This was a great challenge. I have used up many items in my pantry that I haven't been inclined to touch for ages. No one starved, no one was injured, and no one lost any weight! The savings were not as great as I had hoped - my expectations always seem to exceed my realities. But we did put aside $200 to help pay down a bill- and that is a great beginning. I think some of the incidentals took up more money than actual food. And we could have saved more if I had done more baking from scratch.
This next month we are going to try to put aside the same $200 amount. We did do some significant grocery replenishing on November 1st, but stuck to a list of basics. We celebrated with a family favorite of Quesadillas for dinner - and watching a DVD episode of The Andy Griffith Show (Dh keeps saying I am a lot like Aunt Bea - hmmmmm.)
An unexpected savings came in the way of a broken AC unit. It is starting to cool off here - and though some of the afternoons are pretty warm - especially in the upstairs area - we are toughing it out and just letting the unit stay broken until springtime. Usually this time of year we keep the AC going during the day - so we are not putting out funds for a repair bill - and we expect to see big savings in our electric bill the next few months. In the end no matter how much we save, it won't cover the repairs costs - we actually need a new unit and have kept this one limping along for almost two years now - but we can at least delay for now and see what the Lord brings to us for the spring. Now we are enjoying the fresh air, cool nights, and lots of birds and squirrel chatter.
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4 days ago
4 comments:
Okay Scramble, I bet I could eat for a month than a month with the canned goods in my pantry and the frozen food in the frig. The problem for me is that my appetite is so poor, when I want to eat, I can only eat specifically what I'm craving. You did a great job with your October Challenge!
Congrats, great job! You know, so many people are not willing to make hard choices like not fixing the air, etc. when finances are tight. Kudos to you. Did you see the recent email from the Alert Academy? They had to cut some employees, move to one building (to cut utilities) and take a pay cut. Ouch. I'm so proud of them for doing what so many don't and just remain in debt. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Donna. We could probably go another month easily - but it would get a bit boring, and I would have to work a lot harder - so we are just trying to be moderate and stick to basics for a bit.
Hi Kathy,
Thanks - we aren't too brave though. The weather is very mild right now. If it were summer, we would be having that AC fixed quick as we could get someone out here!
I did see that about ALERT. And those are hard decisions - but they only make sense.
We were at really close to being totally debt free with only a small mortage left - and we had some items come up that had to be done - we thought we were about out of it when we got socked again (this time by the IRS for some kind of error/mixup - still trying to figure it out) So we still have a ways to go, but it will be fine and we will just keep working a step at a time towards the goal.
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