December: Month in Review Part 1

Alright guys! I'm back for a December Month in Review Part 1! Using my day off to get caught up on these posts! Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day/Single Awareness Day and Happy Hump day!


Dec. 1st: Work

Dec. 2nd-3rd:
Started off the month by heading to the Troubadour in LA to see Sam Smith. His first show sold out but they added a second show and we were able to get tickets. What an amazing singer. He has an amazing way of relaying his emotions through his music as if he's been through everything he's singing about (maybe he has?). Since we were able to use the carpool lane for most of the way, we actually got to LA quite a bit earlier than expected so we decided to grab some grub. We decided on a sushi restaurant off of Santa Monica Blvd. called Ajisai. Really great stuff. Very fresh.

We were going to drive back to San Diego that night but we were both really tired so we stayed at my parent's house. In the morning we had a bunch of boxes from Crate & Barrel to go through. I had entered their Thanksgiving Giveaway because I had felt bad for the person trying to collect information. People are often so concerned about data collection and for goo reason but I had once been that person at the mall calling out to people to try such and such product so I know how it feels to seem invisible and ignored. Anyways, I signed up and the Monday right before Thanksgiving I get the call that I had won! Super crazy and below is a picture of the six boxes of stuff I'd won. It was a set of 12 large plates, small plates, bowls, utensils, a turkey baster, and a roasting pan and rack. It even came with a cooking magazine. I think it could've been a sign that I need to start cooking lol. I still haven't started though haha. I probably should have made that one of my new years resolutions. I thinking cooking itself takes a lot of prep time. First you have to find the recipe. Then you have to go buy all the stuff. Then you have to prep the food. Then you can actually cook. But I digress lol.

After some serious packing up, we were able to widdle down the 6 boxes to just 3 boxes (they sure put a lot of packing into those boxes but nothing was broken so good job!) and we headed to eat lunch with my dad at Din Tai Fung. People often say this place is overrated but I think their ingredients are extremely fresh. You can really taste the difference.

After lunch, I wanted to make a stop at the Santa Anita Mall. Every year I always send in my wish at Macy's. I believe they donate money for each letter that is submitted to Santa. I feel like if they actually read the submissions, that would be such a fun job lol.

After spending some time at the mall, we headed back to San Diego. We decided to try this new soon tofu place. One of the things I miss about LA is the abundance of BCD Tofu houses! Like can you please extend your chain to San Diego. It's definitely not the same but it's a lot better than the other soon tofu places. I was pretty appalled that most of the soon tofu places in San Diego don't have any side dishes or very few. Like wha?! I'm always like "Where's my fish?!" (even though I usually give it to someone else lol)

Dec. 4th-6th: Work

On December 5th we had a Holiday party for work at Tom Ham's Lighthouse. It was so nice out with a small breeze. It was one of those days that really makes you think "Wow, I'm so lucky to be living in California".

Had some post-party drinks and some life conversations with some other PICs. Sometimes I wish we could get time off and just hang out because we all have the same problems and pressures from the higher ups. It was definitely very enlightening to be around such intellectuals. I really just wanted to pick everyone's brains lol.

Dec. 6th:
Decided to check out December nights at Balboa Park. This was my first time at this event and it was very pretty and crowded (which I was told that this day was actually the most empty it's been). There were some food trucks there so we tested a few places out. I saw a sign with Sweet Potato Tots so I had to give it a go! They were pretty darn good. Also tried a bunch of cultural foods that I didn't get a chance to take a picture of because my phone was crapping out.

Dec. 7th-8th:
Celebrated Sophie's birthday in LA with some Korean BBQ. For some odd reason I have no pictures from this day! I gotta hunt down the scrapbook person lol. I only have this picture and Sophie's not even in it!

stole this one from pearl!

Dec. 11th:
We went out to dinner with Tony's parents and tried out this new Japanese/Italian Fusion restaurant called Ristorante Kaz. I ordered the Squid Ink Pasta which was a bit of a surprise. So my coworker recommende Bencotto in Little Italy for their Squid Ink Pasta. Bencotto's Squid Ink Pasta is actually pasta that is made out of squid ink. This squid ink pasta is with the squid ink pasta sauce. Man, this is definitely something you don't have to eat on a first date. I spent most of the night wiping my mouth lol. Definitely something I want to take home to enjoy and slobber all over the place.

