Hello beautiful long neglected blog. I swear I thoroughly enjoyed writing you but this has been a crazy summer. I know I said that about spring, but this has been truly crazy and I can give more enlightenment on that in the near future.

So July turned out to be “look at all these surprise bills” month. So I vowed to save money by limiting outings to twice a week at a max of $30 for a cumulative $200 for the month. This went okay. Fine I failed. Turns out my biggest issues are purchasing gas, eating out and dating. I didn’t realize that my kindness of treating my boyfriend ever so often would be so expensive.

Planned Week One

• Birthday happy hour at El Centro. My theory is I can have 2 happy hour margaritas and a plate of tacos = $25 with tax and tip.
• Golf with the ladies = $27.50
• Bikram = $12

What Had Happened

• The World Cup made the roof top deck impenetrable and I was starving. So we went to dinner. Then I had a drink with dinner. I finally made happy hour and was convinced by my little spendthrift to buy a round of drink. Actual = $49.47
• I forgot I promised a bottle of wine for a friend’s cookout = $12
• Golf with the ladies = $27.50. I skipped lunch to continue on my path
• I go to $12 Bikram at 12p on my flex Fridays off. However, it was a holiday weekend and thus full price = $20

Planned Week Two

• Happy Hour at my favorite cheapo spot – McCormick and Schmick’s at Nat’l Harbor which will need to include parking. I prepared for mussels ($5), fries ($3), a cocktail ($7), and parking ($9) = $28
• Then I planned to attend the Lake Arbor Jazz Festival = $15 and possible food truck purchase $10

What Had Happened

• The happy hour area was packed so I ended up with real dinner. Then I got on the new shiny Capital Wheel and parking = $53.90
• My friend suggested buying door tickets as it might rain = $20. Then I didn’t like any of the food truck stuff and got real dinner at a restaurant but stuck to a complex salad = $19
• Dinner that I forgot I was going to pay for…

Planned Week Three

• Artscape to see Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. We were taking the train $12 and possible snacks $10
• Fort Dupont for the DC Emerging Artists concert = $Free
• The Hip Hop Bar Crawl – $11 for a ticket and $20 for drinks and snacks

What Had Happened

• So amazingly, I spent $18 for drinks and my friend spend $24 on train tickets
• Fort Dupont = free
• I paid $22 for two tickets to the crawl and $9 on snacks. Drinks were purchased for me

Planned Week Four

• Going away happy hour – $4 for parking (food and drink provided by host)
• Birthday happy hour – food, a happy hour ½ price wine and parking = $20
• Fancy dinner – comped as a result of winning a bet

 What Had Happened

• Perfect
• Food, wine, tax and tip $21. Parking = $4. Evil Parking Ticket because I forgot to hit start on the app until 30 minutes later = $25
• Yay!

I also had to abandon my preferred paid yoga due to the fact that I was failing for either sub-par gym yoga or community yoga, which is actually pretty good but too crowded.