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I only made 3 rules, as I didn't want to feel overwhelmed:
- Track every single day in my notebook (small enough to fit in my purse, so no excuses!)
- No eating out unless it's 100% covered by a gift card
- Keep grocery spending below $350 for the month, ideally below $300
Here's how I made out in the first week:
January 1: no spend
January 2: no spend
January 3: $9.04 household items, $45.74 groceries
January 4: no spend
January 5: no spend
January 6: no spend
January 7: no spend
I'm admitting it wasn't easy. On 2 of those days I stayed in at lunch, instead of going to town, so it made my supersized lunch hour seem even longer (I have 1h45 min for lunch). I think I need to plan better and use that time to exercise instead of shop.
My goal for 2012 is to get 212 no spend days, so I'm starting well with only 206 to go! I hadn't set a goal for household spending, although I don't anticipate it to be too high... will just take from miscellaneous. And groceries are at 13% of my $350 goal and 15% if I want to stick to my $300 goal.... My overall expenses are 50% of the total amount since I bill my sister for the other half.
I'm not showing any gas purchase, I stretched it a bit since I didn't have to drive anywhere on Monday, but I will need to get some at the beginning of the week.
How is your month starting out so far?
11 comments:
Wow, amazing, you OWN this challenge!
Wow good job on the no spend days!
Umm..wow!! That is awesome! I could never get in that many no-spend days!! You're SOO good at this!! :) Good luck next week!
Excellent start on your yearly goal of no spend days! You do have a long lunch hour... exercise would be a great option to fill in the time.
OH MY GOODNESS! I am so impressed! Good job on the no spend days!!! So happy for you! Good luck on week two ~ hope it is just as good as the first week!
You did GREAT! I'm *starting* tomororw! That's a lot of NO Spends, my dear. Hopefully I'll have about 5 in a row! :)!
Great no spends!! I'm at at five and really loving it.
You have such a long lunch hour that I can honestly not figure out what you can do with this time issue. I guess if you could work on your part-time job it may not feel like all the extra time was coming out of personal time.
Hopefully when you apply for another position within your company you won't have to deal with this extra time and will free up your Sat mornings.
Yay! Well done!
I only got two no spend days in last week. I am very impressed with all you accomplished,
Gill
I spent money like a drunken sailor for the first few days of 2012. Most of it was planned stuff, but some was not. I have two items that are not Usual Spending that will be paid for this month, too, both jewellery repairs that i have put off for a very, very long time.
The upside to that is that i met two great local businessmen, so that has satisfied one of my goals, which is to use as many local businesses as possible to meet my needs. (I already do this for most of the Usual Spends, so was glad to find i could also do it for the Unusual Spends, too.)
When i tracked no-spends last year (i stopped my daily tracking in June [hanging head in shame]), i was averaging about 9 no-spends a month. I did count my bill paying as a spend day, even if i didn't do anything besides write out checks.
megan
Thanks everyone!
The Witch, I actually enjoy the long lunch hour usually... I spend a lot of time at the library, by the water and also running my errands. At 5 pm I lock up and go home, no need to run errands at night or on the weekend :-)
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