Money Mondays: April 2015 Budget Verdict

April was an unpredictably spendy month. We took a small vacation. I decided to finally purchase a new camera to replace the one that I had lost on the plane ride back from Hawaii. I decided to splurge on a present for the significant other. I've just finished tallying everything up and man oh man O_O. Looks like I went a tad crazy this month. Luckily, we have 3 paychecks in May! Hooray!

One of the things I haven't been so good about doing is analyzing my spending. Sure it's great to track and see what I'm actually purchasing and the bills I'm paying but what about doing something to attack what's sucking all your money? For this month, one of the major money suckers was eating out. It's something that has definitely been difficult to control. We've moved to an area that has high walkability and every day that I get out early is an opportunity to go to happy hour. For the month of May, we definitely need to start cooking more at home as well as packing a lunch. I think that will be the thing that will help us decrease our spending the most.

Here's to getting shit together in May! Happy Monday!

Money Mondays: April Check-Up

April is just flying by! Can you believe almost half the month is already gone?! Seriously where is the time going. So far it looks like April will be another spendy month. March was a month for splurging on myself but it looks like April is the time for some much needed r&r. If you can spare the time and money, I think it's nice to take a little vacation every quarter. It gives you a chance to recharge. Work has been pretty crazy so we booked a little mini-vacay to get away (think back to those Southwest "Want to Get Away" commercials.) The way this month is headed, I'm really looking forward to getting 3 paychecks in May!

Hope your April isn't turning out as spendy as mine! 

Still got another 17 days to go O_O lol. 

Let's tackle this week and Happy Monday!

Spring 2015 Fashion: Fringe and Trench Coats

If you watch a lot of YouTube videos, you probably know of Jenn Im of ClothesEncounters. She's got an amazing fashion sense but everything she wears is a little out of my comfort zone as well as out of my price range. She recently posted a video of her Spring 2015 Outfits and I really loved the army green trench that she was wearing from Bardot. The trench is on sale for $99 (reg. $149.95) and there's only one size left so I started my hunt for an alternative. Luckily, light trenches are SUPER in this Spring and while browsing thru my Feedly, I found Wendy from Wendy's Lookbook wearing something similar to what I want and from Forever 21 for $32.90! Here's a side by side image of the two trenches.

draper trench (item: 32120JBX) from bardot (link); draped-lapel trench (item: 2000120399) from forever 21 (link)

Obviously the Forever 21 version isn't as good quality and it looks like the Bardot version has pockets (which is definitely something I would miss) but style wise, you could style the two similarly.

Wendy also styled a sleeveless version (check out additional photos here) which I'm also eye-ing online. What I appreciate about the sleeveless version is that it has pockets!

dropped-lapel trench vest (item: 2000097194) from forever 21 (link)

I was reading an article about Kendall Jenner's stylist, Monica Rose, and her top 3 recommendations for spring. One of them happens to be fringe. I had this fringe purse that I purchased from Target and it definitely served me well during the festival season. I have since donated that purse but there are a few fringe items I'd like to add to my wardrobe. I'm not quite brave enough to wear fringe as a clothing item but I did see a few pair of shoes that I liked.

women's sam & libby hughes gladiator fringe sandals from target (link)

women's mossimo supply co. ruthie fringe bootie from target (link)

There were also a couple of purses I liked as well.

Fringed Faux Leather Backpack from Forever 21 (link)

Fringed Faux Leather Crossbody from Forever 21 (link)

I found one fringe top that wasn't too out there that I could possibly wear.

Southwestern-Embroidered Fringe Cami from Forever 21 (link)

Hope you enjoyed this fringe and trench coat edition of Spring 2015 Fashion.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Spring 2015 Fashion

Spring is here! Or if you live in Southern California, it seriously feels like summer already. I had a chance to go shopping lately for some Spring stuff (as well as some non-spring items) and I thought I'd do a little haul.

I have TJMaxx right by my work and it's a real shame that I don't go there more often. This particular TJMaxx always has really great stuff (mostly clothes, not so much for the home section though). I'm absolutely in love with Spendid shirts made from the modal material and this store usually has a bunch. This time, I was inspired to go shopping for some looks I saw from the Spring "Looks We Love" section of their site. I really love this pink ensemble from their site.

So when I went shopping, I was looking to add a bit of color to my usual white, grey, black palette that I have going on. I ended up buying this American Eagle Aerie Favorite T (similar) in the v-neck style ($6.99).  I have extremely sensitive skin to the point where there are certain clothes that I buy that I wear once and I never wear it again because it irritates my skin so much. There are certain shirts and pants that I have to cut off all the tags, otherwise I get itch-crazy. This tee is made of 60% cotton and 40% polyester and it's extremely comfortable. It does look like a shrinker so I'd be aware when washing/drying especially if you are looking for a looser fit shirt.

