Big Picture, Little Details

About a year ago I walked into my bank absolutely panic-stricken and declared to a customer service rep, “My money market account is missing thousands of dollars. Obviously it’s been hacked!”

My thinking was that using the bank’s online features had allowed someone to make unauthorized withdrawals on this account that represented my life’s savings. And after carefully reviewing my recent transactions for the past month, I realized I was right. And the perpetrator was none other than me!

Rather than some shady computer-savvy criminal obtaining my online account info and using it for their own benefit, I had nickled and dimed my account to the tune of about $6,000 in about three months time.

I learned many lessons from that experience. The first was that I should always carefully– and immediately– review my bank statements when they pop up in my email instead of procrastinating them away until I had a minute.

But after pouring over the details of my statements, I also learned how expensive life can be. While, like most people, I am well aware of how much I spend for the essentials– housing, utilities, transportation, insurance and so on– upon careful review of the statements, I realized just how much seemingly little things add up. Things like dining out, spur-of-the-moment getaways, shopping sprees (even when done at a truly fabulous sales event) and most especially, unplanned expenses like unexpected medical costs or underbudgeted life events. In my case I thought moving without hiring movers would save me lots of money. I was wrong. While it did save me some money, unexpected costs and lost income due to taking an inordinate time off from work to try and organize my big moving mess, had me hitting up my savings account for $300 here, $500 there and occasionally pulling out a grand to cover my living expenses. Added to that, my new rent was higher than in my old house as were my utilities and I kept turning to my savings to bail me out.

I knew I needed a budget makeover. And what I needed to make over were the fine details, what I spent for food, dining out, fashion and fun. Doesn’t sound like much, but that’s where most of us mess up. And it’s usually a bunch of not-so-big expenses that really add up. And add up fast! Like anything, when it comes to expenditures, it’s always a lot of fine details that make up the big picture.

Still, living on a budget didn’t sound like much fun. And then I got an idea. I decided to turn the whole concept into a challenge: Just how fabulous a life could I live for less, as in less money?

Now, I’m out to see how I fabulously well I can live for less. And I’m calling it fabuless– the fabuless life.