Saturday, November 12, 2011

Latest challenge: No-spend month

Ever on a quest to save money, we had gotten a bit lax as of late and so with no births on the horizon for November, we've resolved to make it a No Spend Month to try to keep our budget balanced. Well, no extra or nonessential spending. Gas and food are non-optional; as, I've found, is parking if I'm to make any money by working at the hospital. (Getting dropped off would be the only other option, but would cost more in gas than it would save in parking.) But anything else strictly nonessential is out. I meant to keep a tally of how much we've saved, but ha! In my free time, right? So I'll just rattle off a few of the things it's occurred to me to buy, and how I've circumvented it:

-Baby wipes (I know, I know): switched back to cloth.
-Greeting cards: called or emailed instead.
-Groupon, LivingSocial, et al: did without.
-Ditto for eating out (a particular Achilles heel) or getting coffee.
-Buying lunch at work: brown-bagged it (the usual, but tempting to skip when I'm running late, which is always).

And the month isn't even half over yet. Stay tuned for updates, including a fantastic recipe for a natural solution to use on cloth wipes!

1 comment:

Pam said...

Ha. I see you've caught on to the Groupon, Living Social Marketing ploy. Make people buy something they wouldn't have (or shouldn't have?) done otherwise by packaging it as a savings. Plus Groupon did some pretty offensive advertising, in mhy view, so I wanted to specifically distance myself from them -- so I quit them so I don't have to see all the bargains I'm missing out on. Greeting card thing also good idea -- back in the day, a letter was better. Which means in the new day, an email will sail. Happy budgeting. Looks like you're doing GREAT! Love the cloth wipes thing, too. Think I'll go have another baby so I can use 'em. :)