Cookies for breakfast

GARETH SAYS…
Today was a good day even though I woke up incredibly early (4am!!! I must be stressed). Breakfast was a 99c jumble cookie from Wholefoods. Jumble cookies are one of my favorite things in the world and they costs under a dollar - Thank god for the small things!

Before work I dug round my room and found my stash of foreign currency. There was money from all over the world – Brazil, China, Australia, Norway etc. I knew the banks wouldn’t change the coins so I gathered up all the notes and took them at lunchtime to the Chase branch nearest work.

For a $5 fee they change all my notes into dollars and to my surprise I had $99.72. Great stuff. Before leaving the bank I asked about how easy it was to set up a joint bank account, the lady must be on pretty tough targets as she said she could do it all there and then even though I didn’t have all the right documents (I had to pop back in with my payslips and current HSBC bank account details). She told me that there was a $125 gift for opening the account – it gets paid in when the first bit of my salary gets deposited. The $125 isn’t tied to a fee amount of cash or a percentage of salary – you get it even if you put in a dollar!!! I rounded up the $99.72 to a $100 and deposited that into my newly created account. In just under 20 minutes I had made a little under $225. Joy oh joy!

A highlight of my afternoon was free ice lollies at work because the office was stuffy. There were a few left over so I jumped on my bike and cycled over to Amy’s office with one. Free lollies taste sooooo good. We discussed what we should do with the money I gave her – I wanted to hand it straight over to the loan company whereas she wants to put into a high interest account and pay it in at the end of October. This would actually cost us $1600 - the difference between the interest on the loan and the interest on the savings. Hmmmm we agreed to talk about it more tonight.

I’m in the middle of cooking as I type this – nothing is burning yet. I have spent about $16 on dinner but I have enough ingredients for two meals. I am cooking spaghetti with a mushroom, cream, cheese, pea, lemon and white wine sauce. It tastes pretty good. The peas are from the freezer and we already have lots of spaghetti in the cupboard. I’m keen for us to eat well even though we are on a budget. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Oh I almost forget – three other good things happened today. Work was giving away some stuff left over from a project. I am now the proud owner of a bottle of Vitamin C tablets (we won’t be suffering from scurvy over the next few days) , a facepack and a toy set that is very cool (it was brought from MOMA for $38) – the perfect present for someone small although we might just keep it.

All in all a very good day. Fingers crossed we will sleep well tonight. Amy’s staying over and between her problems going to sleep and me waking up at silly o’clock we are almost a 24 hour couple.