Originally published in The Clifton Courier, August 2, 2017

I’m trying to be more financially responsible, and I can already tell it’s going to be confronting.

Now that it’s FY18, I’m going to be different. New financial year, new me. This is the year I start spending my money wisely, dammit.

My plan is to write down how much I spend each day in my diary. Once I get to the end of the week, I’ll tally up the total expenditure for that seven-day period and take a long, hard look at it. Presumably, I’ll do this while wearing one of those green visors the bean counters wear in movies and smoking a cigar (although I’d have to create a separate cigar fund for this, so maybe I could just pretend with a cheerio* instead).

* And just in case I magically managed to muster up readers who don’t have strong ties to the Darling Downs region in Queensland, a cheerio is a mini hotdog sausage. You probably were given one by the friendly butcher when you were a child. Our butcher’s name was Barry. So was the man we bought our hot chooks from. He was a different Barry, though…. cool story, hey? I’ve often said I’m terrible at telling coherent stories, which is problematic considering that’s my profession. 

Once I have that alarming seven-day figure, I’ll go through each item of expenditure and try to justify it to myself.

This, so the theory goes, will make me more conscious of the money I’m spending and force me to reconsider frivolous purchases.

It seemed like the perfect plan. It appealed to my diary-keeping mentality, promised to boost my bank balance and meant I could eat a few little red sausages* each month. All positive things.

* I won’t just you for giggling at that one. It would be hypocritical considering only this afternoon I found myself sniggering when Adrian Richardson used the phrase “penetrate the meat”. 

As always, this experiment was taken up with initial gusto only to die in the arse shortly after. I started this ambitious plan on Sunday and am writing this column on a Wednesday because I can’t see myself sticking to it to make it a rounded seven-day experiment.*

* Yeah, I stopped immediately after writing this column. 

So here’s how I went:

Sunday: I spent $15 on baby’s breath flowers to freshen up my room and make me forget that I live in a cesspit of filth. I also shelled out $7 on groceries, which included salad leaf mix, strawberries and sweet potato. There was plenty of fibre in that mix, which is what I’m all about. Care for your colons, people!

I also spent $8 on antibiotics, which was a pretty justifiable purchase, considering you can’t put a price on health (even thought I just did).

Verdict: I spent roughly the same amount of money on flowers as I did for my groceries and medication combined. What does that say about me? It says that I love myself.

Monday: This was a zero dollar day. I’d packed my lunch and preloaded my public transport card so I didn’t have to drop a dime.

Verdict: Yay me.

Tuesday: I spent $4.70 on a specially-brewed chai latte at the café on the way to the train station. I’m new to this whole “buying coffee” thing, so I don’t know if this was a reasonable price or not.

Thankfully, my mid-morning splurge was offset slightly by the fact that I spilled a whole cup of tea on the carpet of my lounge room.

This sounds like a disaster, and it was. I’m not going to pretend that a teary call to Mum didn’t follow. It was a full mug, for heaven’s sake. Such a loss.

I thought I was placing it on the coffee table, but I missed the surface completely. I can’t blame the coffee table here, but I will say that its clear allegiance to coffee – the sworn enemy of tea – makes me suspicious. You have to wonder if this would have happened if it was called a “tea table” instead.

Anyway, there was nothing to be done. The tea was gone. But when I moved the couch to mop up the mess, I found a 10c coin. And shortly after, a $1 coin appeared.

Long story short, I lost my tea but I gained $1.10.

I counted this as income and this happy accident took my tally from -$4.70 to a much more respectable -$3.60 for the whole day.

Verdict: This experiment turned a potential mental breakdown trigger into a silver lining. Am I turning a corner or am I simply putting financial gain above my own happiness?

Wednesday: I bought a luxe takeaway lunch with extra guacamole, an impulse buy choccie and a truly terrible card that says “dance like no one’s watching” to send to my sister. All up I spent about $30.

Verdict: It turns out I am not putting financial gain above my own happiness. I’m also mildly concerned a crappy card contributed to my happiness.

Overall verdict: Further study is needed, but unlikely.