why are you paying 1400 a month for a beach house in ac? how often do you even use it?
are you splitting your bills with your gf?

and wtf at 300 a month for cable
get internet only and if you need cable just get youtubetv for 40 bucks a month.

where in manhattan do you live that you can actually park on the street for free where it isn't a giant pain in the ass moving it for alternate side parking all the time? why do you need a car in manhattan? I've lived in the Bronx Brooklyn and Manhattan. I never had a car in Manhattan. And in the other boroughs some places parking is easy and some it's such a pain in the ass it wasn't worth having a car.

you also need to compartmentalize when you make/lose in day trading and how you spend money.
it's the same with poker- i'm going to (likely) win or lose thousands this weekend playing poker. but i'm not concerned with short term results and they aren't going to affect my spending habits at all.i know whatever i win or lose isn't actually my ev for the weekend and i'm not gonna spend like a drunken sailor if i have a great weekend.

enough?


I don't know.... The thing is "how to get maximal quality of life with money you have". Obviously you don't have a feeling of security. How much is this feeling worth for you? How much is eating out worth? I mean "+" of eating out you don't have to cook (what do you do with the time it saves you?). You have a feeling that you treat you. (Is that true? Won't you have better food if you cook yourself?). "-" of eating out: It is more expensive, more calorically dense and you basically give-up control over something very important (food) into the hands of someone else.

And if you get somehow into routine with cooking it is not much more time investment than if you go out for eating.

Obviously I don't suggest to make sushi at home. But you can start with something easy like roasted piece of meat of your choice and some veg and then compare costs, calories, time value if you cook it yourself or if you eat out. And then decide which options makes your life better.

Give up control to an expert, yes.

Eating out is great. Nothing wrong with cooking, but given the choice I'll eat out.

Not necessarily, and it's not even a downside unless you're trying to lose weight.

Paying professionals to have control over the preparing/serving of the food is literally the whole point of eating out. If this is a downside for you then yeah I guess you should never eat out.

For most people it's not about time, it's about effort, or perceived effort.

ok.. I admit we have a problem .. but ill address the questions.

1. beach condo,, yes,, we are there a lot,, just about every weekend , especially in the summer.. its right on the boardwalk, and awesome. we both love AC and met there , so, yes, its a luxury , but if we arent staying in it, a family member 9who are all based in nyc or n jerseyis) or friend is

2. the car in lower manhattan is silly, but A. i know lower manhattan alternate side streets like the back of my hand.. ive been parking cars here since i was 15 when i would do it for my dad's buddies at a mechanic shop off delancey . so i find parking very easily and my schedule is super free as i dont have a set schedule , and B. we drive to AC or other parts of the city at night a lot ,, so i am saving 500 a month by not picking a garage , i live on mulberry/canal,

3. the cable thing is totally doable .. and its gonna be the first thing we cut back on

4. eating out too, but its so much fun, that we have to figure out how.. just had uncle boons the other day , and im like ready to go back.

but yes, by now i have learned not to do that, and i understand what my avg is, but , we still need to cut back regardless

300/mo for cable really isnt bad with how comcast likes to bend you over. 3 hd boxes and 2 dvrs, with a few sports packages ran about 280 here. when i took over the account i dialed back to performance internet with a rented modem/router and its 100/mo. makes it way harder to watch sports but obv can find any tv show for free so its not that bad.

I just rotate through the different paid tv options here, constantly getting new stuff and only paying about $30 plus they often give you a free month. This is without sport though, I paid a lot more when I was totally mad about AFL.

Myrna,

There's nothing wrong with eating out if that's what you value. It really depends if it's impacting your financial goals. Personally I don't eat out much as it's so much cheaper cooking myself, calorie/health control etc. I enjoy cooking and growing food but when I do go out I'm pretty picky and want it to be a great experience as it's so rare. Only you know how much value you get from eating out and whether it's truly impacting your finances negatively. Proceed accordingly

i heard if you call near the end of your "promo" rate period and ask for new/threaten to switch/generally light bitching, they will be able to just reup you to whatever new they have. never done it but my gf is great at complaining so we've considered it

try some of these books, "the overspent american", dave ramsey, "your money or your life"

You should try spending less money. If you spend less, then you will be more frugal. It is that simple.

yeah but thats like telling an alcoholic they should just drink less.

