Is it helping you get to bed earlier yet?
We should spend money on the things that bring us joy, so if it’s a game, so what? But yeah, maybe set how many you want to spend a day and stop there?
I really have a hard time sitting and watching the TV too. I feel like I should always be doing something. That’s why I sometimes paint, but I have been too brain dead to do it lately… but apparently not brain dead enough to actually zone out and watch whatever movie we put on.
Hmm. Gold star for me in consistently going to strength class. Demerit for spending a bit frivolously lately.
Yes, I think I’m going to set a limit for how much tokens/gems I spend in the game per day, so at least I’m curbing my in-app purchases somewhat. I DO like being able to pay the game developers for something that brings me such great joy… but I could cool it a bit with my purchases.
The schedule SOMETIMES helps me get to bed earlier. But what’s actually helping is that I removed early-morning workouts so now I get up at 7am and that means I can go to bed a little later and it won’t be so bad. I’m trying to go for an after-work walk instead!
Kudos for going to your strength class regularly! That’s awesome!
IMO budgeting is overrated. I tried YNAB once and I was just like “what even is this?”. I have been tracking my spending lately since I was recently considering quitting my job, and yes it’s interesting to see how much I spend and where it goes, but at the end of the day, if we need groceries, I’m going to buy groceries. I’m not going to say “well it’s September 27 and our budget was $500 and we spent $499 so we’re eating out of the pantry until October 1st”.
Also just sayin’ if you’re giving yourself a gold star for savings then it looks like your Cooking Fever token spending is just fine;-)
Note to self: start writing down my schedule….
I like the IDEA of budgeting, but like you said, I’m not going to just… not get groceries if I need them, even if I’m over-budget. So that’s where it loses me. That said, I think it’s helpful for me to see how MUCH over-budget I’m going in certain areas. Like, if I’m consistently over-budget in my food category, that’s probably because I’m ordering Ubereats too much, not because I’m spending too much at the grocery store. So if it’s September 27 and I want to order Ubereats instead of eating a perfectly fine dinner I have at home, but I’m at my budget… I need to eat the perfectly fine dinner. Mostly, I just need to be a bit stricter with myself when it comes to the way I spend money, but I don’t like that. Ha.
I am also terrible at looking at my phone while watching tv. Phil calls me out on this because I will sometimes miss what happened on a show and ask him and he will say – get off your phone! I think it is something about wanting to feel more productive or not being engaged/entertained enough by what we are watching? Usually I am playing octordle or something like that while watching a show.
I’m giving myself a gold star for getting through the first month of having a new hire. I haven’t managed people in 20+ years and this is a very different kind of management role as I was managing very junior people in a role with high turnover in my previous management role. Now I am more of a mentor. It takes a thousand times longer to train someone that do it myself (I’m exaggerating obv!) but I’ve made myself slow down and do it right so he can take on more of our work. Demerit is staying up a bit too late reading lately. I’m not staying up that much later but I really need to be disciplined about my bedtime!
Lisa, I can’t believe you’re staying up late to read! That’s not like you. I know how disciplined you are about your bedtime. But you must be reading GREAT books and that always makes it harder to turn off the light.
Hooray for a smooth training period with your direct report. One of the things I really need to work on is explaining my processes and the way I do things to other people. It’s hard to slow down and think of all the details that are second-nature to you, but not to someone new.
I track my spending via a spreadsheet, because I’m old school. I just like seeing where money is going (mostly groceries).
Yay on the fruit and veggie department! The couple times I have been in Florida I was astounded at how great the produce is – so close to the source! Kelowna is a huge producer of fruit and veggies and I love eating so local. It makes such a huge difference in flavour and freshness! Calgary is a bit of a desert, produce-wise. Well, at least for fruit, there are all manner of root veggies available. WHO WANTS POTATOES?? Lol! I actually don’t even like potatoes as a group. Anyway, this is a digression, yay for you!
I agree that we should spend money on things that bring us joy – to a point, of course!
I do the same – I track all our household spending in a spreadsheet monthly (I have a Google Drive file for each year and then tabs within that file for each month, along with one extra tab that gives me a breakdown of average spending in each category per month + a summary of all our investment accounts, the remainder on our mortgage).
Glad I’m not the only one still doing it the old-school spreadsheet way!
Nicole, I am aghast! YOU DON’T LIKE POTATOES? That’s basically an entire food group for me.
We do have SUCH great produce in Florida, and I need to be better about taking advantage of it. I remember Lisa remarking about that when she was in Florida many years ago. I forget that it’s not as plentiful in other areas!
I definitely track my spending, but I normally only do it on a quarterly basis. Doing it daily or even weekly can get tedious, so I just keep track of any cash I spend, which is basically nil these days, or any time someone pays me back (which can usually be tracked via an app as well — I normally use Zelle which is already in the spreadsheet that I pull for expenses), and the rest is just pulling my bank info and a couple of credit cards into Excel once every three months. For me this is frequent enough that I can make changes and it will affect this year, but not too frequent that I get burned out or get too much in the weeds (although I do like to break down my Amazon/Costco/Target trips and separate groceries from other things, but that is just me).
