Money and Savings

I spend too much money.  It's been a problem that has been plaguing me since I got my first job in college.  You have money?  Sure, let's buy things that sit in boxes in the basement for all eternity.  I like spending money.  I like having new things.  I like opening random boxes sent from the internet.  Buuut I'm an adult now.  I should evaluate these habits and stop as many of them as possible. 

Starting August 1st, I am not going to order anything from the internet unless I can't get it anywhere else.  (I gotta have my cheese chips)

I've been setting myself up for failure with saving for a long time.  Right now is no exception.  I come up with goals for saving, but don't subsequently cut down my spending.  I have about $300 per paycheck (or $600/mo) that I am not putting into big bills or savings right now.  I know I have been spending more than that.  This means I will eventually max out my (meager) credit card limit and pull the money out of savings to pay it off and start all over again.  I end up not saving anything.  This has happened to me numerous times in the past.

The one time I had some success saving was when I told myself I had to pay for everything in cash (this doesn't work very well when you also have auto payments coming out of your checking account... damn you year subscription to WoW) but this helped me immensely.  I only had so much to spend but I could still spend it how I pleased.  I may need to try this again.

What about the temptation from the internet?  I probably need to go through and delete a bunch of my subscriptions from shopping mailing lists...  but I like to look at them.  At least I've stopped checking out Woot daily!  I've only ordered one thing from them in the last, oh, probably 3 months.  I consider that a success.  For the time being, I will change my shopping filter on my gmail account to mark all of my emails in those filters as read.

So...  plan, starting August 1st: 
1. Pull out $200 in cash. 
2. Spend as sparingly as possible.
3. On second monthly paycheck, pull out another $200 if necessary.
4. Spend as sparingly as possible.
5. Try to pay off the remainder of credit card balance in the mean time (or just pull this from savings for now to have a fresh start, I haven't decided yet).
6. Only buy things online if they can't be purchased anywhere else.