December 15, 2017 Brunswick Faith Family Finance 2

God is good.  I got my first paycheck from my new job and it alone is almost what i normally make in one month.  I started the day with $1995 in my account and as i walk in the door this evening i have…$523 left.  The vast majority of that is bills that have been left to wait as I didn’t have the funds to pay them off.  Now they are paid…we have everything we need food and grocery wise..and i have money in the bank left over that only has to last for two weeks before I get more funds in.  My eldest is freaking out because we usually have to make that money last the rest of an entire month.  For the first time in literally years we could actually afford to buy a month’s worth of everything we need.  Between the cat supplies and the groceries we spent $540.  Now by raw numbers I could have cut a hundred or so off of that..but that would have been getting everything at Walmart and Costco.  The intangibles that most folks do not see are the amount of time it takes to drive to Frederick, the time spent in the zoos of Costco and Walmart..and the trip back home..plus the fuel.  My time is worth  at a minimum of 36 bucks an hour.   It is about 1 hour of travel time, more than 2 hours in Walmart and then 2 hours in Costco.  That alone is $180 dollars.  I usually burn 10 bucks worth of fuel..so $190 bucks.  This does not take into account the wear items on the car that have these miles put on them or the oil changes…etc etc etc.  I am just doing the most obvious one that folks see..time and fuel.  We usually spend around $350 at Costco and Walmart combined.  In total it is $350 + 180 = $530.  I spent 10 more dollars this month than I normally would shopping in Frederick.  We are not totally familiar with Weiss yet..once we are that $10 expense will go down to a negative number and then we are saving money.  In this case folks…shopping locally does save you money as long as you take proper accounting of the intangibles.