Relationship Between Budgeting and Health

The more I spend eating out, the less healthy I eat. When I go to the grocery store I do not purchase cookies and cheeseburgers. When I eat out, I inevitably will choose cookies with cheeseburgers.

The past few weeks have been a good time to apply some of my lessons from work to my personal life. I have been doing a little bit better job of cleaning up my Quicken data from 2008 so that I can do some analysis. Nothing too surprising. I did spend an appalling amount of money on dining out. I bought my lunch at work almost every day. That is a big factor. All that money would be fine, but I think a lot of the food that I eat out is pizza and burritos, like most people. I don't think that is very healthy.

In 2009, I am going to spend a lot more time grocery shopping and then cooking. As you can see from the graph, I could probably spend $1000 more on grocers and $2000 less on eating out and eat much better. If I am still around in 2009, I'll post an update.

Buying the Market

John Bogle, founder of Vanguard, has a prescriptive post on the WSJ.com website. I think it is pretty cut and dry and I like his advice. Although, I think he can be a little windy in the interviews I have heard with him.

It is interesting his point about buying the market. If you look at Vanguard's Total Market ETF, it has outperformed the S&P500 significantly over the past 8 years.

Rent vs Buy Calculator

This Rent vs. Buy calculator on the NYTimes.com website is one of the best financial tools around. It even has an advanced tab on the right hand side that let's you calculate all of those second order things that affect the ROI. Check it out..