can I live on $10 a day?

On a Saturday morning jaunt to the neighborhood coffee shop last weekend, Asher told me about the time he lived on $5 a day. And survived. It got me thinking about the silly things I find myself spending my cash on and how easily I settled into a lifestyle of basically buying whatever I wanted. I took the advice of my financial planner (those three words make me feel SO grown up) and started a money market account (again, grown up) last year and it's amazing how quickly you can save a good chunk of cash when you put it straight into savings. (His name is Brock Allender and he's with Northwestern Mutual. He also helped me set up disability insurance. You don't have to have massive amounts of money to talk to him. Trust me. Find him at http://brockallender.nmfn.com).

There are changes afoot (good ones, of course) which will necessitate some rather frugal living on my part. I'm moving out of my house at the end of April (as in a week and a half from now. eek!) and couch surfing for the summer. I have a storage unit, a PO Box, and friends in lots of other cities. My last day at my job is May 14th and after that... I'm free as a bird. I have plans to spend June in San Francisco taking dance and yoga classes and haunting the local coffee shops with some good books. I'm contemplating going back to school for a Visual Merchandising degree (my top choice is FIDM in LA) or just finding a job in a field that allows me to 1) be creative and 2) not be on a computer all day. It was a tough decision and I'm going to miss my friends (er, co-workers) but I cannot WAIT to see whats next!

So anyway, back to the $5 a day thing. I don't think I'm going to be quite so rigorous with my budget, but I do think $10 a day for food and fun is do-able, at least for the summer. That will help me manage my savings and find creative ways to occupy my time (hello, art projects!). Dance and yoga classes will not count as part of the $10, otherwise I wouldn't be able to eat.. But being frugal with my food/beer/coffee/etc money leaves more for fun things like classes. My goal for this week is to write a budget for the next three months. As part of my Quarter-Life-Crisis-I-Need-To-Find-Myself-Mom-Is-So-Proud-Dancing-Queen-Mega-Vacation Summer 2010 I'm going to blog at least once a week (day? hmm...) about what I've been up to, ways I've found to live happily yet cheaply (or not, who knows), and the people I meet along the way. Maybe you'll learn something along with me, or perhaps you'll just laugh as I repeatedly justify spending half my daily budget on a latte...

hiking outside leipers fork, tn