Loving the No Spend Day

I've made a really good attempt at NSDs and am actually pretty proud of myself!
I turned Thursday into a spending day, making the NSD on Friday. The only thing I bought on Friday was a slab of beer with BFs money! It really helped me keep focused when I really really wanted a diet coke at lunch time but just ended up having another glass of water... and when I went to the video shop with my sister and BIL and resisted getting the Janeane Garafalo DVD I have been wanted to watch for a while, so I was pretty happy with my efforts.

On Saturday BF wanted fish and chips for lunch, and even tho I suggested making something he wouldn't budge... so I spent $17 on food for lunch. I really should have let him have F&C and just made myself some beans on toast. But then later that arvo my sister called us to go out for Indian for dinner but because we'd had take away for lunch BF and I decided to stay home and cook - I don't know how long it's been since we've eaten IN on a Saturday night! I also kept my mind off spending money on Saturday ( I was dying to browse the local shops) by cleaning my entire house!

Sunday we went to the market, and spent $150 on fresh veggies and LOTS of meat. We came home and figured out we have enough meat for 14 dinners for two! Our grocery budget is normally $100 a week, but now I'm so excited that we won't have to buy meat for probably 3 weeks! The veggies won't last more than a week, but I know last week I shopped at Aldi and bought a few packets of frozen veggies so that should tide us over for a while! Total spend at market: $150 meat and veg, $11.50 on lunch, $8 on coffee and $3.60 on donuts

The only negative part was there were still a few items we needed from the supermarket: milk, mustard, new sponges (the old ones were about to walk out of the kitchen!), Easy Off Bam (ran out on my cleaning spree on Saturday), olive oil spread, gherkins and some bread. Oh and BF wanted a pair of sports socks and I couldn't say no! Total spend at supermarket: $31.40. So total spend on groceries for this coming week is $181.40, but I'm confident we will greatly underspend on groceries for the next two weeks. I'll keep you up to date!

Today, Monday, I had allocated as a NSD. And it was fairly easy! I brought lunch from home (morning tea: grapes, lunch: tuna salad and some corn thins, afternoon tea: banana plus two coffees during the day) and went to the gym after work and then straight home! Again, I really wanted a diet coke, but resisted and distracted myself with a coffee! (Note: I don't pay for coffee at work - we have a pretty cool coffee machine and the boss pays for all the consumables)

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and is a spend day - I will buy petrol and pay our bills for the next week. I'll also buy milk and bread again, which we won't need for a couple more days but as Wed and Thurs are NSDs I have to buy them tomorrow! BF’s boat registration is due ($68 for boat and trialer) and we have phone/internet and BF's mobile phone bills due. I'll also pay that speeding ticket I racked up a month ago... THAT was really frustrating, as it's $142 that I could be spending on our wedding.

Our electricity bill arrived for the last three months and I was very excited to see that in the Nov/Dec/Jan quarter our Electricity bill was only $19 more expensive than the quarter before - the reason this is so exciting is we had an air conditioner/inverter installed and it's been a very warm Melbourne summer, a few days over 45 degrees! I can't believe I'm getting excited about an electricity bill...

Speaking of bills, I called my mobile phone provider and added a $4.95 internet package to my $49+insurance package, which gives me 25MB of browsing where as before I was spending $20 a month of non-subscription browsing PLUS i get that $4.95 in extra call credit! This means my next bill should be about $62 assuming that I don't crack my cap... not too bad!