Frugal February is here!

Frugal February is here!

Today begins the 28 days of ultimate frugal living. We go the whole month without spending money except on necessities. This will be our second year of participating in Frugal February. I will update this blog every few days to let you know how we are doing. Today's entry is a list of rules we try to live by:

Frugal February Rules
No spending any money except for groceries and absolute necessities. Paying bills, of course, is an absolute necessity and I am not going to go all crazy and cut off the phone, Internet, etc. This is frugal February, not Living-Off-the-Grid month.

Charging on credit cards is not allowed.

Gas for the auto is acceptable.

It should go without saying that online shopping is out of the question.

No babysitters unless free (daycare/work related acceptable).

No dining out unless using gift certificate for the full amount.

No Lunds, Byerlys, Kowalski’s grocery shopping. SuperTarget is where I will shop.

No gift purchases*.

No liquor store purchases (some of my friends consider alcohol a necessity).

NOTES:
Some people call this cheating, but I call it planning ahead… Valentine’s day is in February and the kids exchange Valentines at school. I plan ahead and make sure I have the Valentine goodies before Feb 1.

Mike and I do not exchange any gifts, flowers, candy, etc. on Valentine’s day. Last year he made all of us pretty flowers – it was touching and so sweet! Better than any bought bouquet.

Ben is invited to a bday party in Feb, so is Maggie. I have to plan ahead and buy the gifts in January. *Of course if s/he is unexpectedly invited to a party I am going to have to break the rules and buy a gift.

My mom seems to think it is okay that if I were to sell something on Craigslist that I should be able to use the money after the sale. Last year during FF I did sell baby room items ($35) and we used it to go out to eat. I don’t have anything to sell this year.

If you have a gift certificate it is okay to use it as long as you use no more than the amount on the card. Last year I stock piled gift certificates to Chipotle and the movie theater. We had a free babysitter so Mike and I went on a free date night.

I try to stock up on Target stuff in January, so that I am not tempted to go into Target to buy necessities.

I do our grocery shopping at Super Target and I am allowed on the grocery side only.

This year we decided outdoor activities on the cheap would be okay. We have been dying to get Ben and Maggie on the ski hill and ice rink. Since January was too cold we feared that if we waited until March our outdoor activity days would be limited. Yes, this is cheating, but I never asked for 40 consecutive days of negative degree weather.