Experiment Results: Friends with jobs make you spend more money

I'm usually a rather spendthrift sort of person; I don't blow cash on clothes, make-up, coffee or any other such indulgences. As a vegetarian who likes to cook, I've also come to see myself as pretty free from the vices of junk food.

To track just how saintly my spending is, I made a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and since February 16th have been recording every single purchase I make.

The results were shocking.

By the end of two weeks, I had spent over $90 on junk food, pizza, alcohol and other empty calories. That's one-and-a-half times more than my grocery bill. How the hell did this happen? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had a little help from my friends; half of those expenses were on the weekends.

I know the internet just erupted in a resounding, "DUH YOU IGNORAMUS! NO WONDER THE WORLD'S GOING TO PIECES--KIDS HAVE NO FORESIGHT!". But this is a revelation for me because my life before I turned 21 was nothing like this. Weekend fun used to be free movies on campus and a burrito. Now that everyone in our group is gainfully employed, they can live it up. Except me.

I love my friends and not for a moment do I want to feel left out, but I simply cannot afford to keep up with their partying lifestyles. I'm not earning any money right now and most worrying of all is that I don't have any plans to make money after I graduate in a few months. I've never felt more "behind" in my life.

One of my resolutions this year is to stay positive and to only dwell on depressing thoughts when they can lead to a productive outcome. So it seems to me that I need to decide right now how important making and spending money is going to be to me now and in the next few years when I have virtually no career path ahead of me at the moment. Now, I realize that having enough money to get me though the giddy party stage of my early 20's is not a worthwhile financial goal. But I'm asking myself with more urgency than ever before, "But then, what is?"

I think the main thing to keep in mind is that I need to be thinking about couple things right now; what I want to do to earn money after this semester, what career I want that job to help propel me toward, and what difference I want to make over the course of my lifetime. There are certain comforts of bourgeois life that I want both now and in the future. I just need to be careful and mindful to not turn those comforts into trappings. Comforts become trappings when you need them for status, friends and happiness. I'll need them as tools to move forward with my ideals.

Have you done similar experiments with expenses? What are your financial goals anyhow? Are there any that would be particularly helpful to have as a 20-something?