My concern was the swim; I couldn’t chance having a coughing fit or asthma attack in the water without access to my inhaler, and I also worried that with my ears being so congested (so odd and annoying), any water that lingers could easily turn into an ear infection. I do not want to be sick again, and I do not want to be on antibiotics again, so I stayed home while my friends completed the course.  

Missing the starting line at a race like this is doubly frustrating because in addition to missing out on race day festivities, you forfeit the fee to be on the course. In this case, I think it was $75. Quite the cost not to participate. There’s no sense in asking for a refund, these events are non-refundable because whether I’m there or not, the race must go on. The supplies, the permits, the race crew, the photographers; they’re all there whether I show up or not. So I don’t mind losing out on the money; the production crew has a job to do and the organizers are clear about the no-refund policy. But seeing all my friends’ smiling, confident faces in their race pictures? The camaraderie displayed in the pre-race group shots? The enthusiasm on display in their race reports? I’m more sad I missed out on the experience than the money.

All that said, I can’t be too sad; I have a long race season  ahead and now it’s time to transition from triathlon and focus on running. Marathon training officially kicks off tomorrow and I need to be mentally ready for all the ups and downs the next 18 weeks hold. In retrospect, I guess I’d rather have been sick before marathon training and be healthy for the rest of the summer and early fall. Time to focus on wellness and getting back to fighting form.

The post Missing the Starting Line appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

So, tonight I got rid of:

• 7 pairs of shoes! (1 for gymshoe recycling, 2 in the trash, 4 to the Salvation Army)
• 6 books (to the local library)
• 1 hat (Salvation Army)
• 4 purses (family and Salvation Army) and 1 laptop bag (family)
• 1 unused swim suit and one pair of lightly used sweats (family)

Additionally, I was holding onto a giant bag of junk mail, receipts, and documents with personal data that needed to be shredded. A friend told me rather than shredding, he puts his junk mail into his bathtub, fills it with water, lets the paper absorb it, then throws the pulp away. Intrigued and eager to avoid time shredding, I modified the process and put the paper into a bucket with some bleach. It’s been sitting overnight in my tub and now looks something like this:

It’s a big mess, and I’m not even sure I can put this into our recycle bin anymore. Terrible. If I had more time, I could probably make my own paper with it, but for now I need to focus on cleaning up my bathroom! Next time I’ll stick with the slow shredding.

The post Decluttering the Apartment appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

Now that my blog is back up, I’m pumped to return to reading other personal finance bloggers. One easy way to read your favorite authors consistently is to use a feed reader, like Feedly; another is to subscribe by e-mail (my subscription link is on the right over there >>).

Here are a few good posts I read this week by personal finance bloggers. I’ve shared some of these via Twitter, but in case you missed them, enjoy!

• Frugal Beautiful: A creepy letter I wrote to myself a year ago.
• Give Me Back My Five Bucks: How much should you save before moving out?
• Money Under 30: Sell your junk for profit.
• My Pretty Pennies: Home improvement- decluttering.
• Eat. Live. Run.: I’m going to Ethiopia.
• Get Rich Slowly: Financial advice for my former self.
• Budgets are Sexy: My new non-spending tracker.

I am feeling very inspired by some of these posts. I’m also super impressed by the design of these sites; these bloggers are so talented! I wish I could hang out with all of them.

One last resource for the week; I also plan to share Dave Ramsey’s free guide to budgeting with my younger brother, who is just starting out in his first apartment on a tight budget.

The post Personal Finance Link Love – Week of May 13 appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

Sometimes it’s a nice day outside and you take a 10-minute walk to soak in the sun, and then you come back to your office with a $6.99 aloe plant named Alan.

In my ten-plus years of office life, I’ve never had a work plant before. I was drawn in by something a little more colorful, but without thinking about anything other than how useful this plant will be when I am sunburned, I snatched up this little guy and carried him with me. After I set it up, I realized my mom keeps an aloe plant in her window, and maybe that’s why I bought it.

At any rate, on a day when I brought everything I needed from home (lunch, drinks, snacks), I walked out of the store with $10.26 in unnecessary purchases, among them my new friend Alan, all because it’s a nice day. I’m such a sucker for good weather.

The post Meet Alan the Aloe Plant appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

Well, I got hungry. And I opened — and finished — this, all 500 and some odd calories of it:



It was supposed to be my “extra munchies” for the week. It lasted one day. Oops.

Let’s discuss how much I ate today.

Breakfast
Instant g-f oatmeal plus banana
Coffee with almond milk

Snack
Half a bag of Pirate’s Booty

Lunch
Tuna sandwich on g-f bread, with a slice of cheddar cheese
Apple
Fage 2% blueberry yogurt
The other half of the bag of Pirate’s Booty
HonestTea honey green tea bottle

3:00 Snack
Kind bar (fruit and nut)

It’s 5:00 and I’m hungry snack
The rest of the tuna salad that was supposed to be a side with lunch later this week (about 2 Tbsp. full)
2 dried dates
LaCroix

Somewhere in there I chugged a bunch of water too.

The good news is that I brought all this food with me today so at least there was no spontaneous spending today. Yay! The bad news is that some of it was supposed to last a little longer.

I think I need to start eating a breakfast with more protein to get me through the day so I don’t wolf down a bunch of air-puffed carbs. Unfortunately I already shopped for the whole week, and oatmeal was the breakfast I chose. Maybe I’ll just hard boil some eggs and add one of those, or toss some almonds in my bag for the morning to tide me over a little better. I really want to avoid unnecessary trips to the cafe down here. Everything is so much more expensive! But the calories in/calories out equation is difficult to figure out when you’re upping your training time every week.