Dec. 14th:
Tony's cousin had a super cute jungle themed baby shower. We got to keep these super awesome mason jars. I never usually win any games at these kinds of gatherings but I ended up getting the poopie diaper lol. I like these kinds of games where it requires the least amount of effort on my part hahaha (my laziness talking there).

Dec. 15th:

Had a small gathering at my house and invited some of my favorite people :). Missing a few peeps but it is a true rare event seeing us outside of work. 

Thanks for reading and I'll talk to ya'lls real soon!!

Debt Free by 33: 2014 Budgeting How-To

A lot of people tend to get overwhelmed by their New Years resolutions. You want to lose weight, eat healthier, spend less, learn more, etc etc etc. That's a lot to take on on top of a full time job. By the start of February, you've realized that half of those resolutions have already been broken and you're back to your old habits. The key to following through with those resolutions is breaking them down into steps that you can actually accomplish. When you're in school, you are given a syllabus to get through a class. For example, a book that you must read during the semester might be broken down into 2-3 chapters a day. In life, the same rules apply. For the majority of us, just simply stating "I want to be healthier" isn't enough. There needs to be specific parameters that you can measure to see if you are or are not meeting your goals. Sometimes there's a lot of pre-work that you must do to set yourself up for success.

For this Budgeting How-To post, I will go over some steps to find what your monthly budget should look like. In order to spend less and save more, you have to look at what you have to work with: your monthly income and how much you spend on a monthly basis.

1) Monthly Income
This one is easy enough. Just look at your weekly or biweekly paychecks for the month of January (hence why I'm posting this in February) and add up those amounts. Take that amount and round down to the nearest $250. According to Wikipedia, the 2011 median annual household income in the United States was $50,054. Divide that by 12 months gives you $4,171 per month. So lets say average Jane made $4,171 in the month of January, you're going to round that number to $4,000. Unless you have a salaried job, your paycheck amount my vary from time to time so $250 seemed like a nice round number to work with. On your budget sheet, you will put this down as your "Monthly Income". What about the rest of the money you ask? This money goes towards something you want out of this year. Did you want to save up for a house? A vacation perhaps? Maybe you just want a pair of Jimmy Choos or a designer handbag? This hypothetical person would be saving $171/month. That's $2,052 in a year. This doesn't have to be something you're saving up for. You can use that monthly money as seed money for shopping or dining out or coffee fund lol. Just do something nice for yourself (if you haven't noticed, I'm all for spoiling yourself :)).

2) Expenses
This category is where people tend to give up. Face it, everyone has a ton of expenses. Living is expensive lol (although death may be quite costly as well, but let's not digress). To make this step a little less daunting, let's break it down into sub-categories. (I have a category for parental expenses because I, like many other children these days, support my parents in some of their monthly bills. You can remove this category if you don't and add additional categories i.e. child support, etc as needed.)
*note if you use your credit card to pay for certain bills (i.e. you have an automatic bill pay that pays your cable bill through your credit card) do not create a subcategory for those items since they will be included in your expenses under your credit card. Example: I use my credit card to pay for my cable/internet at my parents house so I will not create a subcategory for that under parental expenses since then I'd be doubling up. 

• Home/Apartment Expenses: 
• Rent
• Cable/Internet (if you have two separate bills, put these into two separate categories)
• Water
• Gas/Electric
• Parental Expenses:
• Home - Water
• Home - Gas
• Home - Electric
• Student Loans:
• Credit Cards:
• This number usually varies from month to month. This is where you'll have to do a bit of research. Go through your 2013 credit card statements. Write down those amounts and look to see if there are any severe outliers. Maybe you paid off a vacation one month and the amount skewed your payment. Maybe you did a lot of Christmas shopping and your December bill was crazy. Whatever it may be, if there is month where your spending deviates over $500 from the rest of the amounts, you've got yourself an outlier. What you then want to do is just remove that outlier from the picture. So if you've got 2 outliers, you will then add up the other 10 statement amounts and divide it by 10. This will give you your average monthly spending on your credit card. If, however, your payment amounts vary all across the board where there isn't one sore thumb sticking out, just average it out. Round this to the nearest hundredths place. (note: this only works if you're paying your credit cards off in full every month. If you're not then that's probably something that needs to be addressed first).

