Friday, January 27, 2012

31 Days of Nothing - Week 4

31 days of nothing

This is the last Friday of the month. We have almost completed the challenge! I will be doing one more post and link up next week to give an overview of the month. I am really looking forward to hearing how everyone did.

Well this was an interesting week to say the least. On Tuesday my oldest son broke his hand requiring a trip to both our primary care doctor and an Orthopedic specialist. The totals for that day cost me $70 and that is just the beginning of the charges I'm sure.

Here were our other expenses for the week.

$46.o6 spent on gas to fill up my husbands Jeep.

Over the weekend we celebrated 2 birthdays and also attended a fundraising dinner for my nephews who are in Boy Scouts. Total spent on those events was $54.00.

Prescription $2.33.

2 grocery trips. $10.44 was spent on the following. ($.45 for each of the 2 liters-good eye by my husband!)$16.55 was spent on the second trip.Total spent for the week on groceries was $26.99, bringing my total for the month to $80.54. I think we can get away with staying out of the grocery store for the rest of the month.

Today was a huge bummer financially. We took my van in yesterday because the heater wasn't working. After all the inspections they told us that is was going to cost us $1400 to fix. That isn't even fixing everything that is wrong. This is just to get us driving safely again. Sigh...so it looks like we won't be saving much money after all this month. The only good thing is that now we have a little extra money to go towards this large, unexpected expense.

How did your week go? Leave a comment or link up your blog post below.

7 comments:

  1. I am so sorry about your van! We had some unexpected bills too this week AND higher than normal bills which leaves me thinking that I might extend my no spend challenge another pay period. I will need to restock on groceries some, but hoping to not spend in any other area and keep groceries for 2 weeks under $100-$150 rather than my usual $250. If I weren't at the end of a month of eating from the pantry I could keep it lower for 2 weeks, but it is what it is. By doing this for another 2 weeks I should be able to save $200-$300 from our regular budget.

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  2. Those unexpected expenses are killers! We try to keep an emergency fund to have money for car repairs and other unexpected things. We had several repairs over the last few months, and were thankful to have the money saved to cover them. Now we have to build the fund up again since we depleted it--just hoping the next crisis will wait until we have saved a little again!

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  3. Heather, I just took a kid to the dentist and for x-rays, and for a consult and no cleaning it was almost 250 bucks NZD! So 70 for an orthopedist was like... 8-D 8-D
    It's no wonder they have teeth the way they are down here.

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  4. Sara, I agree, I think that show ruined everything.

    Thanks for posting the challenge and the linkys this month, I've enjoyed it.

    Do you do anything like this for February?

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  5. My dad and I are actually going to sit down and plan a week's worth of menus. Our goal is to only go grocery shopping once a week :) Love and hugs from the ocean shores of California, Heather :)

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  6. Ahhh...hope the van comes together decently for you ... that does stink :( I didn't do any type of challenge for February but after the month I just had, putting myself on a $20 a week grocery budget for February ... plenty of food in the house, shouldn't be a problem, just need to stay focused. I think that's probably half the battle, but must say you did pretty good!

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  7. Cynthia we usually have an emergency fund in place but it seems like with all our unexpected expenses lately we can't get it built back up. Hoping for a better next couple months.

    Melissa I don't have any challenges set for February, however I will probably hold some pantry challenges again sometime this year. I love challenging my family!

    Heather, I love my weekly menu planning. Makes it so much easier for so many reasons.

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