Financial Fast: 8 Days In (Almost Fail)

 
photo credit: jessdamen

When I first began on this journey of fasting financially for just 21 days I thought, Oh sure piece of cake. Honestly, even a piece of cake isn’t expensive. You wouldn’t think that half the things that my husband and I spontaneously did were *gasp* expensive. I mean think about who we’re talking about here.

It’s me. Saving. With. Amy.

They really do still call me that, you know. I’ll never be known as anything different to some. I digress…

I’m cheap and I know it. While I lived with a dollar philosophy for years and almost fell out if I had to pay more than a buck for something, I have loosened up just a bit since I quit the savings blog. But this fast has really been a challenge for me. Coupons made it possible for me to feel comfortable in a grocery store.

Exhilerated almost.

When some folks feel overwhelmed and stressed in stores, I usually can remain calm. Until I see someone pushing a cartful knowing they don’t have even 1 coupon and they could probably spend half as much if they were using them. Once again, I digress…

This is about ME and my challenges with this fast. It’s harder than it sounds. 21 days of NO eating out. 21 days of NO shopping. Not even at $.99 day at GOODWILL y’all! Oh yes, this is a major challenge for muah. So far though, I haven’t gone through withdrawals but keep me in your prayers. 😉

No, the biggest challenges have been mostly small things and 1 large thing. We were walking by a Redbox the other night and almost walked up to grab a flick. Not so fast! That’s frivolous and against our rules! I had a Groupon about to expire for frozen yogurt and we thought we might drop in. And then we remembered that we are yogurt fiends and that we’ll most likely purchase more as a family than our Groupon would cover, therefore causing us to pay for the difference. No yogurt. We were really knocking these challenges down one by one!

And then I spent my morning the other day putting together my grocery list complete with coupons and everything I needed to feed us for the week. Sparing you boring details, just know that every other week our grocery budget changes a little. This makes it difficult each week for making a list. I’m trying to get used to making my list smaller on the weeks that I get less money to spend. A long story short, I went OVER budget this week by $10. I’m not proud of it. I decided that I would spend $10 less next week to make up for it, but there was still a feeling of failure.

I come home and I’m talking to my husband that night. He said that HE too failed. Co-workers went out to lunch because he had forgotten his from home. He felt bad about it. I shared that I had spent about the same and we both decided to make up for it with next week’s grocery budget. And then of course there’s out water heater. It stopped heating the water and we took numerous cold showers. And of course it would need servicing while we were on a financial fast wouldn’t it? I think this is one of those that falls under a necessity, but it was still hard paying for it.

So while we’ve technically failed, we’re going to buckle down and fix it and remain on track.

What about you? Are you doing or have done something like this? I’d love your input!

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