August Spending, originally uploaded by Buster Benson.

Spent $20 less in August than July. Which is better than I was expecting due to the fact that we had to eat out every night for 2 weeks during the time that our windows were being replaced and our kitchen was out of commission.

Other interesting facts:

• $300 less on home stuff
• $550 more on restaurants
• $260 less on groceries
• $200 more on bars
• $140 less on yoga
• $260 less on ATM cash

Weird to watch how life events play out in categories of spending.

Still trying to hit that magical 50% reduction in spending from May.  About 13% to go.

July increased about 11% over June, though was still 36% down from May. My goal of making my expenses drop by 50% is still significantly far off. This month, however, had a 14-year old staying with us for two weeks, as well as Kellianne’s mother, so we did try to go out and entertain a bit more than usual. I guess it’s one month at a time with this, so we’ll try harder this month to keep spending down.

As you may know, I’ve been trying to frugalify my life in order to extend the amount of time my little company can survive on its own. My wife and I have made a bit of a game of it, trying to find ways to spend less and yet keep the standard of living at the same level. I’m a big fan of constraints when it applies to building websites and software, and it has been a pretty natural transition to also apply constraints to our spending and consumption.

I got this data from Mint, which is an amazing site, but I wish they had more flexible ways of comparing spending by month with multiple categories instead of just one at a time.

April had a couple big one-time payments related to debt from McLeod Residence, so is a little bit inflated.

In June, we tried to eat out a lot less often than in May, but our total food and dining expenses only came down by 26%, which is a bit surprising. We didn’t make any trips that saved us quite a bit of money. Entertainment expenses were cut by 79% (though we did still find ourselves highly entertained during the month… camping trips, boat rides, etc helped a lot). Spending to get my new office set up might have been a little high this month, plus I got the new iPhone. So… overall, still some big areas that can see improvement.

Overall, spending was cut by 39% in June compared to May. We’ll continue to frugalify our lives and see if we can bring July in at about 45-50% of May’s spending.

Money and spending is a really difficult thing to control so far. So many habits are tied with spending, and it’s difficult to make changes that touch on root aspects of my personality. But, one month at a time.

This is what I am thinking about as I design my ultra-minimalist highly-frugal tech startup work space.  Feel free to disagree.

1. One room and one table + chair per person.
2. Bring a laptop. No need for multiple monitors, that’s just high tech indulgence.
3. No land line.  Use your cell phone or get a Google Voice number if you want to filter “business” from your personal life.
4. As little space as possible.  10×10 should be enough for 1 person, 10×20 enough for 2, etc.
5. No printer or fax machine (walk to the nearest copy shop when you absolutely need to).
6. No Internet (if there’s wireless available). Otherwise, go with the cheapest Internet service possible that doesn’t require a land line.  It doesn’t need to be fast (especially in my case where I’m developing mobile apps that need to be tested on slower networks).
7. No commute.  Make it as close to work as possible so you can walk or take public transit and save on a car.
8. No espresso machine (a walk for coffee is a good thing).
9. Okay, a mini-fridge (for lunch and maybe a beer or two).
10. Have a CSA deliver fruit and veggies to your office every week or two for snacks.
11. No foosball, ping pong, video games, etc.
12. No chef.
13. No conference room (step out of the office when you take a phone call if you’re not alone, go to a bar for meetings).
14. Art on the walls and a big window beats a television.
15. Share your bathroom with others.
16. Go on walks to break up the day.
17. Use your iPhone for music.
18. Have an extra chair or small couch for guests and power naps.

What do you think?

Part of my ramp-up to a more frugal and healthy life this month will be in a change in eating habits. Up until today, a typical week involved eating out at a restaurant for lunch at least 4 times a week, and eating out at a restaurant for dinner probably closer to 5 or 6 times a week. I rarely eat breakfast.

Kellianne and I are going to try something different this month.

One, have breakfast every morning. This means we need to wake up about an hour earlier, but the opportunity to have local eggs with some asparagus or spinach the last week or so has been pretty amazing. For motivational purposes, coffee beans from a local roaster (Caffe Vita) counts as local.

Two, I plan on getting my lunches at the market’s produce counter every day. Focusing on in-season fruits and vegetables that I can eat with almost no preparation. It’ll be cheaper, healthier, and supportive of local farms.

