Times are tight and I've recently committed to a donation of hefty proportions (relative to my personal budget, at least). This week's TT is all about saving the green for my Blogher Acts Maternal Health Donation.
Thirteen Ways I'll be Cutting Back on Spending in May
1. Stop buying sodas or bottles of water from the grocery store, vending machine or gas station. While I've given up soda most of the time, this gets tough on the weekends.
2. Take my lunch to work. Every. Day. No exceptions.
3. Buy only the essentials at the grocery store. No splurges on Larabars, kumquats or Kalamata olives in May.
4. Eat the food that's already in my house.
5. Avoid purchasing any new (or used) books on my long list of books I want. No matter how many coupons I receive from Barnes & Noble or Borders.
6. Make a list of necessaries for Wal-Mart and buy only what's on the list.
7. Limit Wal-Mart trips to twice during the month. (The less I'm there, the less temptation to buy, buy, buy.)
8. Avoid any stores that sell clothes, shoes or handbags.
9. Feed my cat only her "hard" food. (She normally gets 1 packet of rather expensive soft food each evening. Even Gizmo wants to support maternal health causes.)
10. Limit dates with My Love to things we can do for free: movies in, dinner at home, walks in the park, you get the picture.
11. Read the magazines I have instead of buying more each time I enter a book store, grocery store, or other store that sells magazines. (Clearly, I'm addicted.)
12. Take water in a reusable bottle with me to the gym instead of putting a $2 bottle "on my account" every time I go in.
13. Run all my weekend errands in one trip on one day, avoid driving at all on the other day and plan routes to any weekday meetings carefully to save gas (the biggest cash sucker out there).
How are you saving green during these tight economic times?
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4 comments:
What a great list! I'm all for saving money and really need to cut back on my spending habits. Especially now that summer is on it's way...
I may have to come up with a list of my own.
good for you! i did a "buy nothing" challenge for april and did pretty well w/ a few exceptions. :)
Sometimes I think we very well might be the same person. YOur last 3 posts- well, I could have written them. And this post? #1-4, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 13 are all things I am consciously trying to do as well.
Are you sure you're not me? ;)
Erin - It's not as easy as I thought it would be to follow these, so I'm glad I posted them here. Can't deny I committed to it if it's out there for everyone to see.
crunchy - I was tempted to join you in the "buy nothing" challenge, but I knew I wouldn't be able to do it right now. Maybe some other month...
betsy - I suppose it's possible that we're twins separated at birth. I'll have to ask my mom about that. :) My cat does not like #9. She seems to think I should have consulted her first before giving up her favorite evening meals.
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