I’ll figure it out, eventually.

All that said, I am still STARVING. I’m going to go home and eat an avocado for a snack before dinner. And then snarf down a lot of dinner before I swim tonight. And maybe some sea salt caramels. And anything else edible in my line of sight….

The post The Hungries are Messing with My Budget! appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

I cook pretty much everything at higher temperatures than that. Now I’m stuck with a jar of coconut oil I’m not sure how to use.

I consulted Pinterest and it seems like a lot of people use it for baking, or for non-food uses such as natural lotions. This blogger has helpfully compiled 101 uses for coconut oil; though I’m not sure all the uses are applicable to me (several for babies), some appear time-consuming (homemade deodorant bars), and a lot of them seem like a stretch (how can something serve as a tanning oil and a sunscreen at the same time?). I think I can probably try some of the simple beauty uses, like lip balm, overnight moisturizer, hair product, hand creme, but I really intended to use it for cooking since it sounded so delicious.

Are any of you cooking with coconut oil? Help me figure out the best, most convenient, and easy ways to use up my coconut oil!

The post How to use coconut oil? appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

That was my Facebook status on April 16, as I digested the news from Boston.

I have been a runner for more than 15 years. This awful tragedy touched me deeply. Not only because I’m currently training for the 2013 Chicago Marathon, but because, like many runners, I felt personally that MY community was attacked. I just kept thinking about all the finish lines that people I love have stood near, waiting with open arms for me, no matter how good or how poorly I performed. I’ll never be fast enough for Boston, no, but on another day, in another city… The thought is too horrible to bear.

Not much is left to say that other writers haven’t already covered. But I thought as a sign of support and resiliance, I would share some pictures from our local Run for Boston, held Monday in Oak Park, Ill. We had between 60 and 75 runners, most decked out in blue and yellow, running through the streets of our town, behind our local Boston finishers. We held a moment of silence for the victims, then, with steadfast resolve, took our grief to the streets. I loved that cars driving through the town stopped and honked, waved, and shouted their support. The sense of community, of support, and trust, was overwhelming.

Here’s all I could fit in my iPhone camera, before we hit the streets.

And here are the ribbons the local running store made for our shoes.

You can see a few more pictures on our local newspaper’s web site. We had more than 60 runners, the town next to us had 300, and apparently downtown Chicago’s runs were packed too. I hope some of the love and support we were sending eventutally made it over to Boston.

In addition to taking over the streets, I also made a donation to one of the victims, Jeff Bauman. For some reason I was just drawn to his photo immediately on the day of the bombings. I knew his condition was bad, and I was praying for him to make it. My cousin later sent this fundraising link over because she’s somehow in his network. His story later turned out to be even more remarkable given that he was able to wake up and identify the suspects. I will continue to pray for his recovery and that of all the people injured that day.

I also plan to support The One Fund. It’s wonderful that they’ve already surpassed $20 million; health care is not cheap and certainly most of those injuries we’ve heard about will need a lot of follow-up care and rehabilitation.

The post Running for Boston appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

The old me (circa 2005-ish) would have used the nice weather as an occasion to call up everyone I know after work, drop like $80 on dinner and drinks, pose for a bunch of photos like the one below, come home super late on the train, and then question my life the next day.

Partying in the good old days. In Old Town, coincidentally, 2008.

Instead, yesterday I came home, threw all my windows open, cooked a super yummy dinner, got in a great workout, and worked on a few holiday projects. How responsible of me.

Boring for blogging, yes. But that’s what all the old pictures are for. What did you guys do with your crazy nice day?

The post 70 in December appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

I don’t know how people get through the holidays. I’m fairly certain I need to take a day off to accomplish all of the following: decorate my apartment, sign & send holiday cards, shop for gifts, bake cookies, and prep for parties. We have — wait for it — eight parties to attend in the month of December alone, plus one day devoted entirely to baking with my family, so nine if you count that. I’m starting to hyperventilate a little just thinking about it.

Baking day - a sampling of our products

Batches and batches of cookies will be baked!

ManFriend is encouraging me to slow down, because I’m basically the Tazmanian Devil of Christmas at the moment, especially since I lost the week after Thanksgiving due to my wallet being gone. I could always cast a few things off, such as decorating, but I’ve ditched decorating the last several years and I really want a tree this year. Maybe I’ll just get a little one?

How do the holidays always sneak up on me and why am I always so unprepared for them!?

The post Holidazed appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

Street smarts matter in the city

The contents of my wallet are slowly trickling back to me. Not the original contents, of course, only replacements. I’m tired of talking about it, and thinking about it. I just want to get all the cards back and move on, be able to sign up for local events, buy holiday gifts, purchase lunches, and not worry about rationing my cash.

It’s been a weird few days. The express DMV downtown was surprisingly fast, the banks and credit companies incredibly helpful. I had a few odd moments with a local institution where I hold a membership, but ultimately everyone accommodated me. I’m constantly checking my accounts to make sure no new charges come across, and keeping as little cash as possible in my checking. I was in a horribly bad mood earlier this week, but running helped, and now I’m feeling good. Tired, but good.

When I called my dad on Saturday night, he said, “I hope you’ve learned something from this.” I rolled my eyes. But the truth is, I have. I was getting pretty lazy about cleaning my wallet after each Sunday errands run. I didn’t really need to keep all my credit cards in there. I should have had the wallet in a zipped compartment. I didn’t need to bring my full wallet out with me to dinner; I could have just brought the basics. I knew all these things, I just didn’t abide by my street smarts.

And streets smarts matter when you’re a girl on the go in the city.

The post Wallet status appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.