How I Spent $2000 In Less Than One Week

On Monday I decided I’d brag about all of the extra income I was able to make over the past month through my side hustles (hint: around $3500, $2650 of it being online income), but by that time, most of it had already been spent.

See, I’m of the liberal belief that far too many people let money control their lives, and far too few people know how to enjoy their money that they work so hard to earn. In fact, the people who do tend to let themselves enjoy their money are actually enjoying other people’s money, in the form of debt (but that’s another post in itself).

In an effort to lighten up and live like the 24 year old I am instead of the 44 year old I act like, I went on a spending spree. And guess what? I’m not even a little bit guilty (read also: I’ve thought long and hard as to how to justify my purchases, and came up with some pretty good material).

Reinvesting It Back Into the Business

Alright, so it’s no big secret that I make quite a bit of money online, hustling in various ways. Lots of it is aside from the blogs (s), meaning that I have real clients that pay me real money to do real work.

I also make some money through my blog, by bringing you guys all of this fantabulous reading material and hoping that somebody will click. the damn. ads. Oh, and pay me lots of money to become a brand ambassador or something of that nature. Plus other methods of hustlin’.

It’s also no secret that I very much treat my blogs and my online work like a business.

So this is how I justify my recent, $1100 purchase of a brand spanking new, 2013, 13.3″ Macbook Air. 

(It was actually something closer to $1210 after tax, but due to my quick wit and good financial cents (see what I did there?) I managed to save $100 off the regular price of the Macbook plus amass a grand total of 1,000 Airmiles on this purchase alone. But again, that’s another post for another day).

My justification? Glad you asked.

I spend a bare minimum of 45 hours per week on my laptop on blog work, side hustling, and other work related activities. That doesn’t even include the time I spend watching Keeping Up with the Kardashian re-runs. That’s just doing things that make me money (or help me make money).

My old, ugly laptop which is admittedly not even mine is working just fine, albeit a little slow, but the way I see it, if I can use this pretty new machine and be even 5% more productive, I can have 5% more free time (just play along).

Investing In My Health

After gladly handing over my AMEX Card for my new lapttop, my partner and I skipped right on over to my favorite sporting goods store (read: the only one I knew of because I drive by it every day on my way to work, usually while eating chocolate for breakfast) and dropped $790 on two beautiful, brand new, Jamis Commuter bikes.

Calm down. My portion was only $420. 

The bike’s regular price was $599, but to my delight, it was on sale for the friendly price of $359 plus tax. It was a perfect, seafoam green color and I named her Greta.

One does not purchase their first adult bike without also making the responsible and adult choice to also purchase a helmet. So that went on top of everything and my little sporting goods store graciously handed over a $50 gift card to both J and I for future spending.

I justify this by pointing out the fact that cycling is physical activity. Physical activity is good for you. If you don’t have your health, what do you have? Am I right?

Maintaining My Car

I was running low on spending justifications, when I realized that many boring financial gurus state that one must maintain their vehicle, for vehicles are more expensive when they break down than they are to maintain them in the first place.

So I took Yolanda the Honda into the shop for a little detailing.

Never you mind that detailing isn’t maintenance. It surly is if I ever want to sell her! (Which I don’t, but that’s besides the point, okay?).

That rang it at an even $200 after tax, and boy does she ever look shiny.

Then I realized that I had to feed myself and put gas it my nice, clean car, so we did that and I went home and totaled it up and realized that I had spent $2000 in less than a week. So I went straight to work on justifying it. 

So that, there, is the story of how I spent too much money on frivolous things in a short period of time and justified them all in ways that you probably still aren’t buying.