Three, for dinner grill some local fish or sausage and steam some spinach, kale, or whatever else is in season. Simple, quick, tasty, cheap, and healthy. The fact that BBQs on the roof are pretty much an utopic setting helps encourage this as well.

Doing this at the height of spring is pretty much the easiest time of year to take the plunge. It’ll be more of a challenge to keep it up at the end of summer, I think. But that’s the future’s problem.

We aren’t going to go for 100% local, or 100% frugal, it’s more that we’re going to make a conscious effort to change base habits and see if we can make something new adhere to our habitual minds.

This is the plan. Now I just need to find a way to keep it. If anyone has any tips, precautions, or motivating tales, let me know.

When I turned 30, my birthday motto was “Higher highs and lower lows.”

When I turned 31, my birthday motto was “Double down.”

When I turned 32, my birthday motto was “No problem.”

Each year, the motto has helped me frame the upcoming year and give it some kind of direction. Those three mottos are pretty much a table of contents of my 30s so far.

Today I turn 33, and I the motto for this year is going to be “Frugal to the max.” I’m starting a new company, we’re planning to start a new family, and I think it’s time for the essentials of life to come into sharp focus.

Last night I woke up around 5am and did my usual iPhone surfing from bed, but nothing was happening (other than Dita Von Teese returning from Paris). So I sat there and had this strange realization of the shortness of life. To be able to sit in bed, with an exciting day ahead, with the love of my life right next to me, while we’re young, full of energy and ideas, hopeful, excited, and the world seems to be in sync with our goals and hopes… it’s a snapshot of time that I truly appreciate. I laid awake and savored everything that I have right now, and promised not to let it slip by without being fully appreciated.

Turning frugal is how I’m going to appreciate. And from what I can tell from people who I’ve talked with this about, it seems like we’re all interested in getting back to basics and truly savoring the essentials of life: love, friendship, health, quality time, creativity, sustainability, balance, and sense of self.

Tonight I celebrate with friends, tomorrow I start something new.

The month isn’t done yet.

Mint.com doesn’t have an easy way to export their little charts, unfortunately, so I typed in the dollar amounts for May into Google Docs and made this little pie chart.

I didn’t include dollar amounts because I’m sort of ashamed about how much I spend in an average month.  And yeah, May was an average month, even though we spent 6 days traveling.  Something like that seems to happen almost every month.

The main areas that I think I can make cuts are travel, food, and shopping.  So, assuming that I can also make some smaller cuts in the smaller areas, I am hoping that I’ll be able to cut my spending in June by somewhere between 33-50%.

Starting June 1st, I’ll be taking some serious steps towards implementing a new frugal lifestyle that will go along with the bootstrapping of my new company.  To begin, I’ll be taking a look at my spending, and separating them into fixed costs (mortgage, property tax, condo dues, gym memberships, subscriptions, etc) and variable costs (food, clothes, music, books, etc).

From there, I will create some new daily spending habits as I did when we were starting up the Robot Co-op.  Back then I was going through a similar process in my head, preparing for a serveral year bootstrap process (selling all of my possessions, moving into a tiny studio apartment, changing habits) that in the end wasn’t necessary since we found investment relatively quickly and were able to keep good salaries.

I also remember back in college when I lived in a 10-bedroom house with between 11-14 other people and paid $125/month in rent.  I made burritos and smoothies at Todo Loco and had a daily allowance of $11 (after rent and tuition costs).  I read books like Dharma Bums, walked around in kung-fu slippers, stole toilet paper from work, and did everything I could to save enough money to buy a CD every month or so.  So I know I can do this, and also do it happily.  I don’t look back on my frugal days of the past with distaste… to the contrary, a lot of the lessons I learned and philosophies I’ve created since then have very strong foundations from that time.

This time around, I plan on taking a slightly different track.  Rather than eating disgusting Ramen and Mac & Cheese, I’ll eat fruit and veggies from the market.  Rather than sacrifice cost for health, I plan on making as many cuts in the direction of sustainability, re-use, and non-commercial entertainment.

Stay tuned for a series of posts on this topic.  For now, I’ve got one more week til my 33rd birthday where I can spend however I like, and I will certainly enjoy the send off.