I'm guessing I'm really into the bright pink/coral color for spring because I ended up purchasing a second tee that looks very similar to the Aerie tee. This one isn't that "washed out" material of the Aerie one so it would be a great option for going out without that beachy/casual look.

I couldn't steer clear of the whites for long. I love all things white and the trouble I have with white pants or shorts are that they seem to always show my underwear. I haven't been able to find a pair of shorts that aren't practically see-through. While I was browsing, I picked up a pair of high-waisted scalloped shorts just for shits and giggles and I ended up loving them! They actually matched really well with the pink/coral shirts I had picked out. The great thing about solid white shorts is the versatility. If you want to look more put together, I'd go for an all-white monochromatic outfit. For a more fun look, pair the shorts with a floral/printed top.

This is all the Spring/Summer items I have bought so far. There are a few more items I'm looking to add to my wardrobe this season like some culottes (which I could also be good for work as well), fringe stuff, a maxi dress, nice sweat-proof sandles (I have a hyperhidrosis problem) and a jumpsuit. I'll keep ya'll updated! Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Money Mondays: March Check-up

There's about a week left in March but it's still a good time to see how we are doing so far.

I did purchase a bit of stuff this month for myself. I splurged on some flats for work as well as a purse I'd been wanting. I've also been shopping around for some more suitable work clothes. Looks like I'm still doing ok but I should be cutting some spending, especially since next month is a rent month. Just one more week! Save save save!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Don't forget that it's tax season! Don't procrastinate! 

My Life Lately...

The last few weeks have been both stressful and rewarding. Work has been quite hectic and I haven't really gotten a chance to recharge. I took a few days off two weeks ago when my friend came from Hawaii to visit and we headed up to Disneyland. Every time I set foot into that place, I get sucked back into getting an annual pass. This time, I made the jump and got a pass. I'm definitely feeling the itch to go back now that I have a pass but now it's about finding the time to go.

March was going to be the time when I started all my changes. Maybe that was a little too ambitious of me. This year surprised me because usually January is super stressful because there are a lot of changes going on at work. However, this year, it seems like as the year progresses, the stress levels are increasing. One of my favorite YouTubers, Ingrid Nilsen, read my mind and made a video on Relaxing and Letting Go. I found her tips to be really helpful and it was like a little hug to let me know that I'm not alone when it comes being stressed and overwhelmed.



Let's take a look at a few of my goals this year and how they've been coming along.

• Finances
• My finances are actually going quite swimmingly. I've been following my budget of 50-25-25 (debt, save, fun, respectively) although I've been trying to put a bit more towards debt than 50%. I still have my goal of being debt free by 33 and I'm really close to being able to reach that goal. 
• I've been speaking with friends and just gathering information on what I should do in terms of putting money into my 401k or putting money into a Roth IRA. I looked into how much I had actually put into for 401k last year (vs. the total including my company match) and I was NOWHERE near the maximum of $17,500 in 2014 ($18,000 in 2015). In 2014, I put 5% of my pay towards my 401k. This past month, I increased it to 15%. My reasoning for this is that it will drop my taxable income down drastically since these are before-tax contributions. 

• Food
• Initially we thought that we'd be able to spend our Saturdays heading out to buy our groceries for the week at the farmer's market. However, looking at how costly some of the stuff is, we've decided against it. The prices at the market were double what we'd pay for at, for example, Sprouts. 
• We have been exploring the area quite a bit but I haven't posted any of my foodsplorations because I wanted to at least try a place out twice (to a few times) before giving it a review. 
• I actually cooked a bit more in January than February so I'll hopefully be posting some of those up soon. We've been having out of town guests and exploring the neighborhood so that usually doesn't leave much time for cooking. 

• Fitness
• Wow. This has been absolutely non-existent! I made a whole calendar for March and I haven't even done one day of booty exercises. Well, sometimes life throws some curve-balls at you but that doesn't mean the game is over. Step back up to that plate with your game face on. 

• Travel
• With all this budgeting and finance talk, a vacation seems less and less likely this year. I'll still probably plan for my annual Hawaii trip sometime in the fall when fares drop to their cheapest but as for right now, a Peru trip seems very far from fruition. I was looking at it and it would cost approximately $4,500 for the two of us to head out to Peru. Ideally, we would want to go in May and it seems very unlikely. I was researching and it seems that the best time to go to Peru is in May. I feel like saving that kind of money for a vacation in the latter part of the year would be much easier than shelling out the money up front. But as of right now, we have no plans to do any sort of traveling this year :/. 

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

I'll talk to ya'lls very soon!

