How did everyone do on their first week? Did you stick to the spending freeze?

I hope you're all caught up, especially with your "bucket" list of dreams. Also, be sure to answer the questions of the day I posted last week (if not in public, at least know your own responses). We're going to be using those as a basis to set some goals for the next five weeks.

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We were just six and one half hours away from spending nothing during the freeze, but I had to buy gas to make it home from work yesterday. Obviously, gas was "approved" but I had really wanted to make it a week without spending anything. Total for the week- $37.00.

Morning. I did ok with my spending considering the amount of Window shopping We did.

Currently everything I have will have to be packed up and moved within 5 weeks. A good incentive not to stock up or buy anything at the moment. Still we went shopping. I go tomorrow to pick out flooring for my new house (seller is paying) Still DH won't be with me so I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. Picked out pain colors too to make sure everything goes together.
I think where we really saved this week is in not going out to eat. That is our weakness of extra spending.

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma

I only broke the freeze once, I got a Tim Horton's coffee for $1.54.. and much to my surprise, DH only broke it once too and bought a bottle of pepsi..

I'm all caught up except that I'm still working on the list of dreams.

That's really great!!!

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I did terrible. We found a dryer for $40.00 and with all the rain I have had weeks worth of laundry stacked up cause I couldn't get it dry outside, so we ended up getting it. My washer broke, our water system failed and my garbage disposal broke. When it rains it pours. The water system we got fixed for $97.00, the orginal repair cost was $1600, the washer we are using a washer that my ex-husband had sitting around so that didn't cost us anything. The garbage disposal cost $49.00 tried to live without it but the sink kept getting clogged.. Hopefully this week will be better.

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We did good. Had approved spending since we would be out of town. Small town living equals higher everyday prices. Went to a Walmart and got twice as much for same price. That was the only extras...and as I said it was approved. Looking forward to not spending any money except gas this week. All events are free for kids this week and it finally nice enough to use the in laws pool. Kids will only want to do that for awhile. I am pretty excited almost all caught up on bills and I may not have to look for work outside of the home now! Keeping my fingers crossed since we have not had any extras pop up yet.

We did great on the spending freeze. Today, well, I BLEW it, big.

I decided today the kids & I would do something fun since it was the only day we don't have ball games before I have surgery next week.

Took the boys for their physicals, got back in the car and the temp thingy read 101* . Holy Day! Told them whatever they decided it had to be indoors and they all had to settle on it. They picked Wendy's for lunch. Good enough. Fed all 5 of us for $18. Then they wanted to go to the mall. Good. I picked up bday gifts for July, Aug & Sept bdays, got them a couple of pairs of shorts, pj's, Miss Picky a Nike bathing suit top and DS a pair of Nike tennis shoes for basketball camp all for less than $150.

Then I remembered Steak 'n Shake has Happy Hour from 2-4. All shakes are 1/2 off. So we headed over there and got shakes for less than $10 and they were yummy!

Stopped to get black shoe polish so I could shine up Dave's shoes for his corporate visit this week. Made a pedicure appt since I figure after they open me up I won't feel like painting my toes so that's where I'll be Thursday!

Kids had a blast and have told anyone that will listen what all they did today. Wasn't much and was stuff I needed to get done before surgery anyway, but they didn't know that! Worked out great for all of us!

SO money well spent, IMO!

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I'm doing good so far! I spent $8.00 on cheese and bread (on approved spending list), and $20 on pool chemicals for our new pop-up pool (also on ASL). I cheated, and bought 3 chocolate-covered cherries at the corner store (66c), but I held myself back at Walmart last night, and passed on the much-wanted Subway sandwich I've been craving for so long. Instead, when DH got home later, we had breakfast for dinner (yummy). Total so far: $28.66.

Also, I found out that there is a Kroger not far from me, so I'm putting coupons on my ASL. we are at the end of our money and I need to stretch it as far as possible, and with sales/coupons I can get a lot of food for very little money. i need to be proactive and work the system a little right now or we'll be up a very deep crick with 0 paddles to be had.

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We did really good, but I am beating myself up for the money we did spend this past weekend... even though most of it was pre-approved or part of our allowances. I think maybe I've gotten too much into tunnel vision when it comes to the not spending money, but I really wanted to spend nothing the past week just to prove to myself that I could do it.

We used the pre-approved $20 for my mom's birthday. I bought her lunch and a beer at the street fair and we had enough for my husband and I to share a beer (a HUGE luxury for us since we never spend the money on alcohol anymore). Then all we needed was one more dollar from the leftover change to share another one, so DH dipped into his allowance and brought up that extra $1.00. I just feel guilty thinking that we should have saved the leftover money. But I know we both needed the little treat...

On Father's Day, my DH also dipped into his allowance and bought us all ice creams at the zoo. It only totaled $8.34, but again, I felt guilty that we spent anything at all.

THEN, Walmart was having a sale on Mac N Cheese (50 cents per box) and hot dogs (50 cents per package) on the last day of the freeze so I spent $7 and stocked up on some of that (4 packages of hot dogs and 6 boxes of mac n cheese). I guess since the allowance money didn't count, I only spent the $7.00. I ended up not getting any milk or gas until the official freeze was over. Also, I was pretty excited because I found milk at Walmart for $1.58 per gallon, which is the cheapest I've seen it yet. And we go through about 3 gallons of milk per week, so that was exciting.

Other than that though we did awesome. I was really happy with my DH because he managed to not spend any money either during the week. His weakness is going to get fast food when he doesn't have a lot of time for lunch. He managed to not do that once!

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Monica ~ Mommy to Matheu, 7 and Liliana, 2