Coffee Shop Hop and Week 4 Recap: No Spend Challenge

Week 4 has come and gone and I cannot believe that an entire month has gone by in our no-spend challenge!  11 more months to go, right?

I can't wait for this year to be over, not because I am writing down all of the things that I am going to run out and buy but because this takes some serious effort. Legit. This week I had some bad moments.  Let me tell you about them:

Monday I met a friend for coffee to work on a project together.  She was super sweet and had asked if she could come over to our house.  But for real our house looked like Stonehenge with Christmas bins stacked everywhere so I declined and we went to a coffee shop. 

It wasn't until I was driving to the coffee shop that I had one of those lightbulb moments, thinking "huh, I guess I'm going to have to actually purchase something."  You know how shop keepers frown upon you just sitting there and not actually getting something. 

I purchased my coffee and got a small one but I did get one of those frou-frou drinks and it all being said it was $5.  I kind of did a walk of shame to the table with my coffee and felt bad for spending so much. 

The next night, Emma had scouts which is in across the state line and takes me over a half an hour to get her to.  Driving home during scouts results in me constantly driving so I decided by golly, I was going to find somewhere and get some blogging done!  It would be great!  I found a cute, quirky coffee shop, and again, decided it would be best to buy something. 

This time I was prepared.  I ordered just a small cup of coffee.  That should be harmless enough, right?  Except the darn thing was $3.  Again I had to do the shame walk with my cup of coffee.

I've started feeling like an old man that complains constantly about the cost of a cup of coffee.  Martin. I've become Martin from Frasier. 

The rest of the week went fairly smoothly.  The only other thing we spent money on was dinner Friday night.  We were supposed to go out with our neighbors last year and we could never make it work.  Finally we were all available and we didn't want to let our no-spend challenge get in our way. 

So we all decided to go to a restaurant that was participating in "Restaurant Week"  an event near us where certain restaurants offer reduced pricing on their meals.  Nick and I were able to get appetizer, dessert, and entrees for the 2 of us for $33!  It was a really good meal!  We ate at the Lasalle Kitchen and Tavern.  If you are ever in South Bend you should drive over and check it out...really good food and a really fun atmosphere with live music at the bar. 

Saturday we had fun going to visit Nick's grandma and then we drove onto a chili-cookoff for Emma's scout troop.  We had a wonderful (and cheap!) day visiting with friends and family. 

All in all it was a great week although I totally messed up with the coffee shop purchases. 

However I have used those as some jumping off points to change my behavior. 

After all, if my house had been clean and tidy I would have had no problem having my friend over to talk and I wouldn't have spent anything at all. 

So as a result of that I moved some things around so we could skip school for this week and I am deep cleaning our house.  Together as a family we are purging so we have less stuff to put away and maintain.  By the end of the week I am hopeful we will have a place for everything and everything in its place. 

I've also learned that I need to have a go-to drink to order when I go to a coffee shop.  I would love your suggestions!!!  I love coffee, tea, anything.  It just needs to be inexpensive so I feel at least a little bit better about buying a want item.  I do have to visit coffee shops as I am on a lot of committee's and part of groups that meet at coffee shops. 

Please help me with what do order!  Comment with your suggestions!  I'd love for you to help me out!

The No-Spend Year through a Child's Eyes

So, hi guys, this is Emma. 

I'm sure that you've heard my Mommy talk about our "no-spend year" before.  Well, I'm going to tell you more about that from my perspective. 

When mommy first told Cal and I about her idea, I thought that it would just be cutting off Matilda Jane clothes, and fast food. 

This, however, was not the entire idea. 

I seriously think that our family is reverting back to the early 30s.  I mean, back then people didn't really just go buy stuff, but they saved any money that they could to send their children to school, or buy food.  Half of thetime, if you were a kid or an adult, you would be hungry.  As in super hungry.  We probably won't be going without lunch.  That makes me hungry! ;]

 When most people think about the early 30s, they think that people kind of just had the stuff that they needed.  Such as: food, clothes, and shelter.  Well a lot of them didn't have that unless they worked HARD for them.  My great grandma told me that back then they had to make their own clothes.  Shirts, pants, dresses, socks, underwear, and they only had a very small amount of them.