Money Mondays: February 2015 Budget Verdict

March is officially here! Quite scary for me since I'm basically supposed to be starting all of my changes this month. But first, I'll reflect on how I did for February. Like I had said previously, I wanted to make sure to keep my spending low in the beginning of the month because I knew I would be spending quite a bit a money during the end of the month (take a look at my "Out of Town" expenses).

Tony and I switch off paying rent (one month I'll pay, and the next month he'll pay) so money is a bit tighter on rent months. I was still able to pay much more on my loan payment which is good. However, I was in the negatives in terms of money rolling over to next month. This isn't such a big deal since I know for March, I don't have to pay rent so I'll be able to save a bit more.

So far so good! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

I'm ready for you, March!

Fitness Fridays: March Calendar

March has officially creeped itself into the picture :/. It's the month that I'll be implementing all my crazy life changes so we'll see how that goes!

For today's post I wanted to go ahead and post my booty workout/challenge I'll be doing. I'll probably be doing these right when I get home from work. I feel like when I just get home from work, I'm still running off that high of running around all day. On the days that I work the late shift, I'll probably do these right when I get up, that way I can hop into the shower right after and get the day started.

sorry this is so small. i was having technical difficulties lol

Feel free to join me this month and get your booty into shape!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

2015 Goals: Fitness Fridays

One of my big goals this year is to start working out. I've been doing a lot of Pinterest-ing and I've found some really good stuff. First off, I'm going to say I'm definitely no expert in regards to fitness. If anything I'm currently being awarded the "Sloth of the Year" award. I haven't worked out since I've moved to San Diego O_O. So yeah... I thought I'd make a real effort to work out this year.

Fitness Membership

I bought a Groupon for a barre workout place that's walking distance from our apartment. It's 1 month of unlimited use. Plus, under the conditions it states that I can purchase and use the same Groupon every 6 months so if I really enjoy this place, I can purchase another Groupon in 6 months. This place sounds really promising so I'm excited. Right now I'm planning to start using the service in April (but we'll see). 

Calendar of Fitness

So I've been trying to plan a simple workout to start in March. I've basically looked online and I actually found a site with a really great Fitness Tracker you can just print out. They even have some 30 day challenges like squats, wall sit, plank, etc. If you're more on the lazy side and can only commit to one thing a month, this might be a good option for you. 

Start Small

I've been slowly trying to integrate exercises into my daily activities, especially when I'm sitting at the couch watching television. I usually try to do some arm exercises with dumbbells or leg raises with some ankle weights.

Research 

The hardest part of starting is that I basically have no idea what exercises to do. I've been pinning a crap load of stuff but videos are even more helpful if you're short on time. For instance, I'm trying to tone my arms (living in Southern California, you can pretty much wear a tank top every single day of the year) and I actually found this pretty good 10-minute Tone: Arm Workout. I'll be doing an arm workout as well as a butt challenge for March and I'll post more about it next week. 

Hope everyone's week has been going well and TGIF!

Whether you love or hate Valentine's Day, make an effort to love and appreciate yourself. 

No matter what has happened up until this point, you've survived! Just keep swimming.

Have a great weekend!

2015 | RESTART

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Years!

Every year since I've graduated and started working full time, I set goals for myself for the new year. I think of it as a kind of syllabus for the year (still in student mode here). I'll be making January and February my month of planning. March will be when I start implementing my new goals. I'll be using 2 separate manila folders to collect workouts and recipes. Once I compile a good amount of workouts, I'll start planning when I'll be doing them throughout the year. I'll probably change workouts every 2 weeks. As for recipes, once I have compiled a good chunk, I'll probably end up bundling recipes with similar ingredients together and do some meal planning. I'll probably be Pinterest-ing quite a bit as well. So let's start off with the 4 main focuses of the year.

