Spending Challenge and More Snowflaking Ideas

Thus far in August, I have had three no-spend days, three days of eating out, and seven spend-but-no-eating-out days. In order to motivate myself to cook and eat more at home as well as to spend less in other ways, I have decided to provide myself with a monetary incentive. I have created a new “Pamper Myself” sub-account. For each no-spend-eat-at-home day, I will give myself $2. For each day I eat out, I will take out $2 from the pamper account for snowflaking. And for each day I spend money that’s not eating out, I’ll cut the account by $1. This will definitely encourage me to plan and lump my shopping expeditions together instead of going to the grocery store every time I need some small item. At the end of each month, I will calculate and deposit the money into the “Pamper…” sub-account. If the amount is in the negative, I’ll snowflake it. If I do end up having some money in the “Pamper” account, this money can be used by me at any time with the following stipulations:

1. The money SHALL NOT be used for eating out.
2. The money SHALL NOT be used to buy dull stuff like groceries.
3. The money shall be spent ONLY on myself and not on others.

I think I know what I shall do with it: I probably will revive my suspended Netflix account first (I shall have to fight this urge until January since this coming semester I need to focus on research and internship applications among other things. Netflix only encourages me to procrastinate. I get more done when I am too lazy to go in person to the redbox or library.) Also, I shall buy myself an iPod Shuffle to replace my iPod Nano which I stupidly ruined – that will encourage me to get out and walk more – another one of my goals. I am sure I shall not run out of ideas about what to pamper myself with. I have -$7 in this account right now. :-(

P.S. Another snowflaking idea I saw on some PF blogs is to snowflake any amount saved using coupons. I have to get some milk tomorrow and have a coupon for $0.75 off. So, this snowflake category will kick off tomorrow!

August, So Far…

Since my assistantship contract at work starts only on the 15th of August, I’ll have only half a month’s pay at the end of August. I sat down and tallied the expected income and expenses. It’s a horrifying looking spreadsheet. However, I have decided to make a few changes. I am not sending any money towards savings this month, I shall use my snowflake and extra income money to pay for the semester fees and keep the rest in my checking account to tide me over till the end of September. If I am frugal and stick to my budget, I will manage to scrape by without digging into my savings. We’ll see how that goes…

So far, I have not had a single no-spend day this month. However, I only have had one evening of eating out. Taking stock of my pantry definitely helped in terms of planning meals. The pity of it is sometimes I don’t want to eat what is in my pantry. I’ve been busy cooking. I went and bought the silicone baking mats I wanted ($10.63 at Wal-Mart). So, yesterday was baking day – I made raspberry scones and sundried-tomato biscotti from ingredients I had at home. Also, a friend of mine gave me a HUGE bunch of basil that she grew in her garden. I kept a chunk of it to use as garnish, on pizzas and to add to bruschetta topping, and made pesto with the rest. And then, I used up a lot of the pesto in a HUGE batch of olive-artichoke-pesto-pasta (in order to use up more stuff I had at home but was not using). And I made some delicious Baba Ghanouj (using up an eggplant and half of the tahini I have in my fridge), and a large batch of pita chips. So all in all it was a good couple of days of cooking – at least it prevented me from going out to eat! Tonight, I picked up a bread machine from a fellow freecycler. I have never used a bread-machine before, but hopefully I will be able to make fun breads with the machine and use up more of the various flours I have at home.

On a sadder note, it looks like I will not be able to continue with the English speaking partner any more. We met for about a week and then our schedules started to clash. And it now looks like our semester schedules don’t match either. Oh well… maybe some other opportunity will pop up somewhere.

I Love Craigslist

I pulled out a bunch of stuff I was not using and snapped some pictues and posted them on Craigslist yesterday. I have already got one buy (a set of baking pans for $5.00) and three more potential buys. Isn't it fun? Most things were small, but I also had a couple of pieces of furniture that I don't really need. I think the key is to post pictures on there too.

I've had a couple of no-spend days in the past week. My challenge of cooking at eating at home is working fine. I made some parsley-oregano pesto last night and tossed it into some rotini pasta with some garlic, olives, artichokes, dried pepper flakes and romano cheese. It was delightful. But today and tomorrow, I am lunching out with friends. My budget is looking awful right now.... all negative numbers.