Week 2 Review for No Spend November. Here’s what’s gone well, what’s been hard, and what food I’ve been making with food from my freezer, pantry and garden.
No Spend Month Challenge
No Spend November: Week 1 Results
Week 1 Review for No Spend November. Here’s what’s gone well, what’s been hard, and what food I’ve been making with food from my freezer, pantry and garden.
No Spend November: A Money Savings Challenge
November is a fantastic month to save gobs of money, break bad spending habits and get off the hedonic treadmill. Join me this month for No Spend November and see how much you can save and make due with what you already have.
Fasting, Booze, Lent and The Hedonic Treadmill
Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. You’ve probably heard of giving something up for Lent. Traditionally, Catholics who are better Catholics than me use the 40 days (not including Sundays) between today and Good Friday (that’s the Friday before Easter) to fast, pray, do charity and reflect on the sacrifices of Christ. But…
Eat From The Larder Challenge 2015
Maybe I didn’t plan very well when I enthusiastically committed to doing another Eat From The Larder Challenge this April. We already had a scheduled a family vacation. Non-negotiable. We already had a scheduled dinner-date with friends. Non-negotiable. We were completely out of butter. Clearly, running out of butter is a dire failure of larder maintenance….
Eat From The Larder Challenge
In February I wrote a post called Food Storage For People Who Don’t Hate Food. Most of the feedback I got on that post was very positive, but a few readers seemed skeptical of my claims that eating from the pantry for six months was reasonable, even if one had the food stored. This floored me…
No Spend Month: Final Numbers and Reader Feedback
It’s time to come clean. It’s the big finale, the big reveal – did we make our No Spend budget or blow it? Did you make your budget? I’m happy to say that we did stay within $250, and we saved up a ton of money this month. In addition to the casual dollars we…
Mini-Money Challenge: What's Important To You, Really?
Throughout this No Spend Month I’ve talked (and talked…and talked) about financial values. Well, now I have a confession to make. There really aren’t any financial values. There are just your values. Financial management and financial goals are big tools to help you live in accordance with your values, but they are not the same as values. If…
No Spend Month: Week 3 Wrap Up and At-Home Coffee Analysis
The giant canister of coffee beans we keep on the counter clinked empty early this week. Out. Of. Coffee. This is how most conversations before 10 am start in Seattle: “I’m not really up and moving yet. Haven’t had my coffee!” “Hey, do ya wanna go get a coffee?” “Um, could we talk about this…after…
Mini-Money Challenge: Occupy Your Brain (Why You Don't Really Want What You Want)
I had a dream the other night. I was working some corporate job and my boss lent me his car to run errands over the weekend. In the dream, I didn’t know what kind of car it was, and somehow Homebrew Husband ended up driving it to pick me up from this job. This was…
Mini-Money Challenge: Sell Some Books
I’m of the Erasmus school of spending: When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. As an example, these are some of – but not all of, you understand – my cookbooks: I have an equivalent number of gardening and house-maintenance books, quite a few big, heavy collections of…
No Spend Month: Week 2 Wrap-Up
Ready for the big No Spend Month disappointment? I totally succumbed to temptation at the thrift store this week. See, there was this mint condition, vintage, all-wood game of Labyrinth. Remember trying for hours to get that little metal ball past the fourth hole in the board? Or was I the only one dorky enough…