1. Finances

• Loans:
• Reflections: My goal to be debt free by 33 is coming along swimmingly. I'm not a patient person so before my post today, I was actually quite disappointed with myself because I had originally wanted to finish paying off one of my loans (I have a Stafford and a Grad Plus loan and I wanted to be done with the Grad Plus loan since it's the one with the higher interest). Unfortunately, due to some extra travel (Coachella, Alaska, Seattle, Tennesee for Bonnaroo, New Jersey/New York, Hawaii, and New York again) and splurges (which I'll discuss below), I was unable to pay off as much as I wanted. But after some careful Excel maneuvering, I found out that I paid a total of $36,079 towards my loans which was $18,000 more than what I would've paid if I was just paying the minimum. Another accomplishment I had wanted to achieve was to get to a point in my loan payments where I would be paying more towards the principal vs. the interest and I'm finally doing just that for my Grad Plus loan! 
• New Goal: Now that I've kind of seen the sacrifices I had to make for the year as well as how much I dug into my savings, I will probably be content with myself if I end up paying the same amount as I did this year towards my loans. I mostly want to use the money I save up this year towards traveling. This past year, I was bitten by the travel bug and it's still going strong. I've seen a few of my friends go to Europe this past year and it really makes me want to go back, especially to Italy.
• Savings:
• Reflections: I pretty much emptied my savings this year to pay off my loans so that was the "sacrifice" I had to make this year. I didn't go into my emergency fund but I good chunk of my savings was depleted :/.
• New Goal: I want to be able to double my emergency fund by next year. 
• Splurge:
• Reflections: This year I made the leap of purchasing my first Chanel bag. It's my most expensive purchase to date and I did purchase the bag when I was in Oahu at Ala Moana. I've had my heart set on getting a Chanel bag since I graduated but I could never get myself to buy something so expensive. But I finally went for it because it was only getting more and more expensive. I'm really happy with my purchase but I wish I could wear it out more often. 
• New Goal: For the new year, I'd like to save up for a second, less expensive Chanel purchase. Also, we've had to downsize from a 2 bedroom to a 1 bedroom, we've been getting rid of a lot of our clothes. Now that I'm a bit older, I'm trying to purchase fewer but better quality clothes. I'm hoping to be able to do a session with a personal stylist possibly at Nordstrom, J. Crew or Topshop. 

2. Food

• Explore:
• Reflections: During January we did restaurant week and we realized that many of the restaurants that participate in restaurant week tone down their menus and food for those weeks. All the places that we've been during restaurant week, we've been pretty disappointed minus Amaya at the Grand Del Mar and Eddie V's. That's why we didn't end up participating in September. It was also costing us a fortune since each meal was at least $100. I'm glad we didn't participate in September (minus going to Eddie V's which was only because we had a double date with a friend from out of town) since we did a lot of travelling and we spent a good amount on food when we were gone. 
• New Goal: Since we are now living in Little Italy, I really want to explore the restaurants that are in the downtown area. I didn't really do restaurant week this past September besides going to Eddie V's but I do want to try a few places this time around in January. 
• Cook: 
• Reflections: Cooking was definitely really hard this past year mostly because I didn't know what to cook and I didn't really have time to cook. Also it was getting really expensive to purchase groceries that I was planning on cooking and then not having the time to cook and throwing, basically money, into the trash. That alone made me even more discouraged to cook. Our fridge for most of the year consisted of only alcohol and condiments. Closer to the end of the year was when I made more of an effort to cook. We purchased meats from Costco and the defrost button on the microwave became my best friend. 
• New Goal: Every year I tell myself I'm going to start cooking. This year I'm going to once again put that on my list of things I want to do. There's a farmer's market in Little Italy every Saturday so we'll be able to purchase groceries on a weekly basis just steps from our place. It might not be very friendly on the wallet though so we'll have to see. 

3. Fitness

• Reflections: So beginning of last year I told myself to join one of those pilates/yoga classes. That plan didn't exactly come to fruition or I should say at all. Time and my lack of energy were the biggest contributors to that failed resolution. 
• New Goal: This year, I'm hoping to get a fitness pass to one of the fitness joints in the Downtown area so that I can just walk there. I know one of them has a Groupon but I think they removed it since everyone's goal is to get in shape but once that dies down, I think they'll put the Groupon back up. 

4. Travel

• Reflections: We did quite a bit of travelling this year so I was very proud of us. Our first venture was to Indio for Coachella which was super fun. We celebrated my cousin's quarter century there so it was really fun. Second stop was to Seattle where we then took a cruise to Alaska and Victoria, B.C. It was our 2nd cruise and even though we were a bit disappointed with the cruise food, it was still a very humbling experience. In June we went to Manchester, Tennessee for Bonnaroo which was also extremely fun. We were extremely happy to have been able to see Sir Elton John and Lionel Richie. In August we flew cross country to New Jersey where we got to see our friend's tie the knot. We got to also explore New York a bit which was nice. My first time in New York was a bust (I pretty much hated it) but this time I fell in love and I was almost debating living there for a bit. In November, I took my annual trip to Oahu and this time I also flew to the Big Island. It was a very interesting experience to say the least and I can't wait until next year to explore a new island. To continue the birth month celebrations, I also crashed my friends' vacation to New York. This time I got to see New York without my beer goggles so my infatuation with New York has kind of died down but there's definitely so much to see there that I would definitely want to go back in the future (now that I've gotten the hang of taking the subway). 
• New Goal:
• Places I'd like to visit in the new year:
• Peru
• Coachella again or Lalapalooza?
• Dallas
• Somewhere in Europe
• Annual Hawaii trip

What are your goals for 2015? Any trips you are particularly excited about?

Let's make 2015 our best year yet! Love you all!

Here's a look back at 2014!