I love challenges. I thrive for competition and a goal. Whether it was with school or sports, I have always took being one of the best seriously. When you become a grownup, being the best involves your career and your competence at home. For a SAHM with a part-time position with the state and a fun side business creating wedding items, I have had very few times that I could stop and consider whether I was the "best". Not sure anyone else could be better than me at my own life. Right? For those who have positions in a "real" office, you compare yourself with coworkers. I don't have coworkers and I dare not compare myself to other parents. So here I am. The only person to compare to is myself, so I enjoy challenges still. I dare push myself to be better and better because thats my personality. Competitive to a fault! :)
So, last night I was pondering while making 3 hand=painted aisle runners, how can I challenge myself this month? I came up with the $66 in 33 days challenge. For the next 33 days, Rob and I will have $66 worth of cash in hand. This cash will be the only thing that we can use for non-bill or gas related expenses! We each get $1 a day. Freaking awesome! Haha. (Do you love how poor hubs got draw into this...). We have our bills on auto-pay. Have shut down the credit card use completely a couple weeks ago and have deposited a good amount of our checkings into savings! With the $66, we must pay for groceries, toiletries, and recreation. With Kennedy's milk costing about $4 a week, we have about $50 to play with for almost 5 weeks!
If I didn't have a stockpile of items that I bought while on our $35-50 budget for groceries for the last months, this may not be possible. But the truth is that I think that we have done so well stockpiling, that we can live comfortably (yet restrained) with the $50 leftover!
So, no more trips to Walmart for "one thing" or "just browsing" at Target. Time to get serious and tell this challenge to bring it. Anyone else in? I challenge you but warn I am super competitive! :)
I couldn't do it! Your inspiring. The best my husband and I have come to something like this is limiting me to $200 a month (non bill, non gas related expenses) and him to $100...yeah I got my hubby into it too, poor him gets less than I do, but I'm the one out with the kids, so it works for us. We've been on this $300 extra budget for about 3 months now and it's working out ok, our next step is to limit eating out to hopefully bring that number down even more. We have a habit of eating out at least once a week as a family, that's an extra $150 a month-ish for our family of 4. Love you and Good Luck! love it!
ReplyDeleteEating out is crazy expensive for a family of 4. I grew up in a family of 6 and we rarely ate out or went to the movies, etc. Too expensive! We are cutting eating out to the bare minimum. I was thinking about once or twice a month. How much are you spending on groceries?
ReplyDeleteWhoaaaa! Can't wait to hear how this goes! I want to hear about your first temptation... and how you overcame it!
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