Four Weeks of Frugal: Week 2

I must say, I am rather relieved our fiscal week has renewed.  By the fourth day it's all too easy to be stretched thin budget-wise, especially when that budget is $100 (including groceries) for your WHOLE WEEK!  Let me put it this way: by day five I was microwaving stale honey buns as a snack (I need the calories anyway).  

WEEK 2 CASH OUT:

• $58.42 on groceries.  And this was the first day.  More than half of our weekly allowance, poof, gone.  Our cashier had read about my frugal challenge, so there's no way I could lie about this one and claim that we spent that money more efficiently than we did! But what is a mom supposed to do, just NOT buy produce? Come on.  I might live off of stale honey buns but my child will not!

  

  Budget friendly meal I made: if you have Ritz crackers, shredded cheese, and milk lying around, all you need is the chicken and you have yourself an entree!

  
  
• $25.00 on more Christmas gifts.  I feel it should be mentioned that this is the first year ever I will not be freaking out in December over what to get everyone. 
• Another $6.58 on groceries.  I wanted to feed my mother in law, but I couldn't have her over without some puff pastry and a small bag of ice!
• $5.80 at Rally's.  If, for some reason, this is the only blog post of mine you have ever read, please let me assure you that we don't limit ourselves to processed MSG-loaded sub-food! But when you've just gotten off a sixteen hour shift, you kind of only want a cheap greasy burger.  Besides, I had two coupons.  

That amounts up to $95.80.  Woohoo!

STUFF WE DIDN'T PAY FOR: 

• Starbucks.  Luckily I saw on Facebook that Sunday was buy-one-get-one fall frappucino day.  I got myself a nice pumpkin spice while Ian enjoyed a salted caramel mocha. That gift card is, for all practical purposes, completely cashed.
• $2.98 on eggs and shredded cheese.  I used our old food stamp card which had a little over three bucks left on it anyway. 

  

  Free dinners are always awesome

• Dinner at Mojitos Tapas, thanks to my mother- and grandmother-in-law.  
• I used Ian's Target gift card to pay for a $7.29 chalkboard. 

  

  Et voila! Hung the chalkboard in the kitchen to keep track of our hectic schedules!

• Four consecutive trips to the zoo with the membership that was (you guessed it) gifted us. 

  

  He got to become good friends with this guy

    IN FACT, WE MADE MONEY!

So, while it might not be the way some people would choose to spend their $100, it worked for us.  Not only that but we actually ended up with $77 cash by the end of the week from sales I had made on Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook (and let me tell you, I sold those people some CRAP-ola.  Really Craigslist guy? You want to buy ESPN Jeopardy the Boardgame for $3? Okay.)

I guarantee you, someone will take your clutter, so you might as well SELL IT! 

Another successful (by my definition) week of the Four Weeks of Frugal is in the books! My challenge for week three is to somehow pay it forward, with what little we have.  

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer...

Proverbs 11:24a 

Four Weeks of Frugal Challenge