We’re halfway through No Spend February!  Time flies when you’re having fun, right!?  This week presented us with a lot of opportunities to spend money, so, to keep us accountable, here’s our breakdown for the week.

SPENDING (Week 2 Total: $583.48)

2/8/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $187.48)

$187.48 – Josh’s laptop died.  Like dead…beyond repair without significant expense dead…BIOS completely hosed dead.  Since it’s two years old anyway and these days, computers a ridiculously cheap, it didn’t make sense to put $200 into fixing it (I have my doubts it would have ended there) when a new one only set us back $185.  So, we bit the bullet and bought a new one.

2/9/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $0)

2/10/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $223.37)

$26.33 – Gas for Alexis’ card at Giant, and one of the necessary expenses we called out before we started the challenge.

$197.04 – Groceries for the next two weeks at Walmart.  Not too shabby considering we usually spend $300+ every two weeks.

2/11/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $56.55)

$56.55 – Scuba diving shorts and top for Alexis for our upcoming confined water dives and a Valentine’s Day card.  We called out the scuba stuff prior to beginning the challenge so the extra few dollars for the card is what it is.  I’m just proud to say I got out of target with ONLY the things on my list and for under $100!

2/12/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $109.01)

$4.98 – Valentine’s Day card.  Since we didn’t do gifts again this year, spending the $5 on a card seemed pretty reasonable.

$59.05 – Gas for Josh’s truck.

$44.98 – Our Valentine’s Day gift to each other – steaks and lobster tails.  Considering we got huge steaks and four lobster tails for a fraction of what we would have spent if we had eaten out on Valentine’s Day, we’re really happy with this!

2/13/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $7.07)

$7.07 – Lunch for Alexis at Sheetz.  I was at a training for work all day and seriously messed up when I packed my lunch in the morning.  Since I forgot to pack half of my lunch (duh!), I ran to Sheetz for lunch.

2/14/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $0)

REFLECTIONS

We made it halfway and we’re not starving, bored out of our minds or ready to kill each other.  We’ve got a couple new reflections from the second week of our no spend challenge, too.

• We heard that the universe would present us with a million ways to spend money during our no spend challenge and that has been VERY true!  My word, the number of spending opportunities that have been presented to us since the beginning of February!  The important pieces for us in battling the universe’s lure of spending money have been staying focused on our goal and evaluating our spending opportunities before sliding the credit card.
• We’re capable of spending a lot less on groceries if we want to.  We’re good at spending $300+ every two weeks at the grocery store without batting an eye and, before beginning the no spend challenge, we didn’t really have any idea what we already had on had.  Leftovers weren’t always eaten, food got freezer burnt just hanging out in the freezer and sometimes the spinach got wilty before we ate it.  During the past two weeks, we’ve been able to cut our grocery spending by making a conscious effort to use up what we have on hand instead of just buying without knowing our inventory.  While it’s not an area we feel like we have to address right now, it’s definitely an area that we can start working on.
• Expensive shit breaks at the most inopportune time.  All was well in the technology kingdom until no spend February.  Then expensive techy shit started breaking.  Fortunately, we’re in a position to be able to spend time fixing or spend money replacing things but I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of universal rule that expensive shit breaks at the most inconvenient time.
• When we focus our attention on not spending, we’re really successful.  We really wanted to watch a highly recommended documentary, but, it wasn’t on Netflix (which is free for us each month).  It was on Vudu, YouTube rentals and iTunes, but, all of those would have cost us money.  We decided to wait.  Alexis really wanted sushi, but, instead, we enjoyed a home cooked meal that didn’t cost us anything extra.  It’s becoming increasingly clearer that a considerable amount of our extra spending was based on convenience, impulse or ease rather than actual need.  And, when we keep that in mind, we make much better decisions about our spending.

Two weeks down, two more to go!  We’re excited to see how well we’ll do in week three.