If you’re not watching the Discovery Channel/BBC series Planet Earth, do it. Run, don’t walk.

I’ve recently started to plan out a budget for myself. Don’t worry Mom and Dad, this isn’t because I’m poor and starving, but rather because I have too much disposable income. I know, wah wah. My problem is that I’ve never had to worry about money, but this doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t worry about money. So I downloaded the free trial of Microsoft Money (and Peter eventually got me a copy), and started making up my budget. I’m still tweaking numbers and trying to figure out what works best for me, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

A big chunk of my income goes into what Money likes to call “Committed Expenses”: rent, groceries, utilities, cell phone bills, etc., so that’s not really something I can change. But one big money-saving area for me is to not eat out as much as I have been over the past year, so I’ve been trying to be good about bringing my lunch and cooking dinner at home. We’ll see how it goes, but so far (i.e. for about a week) it’s been going well.

Finally, a couple more MySims writeups:

• Wired
• Qj.net