fiscal responsibility

let me start by saying that this is not a rant about the economic stimulus plan or the fact that the US government is now providing car warranties.

laura and i have decided to try actually budgeting some of our expenses. primarily because we ended up owing taxes this year and i decided that we are poor. at this point, i expect anyone who is reading this is probably really offended that laura and i would call ourselves poor (well, really just me). while we do both make a good bit of money, it manages to disappear as fast as we can earn it just like everyone else, mostly because of our habit of eating out way too often.

we've settled on a figure of $600 dollars per month which comes out to between $3 and $4 per meal per person depending on what assumptions you make. originally i had suggested $500 per month or roughly $125 per week, which is less than $3 per meal per person. we tried that for a week an went over by about $5 and cleared out most of our freezer and pantry in the process.

anyway, i've added a new gadget to my blog (over there on the right ->) so you google reader users (a.k.a phil) will have to go to my actual blog page to see it. it's our running tally for the month.

does anyone else budget their expenses? how much do you spend on food?

* for the record, i got a foot-long sub from subway today but i only ate half of it.

how dan missed out on the second biggest single-day gain in the stock market ever.

last week i had decided that i'd had enough of sitting this one out and watching my retirement slip further and further into the future. i moved my international investments into us value oriented funds. then on monday i decided it was time to start buying some stocks. overseas markets were down 10-12-14 percent monday and the us market were about even. the week before i had transferred some money to my ING account, who now operates their brokerage program through sharebuilder. i put the order in to buy monday night after the markets closed. today the s&p had it second biggest single-day gain ever. up over 10%. awesome, right? i logged into my sharebuilder account to check out the massive amounts of money i had surely made today. the order i put in monday night? still "processing". seriously though, we're not talking about a lot of money, but if i were someone else, it could have been. mostly i'm mad because honestly, i have no idea what i'm doing with my investments and there's basically no chance of me timing the market that well ever again. ever. fuck.