I am with SMRM on the giving away my stuff to charity. It is much too hassle for me to set up and meet with the buyer on the stuff I have. Perhaps if the items were significant in price I would think differently. But it is much easier for me to pile it in the car and drop it off to charity for a good cause {as I did a couple of weekends ago}.

Now, I just need to go figure out my categories and their averages, because I kind of lump sum my variable categories into one. When I am out, I’m out. If I have left before the following pay period, it goes in the bank.

Besides, you just can’t compare apples to oranges (literally) between a country like the US vs. Canada since the US food costs are 2/3 of that in Canada, gas is 3/4 – basically everything is cheaper in the US. And Laura’s in Portugal, that would be even harder to figure out.

AlexK – every month I post my totals by category. I think my savings rate was 57% for the last 6-7 months, 4 of which I was working ~25% capacity. Last year, my savings rate would have been over 75%. But I tended to focus on the income side of the equation back then.

Sam – we do allow boys into the competition. I don’t know if you could stand the heat in the kitchen though…

I trust you see the irony in this statement:

“Of course this will only work because the competition only runs for a month. For longer challenges, you’d need something like the 21 day makeover. ”

The contest is a percentage reduction on expenses, possibly the only way to do it when we have differing family sizes.

@AlexK I think we’re all quite frugal anyway, I blog my normal budget costs; grocery is £240 pcm for 4, so I’m looking to reduce that as much as possible. In fact grocery wil be all I’m spending for the next 3 weeks!

Should we put in an anonymous spreadsheet of our total monthly expenses?

I’m assuming rent/mortgage doesn’t count in the equation, or frankly any other unavoidable fixed costs?

Let me know!

Cheers,

Sam

Jacob I would be interested in knowing the actual expenses and savings rates of your readers. I live on about $1750/mo.

So far, the only thing I’ve spent anything on this month re. the challenge categories has been for groceries. If I didn’t have kids, I could have reduced this to zilch, but I didn’t have much for fruit, veggies and dairy stockpiled and I’m just not willing to have them go without that stuff for a month. I used the strategy of only going into the grocery store with a $20 bill last week and walked out having bought $18.57 worth of stuff, but could probably have got away with walking in with a ten-spot instead. Then of course, we just had to run out of toilet paper today, necessitating another trip to the store. But I wasn’t as conscientious this time and walked out with a bill of $19 and change (thank god TP was on sale!) – some of the stuff I bought in addition wasn’t stuff that was necessary, so I’m kicking myself now. Thanks for the additional kick from you because I really should know better.

With respect to selling off my crap, I find the prospect of giving stuff to charity organizations more motivating than selling it just to buy more stuff. It seems the pain of realizing it’s worth essentially nothing to me at the end of its useful life (if it ever had much of one to begin with) is a great stopper in buying things to begin with.

I went on a field trip today with my son’s school to a local amusement / historical place – thereby getting free admission. It was kind of interesting to see that of the group of parents and kids I was with, I was the only one whose kid paid for his own candy at the candy store – and he bought about 25% of what the other kid’s parents bought them. And he’s the only kid I’m sure that doesn’t get an allowance either and works for all of his money. But that’s something I wouldn’t have paid for even if there wasn’t a challenge going on anyway.

Interestingly enough, even though there are some categories that aren’t included in the challenge (what we perceive as non-discretionary), I’ve been motivated to reduce those areas as well. It’s just good practice every once in awhile to review everything and see how much value it’s really providing you. I think it’s an excellent practice to go through the 21 day makeover at least annually and see where there’s been some unconscious spending creep going on.

Dollars in: Yes. Dollars out: Pretty much zero.