I've implemented a sort of social experiment around here: to see if we can live on twenty dollars a day. (Maybe "social experiment" isn't the right phrase? Monetary experiment, possibly? Though before too long we may begin fighting over the last piece of bread and then it will be more social than we desire...)
I digress. The twenty dollars doesn't include housing, or heat, or any of those things: the bills are paid. I just wondered what it would be like to give ourselves a $20 daily allotment and try to live within it. The money needs to cover groceries, household purchases (diapers, laundry soap etc), gasoline, and spending money. I set a single twenty dollar bill out every morning and whoever needs something can grab it and spend it. If there's any left over, it gets added to the next day's twenty...and so on. We're going to try it for about 3 weeks and see how feasible it is. I'd love to eventually get to the point where we are providing so much of our own food that a Grocery Budget is nearly non-existent.
Day One:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with brown sugar & raisins.
Lunch: Two loaves of homemade bread, fried eggs, yogurt with berries from the garden, watermelon, lemonade (left from Cole's birthday on Sunday).
Dinner: Barbecued trout (caught by the neighbor), basmati rice pilaf, salad.
Spent: $10 at the grocery store (a bag of rice, a half gallon of organic whole milk, green onions and cilantro for the pilaf.)
$5 at Dairy Queen--Mama needed ice cream, and Daddy says 'you shouldn't eat alone'...
We had so much food floating around from the weekend that I thought we'd at least be able to get through the first day without spending, and yet there is only a fiver left. This may prove more difficult than I anticipated.
--a little nutty--
About Me
- our little acorns
- Bellingham, WA, United States
- I love beach houses and farmer's markets, a warm bed in a cold room, being surprised with a Starbucks coffee, rain outside my window, acting as queen to my six silly boys, delighting in my daughter's belly laugh, learning the fear of the Lord, peanut m&m's after the kids are in bed and making my husband proud. I don't love shoes left on the landing, cooking on the weekend, hot summer nights, being the center of attention or fair-weather friends. This is my own private therapy. Welcome.
1 comment:
I've been doing something along these lines since the end of January, you know, when I paid off my bills, Christmas bills, had work done on my car, etc. I told myself I was going to stop using my debit card since it's so easy to whip that thing out and use it without "really" thinking about it. I went to all cash. I leave enough money in my checking account each payday to cover rent, bills and little extra "just in case" cause I learned the hard way. I overdrew my account by $2 and got dinged with a $40 overdraft charge. Ouch. So, yes, I too live off cash now. At times I hate it because I look in my wallet to see a few lonely dollar bills hanging out and that's it. But, I've also learned how to save money again and am WAY more conscious as to how I spent my hard earned moolah. :) Good luck and keep us posted. (it's good to see a few posts, i've "missed" you!)
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