We luckily will not have to do that.

Not only are we just buying what we need, but we are also trying to get rid of the stuff that we don't need. We are trying to get rid of some old clothes, toys, and just general stuff. I got rid of some dresses last week that I either didn't wear, or are too small.  My brother has a hard time getting rid of things, for some reason.  He keeps EVERY little thing.  I have explained to him that all the things that he gets rid of [if it isn't just trash] goes to kids who have none, or little. He is so difficult sometimes!  Grrrrrrrrr!

So far it has been hard to stick with our plan, but I'm sure that it will all turn out O.K.

I really don't know about the rest of my family, but I am starting to realize that we just don't need all of this stuff. 

I kind of want to scream sometimes because it can get pretty angering to not get what you want.  I mean, I don't get what I want outside of the no-spend year, but I get even less of what I want in the no-spend year. 

You might think that I am exaggerating but I'm not. 

Well, I hope that this has been helpful and inspiring.  Bye.

No-Spend Challenge, Week 2 with a Lesson in Using What You Have

Last week went by in a whirl. 

Our church is looking for a new pastor and it was a crazy week of preparing for a new one to come for a visit.  I apologize this is coming to you so late in the game but as I've always said, better late than never! 

This past week as I mentioned was crazy and so I don't remember what days I did what.  I do remember though that there seemed to be a presounding theme throughout our week and that was to use what we have. 

The one thing I've been so amazed with by staying home is how much time I have to get things done. 

Before I was doing mindless errands to get things I thought I needed which in fact, upon a long, hard look turned out to simply be wants.  Oh, maybe not wants in the way of saying I really want that carton of yogurt tubes but more of an issue of mindlessly keeping up with the Joneses. 

I didn't even realize I was doing it but it was in my head that the kids wanted go-gurt tubes because all of their friends had them at snack time and by golly, they had wanted them too!  But when I realized it I put a stop to it.  If we have yogurt in cups at home then by-golly they can grab themselves a spoon and take a good old-fashioned cup of yogurt.  Ta-da!  Mindless shopping and spending minimized. 

This week by being home I've also noticed two things happening:

1) I am going to the gym a lot more! 

Weird that I said by being home I am going somewhere but shut up, it's my blog and I can write weird things.  ha! 

It's true though.  As I mentioned before we did not cancel our gym membership but instead challenged ourselves to make the most of it's value.  As a result I've gone every single day.  I am sore in parts of me that I didn't know existed but it is also a rewarding feeling to know that I am doing something good for myself, burning stress off, and using that gym membership to it's fullest.  Our gym also has daycare, swimming, a waterpark area, a big gym for the kids, a video game room, an art center, and a rock climbing wall.  So our gym is something we go to a lot and do a lot of different things at. 

2) I am cleaning this house up! 

This past week was the first time in I don't know how long that I actually got caught up on the laundry.  It was a great feeling!  Being caught up on the laundry also brought out some feelings of overindulgence when I discovered that both of our kids have so many clothes that I can't put all of them away when they are all clean. 

So for each drawer we stood in front of it and weeded and sorted, and hemmed and hawed over everything until we had gotten rid of enough that everything fit.  It is definitely a weird feeling to get rid of things that still fit and are still perfectly good but I will be donating them so I feel good about that at least. 

So both of those things (massive time at the gym and laundry) I had not had time for before when I was running everywhere and getting things we simply didn't need. 

Can I get an amen about no more trips to Hobby Lobby?

The other thing we've been doing is actually USING what we have!  I've pulled out blocks and cards and books that had been buried because we have too much.  I've noticed the quiet as they rediscover simple things that we already have. 

I've also done my nails with nail polish I already own.  I mean, I already have it, why not use it up?  Anyone else guilty of buying things and then never even getting around to using them?  What is up with that?

When Emma and I would have girl time together previously we would go buy something or go out to eat.  Now we are doing our nails together and it is so much fun!

