Sometime over the weekend I'll crunch the numbers and present 2004 by the Numbers, but for now I'll just give you a little example of how I am all about amortizing. Last night I was lazy, work was long and hard, and I wasn't anywhere in the mood to come home, defrost the meat, cook, and then eat at some ridiculously late hour like 11pm. Instead, because a co-worker had given me a ride, I decided to stop off and buy a rotissarie chicken cut up into quarters. Total cost: $7, which is not bad but not really a deal, but I digress. The chicken was tasty, damn fine tasty. I wanted to eat it all up in that one sitting, and totally ignore the bowl of rice and soup I had made to go along with it (microwaved leftovers). But that would mean my meal would cost $7. Worse, since I bought it at a restaurant, it would count towards my Dining Out budget, which is always seriously overbudget. This would be no good. However, if I just ate half the chicken, and used a quarter for lunch for the next two days in a row, that would drop the per meal average down to $2.33, and since I ate it at home as part of a larger homecooked meal, I could apply the charge towards the Groceries budget, which still had some room. Which, it just what I did. In tomorrow's post I'll show how I compute my pro-forma earnings numbers, and how you can apply aggressive accounting to everyday transactions. It's not just for Ebberts anymore, dontcha know?