Last step in expenses is to add these all together. This gives you the total amount you spend a month.

3) The Difference

Take the amount you got from "Income" and subtract the total you got in "Expenses". This is where you find out how much wiggle room you have each month. If you find that you are in the positives, you're in luck! This means you can put this money towards your savings or towards repaying a loan. If you have unpaid credit card debt, this money could go towards that too. If you're in the negatives, that means you're spending above and beyond your means. This would be a good time to take a long hard look at those expenses, break down each credit card expense into categories and find out what categories you're spending the most money in and cut down those expenses. Again, it's a long tedious process but the reward will be huge. 

I hope this was helpful to those of you trying to make a budget and stick to it for the new year. I wish you all the best on your New Years Resolutions!

Sunday Sounds: Coachella 2014 Series - MS MR

Awhile back we had gotten tickets to see MS MR. They were running a promotion on the site for $0.91 per ticket. Including fees, the tickets ended up being around 5 bucks. We didn't end up going since they had to reschedule the show to a date that we had a scheduling conflict. That's when I started listening to them. One of my favorite songs from them (not listed below since I couldn't find embed the song on here) is Bones. Here are some of my other favorites below. Happy listening!

Sunday Sounds: Coachella 2014 Series - Adventure Club

Coming to you real quick this Sunday since I have work today. A few of my favorites from Adventure Club.

November: Month in Review Part 2

Nov. 16th: Christina's Bridal Shower

Drove to Pasadena Saturday morning to attend Christina's Bridal Shower at Cafe Bizou. Matt's mom and sister were the hosts and they did an amazing job. After the shower, we walked around the Pasadena area. We happened to walk into Crate and Barrel since Christina's mom had a gift card she had to use and it just so happened that they were doing their Thanksgiving Giveaway. I entered the giveaway not really thinking anything but I actually won! It was pretty crazy because they called me the Monday right before Thanksgiving to tell me I had won. I've never really won anything in life (that I could remember) so this was a huge surprise.

known this girl since the 3rd grade! oh how fast time flies!

Nov.18th-21st: Work


Nov. 22nd:

Tanya flew into SD for my birthday weekend and the Drake concert on Sunday Friday night. We headed straight for ramen at Ramen Yamadaya. Afterwards we went to watch The Hunger Games Catching Fire. I thought it was a pretty good movie. But I felt like people were exaggerating how good the movie was.  I thought it was good but not THAT good.

Nov. 23rd:

People started coming for my birthday weekend Saturday morning. Plans were to hit up Snooze and then go Go-cart racing. The wait at Snooze was quite long but worth it for this baby.

OMG French toast

spending time with the bestests

after go-cart racing

That night we headed out to Little Italy for dinner. We went to Bencotto per my coworker's suggestion and it did not disappoint. I absolutely love pasta and I had been looking for a good place in San Diego. My coworker was telling me about their squid-ink pasta and how it was the best squid-ink pasta she's ever had. Well, it was absolutely delicious. Cooked to perfection and the flavor was all there. My new go-to Italian restaurant.

Nov. 24th:

The next day, people were heading back to LA but we decided to squeeze in brunch at Prep Kitchen before everyone left. It was pretty delicious.

Instead of a cake, Judy opted for some macarons instead. Delish!

Thank you to my beautiful friends for making the trek all the way down to San Diego to spend the weekend with me! Ya'll sure know how to make a girl feel special!

After brunch we headed home to take a nap and then made our way to the Viejas Arena for the Drake concert!

My 3rd time seeing Drake and the only time I fully remember the concert lol. It was seriously a huge party but just don't Drake and drive (...or you'll end up at your ex's house) :P.


Nov. 25th:

The next morning we woke up at the break of dawn to drive to Disneyland!

 

Nov. 26th-30th:

Took the rest of the day off to go to the eye doctor to get a new prescription for my contacts and then worked the rest of the week. Made it to two Thanksgivings with Tony's dad and mom's side of the family which always means amazing food. Went Black Friday shopping and got a bunch of cool stuff.

That concludes November Month in Review (finally!)! 

Working on October and December and soon January! Stay tuned!