So after a few binges in the itunes store last year I realized that I have issues with controlling my spending habits. *Snort* This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that knows me irl. Fear of driving isn’t the only reason I usually bring a shopping buddy when I go out - I need someone who can help me get a grip when I start to clearly get my spendy grabby self out of control in the Swell Section at Target. Despite (or maybe because of, who knows) my mom’s mathematical prowess I am determined to be Math is Hard Barbie and this inability to add simple sums is most glaringly obvious when I’ve got a shopping cart. Even a virtual one that’s doing the math for me. To be fair, though, when buying single products out of a saved shopping cart at itunes you don’t know how much you’ve spent until you get the email a day later. And you’d be really surprised how quickly that 99 cents a song (plus tax) can add up when that clicky mouse finger gets going.

This has been the year of some financial restructuring in our household. Despite my supposedly saving around two thousand dollars annually from quitting smoking (Cody doesn’t count since he’s still spending money on the patch) we had a fairly rough year financially in 2004. Sure, there were some household things like restuccoing and major tree removal but we’re homeowners and that’s the cost of doin business when you sign on for the mortgage. The good news is neither of us ever tried to qualify for enough credit to get ourselves in serious trouble and we paid off his car three years ago. So the only real debt we carry is the house.

What’s funny is while I have an inexplicable ability to handle money in the abstract - predicting good investments, tax shelters, etc - I have an equally inexplicable inability to balance a checkbook properly. So we’ve been trying a new way to balance our budget and so far it seems to be working. Don’t want to go into it too much but basically it involves two accounts - one for the regular monthly bills and the other for food, pet expenses, and discretionary (gaming, video, website, music) funds. Manages to keep our tech spending from interfering with the regular bills that we kind of sometimes tend to forget to pay.

I’ve found a nice solution for the itunes store where my spending could be controlled but I wouldn’t feel deprived. We used Cody’s itunes account to set up a monthly allowance that sends my itunes account a 30 dollar credit every month - and I entered a dummy cc number on my account so I couldn’t “accidently” spend over the thirty dollars. It’s about what we’d spend on a movie and popcorn on a friday night at a new theater so it doesn’t seem *that* unreasonable to spend on music once a month. And I get some fun music purchases.

I used to just go and pick out thirty or so songs from my saved shopping cart. But I started getting an error message last month and the apple customer service folks had to clear it out for me. So this time I had to pick the songs out one by one.

This is what I spent my thirty bucks on this month. (I made it into an itunes imix as well if you’re interested - February’s buys)

I’ve been in a strange alterna 80s / dentist office am radio in the 70s mood lately. And it shows.

Warren Zevon - Lawyers, Guns and Money
Bright Eyes - When the President Talks to God (this was free)
Skip James - Devil Got My Woman
Skip James - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
The Police - Invisible Sun
Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In)
Lou Reed - This Magic Moment
Björk - Army of Me
Gene Loves Jezebel - Desire (Come and Get It)
R.E.M. - Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single)
Morrissey - November Spawned a Monster
Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats - I Don’t Like Mondays
The Fixx - Red Skies (Alternate Version)
Happy Mondays - Step On
Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers
Throwing Muses - Dizzy
U2 - I Will Follow (been thinking about when they were, you know, good)
Eagles - I Can’t Tell You Why
Morphine - Gone for Good (my morphine cds are scratched to shit)
Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues
Alice Cooper - I’m Eighteen (please don’t make me explain this)
Bob Marley - Redemption Song (I’ve been thinking about non-overplayed bob marley songs too)
Gene Loves Jezebel - Jealous (apparently I’m a fan and didn’t notice before)
Matthew Sweet - Sick of Myself (I love him)
Gary Wright - Love Is Alive
Jackson Browne - The Pretender
The Spinners - The Rubberband Man (hee! I love the spinners I didn’t know they did this song!)

Sorry about the itunes links but I’ve been barred from posting mp3s by the ever paranoid Mr Man and I still want you to be able to get them if you want.