Week three of no spend February in the books!  It’s hard to believe that February is almost over.  But, that means we’re closer to spring, warm weather and SUNSHINE, so, we’ll take it!  Here’s our spending breakdown for week three of our fiscal fast.

SPENDING (Week 3 Total: $310.27)

2/15/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $232.74)

$26.58 – Gas for Alexis’ car.

$206.16 – Dentist copay.  A necessary medical expense and anticipated before we started the no spend challenge.

2/16/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $0)

2/17/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $0)

2/18/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $0)

2/19/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $38.30)

$38.30 – Grocery store for salads for lunches for the rest of the week.  And, supplies to learn to make sushi.  Okay, okay, I cheated here.  I really wanted sushi, but, I was committed to not buying sushi during no spend February.  So, I decided to spend some money on buying a sushi mat, rice paddle, sushi rice and the fixin’s for sushi.  It cost a little bit of money, but, we learned something new, dinner was AWESOME and we spent much less making our own sushi instead of buying it.

2/20/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $0)

2/21/2018 (Daily Spending Total: $39.23)

$6.58 – Dollar General for canned cat food (a whole ridiculous story, but, believe it not, a necessary expense), manila envelopes for filing and 2 Cadbury eggs.  Could have done without the Cadbury eggs, considering it is no spend February and everything.  But you only live once!

$32.65 – Food from Zeidereill’s.  Definitely not needed, but wanted pretty badly.

REFLECTIONS

21 days done and only another 7 to go!  We did really well this week, but, had a little loss of willpower at the end of the 7 days.  Here’s what we learned:

• Zeiderelli’s pizza is our weakness.  We tried to be strong.  We tried to be rational.  And, we still ended up spending $32 on food from Zeiderelli’s.  Considering we typically eat there more than once a month, making it 20 days without eating out is really good for us.  But, probably our breaking point.
• Medical expenses are…expensive!  Even though we called out the medical expenses we knew we would need to pay during February, they still come out of our wallet.  And, it’s expensive!  $206 of the $310 we spent this week were medical expenses.  So, budgeting for these expenses is crucial to stay on course with our financial goals.

Three weeks down, one more to go!  We’ve challenged ourselves to see how well can we do in the final week of our February fiscal fast and can’t wait to share how well (or poorly) we do!