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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 over the basics of what we are trying to do. You can also brush up on our plan with our week 1 goals.
For everyone that already knew all that, let’s get on to this weeks details…
Do you ever feel like your train (week) derailed and it’s impossible to get back on the tracks? That was last week for us. My goal was to spend nothing in groceries… but then remembered that it was our week to bring snack to 60-80 kids at our homeschool co-op. Later in the week we needed to take meals to two families in church. That is really an honor and not a problem, but I wasn’t quite so stocked to take crock pot meals as I hoped. With both of those we did have to shop, however we didn’t spend much out of the budget!
As for eating out, we did great! I did “splurge” and eat out once, but I only did it because I found a gift card for the cafe. It’s nice to get a treat and not feel guilty for it!
Last weeks goals:
$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
We ended up hitting all of these except grocery. I spent $35 getting the snack and food for meals to deliver.
We did some other budget maneuvering this week to help make up being behind in the challenge too. I decided one place we hadn’t looked at recently was insurance. This is really something you need to get in the habit of price checking yearly. Never just pay the bill! Always make sure you have the best rate. I called around and priced out our cars and our house. By switching carriers we saved over $200! We budget and keep all of this money in a special savings account and pay yearly (you avoid added fees and usually get another discount), so that is a sweet savings to feel all at one time!
Savings Total So Far: $590!!
That means we are actually a tiny bit ahead.
I’m still waiting to see the processed earnings from my Thred UP bag from last week, they say it takes 12-14 days. So hopefully I can add that in next week.
In case you are wondering we aren’t going miserable in this challenge. It’s been fun, we’ve focused on staying home a lot more and having good quality time. We’ve also had 3 different nights we considered date nights already this month. This week it was dinner and a free movie, watching the 2012 version on Much Ado About Nothing on Amazon Prime (I recommend it).
This Coming Week:
We are keeping with the beginning plan, and planning on also listing two different trailers that we have on craigslist. They are both little and won’t bring in a ton, but it all adds up!
I’m also hoping to do another week of eating from the pantry, this time for real. No grocery expenses at all! If things get rough we’ll at least have 6 fresh eggs every day and tomatoes. To bad our garden isn’t growing anything else right now. I don’t see it getting that rough though, we still have plenty of things in the freezer stored up.
$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
+ Hoping for Thred UP bag credit and craigslist sales…
How did your week go? Share what you have been doing to save even more this month in the comments or leave a link to your post.
