Sept. 7 no eating out: Success.
Tonight and tomorrow will be challenges, but I think I can make it. Tonight we're going to a party that we thought might have free drinks, but turns out it's got a cash bar. I'm going to have a drink or two before I leave home (don't worry, I'm not driving) and try not to buy any while I'm there. I'll eat something before I go; there's supposed to be food, but now I'm not sure if you have to pay for it or not.
Tomorrow we're going to a block party, so I'm sure I'll be tempted by delicious-smelling food trucks. After we're getting some photos done by our photographer friend, and he said we should "grab dinner" after that. I made sure to specify that I'd rather make food than eat out or get takeout, and he was agreeable to that. So we're bringing the fixin's for vegan sloppy joes and salad. It'll be really effortless so even if we're tired after the block party and photo shoot, it'll be nothing to fix dinner.
I'm glad North Georgia Gal suggested this challenge, because these are things I might have used my spending money for, but instead, if I succeed, I'll have money to put in my as-yet empty clothing envelope that I started 2 weeks ago.
I did 20 minutes of cycling to get the groceries, and then NT asked if I wanted to take a longer bike ride. We ran a few errands, and I think the total biking that second time was an hour. So I worked out 80 minutes today!
Today's goal was to get groceries in under $143. We saved over $40 shopping sales and using coupons, but we had to buy a big bottle of olive oil ($14) and a new door handle ($23) for our balcony door (the old one snapped off in my hand a few days ago). So we were $6.26 over and still had a few things to buy at the Asian store and Lunds (which had some amazing coupons we HAD to use). Then NT remembered that he'd taken $10 out of the budget already to buy things at the Asian market. We crossed a few things off that list, and got total spending between Lunds and Hai Nguyen down to $5, so we can deposit the other $5 back into groceries.
That means we're only $1.26 over budget. We do still need to get wipes ($3.50) and we MIGHT need to get formula ($20+, but we're going to wait and see if our current box lasts us until Friday). So, considering the balcony door handle mishap, we did pretty well. And I didn't try as hard to stick to just the bare minimum; we stocked up on pasta and cereal, for example. Next week we can buckle down and only get what we need, and we should be able to spend MUCH less on food than this week. We'll need diapers for both girls next week, as well as formula, and AA could use a couple new pairs of shoes (we don't have a clothing budget for the girls since usually we get everything we need through hand-me-downs and gifts, so we take it out of grocery/household if it's a necessity).
Anyway, this Lunds deal. We got a new Lunds in downtown, very handy to both work and home, but we hardly ever go there because it's such a high-end grocery store. Last week we noticed some really great coupons in the mail; one was for 99-cent orange juice, the other for a free baguette! We didn't get around to going, but this week we got another circular from them with a coupon for 99-cent pound of organic strawberries and 99-cent carton of 12 organic free-range eggs! Those are things we use every week, so we made sure we made a special trip. We'll be perusing their flyers VERY carefully from now on to see if more amazing deals come our way. When we redeemed those two today, our total went from about $8.50 to $1.98!
No eating out challenge, weekend plans, grocery spending, etc.
September 8th, 2012 at 11:49 pm
September 9th, 2012 at 01:05 am 1347149103
September 9th, 2012 at 02:37 am 1347154629
September 9th, 2012 at 02:41 am 1347154897
September 9th, 2012 at 04:06 am 1347160004
September 9th, 2012 at 09:03 pm 1347221012
I have noticed that Snafu tends to like to tell everyone what they are doing wrong. It doesn't appear to be in a "could I suggest" type of way either or is it just me?
Hey maybe it's the migraine or my cranky menopausal self.
I do a household account too because I did not follow through on categorizing everything, so household spending is just Household:store name in quicken.