Frugal February -- My month spending NO money

In early December 2007 I started talking to Mike about the idea of trying to go a few months without spending any money on non-essential things. In other words the basic necessities like laundry detergent, soap, groceries, etc. were okay to buy, but anything else including dinners out, baby sitters, gifts, SimonDelivers, etc. would be off limits. We were going to try this experiment in January and go for one or three months, but when January 3rd rolled around and we were already WAY over budget due to a few unexpected expenses we decided to designate February as the month to spend no money. It was my sweet friend Gina who coined the phrase Frugal February and so it sticks. Many people have had questions so feel free to post any questions and I will try to answer. I think the most common question is, Why? The short answer is we thought it would be a fun challenge to learn if we could actually go a whole month without spending money on non essentials and of course to see how much money we could save.

I will update this diary regularly, and in the meantime please leave a comment or ask a question.

February 1. So it begins... the month of spending no money. I don't think it will be that difficult, but we shall see. Tonight I had a fund raiser event to attend and several friends were there. I had warned them beforehand of my personal challenge, so it was not a surprise to them to see me without wine in hand and of course I didn't buy anything at the event.

February 2. Another day and I don't feel we are missing out on much. Ben and Maggie were in a wedding today (all costs were paid in January) and there was one moment when I wanted to get a Coke from a vending machine in-between pictures and the ceremony, but since I didn't have any cash it was easy to thwart that desire. And cold, refreshing sip of water worked wonders.

February 4. Today I went grocery shopping. Because I feel SimonDelivers (my usual mode of grocery shopping) is an extravagance Mike and I decided to skip Simon or Lunds/Byerlys during Frugal February. By the way, easy for Mike to say, he is not allowed in a grocery store. So when Maggie and Ben were in preschool classes I headed to SuperTarget. It was great shopping by literally walking up and down every grocery aisle and I bought a load of groceries for a lot cheaper than if I had shopped through Simon. The hardest part was sticking to the grocery part of Target. I would not allow myself to venture into the traditional Target aisles, otherwise the temptation would have been way to great. I am a SUCKER for clearance items.

February 7. Probably the most difficult Frugal February day, for two reasons. It was my grandpa's burial today, which was of course a sad event. Right after the burial we went to my mom's house , and then from there the kids had dance from 4-5. The last thing I wanted to do was go home and make dinner. I wanted so badly to grab take-out and head home to veg out. But I persevered and headed home. Dinner way very late only because I was stalling. I ended up serving frozen pancakes and sausage. Nobody complained, bless their hearts.

February 12. The weather has been cold, and the kids are antsy. It would be so great to get out of the house and go someplace... anyplace. It just seems like all the places I think of cost money or would be too tempting for purchases. I have a Minnesota Zoo membership, so maybe we should head out there.