I could go on forever with examples, yo, but in short, we're using what we have, cleaning what we have, and moving what we have (at the gym!) 

I hope you all are having a great week! 

Comment below with what you want me to talk about relating to our no-spend challenge!  Next week I'm talking about how I pack food for road trips.

Week 1 Recap of Our No-Spend Challenge

This was a pretty tough week to be thrown into for our first week on the no-spend challenge. 

Although the weekdays went pretty smoothly.

Monday

We started school back up and that prompted Nick and I to have the discussion about how/if the challenge would affect the way we do our schooling.  We had said it wouldn't really before in our talks but it came up again when I introduced a new "motto" for our classroom to the kids.  Nick said I should enlarge it, laminate it, and hang it up in the classroom.  That prompted the discussion on if that was in fact a need or simply a want. 

The jury is still out on that one so we'll have to see what I decide.  It may in part be decided by the price of making the poster.  $20 for a poster?  No thanks...

But I think we kind of narrowed down that in terms of what the kids are learning and the core of what they need we absolutely will not waiver.  The fluff stuff we may reevaluate and see what we could use that we already have.

Tuesday

Calvin threw a wrench in our plans by declaring that instead of taking the train to Chicago for his birthday as planned, he wanted to go to LEGOLAND.  So after calling Nick and having him approve the change, I frantically hopped on line to try to track down as many deals as possible. 

In the end it proved to be way too much money to change our plans so we decided to stick with the original plan to go downtown for his birthday.

Wednesday

My best friend and I took all of our kids to Sky Zone (a trampoline park) to get the kids to shake out all their wiggles!  What a fun time we had!  It is so fun to have a friend with kiddos that my kiddos love! 

I know, I know SkyZone is in no way a "need" but thankfully the kids got giftcards to there for Christmas so we used those to go.  Hooray for fun things to do!

Thursday

Why do companies feel the need to try to get you to spend money after you just had Christmas?  Besides the fact that everyone went out and spent tons on gifts I know that we do not have any more room for more STUFF! 

These catalogs always get me!  Lakeshore Learning, an educational store gets me every time.  I always ooh and ah over all of the stuff that is in there.  Surely if I get all of this stuff the kids will learn more, right?  I rationalize to myself.  But the truth is that even though we've decided the no-spend year will not affect our schooling, we do not need any more supplies.  I've over bought as it is. 

American Girl was a difficult one (for about half a minute) to toss.  I don't want Emma to miss out on childhood because of the no-spend challenge.  But then I remembered that the dolls themselves are what make childhood so great, not the shopping, so I tossed them.  She needs to be grateful for the 4 dolls she has and not be shopping for more. 

Ulta always kills me. Do you see that?  Do you?  The one day sale thing makes me want to almost get up and run out of the house.  Almost.

I must buy the things!  But it is an almost feeling and so I restrained myself.  But it was hard! 

The Weekend

This past weekend was a blur!  We went to Chicago on the train to celebrate Calvin's birthday.  He turned 9!  How did this happen?  Can anyone tell me, please? 

I still feel like I am about 25 and have no clue what I am doing with motherhood.  Or Autism.  Or mothering a child with Autism.  There is still so much to learn, but anyway.

We realize that a trip to Chicago is not a NEED but we have a son who has talked about this trip for basically a year so then telling him last minute that he doesn't get his birthday trip due to his parents' weird challenge was not an option. 

We did however go through this weekend with a clear idea in mind of what we were going to buy and what we were not.  While these trips usually end up with us finding "deals" and stocking up on every little thing we see, this time, we did not. 

Dylan's Candy Shop?  We let them get a tube of candy and a small little something else.  Calvin got to pick one thing out at Lego as his gift.  We got Emma something at American Girl. 

For Birthday cake?  We decided on a couple of cupcakes from the Cupcake ATM rather than a whole cake. 

I saw SO MANY awesome things I wanted to buy mainly because there were gobs and gobs of things marked down on Christmas clearance. And it was really, really hard but we didn't get anything we hadn't planned. 

