Leos don’t like to budget…

I’m not actually into astrology (I tried to be—but for three months straight my horoscope was 99% wrong, which feels statistically impossible even for guessing! So I gave up on it). However, I read one time that Leos don’t like to budget, and I can totally relate to that.

Even though I was working hard to pay off my student loan debt over the past year, I still knew that while I worked one full-time and three part-time jobs, I didn’t have to pay attention to how much money I spent on kitchen gadgets and food (and a new phone, and a laptop, and traveling…).  I don’t think I went overboard and I don’t call the money wasted (I earned it, after all, and I don’t regret any of my expenditures), but I also don’t think I thought about it much as I was handing over my credit card to buy thousands of dollars worth of (wonderful) stuff in the first half of 2010.

Now, because I’ve taken the standard full-time job out of my life (i.e. benefits, heath insurance, a predictable paycheck, and the 401K I hadn’t put any money into yet), I need to think about things a little more. I’m going to try, but I think about budgeting and it makes my palms start to sweat (why couldn’t I have adopted the Master Budgeting Skills from my Dad?). Do you have any tips for me?

I need to budget (or maybe the better word is moderate) my habits too. I feel really cruddy after my week with my cousin—it was hard on my wallet and also threw my health issues back into full swing.  Have you ever had a time when you didn’t realize how great you were feeling until you stopped feeling great?  That’s me right now.  But no complaints, I just have to stay on track even though it isn’t paying off again yet.

A side note: I tried to make raw ice cream—the first step (using coconut flakes processed with water instead of young Thai coconut meat) burned out my food processor and did not yield smooth coconut cream like it was supposed to.  The second step (combining the coconut cream with soaked cashews, water, a vanilla pod, and agave, in the Vita-Mix) caused the Vita-mix to shut off because it was overloaded (wtf—aren’t Vita-mixes supposed to be able to chop wood?).  Last, the third step (putting it in the ice cream maker) worked ok, but taste testing told me it was too sweet and the vanilla pod was not totally pulverized. I added tart cherry juice concentrate to moderate the sweetness and picked out the pod chunks—which worked fabulously to fix the taste!  The end result?  Gritty Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream that I don’t want because I’m not hungry and don’t feel well!  Live and Learn, I suppose—who wants to go to 105Degrees with me for a month next summer (It’s in Oklahoma, and run by Sarma’s ex-bf Matthew Kenney, who is an awesome raw chef)?  They have a month-long raw chef training program, and I’m thinking it would be a great (fun) thing to do next year for the month of June.