Money matters

I put the Crunchy Stir Fry Vegetables back and took out the cheaper sack of vegetables that looked less appatizing but where half of the other's price. It was Fresh Egg Noodles for me again as they were still on sale; half price. "Good", I thought. I added some sauce and a yellow bell pepper to the ingredients and concluded that this two-day-meal would cost about four to five pounds. "Ecellent", I thought as I continued shopping.

"Should I get the kilo bag of Crunchy Muesli?" Yes, definately! It is 1,32 for twice as much as the bag that is 0,99!
I counted the number of items in my cart; 14. Most of them were under a pound, some of them over, but all together it would be less than fifteen for sure.

The cashier lady smiled friendly; "Thirteen pound ninety please". I had succeeded.

Smiling while walking back home I had spent less than my aimed budget for three days groceries and that fifteen was even less than the budget I had planned for before coming to London. Quickly, I calculated that I would save up more than a hundred pounds a month. That would be more than 1200 pounds a year I could save! Or actually that I would have to borrow less. But still, 1200 pounds, I could even spent a little bit of that, right? On something nice, or going somewhere, or buying a DVD or two.

That evening as I went to the kitchen to prepare my cheap but healthy and tasty noodle dinner, one of my flatmates asked me if she could borrow my Oystercard. She had lost her's and she was going out tonight, but she did not want to spent a lot of money on a daily travel ticket.
She asked me if I wanted to come along? I told her I was staying in. Immediatly after I gave my answer I started to hesitate though. It would be nice to go out and meet some new people. Thoug obviously it was not guaranteed that I would actually meet new people. Besides, I had to pay not only for the transport but also an entrance fee and at least a drink or two.
My answer remained; "No thanks." and I gave her my Oystercard.

Later in my room I was reading the script for Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999) and checking out to see if there were any good gigs on in London. I was just checking to see if by any chance there was something nice but cheap. Little did I think, because of course there was also a lot of very good bands playing live in London. Bands that I would have considered spending more than a little money on to go see. But of course those shows were long sold out. And the smaller venues for unknown bands were in such remote places that I would surely have to carry my heavy Street Atlas around in hopes of not getting lost.
Besides, I did not want to decide to spent the saved money yet. I could better wait a little longer to see if I could maintain my current budget.

As pleased as I felt that afternoon spending so little money on three days of grocery shopping as sad as I was feeling now that I realised I was looking at a year of staying in at night. Roughly another fifty friday and saturday nights when everybody goes out to have fun. But not me, I will be in with no one to talk to; reading and writing with my face buried in my laptop.
Because I am on a budget.