We had a lot of fun throughout the weekend, everything we got was a deal or at least a planned expense, and we were able to come home and not feel completely janky because we had spent way too much. 

It was a nice feeling. 

One of the not nice things about this weekend was how my view could get so a skewed by all of the nonsense of the stores in Chicago.  We stayed downtown so there was plenty of walking past stores like Cartier, Tiffany's, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and more.  We came back to our hotel after a night of shopping and I couldn't believe how burdened I felt about those things.  Was it Jealousy?  Envy?  I don't know but after talking about it with Nick I boiled it down to the fact that when we are at home I feel content with what we have but when I am in Chicago I start to realize everything that I could have.  Do you know what I mean?  It was not a nice feeling.  In the end I reasoned with myself that that could forever be a never ending cycle.  If I had a new Tiffany ring I would want a Cartier or a newer one or a bigger one.  This could go on forever. 

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So I am learning from this that it has to simply be the fact that you have to make the decision to be happy with yourself and what you have whatever that may be.  Sometimes it is a lot easier said than done.

I can't believe in the short time of one week how dramatically altered my viewpoint has been. I now go through our home looking at things with hushed tones and gentle fingers...it's all a reminder of how amazingly blessed we are. 

And while I could probably say, "let's go back to how things were, we're changed already" I don't think I can say that yet at all. I want to go through a hot, sticky day and teach kids the value of cold hose water; the joy of hard work and how good it feels to lay in bed after a long day and feel content and pleased with the work you've accomplished. 

It was a great week.  A difficult week at moments but a week that made us feel perhaps even more grateful for gifts and possessions than we would have.  For that, the difficulty has been worth it. 

Day 1 of No-Spend Challenge with a Lesson from My Toes

Last night we stayed home and toasted the last year away.  It was an amazing year, full of trips, memories, laughs, and adventures. 

I am so blessed by our family. 

Last night we rung in the new year and with it an entire year of not spending. 

As excited as I am I'm also feeling a little scared. 

I mean, how hard is this going to be?  Ahhh! 

I felt like last night I should have been out on the town, driving in a limo throwing money out the sunroof.  Something.  I mean, that was my last shot to waste some moola. 

But we stayed home.  Despite numerous invitations I just wanted to be at home with our kiddos.  My parents even wanted to take the kids and instead we just decided to be home as a little family. 

So today begins a year of this no-spend challenge I've been talking about.  If you are new to this you can read my initial post here and then my post about the basic rules we have set out for ourselves. 

How hard can it be to not spend money when we are staying home?  This should be easy!  A cake walk!  A walk in the park!  Any other kind of walking!

But this morning after I took a shower I was stunned by my toes.  Yeesh!  I NEED a pedicure!  Like, someone call a group and let's have an intervention time. 

But then I remembered the date and it caught me off guard how spoiled I am.  Any other time I probably would have proceeded to get ready, grab my purse, and tell Nick I am going to go get a pedicure. 

But not today my friend. 

Today I found my very own nail polish remover, remover the polish myself.  And currently have naked toes. 

The horror! 

It reminded me of a conversation with my Grandma.  She was telling me about nail polish and when she was a teenager no one had money to own nail polish.  She said once in a blue moon one of her friends would have a bottle (A bottle!) and then the girls would go over and paint their nails with it. 

How cute is that? 

It made me feel a bit well to do with our two giant baskets of nail polish.  And yet those sit while I go out to the salon for a pedicure. 

So here I am in day one of this challenge and I'm already learning so much about what is truly a need and what is a want. 

Obviously a pedicure is a want but it kind of shocked me how my mind instantaneously went to thinking I HAD to have one. 

I hope you all are having a great New Years!  Me and my naked toes are signing off! 

The Rules for Our No-Spend Year

As I mentioned in the last post, we as a family are going to not be spending anything extra through the 2017 year. 

Today I thought I would share with you the rules we have set out to follow as a family.

I am sharing all of this with you as an extra added layer of protection for us (ha!) that will hopefully provide the accountability to help us continue this for the entire year. After all, y'all are watching us so we better not sway from these rules! 

