$21 Per Week

One week before Christmas, I was driving along highway 628 on my way home from work sans children, since James had a meeting in St. Albert and could pick them up on his way home from work.  Part of this road becomes a dirt road and I began the usual courtesy of driving in the middle of the road, then hugging the edge as best as I could while passing someone.  I looked ahead and saw oncoming lights, so I moved my Ford Escape to the side, except that my vehicle did not want to move over; it wanted to fishtail on the ice.  It is difficult to remember exactly what occurred, but I think in my attempt to stop the truck from swerving, I hit the brakes and my truck swung around, hurtling toward the snowbank at 80 km/hr.  At this point I realized there was nothing I could do, so I relaxed and just started to mutter "No, nononononono..." repeatedly, hoping that this ordeal would be over soon and I would live through it.  The SUV hit the snowbank and, as SUV's tend to do, promptly bounded onto the passenger side.  Shaken, but okay, I managed to crawl out of the driver's side door with the help of the on coming driver.  The end to this story?  Happily, a retired guy who was looking to tinker on a truck bought it for $2000 and we were left wondering what our next vehicle would look like.

James, never one to spend more money than he has to, suggested that we quit "f---- around" and just buy the vehicle we want...brand new.  Me, who will happily spend money on whatever, didn't need much convincing.  New vehicle it was.  After many budgets later to see how much we were spending on a vehicle and what our monthly payments would look like (I like spending money with money I have; I hate owing), we bought a 2013 Subaru Impreza in Cherry Red (which is "maroon" to the insurance people who do not recognize the term "Cherry Red").

More expenses followed: I wasn't going to drive the highways without winter tires again, et cetera, et cetera.  Next thing we know, February is looming and the credit card is looking crazy.  If there is a financial rule we adhere to like it was from the Bible is this: we pay off our credit card amount in full, every month.  This ensures that we neither overspend, nor that we incur ridiculous interest (again, I like spending money, but I don't like giving away money to large banks for no reason).  So we had to start to find pockets of money in various places until we realized we were about $500 short.

I had just read this article: http://www.chatelaine.com/living/budgeting/could-your-family-live-on-21-a-week-for-groceries-take-the-challenge-and-save-thousands/ a few days before and realized that we could possibly do this.  A household of six people, four adults and two children (we have renters), would have to live on a highly restrictive food budget for one month.  Considering we normally spend approximately $700 per month on groceries, this was going to the extreme.

Lucky for us, I tend to hoard.  When I buy groceries, I buy everything in bulk because, God forbid, should I run out of something right when the inspiration hits for me to cook with that particular food.  James constantly finds my treasures in various pockets of cupboards and wonders why on earth we have three different bags of bulgar various stages of emptiness.  The first thing I decided to do once we were both on board the crazy train was to go through our freezer, pantry and fridges to ensure that if we could not afford to buy another thing, we would at least be able to eat broccoli and rice for a week.  

Initially, it was difficult to imagine only spending $21 in one week.  It forced us to prioritize our food and our food intake.  I am not sure why it was surprising to me, but most of the money was spent on soymilk.  We go through soymilk in this house so quickly, it occurred to me that someone might be just dumping cartons down the drain.  No one is, but we do have six people living here with large appetites, so I guess buying 30L of soymilk in one month shouldn't have been the shock that it was.  

It really helped that I wasn't on maternity leave anymore.  During mat leave, I could easily go shopping; finding reasons to spend money, especially in the grocery store.  Because it is food, right?  Food is a good excuse to spend money guilt free.  Except that from now on, it won't be guilt free for me because there is so much food in my house that I can't bring myself to buy more than I NEED for the household to function, rather than stocking up for the next nuclear war.  

Lesson learned?  Yes.  Buy shopping consciously, and taking Chatelaine's idea of maintaining a $21 week once a month, we can save about $200 per month in our house.  That is $2400 per year.  How much will you save?