It’s tough to save money in Japan. My wife introduced me to an iPhone app called Wealth Watchers. It’s like Weight Watchers but in reverse, because you’re trying to keep money instead of lose chub. I think she showed it to me to try and ascertain just how much money I spend on digital comics. But that comes out of a different account, a-hah ha ha ha!
The idea behind Wealth Watchers is that you firstly establish your consistent monthly costs, eg. ‘Housing’, ‘transport’, ‘insurance’, etc. In other words, the boring stuff. From there you proceed to record every instance of your spending, along with a short description of what you spent it on. Again these all fall under broad sub-headings like ‘entertainment’,’transportation’ (Again? What am I, Jason Statham?) and ‘Dining & Groceries’.
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| I spend way more on transportation than this guy. |
The first clue I had that this app and I would not be best friends was that there was no category called ‘music’. Where was I supposed to record all the awesome concerts that I will one day go to? What about all the cool Japanese CDs I will find, not to mention my ongoing iTunes habit? What about the Y60,000 I spent on a Yamaha acoustic/electric guitar?
I created a music category, and told my Wealth Watchers app that I was ashamed of it.
But I was committed to enter my spending for at least a month, despite the glaring oversights in spending categorization. I mean, I could still learn some useful financial info about myself, right? Or would this exercise reveal a darker financial secret, lurking just beneath the depths of… my wallet. I have stared into the dark financial abyss of my soul and I don’t know what stared back at me, but its name sounded like a sneeze, it had tentacles and it called me ‘son’.
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| GNAAARRR!!! Don't forget to buy coffee. |
Here is a startling insight into my finances, courtesy of the app that chipped away at my sanity until all that was left was…
Date Pay Type Amount Notes
21/10 Cash Y293 Coffee. Hey, this could be fun! I wonder what else I will buy?
21/10 Cash Y15,080 Meat, yeah!
22/10 Cash Y500 Coffee. I love you.
22/10 Cash Y1400 All my lunches for October at one school. Probably the equivalent of a week’s worth of coffee.
22/10 Cash Y1,000 Booze. Goes great with meat!
23/10 Cash Y747 Bunkasai lunch and... more coffee.
23/10 Cash Y320 Big Mac. I ate you standing up and you were so good. Do you remember? You probably don’t remember.
23/10 …Cash Y3,000 Nijikai karaoke. Ouch, 3000 yen? Were we at an airport?!
24/10 Cash Y2,805 Lunch at IKEA for 2. I had no coffee. It was a bit weird.
25/10 Cash Y353 Coffee & snacks.
26/10 Seriously. Cash. Y478 Coffee & snacks.
27/10 Come on. Y100 Coffee. And I can sense you judging me, Wealth Watchers. Just so you know.
27/10 Cash Y150 More coffee! But this one came out of a special magical machine at Tokyu Hands. There’s nothing wrong with the amount of coffee I drink. What would you know?
28/10 EFTPOS. Just kidding, it was cash! Y270. It was coffee. Is that what you wanted to hear? It was coffee, ok?
29/10 Cash! It’s a cash society! I paid with cash! It was 270 yen. God, you’re such a bitch sometimes, Wealth Watchers.
30/10 Fuck you, Wealth Watchers. You don’t even know what it’s like to be human.
30/10 Cash Y6100 A gun and one bullet. And a can of coffee.
Okay, so my dark secret was that when it’s recorded every day the amount of coffee I consume terrifies me. Maybe that’s not so bad. I’m pretty sure Wealth Watchers has the power to distort whatever you spend money no to make it look like you’re off the wagon and out of control. As an experiment, try changing the word coffee to any of the following: ‘crystal meth’, ‘puppies’, ‘rice’, ‘baby food’. Do any of them make me seem less financially unhinged? No. That’s the power of Wealth Watchers!
You can download it for free! Which is great because then you don’t have to add it to your list of expenses under the ‘severe depressing influences’ category.
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