I love this line by Beckett – I’m not going to say “well it’s September 27 and our budget was $500 and we spent $499 so we’re eating out of the pantry until October 1st”. — because I don’t track it that close (monthly), but for me if I have a budget, I am exactly going to do what she is saying, eat out of the pantry for the last three days!!! To me that is the goal of a budget, but I have been called regimented in the past, so that’s just me!
I had to laugh at your comment, because believe me, if we had enough food in the pantry to get me through the weekend, I would totally do the same thing to keep in my budget.
Oh, same! I believe what she was trying to say was that if she didn’t really have much left to eat and needed to go to the grocery store but she was at her budget limit for food – what do you do? Do you just try to cobble together meals from pantry staples? Or do you just throw in the towel and go to the grocery store? And I am definitely the second person.
Oh wow, you only track expenses once a quarter? I feel like that would take me so long to do! I get overwhelmed if more than a week has gone by and I haven’t input my expenses. Maybe I’m just spending more often than you are? (Very likely!) How long does that take?!
I wish I was more regimented about my budget! But I’m more like Beckett where I’m just like, “Well, I’m not going to STARVE myself! To Ubereats I go!”
I am loving your strategy for scheduling as well as your savings game! Such great ideas! I really need to find ways to game-ify some of the more onerous aspects of my life, because I definitely think making a game out of things helps! I am have also really been struggling with a schedule lately — moving and dealing with a longer commute plus a constant stream of service workers in the house makes me feel like I have no control over my schedule… but if I just follow your lead and plan my schedule the day before, I should be able to find time to do things like work and write and exercise!
Also, way to go with adding in so many fruits and veggies! That sounds like great progress. I need to work on adding more veggies to my life as well, and this is great inspiration!
There really is something to creating a strict schedule – I have found it is really helping me mark things off my to-do list and feel more productive, even on days when things feel crazy! I hope it helps you. <3
Your savings game is spot on. I know I could do better in that area. I don’t stick to a strict schedule anymore, whether that’s a gold star or a demerit I’m not sure.
[And btw, where is Elisabeth? Her blog vanished from my feed without a word. Peculiar, I say]
Ally, Elisabeth’s blog was accidentally deleted. After you asked this question, though, she replied to a comment above, so you can find her new blog!
Thanks for the head’s up, J.
Sometimes a strict schedule works and sometimes it doesn’t! As long as not sticking to a schedule is working well for you, that’s a gold star in my book.
And yes, J beat me to your question! I linked her new blog at the beginning of this post, but I should have called it out more clearly!
I stopped doing monthly budget posts, too. I found the tracking to be So Stressful. Maybe I will get back on board as a 2024 goal. *sigh* It’s so depressing without a job right now, to be honest.
Gold star: I sent several emails today I’d be procrastinating on. Demerit: I procrastinated on sending those emails.
Hooray for sending those emails! Procrastination is one of my biggest strengths. Ha!
I’m also guilty of the in app purchases, and I feel stupid for doing it. I do try to limit myself.
Congratulations on your fruits and vegetables, I know that is a big one for you. Bonus fact, because fruits and vegetables have so much water in them, they are hydrating, so you can feel good about that as well.
Your saving game sounds fun. 🙂
Everything in this comment made me feel wonderful, J! I’m glad I’m not the only one with an in-app purchases problem. And I totally forgot that I can count fruits/veggies toward my hydration levels! Woohoo!
Well, these are some honest demerits and gold stars. I have to say it’s hard for me to have the TV on and also not be doing something on my laptop. Nice job on the fruits and veggies! And I agree with Birchwood- if you’re saving money then your Cooking Fever token spending can’t be too outrageous!
Why is it so hard for us to not be doing something else while we’re watching TV? There’s just something about our myriad of screens, I guess!
I love trying to make a game of savings! I used to use this app called Tip Jar, which I loved, but it went under, so I had to delete it. Oof. Recently, I decided to just automate some savings – $5 a day for two weeks, which adds up to $50 I wouldn’t have saved otherwise. My savings is in pretty good shape, but this is a good extra bonus.
That’s a great way to add a little bonus to your savings! I love it! Too bad about Tip Jar, though. I remember that app!
I can see how making it a game to save money works for you, as you enjoy games so much. I don’t think I would ever pay for a game app but then again, I do not play games on my phone for fun and maybe I would too if I really got into it – ha.
I also do scrolling when I watch TV, but mainly because we have the news on in the background. I don’t watch a lot of series, so it’s not like I have to give it my full attention.
OK, I have to confess, I’ve been tempted to clear Feedly for those posts over a week old. But then I worry about missing something important that may have happened in the lives of the bloggers who are important to me. So, it’s a dilemma. Will I catch up? Maybe, in 20 years. So are my old comments worthwhile? Not necessarily. I’ll keep pondering. And commenting on your old posts. 😉