Expense Report #1

I promised that as part of my effort to rein in my impulse buying, I would account for my purchases. Other than food and drugstore items and the previously mentioned pocket knife, the only other discretionary purchase I made last week was a bunch of discount movie passes through my employer.

I consider this an instance where spending money ultimately ends up saving money. The movie theater now costs $11 per ticket, but by buying these passes ahead of time, I save almost $3 per ticket. And unlike certain kinds of discount passes, these don't expire and there are no restrictions on when they can be used, so if we decide we want to see a movie on its opening weekend, we can just go and not have to worry about how long it's been showing.

I didn't go into any clothing or shoe stores, and I didn't buy anything on eBay, which is probably more significant for me. But I am going to need to buy a more robust surge protector soon, because on Friday there was another power outage while we were at work, and I had to deal with more TiVo crankiness, though thankfully it wasn't of the magnitude as the earlier crisis. But it took two or three restarts and several hours for the new machine to get back to behaving properly, which was troublesome and troubling.