Personal Spending Report: January 2011

Currently listening to The Black Brigade Debrief #82.

2010 was finally over. Glad to see that year over. Based off of the months of November and December 2010, I took the average of those two months and set it as a benchmark for how much I would spend on a monthly basis. I set my target goal at $550 a month or less.

With this goal in mind, I would check back on my records to make sure I was staying on track. At the end of the month, I spent at total of $550.86.

I spent $222.75 on car insurance. This was the highest premium I ever paid for full coverage.
I spent $101 on gas. I filled up on fuel four times this month and at this time, I was still using only premium gas. Had I filled up with regular, I would have saved a few dollars.
I spent $81.20 on fast food.
I spent $31.49 on groceries.
I spent $47.38 on weights. I think I either bought a 20 pound weighted vest. I intended to use it while running but the vest was kind of loose and kept bouncing against my chest while running. What I used it mainly for was to add resistance while doing pull ups.
I spent $33 going to a bar/grill with my friends from college/church.

This month was not very eventful. Looking back on my records from years ago, I notice how many blank days I have. There were several days where I didn't buy anything. Back then, I didn't have a habit of going to Krystal's for my lunch break at work. I spent more than $80 on fast food, but I typically kept that to the weekends and usually bought combos. I didn't really purchase from he dollar menu.

This month, I don't remember work being that stressful. Since Christmas passed, the customer weren't as pressed or frustrated about getting their money for Christmas presents.

I noticed that I had the habit of buying things for the sake of buying things. On January 23rd, 2011, I bought some mints. They were Tic Tacs. Typically, I would keep these in my cars and eat them at red lights.

On New Year's Day, I took my mom to a public park when it rained and we went to eat lunch at Moe's Southwest Grill afterwards.

First World Problems: Cracked Screens

The two most common first world problems I can think of is heavy traffic and slow internet connections. Both of which cause consternation but it is not the same as starving to death and dying from ebola. Should I add a third item to this list, it is cracked phone screens.

Every Iphone my boss has a cracked screen. My coworker LEASED a Iphone 6 and cracked the screen within two weeks. My dad cracked his screen and had to spend $200 to replace it.

Traffic and crappy internet are things I deal with frequently. Thankfully, a cracked phone screen is one problem I'm happy to not deal with. Nowadays, these devises are so expensive that you can get insurance plans to deal with this situation.

I often make the joke that by the time I buy a smart phone, everyone else will have artificial intelligent phones.

My only reason for believing in a God

Christianity is a topic that most men may struggle with while growing up. Over the last 14 years, I've tried this religion. And I've failed miserably at it. I will admit, it was very easy to believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible as a little kid. Believe in God or else you will go to Hell. Easy.

God was real and I knew it... because my parents told me so. And my parents knew everything. At least they knew so much more than I did at the time. As a little kid, I had the perception that every believed in God. And if everyone believes in it, than it must be true. As a little kid, I never heard of or met any atheists or had any ill will towards the Lord.

But as I grew older, things started to break down. As it turned out, the world has a lot of atheists and people that absolutely hate the idea of a God. Slowly, I absorbed several arguments against the validity of Christianity. Genesis sounds like just a fairy tale, Revelations is just insane, it would have been impossible for a flood to cover the whole Earth, the Earth is more than 2000 years old, there are severe inconsistencies about Jesus's life and the list goes on.

This combined with other events I've experienced caused me to do several sinful things. I tore up my Bibles, I rejected the Lord, I abandoned my church, I prayed to Satan just to spite God, I prayed to God just to curse at him, and I went as far as rejecting his existence all together. After doing all these things, nothing changed. Everything was the same.

It some time to get past the hatred of the Lord. I needed to save up a lot of money to to get past it.

After calming down a bit, I gathered my thoughts together. I couldn't trust the Bible. It isn't all false and it isn't all true. Did Jesus exist? Was Jesus God? Did he come back from the dead? I don't know. I don't intend on finding out. With any text that was passed down over multiple generations and translated hundreds of times, who can really know what is true?

But does God exist? I don't know for sure but I think it is more likely that God does exist. When I say God, I am not necessary referring to the God that is portrayed in the Bible. The Bible does a lot to personify God. The God of the Bible has emotions, talks to people, and manipulates the world.

The God that I am thinking about is much different than that. Growing up, I've noticed that nothing ever gets where it is without outside involvement. In other words, everything was created by something else. Houses are constructed by contractors, mountains happen when tectonic plates collide, and stars form when hot gasses undergo fusion. Everything is created by something else.

Well almost everything. The first thing that ever existed could not have been created by something else. This would imply that there has to be something that always was. What ever that thing is, I believe that thing is God. It might by possible that our entire plane of existence is God.

I could be wrong though so don't take my word for it. After all, I'm no priest. I'm just an accountant.

Phantom Pain Update

I haven't written anything in a while. I need to post something.

Over the last few days, I've been playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Oh dear God, I've been playing this game too much. It was the only game I've ever purchased on release date costing more than $50. But it has been completely worth it. I've been waiting for this game to come out ever since I saw the trailers for Ground Zeroes come out in 2012.

The gameplay is mostly the same from Ground Zeroes but the biggest addition is growing your Mother Base. And I've been stealing everything in the game with the fulton balloons. Soldiers, jeeps, gun turrets, hyenas, you name it. But the gameplay isn't the thing that is captivating me. Sneaking past enemy soldiers to rescue prisoners or destroy tanks is great and all but I'm just waiting to see what happens next in the story.

With this being Hideo Kojima's last game with Konami, this story takes place after Peace Walker and before the original Metal Gear. Up to this point, Big Boss has always been protecting the countries from nuclear war. However, in the original Metal Gear, Big Boss was a warlord that perpetuated war in order to always keep soldiers fighting. He committed countless atrocities including recruiting child soldiers and making them fight in his army.

I want to see Big Boss turn evil. After 30 missions, it looks like Big Boss is still trying to play the role of the protector. I haven't beat the game yet but it would be a big let down if this doesn't happen.