Because right now we feel kind of scared and nervous and ridiculous about this.

But it will be fun to see if we are up for the challenge. 

One of the things I think I should mention (in case you are missing my obvious hints to get you to read my last post, ahem!) is that this is not just about money.  We are trying to change our thinking and our attitudes as a family.

That being said, we have different traditions and ways of living in our family than I am sure you do in your family and vice versa.  For example, since our kids have turned 8 we have given them the choice for each birthday to have either a party with their friends or to go on a local-ish trip.  This year they have both chosen trips.  We will still go on the trips but how we go and what we do and spend will be different than before.  Now is the trip actually needed?  Heck to the no.  But we have already decided to go ahead and take those trips.  That's a decision our family has made. We recently purchased a lake cottage that needs some work.  While we will not be dumping money into it during our no-spend year, we will still be spending money to begin the renovations on the cottage.

 So you see, how we do this will look differently than how you would do this.  And that's okay. 

If you are doing this too and have taken the challenge I'd love to hear how you plan to do this!

Now, the rules are not set in stone.  Moses did not come off Mt. Sinai with them.  They are rules our family will have to look back on so when we want to spend money on something really, REALLY badly; we will have something we can look to to remind us of what we are to do.  Because I know how this goes.  I will twist every rule I can get my hands on to be able to buy something.  I need the rules.  My kids need rules.  We are rules-kind-of-people. 

Here are our rules for our year of Not Spending:

• We'll Only Buy for Our Needs

This year we are buying only things we need and not things that we want. 

This has already been hard for me. 

I have wanted to buy Christmas clearance so, SO bad.  But I don't truly NEED anything there.  And Lord willing all of that stuff will be there in years to come.  Try as I might to convince myself that I have to buy it all now, it really will be there in later years. I have so much wrapping paper and everything already in our attic that I don't need to go out this year and mindlessly buy a bunch of stuff. 

So we are not going to be buying something unless there is a need that we have determined.

• Food Must Be From Home

We go on a lot of vacations.  At least we have in the past.  Nick is on the road a ton and there are a lot of opportunities for us to travel with him fairly inexpensively.  The most expensive thing about those trips seems to be all of us going out to eat. 

Nick has said that he wants to make sure we can still travel as a family and travel for field trips and things but we are going to be cutting all of the food costs out (mostly!) by bringing food from home. 

This also applies to going out to eat.  Craving pizza?  Instead of calling Dominos we will make it at home.  Is pizza a need?  No we could eat beans all the live long day but we are going to allow ourselves to enjoy some of our wants (of food, at least!)

• Homemade is Best

I've mentioned before that we are still going to be celebrating holidays and birthdays. I am sure we will purchase some gifts but we are going with the motto that "homemade is best".  I have a kajillion craft kits and projects that I could make for people for gifts.  Not only would those provide us with a meaningful gift but those are things we have already purchased, money invested in things to do that have been sitting around for years.  So a gift and something to spend my time doing...seems like a win, win for me. 

Homemade will be implemented, not just with gifts but with everything.  Games during the summer?  Homemade.  Halloween costumes?  Homemade.  So and so forth.  We are going to be making lots and lots of things.  And that will keep us very busy which I like the idea of very much.  No more bored children here...they'll be too busy making something.

• Maximize Our Usage of What We Do Buy

There are some things that we will still be purchasing.  This may seem crazy to some but we are keeping our gym membership. Our kids take swim lessons there as well as 4 other types of classes.  We get huge discounts by having a membership.  That being said Nick and I don't always take advantage of our membership like we should. 

But this year we will so we are getting the most out of what we are spending.  After all, with a family gym membership of $50 a month, going every day figures out to be less than $2 a day for our family of four to go and exercise and spend time together.   And that seems like a good deal, especially with us not spending money on other "fun" things. 

So like with our gym membership, whatever we do buy we will get the most of our purchase.  Like how my Grandma washes plastic baggies and reuses them (we will not be washing out plastic baggies). 

