Spend, Spend, Spend!

Tis the season to be jolly! Extended time spent with the family can either be joyful or hellish. Luckily, Thanksgiving dinner was somewhere in between this year. The last three years, we've been on vacations during Thanksgiving week but fell behind in vacations this year so here we are stuck at home. The turkey dinner itself couldn't have been easier as I simply ordered a whole turkey meal from Marie Callendar. I knew that the turkey would be cooked and just needed to be heated up but I didn't expect it to be a packaged Foster Farms turkey that I probably could have bought at the supermarket. Nevertheless, it was moist and tender. I comtemplated shopping early on Black Friday. This year in particular, retailers were incredibly competitive and the Black Friday ads were "leaked" to the public on numerous internet sites. Fights that broke out a Walmart of $400 laptops made national news. I decided to head to Staples and Radio Shack at 8am on Friday to pick up a couple of items. I'd actually never seen so many people at a Radio Shack before (that doesn't mean much as there are normally only a couple of customers there at any given time). The item that I wanted at Staples, a 256MB USB memery card was sold out. I was silly to think that I'd beat the housewives that don't mind getting in line at 5am to save $20. Of all the things that were advertised, nothing really sounded that appealing to me and so I've spent a total of $0 on holiday shopping so far! As the ultimate consumer, I'm practically dying to spend money on something, anything that is new and clever. Can someone say j-a-d-e-d?

Monday 11/21:
$12 lunch at Fire Dance
$0 frozen dinner

Tuesday 11/22:
$4 lunch at Viet takeout place
$32 dinner for 2 at Coco's
$109 clothes at Mervyn's

Wed 11/23:
$0 company meeting lunch
$5 2 movie tickets and concession (Harry Potter, had two gift certificates)
$0 leftovers for dinner
$13 airphones online

Thurs 11/24:
$45 gas
$90 take out Thanksgiving whole turkey meal from Marie Callendar's

Friday 11/25:
$7 drive thru Starbucks
$5 drive thru breakfast Farmer Brothers at (saved $5 Entertainment coupon)
$50 semi-synthetic oil change (saved $8 with coupon)
$15 Trader Joe's
$0 leftovers for dinner
$3 Starbucks again

Saturday 11/26:
$24 lunch with sister at Chinese place
$11 coffee and dessert for 2 at Starbucks
$0 skipped dinner because of late lunch
$36 Jason Mraz Mr. A-Z CD, Madonna Confessions on a Dancefloor CD, 20 Ads That Shook the World book by James Twitchell on Amazon

Sunday 11/27:
$53 supermarket (saved $11 in coupons)
$0 leftovers for lunch
$32 TJ Maxx Homestore
$0 prepared dinner