Living on $50 a Day, Aug. 19th…

I’ve been bleeding money left and right lately and it needs to slow down.  This past week the bike crapped out so there was $120 down the shitter for a new set of wheels.  My diet since moving onto the Fritter has sucked and I’ve been spending more on food than normal, or so it seems.  And of course, little bits and pieces for the boat keep cropping up.

Upside is I’m about done with the latest website project.  Now I can get moving on a couple of apps for the two clients.  If all goes well I can get everything finished up and more importantly, billed out by the end of the month.  I’ve also got a possible new client for another website and as a bonus, maybe some part time work doing something I know how to do and enjoy…and it don’t involve standing behind no counter.  Hopefully all this mess will settle down going into the fall.

This week I’ve got Sprint and rent coming up.  Beyond that, it looks pretty quiet spending wise.  Overall this year I’ve been keeping the spending to a minimum.  Yes, there is no chance of me hitting the $50 a day mark.  Taxes, a new computer, the boat, all conspired to kill that objective.  But it doesn’t matter.  Next year there will be other unexpected expenditures.  There always are.  The upside is, I now have a better understanding of where all the money goes.  Getting rid of the damn debt helped beyond anything else.  Had I gone into this year owing money on credit cards, or a car loan, or something else, then things would be much more complicated.   Having the absolute minimum on bills takes a lot of the worry out of month to month living.  Yes, the boat complicates matters a bit, but as you have read in the Living Aboard series, I ain’t under any kind of particular schedule or pressure to do any upgrades to the Fritter.  I have projects that are more important than others, but unless something like a storm came in or for some reason the marina threw me out, nothing needs done immediately.

If I can continue to build the web and app business into something called a “profit”, life on this here little sailboat at the end of the world might become pretty simple and pleasant.

Capt. Fritter