I just got back from the gym and now I’m starving for muffins. Just a quick post before I raid the fridge.
My gym is showing reruns of Entourage on their TVs. (Entourage’s new season started yesterday. Watch it.) Entourage follows the lives of an upcoming actor in Hollywood and his boys. They’re throwing money around and eating fine foods. Lots of bling bling. Lots of fake boobs. Actually, if you think that Desperate Housewives is anti-feminist, you haven’t seen this show yet. Still, I choose to overlook the lack of a strong female character on the show, because it’s very funny.
Entourage is all about looking nice and playing hard. But I also read the Times this weekend and, man, did they scare me. Even the Style Section was serious.
There was this stern talk to graduates about the evils of buying lattes, and there was the whole magazine.
Conserve. Spend. Conserve. Spend. People don’t know what to do. That’s why a friend of mine is spending money on fancy birthday parties and vacations for her kids, but not spending the money to fix her roof or get the mold out of the basement. And Steve and I might make smart decisions about those things and have no credit card debt, but we spend two weeks salary on mortgage and school loan debt. What morons we be.
Jane Galt had some good advice for people a few months back. My main advice is to have friends who make less money than you. Poor friends good. Rich friends bad.
But, truthfully, I’m still glowing from the workout from the gym and may swing by Starbucks before I pick up my kid from school. Because I deserve it.
Apt. 11d 
I think the only advice I’d add to Jane’s great post is that whenever you get an increase in income, start regularly saving that increase (the “Pay yourself first” part of Jane’s advice). After all, it’s a helluva lot easier to maintain a standard of living than to lower it. And it does wonders for your retirement plan if you can live like a student even after you’ve landed your first job.
(This is not to say to wait until your next raise, as time is of the essence when you’re talking about compounded interest. Just that it’s a real easy time to start or increase your savings.)
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When I got my first job, I bought a house instead of a car, and then took roommates so I minimized my out-of-pocket expense. I didn’t buy a car for seven years. That was 1976 and houses were by current standards ridiculously cheap. But if you can configure your existence so that you don’t need a car, it still frees up an enormous amount of money.
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