After reviewing our finances and deciding we spend way too much money on non-necessity purchases, I decided to issue a challenge -to go one week and not spend a single dime except for necessities like gas and groceries. My hope is that it will be a sort of boot camp in frugality. Waste not, want not...reduce, reuse, recycle and all that. So for the next 7 days there will be no more Starbucks, no Jamba Juice, no snacks while getting gas, no eating out at restaurants, no Amazon purchases, no movie rentals, etc. Kevin will take his lunch to work. If we want to do something fun, it will have to be free. If we put all the money we spent each month on that crap in a savings account it could probably pay for our kids college! Do we really need all that stuff? No. Will it be hard to give up? Probably. It should be interesting!
We did a practice run over the weekend. We wanted to go to the zoo on Saturday but instead decided to take the kids fishing and for a hike. It was a lot of fun and probably saved us close to $100 we would have spent on gas, tickets and food at the zoo. It was a good example of how you can still have just as much fun without spending money. Afterward we cheated and went to get barbecue at Hog Heaven though. ;) We are starting "for real" today though!
3 comments:
no! this is so hard!
i make a list of things i need for the week and only buy those things. so for example this week's list said:
halloween costumes(i know, such a slacker mom)
HSM3 movie tickets(we don't need this but i've promised the kids so i budgeted them in)
groceries
gas
post office
2 new shirts from target
and that's it. i went and got all these things today and for the rest of the week i won't spend anymore money. and then the next week's paycheck i'll make a list again and only buy those things we need/want.
Seriously??? No, I can't so I don't even try. Long and I have a system. I get a budget, cold hard cash baby, every payday and that's my spending money for 2 weeks and covers everything not budgeted for. Now that we pay cash for all non-necessities we've been able to cut our spending and stop dipping into our savings. But sometimes it's hard because a BIG non-budgeted item will come up right after payday and then I'm broke for a week. Having a newborn helps...LOL!!! Since often times it's easier to just stay home rather than drag the baby and 2 kids out of the house.
Best of luck with your experiment. I wish you much success!!!
Best of luck! I am a shop-a-holic for kids clothes....don't buy stuff for us ever anymore even though there are a couple of CDs that I fancy at the moment. Oh wait, I take that back - I just bought the "His Dark Materials" book trilogy as I needed something to read going to bed....I guess I fail already!
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