Earlier this summer, I found myself staring at an ugly yellow hooded fleece and deciding whether or not I was going to drop thirty-five bucks on it.

“It’s a unique color.”

“I’t’s ugly and you’re broke.”

“But…I’m in Maine! Maine is a place of fleece! I should get a fleece because I am on vacation and in Maine!”

“You are an irrational maniac.”

And so on. I didn’t end up buying the fleece, but more often than not, I fail this little internal test. It’s not like I’m addicted to clothes, or run up huge credit card bills on luxury items; I simply spend when I don’t need to—iced coffees, new socks, parking-tickets-begotten-by-laziness—and I want to understand why and how to feel more in control of my money.

I’m using this blog as a place to chronicle as honestly as possible the stupid things I spend money on, and also the stupid and lovely things I manage to resist buying. If I can capture those items on the blog, it’ll kind of be like owning them, right? And I’m hoping that some sort of pattern emerges that will help be to better understand and control my habits. I don’t really have a thesis that I’m trying to test, though it feels like I am tempted to spend more when I have less.

So thus begins day one of this observational study. It is 9:05am, and I have thus far spent $2 on coffee. Amen.