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This month I am challenging myself and all of you to try to cut your budgets to save $1000 (or 10% of your income). If you are already saving that’s awesome, but I still challenge you to do this with us. You maybe surprised at how much fluff works it’s way into your life when you think things are going swimmingly. For those that aren’t saving and living penny to penny this isn’t easy. But… at the end of the month it will worth every minute of it to look and have started a small nest egg.
If you are just joining in, read back over the basics of what we are trying to do. You can also brush up on our plan with our week 1 goals.
Now that you’ve been cutting back for a week, how’s it going?
I’ll confess somethings were easy and some were crazy hard. I’m not always a planner so not grabbing any fast food when we are out and about is tricky business. I fell off the wagon once when it was 3 pm and I still hadn’t finished errands and needed lunch. A girl has to eat… I had packed lunch for the one kiddo that was with me, but thought I could stretch till I got home.
Total for last week we put a nice chunk in savings (yes I took it out of the checking account as if we had spent it and moved it to savings… ah the joys of online banking). The final amount was $190.
This was from:
- $55 from not eating out for dinner (we normally budget once per week)
- $15 in extra grocery money not spent on snacks/juices and non-vital foods
- $40 from not snacking/eating fast food. This is normally in a “cash” segment of our budget that goes to miscellaneous. What we are really trying to do is have NO miscellaneous purchases!
- $80 in a tank of gas we didn’t need!
I had budgeted last week for $60 in gas, but we did an awesome job on living in one car. We didn’t even leave the house for three days which is pretty rare for me.
Week 2 Plans
While $190 is awesome, we need to step it up a bit to hit $1000 by the end of the month. This week the plan is to continue everything from week one, and to add a little bit more…
We already live on a grocery/household purchase budget of about $50 a week but I’m going to try to eat only from our stockpile this week. I even have a few gallons of milk in the freezer so this should work without a problem.
There are a few other categories of our budget that have wiggle room. Clothing and medical being the main two. I’m kinda hoping I can play things well end up with those being unused this month too, but it’s a little early to be deciding that no one will need them.
I did send off two bags of clothes to ThredUp.com so that should hopefully result in some extra income coming in!
- $55 – no eating out
- $50 – no grocery shopping this week
- $50 – no miscellaneous cash purchases (snacks, fast food, etc.)
- $80 – gas savings from one car living
That’s a total savings of $235 not taking into account any earnings from ThredUp. We really need to be at $250 to make up for last week so I’ll see how we can get creative during the week.
If you need some other ideas, think about your standing bills and how they can be reduced any this month. This is a tough one for us, living in the country we only have a power bill. We are trying to be as energy conscience as we can though. It’s one that we won’t know till after the month how we did though.
How was your first week? Leave a link to your post or a comment with how things are going.
