and the great experiment begins

tomorrow is a new month. a month in which i will be experimenting. out of necessity.

and that experiment is named: how little money can i live off of for a month?

see, due to some money troubles in korea and that place being WAY more expensive than i anticipated or was led to believe, money is tight. this also has to do with the fact that i only get paid once every three months. my next paycheck comes 1 october. so this is the last month of the july-october pay period, hence the tightness. this entire month (august), i have meticulously kept track of every rupiah spent in order to better budget what i have left.

grand total: 1,963,775
translation: about $200

how much money i currently have to live off of for the next month: 1,200,000 (about $120)

i just got finished looking over the last month's expenses, and here's what i spent my money on. (btw, i've never done anything like this before. it was interesting.)

fun/leisure/entertainment: 69,000 ($7)
food: 518,200 ($52)
transport (including gas and upkeep for my bike): 53,000 ($5)
school supplies: 14,400 ($1.50)
bills (LPG, water, electricity, internet, house helper, mail, etc): 1,062,575 ($100)
phone: 102,000 ($10)
tithe: 150,000 ($15) (less than what i should be giving, i know)

ok. i know i can live on less than this. first off, almost HALF of my bills expense was due to me getting slammed with a $50 charge when i came back from korea. who knew i had to pay to get back into the country?! also, i pay my helper $10/week to buy food for me at the market. so my food total should be closer to $40. that extra $12 came from eating out about twice a week. should be stocked up on school supplies. and now that we have a third person living in the building and i FINALLY got her internet up and running, that bill will be split 3 ways instead of 2. and someone was stealing phone minutes from my cell phone, but i think i finally got that blocked.

the bottom line is that i think i can make it. and still afford to have $7 worth of fun this month.

now for those of you who might be worried about me, don't be. God always meets all my needs no matter what. AND if worse comes to worse, i can try to find a way to use my credit card here, which is linked to my american bank account. it just stinks because i lost my pin number and it charges me an arm and a leg for a cash advance. but i had trouble using it in korea, so i ended up having to withdraw money from my indonesian account from an international ATM i found there (praise God for that or i'd have had NO money), which is why my indonesian account is just about empty.

i'm excited to see how this works out. sometimes i feel bad that i already live off of like twice as much as my indonesian friends do. they don't have internet bills or house helpers or pizza once a week.

and also, i'm excited to use this as a way to save money. because the more money i save now, the more i'll have when i come home next summer. and the more money i have when i come home next summer, the more places i can go and the more people i can see!

the down side to this is that i smell like a hobo. i've cut out nonessentials such as deodorant and bodywash. i mean, i live in a third world country, right? good thing i still had a bottle of shampoo and some bar soap.