No-Spending Challenge Results #6

Yay! The end of my 4 Week No-Spending Challenge has finally descended upon the Sarr family. I’m always very thankful to get to this point and get to the finish line swiftly. It does also means that the end of summer break is likewise upon us, and my heart wants to hold onto the fleeting days, but they are swiftly sifting through my fingers. Let me take a moment to mourn for myself…okay. I’m back.

In my no-spending challenge parameters I disclosed that I began the 4 weeks with a mere $200. In an ordinary month $200 would get me through, maybe, a week and a half of groceries (you can read about our ordinary weekly spending here. I can hack it…and although I’m not thrilled about it completely, I ALWAYS think it’s good to do. When we are on the verge of running out of something, I love to get it pronto. So it makes me feel a bit discombobulated when I’m at a store and can’t get what I know we’ll need real soon. But self-denial is, indeed, good for me, and helps put life into perspective. Anyone else there? I just keep an ongoing list of stock-up foods.

With that said, what I love about carrying out the challenge is that I am propelled to be more purposeful in using the forgotten foods in my freezer and pantry. They were clearly looking more thin post-challenge, especially in my baking shelf “aisle”. I’m also much more tenacious in utilizing the produce I buy.

So I recorded all of my grocery expenses, even if it was one meager little item. This didn’t include the few times we ate out as that wasn’t part of the whole deal. Wanna see the results? Well here we go.

Week 1
8/6/18	Walmart	$1.48	Wk 1: $41.26
8/9/18	Safeway	$3.04
8/10/18	Fred Meyer	$26.35
8/10/18	Safeway	$5.40
8/10/18	Safeway	$4.99
Week 2
8/12/18	Fred Meyer	$12.30	Wk 2: $68.46
8/16/18	Safeway	$1.98
8/16/18	Costco	$16.46
8/16/18	Winco	$24.09
8/18/18	Fred Meyer	$13.63
Week 3
8/21/18	Walmart	$10.84	Wk 3: $46.16
8/23/18	Snow Goose Produce	$2.98
8/24/18	Coop	$13.99
8/24/18	Winco	$7.88
8/24/18	Costco	$10.47
Week 4
8/30/18	Trader Joe’s	$15.25	Wk 4: $36.89	4 Week Total :$192.77
9/1/18	Sprouts	$21.64

So you can see that I ended up spending a total of $192.77 for the entire four weeks. The final numbers might have been less if the brand new Sprouts Market wasn’t in the city we were traveling through. I really wanted to check it out, and they ended up having some seriously good deals there. It’s not super close to my house, so it’ll be an occasional place we go…just like Trader Joe’s. Do you have a Sprout’s nearby?

So what do you think of the whole challenge thing? Is it your time to pinch the pennies? Are you up for doing a no-spending challenge? I’d love to hear about your experiences…