I love live sports
Youtubetv is great
40 bucks a month and I think you can use 6 devices at once

Yeah that's what Ive noticed.

There is nothing wrong in eating out or in fact any spending. The thing is that Myrna's posting here shows already that he is somehow not so happy with how things go. And the questions is what can he change.

I noticed here how differently I view eating out to majority of posters. There was an argument that with eating out you trust an expert. I eat non-home cooked meals only in professional context (value 100$+). And if I compare my cooking with such meals this argument clearly holds. I would never produce the effort necessary to create such meal. But if I compare my cooking with a meal out for around 20 $ I win every time.

I think it plays a big role that people have internalized the feeling that cooking at home is something for poor people, it is something that you do when you have to do it, it is kind of sacrifice. And no one wants to be poor, everyone wants to have fun.

One thing I do every few month, I invite people for cooking. It is not conventional pot luck party where you bring a dish with you. Food is really created then at my home. It is important to have sufficient amount of alcohol. And important to think of the dish that is well suitable for making in a group (Pizza is perfect ). We sit around, drink red wine, chat and people are chopping stuff for the topping. My task are things that can't be divided into smaller portion like rolling out the dough and ensuring that everyone has something to do. It is totally fun. It is especially good for people with some social issues because you don't have to keep-up the conversation and it somehow develops around this common task - PIZZA.
And it works pretty well although I have a tiny apartment with really small kitchen.

I don't eat for days.

I don't think I believe you, people always say stuff like "better than fastfood"or "better than the restaurant" about their cooking. I mean, maybe in some way, but probably not. Like, if you or your mom makes something like chicken nuggets and fries, I guarantee it's going to be worse than Mcdonald's. See, they have it down to a science and your mom goes through life with an inflated sense of self-worth. And I bet 95% of whack-ass, braggart italian grandmothers can't make better spaghetti than olive garden, stuff is solid, even if it's "not authentic".

I'm sorry your mom abused you as a child poppunk.

Hehe.... my mom definitely does not derive her sense of self worth from cooking. She was very amused at the idea.

By " better " I mean better nutritional value and better corresponding to my taste buds. While the second one is subjective the first one can be objectively measured.

May be if you had listened to your mom you wouldn't have to eat mcdo chicken mcnuggets and would be able to make pasta like you like it.

Conclusion: listen to your mom!

Edit: I totally agree with one thing from your post: mcdo & co has it totally figured out how to make people overeat, how to make them buy more than it is good for them. And I mean not only taste and nutritional combo of their food. They have an excellent marketing strats. I struggled few years ago with ending on my business trips in mcdo although I hate it.

taste buds*

Lmao! You'd have to be a pretty awful home cook to not be able to produce something better than what you can get at McDonald's or Olive Garden. None of these places are using super high quality ingredients or doing anything that requires a high degree of skill. When that's the case the value and quality for these kind of meals will often be better coming from even an average home cook.

Myrna is trolling you all

Preki this is another example of a bad post you’ve made in oot.

It contributes nothing, it’s incorrect and it doesn’t present a better way to do something. You just made an off hand comment that sounds sort of witty and snarky but actually is false.

An alcoholic is someone with an addictive disease. Someone who is bad with money could be uneducated with finances (most common issue), has been miseducated, has poor impulse control (is not an addiction or disease) and in some cases, fairly rare, they may have a shopping, buying addiction which may be the one example that relates to your quote.

There are lots of ways to improve with money that start with “stop spending on things that aren’t vital” whereas walking up to an alcoholic and declaring their problem would go away if they simply “stop drinking” would not work the same way.

I’m starting to believe that you don’t understand these differences because you’re not a very intelligent human being.

Going for a perma with just north of 1100 posts may not be frugal, but it's definitely efficient!

You're wrong. Mcdonald's fries are made with a fry, freeze, fry, double fry method which is fairly difficult to emulate. I've never been to a nice restaurant that had fries that were better. And that tempura thing they have going on with their mcnuggets is the same deal, you can emulate it, but you're not gonna be as good as them.

And Olive Garden actually does make very solid sauces that are much better than you can buy from a store, and probably better than 99% of the sauce recipes from clueless food bloggers.