Welcome to week 4! This week, there was an interesting development as the Roommate was sent off to work at another location, essentially leaving Froggy and me to our own devices. In my first week of unsupervised shenanigans, I paid bills for the month and headed to the casino for some shops and an impromptu Bingo session.

I spent a bunch of time this week at the four casinos near my house. I wasn’t visiting them to spend all my hard-earned money. Instead, I was earning some. The locations needed a mystery shopper to assess their cage-handling process. So sign me up to earn $150 for about 20 minutes’ worth of actual work. A quick and easy way to supplement my part-time income, and I don’t mind doing some fieldwork.

While at one of the casinos, I went to bingo. I kinda love it because I know exactly how much I am most likely going to lose. $8 doesn’t seem like a bad amount to spend to be entertained for a few hours. I used some coupons I got from going with friends earlier in the month, and we went on a discount day. I stacked some other frequent bingo points on the receipt, and voila! My bill went from $53 down to $8 due to all the discounts I had. If I used the players’ points, I think I could have played for free!

While I don’t mind playing bingo for a few hours, I always have an issue with playing some slots. It just seems too easy to whittle down my funds. I always feel guilty after playing, even if I lose $10. That $10 could have gone to something else…like an investment. I am finding that when I go with other people, there is much more influence to play other games I did not plan to play. This time I guess I was lucky as I was down to $5 out of $40 to play slots with, and I hit a biggie (well, a biggie for me, my sister would tell it I was chump change!). Something wild and special started happening and all the lights and sounds were going off. I won $400 and I was excited! Typically I would have cashed out right then and left, but because I was with other people, I felt compelled to spend and play more. I can’t say I particularly enjoy that feeling. I still took home about $280, putting me $232 to the positive. I planned to save this for my bingo adventures so I am playing with house money for the rest of the year.

As a side note, mentally, I feel like I am doing the best I have been in about a year! It feels so good to finally feel like myself again. I am not sure if the missing Roommate or the small windfall are playing a role, but I really like feeling this good again.

Hope you are all doing well!

-Chick