Tally for Days 8-10:
Baseline Avg Spending Combined: $634.77
Actual Spending Combined: $161.40
Savings: $473.37
Baseline Avg Spending Combined: $634.77
Actual Spending Combined: $161.40
Savings: $473.37
Saturday, October 10, 2009
No Spending Challenge: Days 8-10
Well things are clicking along with our savings now. Yesterday was a good day as we spent $0. Those days seem few and far between. I am finding as this goes that it is a lot harder than it sounded initially and not so easy to just not spend any money at all, at least with kids in the house. That said we are starting to make progress overall. Today was grocery shopping day and I totally blew my budget which is to stay under $100, I wound up spending $138. There were a few factors driving that, but the biggest one I think was that I did not use my calculator adding everything up as I went. Using a calculator (I use my phone if I forget it) makes such a huge difference in what you spend, if you've never done this try it and see if you start really thinking twice about what is going into your cart. Next week it will be back to the calculator for me.
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Heather, How did you calculate your average baseline spending each day? Did you average what you had spent on the 1st, 2nd, etc, of several months and calculate an average? How long did you track spending so closely to have these numbers? I'm very interested! Julie
ReplyDeleteHi, Yes I took 4 months of my online bank statements and tallied the spent amount by day (you could do more or less months). I then just did a simple average for each day 1-31. That was the tedious part, now we just total what "little" we are spending each day, I check in with my hubby and total it up if we've spent anything. I use Excel to track it and once set up it is easy. I also do not count gas, mandatory bills/payments, and medical. Hope that helps!
ReplyDeleteI should add I've been tracking the gas, mandatory bills/payments and medical in a separate column to see if we fall outside what I normally budget for these amounts, but the the true challenge part is geared toward discretionary spending.
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