• Think Before We Buy

So this would seem like a no-brainer but allow me to explain.  We have a notebook that we are going to be keeping as a family.  If we have something that we really, REALLY want to buy, we are going to write it down.  We'll jot it down and then come back in a few days and write how we remedied that need.  What we learned from it.  I am imagining I will be writing several entries about wanting to buy Emma an outfit I see.  And I'll probably go back and reflect that we lived our life with what we have and survived.  Hallelujah!

Also if we have something that we think truly is a need, we will write it down and ponder it.  Pray about it.  Stress about it.  After all, is it really a need? 

I found myself doing this very thing this morning when I was cleaning the tub.  I was almost out of cleaner and instantly thought "I need to go buy more cleaner."  But after pondering it I thought about how I have a ton of baking soda and vinegar that would clean our bathtub.  And I have bleach.  And if I was really honest with myself (this is embarrassing) I have bottles and bottles of cleaner that have never even been opened.  So by stopping to think about it I found that I really didn't have a need at all. 

• Birthdays and Holidays are Still On

I mentioned above that homemade gifts will be given from our home.  But I am sure we will still buy gifts.  To clarify our gift buying, if we do buy gifts we are going to have a strict budget and keep to it.  No more frivolous buying of spending a ton of money on any and every little thing.  Those times are done. 

So those are our rules.  As you can see we could make this a lot more strict and say, "beans only, no gifts, nothing!"  But we are keeping some things in our lives that aren't true needs but things that are needed for our family to be happy.  For us this isn't about making ourselves miserable but rather to find those areas where we need to change, to learn gratitude, and to grow, and stretch ourselves in those. 

Are you taking a no-spend challenge?  What are your rules?

Comment below if you are joining me with a no-spend challenge and what your rules are. 

Have a great day friends!

Introducing: Our No-Spend Year!

The Money Saving Mom, Crystal Paine, inspired me this last year by making it her year of rest. 

I love the idea of having a theme for a year! 

So this upcoming year, 2017, our family has declared this to be a year of not spending extra!

We will buy for necessities but not for wants!

We've done this for a month in the past. It was hard.

I think a year may just kill us.

But...here's the thing: For us this is not only about money!

To give you a bit of a backstory, we recently came home from a two day whirlwind trip to The Henry Ford campus in Dearborn, Michigan.  Our kids loved, LOVED (you should go, like, for realz) touring Greenfield Village and The Henry Ford Museum.  On the way home we were talking as a family about how neat the old generations were. How it would have been so neat to have self-service gas stations and to sit around and listen to radio programs. 

The kids went on to do their own things in the backseat while Nick and I continued talking. We discussed how much we hate that our kids are growing up in this age of entitlement and technology and loss of skills that so many people had in generations before (sewing, baking, basic carpentry skills, anyone?). 

Anyway, as we drove on we kept talking and by the time we pulled into our driveway we had this plan outlined: a year of not buying anything extra. For gifts we would encourage our kids to make homemade gifts. We would entertain ourselves with things we already have (shocker!) or we would instill some good old fashioned hard work to pass the time. 

We will still buy for needs but wants have to go.  No more running out for craft supplies or more Legos or WHATEVER! 

We're hoping this creates an attitude of gratitude that we so desperately want our family to have as part pf our legacy.  We want this to help their creativity blossom.  We actually like it when our kids are bored: It's when they think their best.

The extra money? Well, we have a wee bit o' debt left that by paying that off would make us DEBT FREE!!! So we're really hoping that we can throw all of this extra money at that.  But that's not our reasoning behind this madness. :)

We're hoping that, Lord willing, when we are staring at the back end of 2017 that our kiddos will have a better appreciation for their money, and especially ours, and will think a bit differently about spending and the value attached to their things. That, when they are making out their 2017 Christmas lists, perhaps they will ask for less rather than more toys. 

All that said, I'm inviting you all to join in on our fun...be it for the entire year, a month, or even a week! 

I plan on documenting this all as the year progresses in hopes that by doing so y'all can keep me (us) accountable and on task.

Wish us luck and let me know if you'd like to join in on the fun! 

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