Monday, October 6, 2008

This one's for you, Abbi!

SO - I read in the Readers Digest about a guy who didn't spend anything for a whole month. He paid his bills, of course, and eventually set up a spending limit of $100 for groceries for his family of four. But he didn't spend any extra money on things. I thought that might be fun to try, so I did it. Kinda. I cut my grocery limit to $25 - since I am a single loser - and off I went. It was rather fun, and I kinda have a new look on spending money. The first time I went to the store after I decided to do this, I almost felt guilty! I spent $6 exactly on mushrooms, salad, and milk. I would be going home from a late appointment and think - "Oh, I'll just stop by Sonic and grab something to eat." Then I'd remember my little deal. Rats!! So home it was. I usually eat peanut butter and jelly in the morning on a tortilla, since I'm half Mexican :-), and I ran out of tortillas. Rats again. So - I can make a decent tortilla, and so I got out my rolling pin and recipe and with a few quick texts to my real Mexican friend I was off! The tortillas turned out pretty good - I told Sarah they weren't good enough to make her gramma proud, but they were good enough to make white girls jealous! :-) So now I had tortillas! Ha woo! Grocery store avoided! Then another test came up - muffins for church Sunday morning. I was out of flour, and low on a few other key ingredients - but I remembered I had bread flour in the freezer. Ha woo! I found a recipe that called for cereal, and not as much flour so that's what I did. They were ok. Not a keeper, but they were edible. I made the most wonderful applesauce from apples from Tom and Camilla, and made a perfect soup from beans, carrots, celery and other stuff around the kitchen. That was fun because I made a whole crock pot of it and brought it to work and the people ate it like there was no tomorrow! I started noticing my dog food was getting low, so I cooked rice and some gravy to add to it, making it go a little longer. Highland ate it better, too. He's such a skinny little rat, that he needs to eat all he can. Dmitri on the other hand.... :-) So - long story short, I made it three weeks plus a few days, until I realized that the dog food really wasn't going to last and I only had $7 to last one more week, and we were eating out with the church Sunday afternoon, and I had squeezed every last bit of toothpaste out of the tube - every last bit! So I caved...I went to WalMart and bought groceries. So I failed - but I learned a lot, and it was tons of fun.
So I've already made changes:
In my dogs food - rice is cheap, they like it, and it will make the bag of dog food last longer. Ha woo!
I haven't eaten fast food since before the day I started this. It's definitely on my bad list!
I'm making tortillas from now on...it's more work, but they were just as good as the kind I buy, and if I keep making them, I WILL make Sarah's gramma proud! Or at least keep making white girls jealous! :-)
So that's all for now - but it was rather fun, and it made me think of Abbi. And that was fun, too!

2 comments:

Abbi said...

Yea, George!! I am so proud of you. I read that article too. I thought about trying it but I decided for now I was already doing it to a large degree (My rule has been buying no clothes or shoes since March of 2007, though I do get to get new shoes in Jan!!)
I have also been working at lowering our grocery bill dramatically and making gifts (as much as possible. However I think $25 a month would definetely stretch me!! Good job for making it that far.
I will look forward to hearing more frugal tales :-)

Christy said...

THis is such a hilarious post. I loved reading it!!