A Whole Lot of Nothing...

So I was checking out my friend Mother Owl Haven the other day and got tipped onto a great idea.

So our family has decided to play along. Nothing but Absolute Needs, and simple goodness for the entire month of September, and I can’t wait. I’ll be updating you on my progress every week. Can I handle taming my shopaholic tendencies? We’ll see?

I’m really motivated to get this going after writing out a check to the high school for around $200 for school class fees, student body cards, etc. And that was basically for only one of my six kids. So much for the money I was planning to spend on buying new back to school clothes.

I’ve got a couple of weeks to figure out how we are going to do it. So far the fast food, candy, movies, rentals, and stuff like that will be totally out of the picture. I’ll have to reach in my dusty bag of creative tricks to keep the family entertained on a budget of nothing. But I like challenges! Especially ones that result in more money staying in my pocket.

I was talking to Prince Erik and he wondered if he would have to give up the Bogus Basin Bike race he’s been training for all year. I told him I thought it would still be o.k. to do but we are rethinking how he will do it. Maybe we’ll have to find a friend near Boise that he could stay with so he doesn’t have to rent a hotel room. Pack his own food instead of eating out. Etc.

I’ve been tempted to stock pile a bunch of goodies to get ready for September but I think that would defeat the purpose of the challenge so I’m trying to live as close to normal up until day 1. In the next few days I’m also going to add up our averages to see how much we spend on utilities, groceries, gas etc. I’ll try and break them down so that I can really see how much we save by trying to stick to the whole nothing goal.

It might be similar to our No-Technology month of February. Dang hard to deal with at the beginning but easier and more fun near the end.

Anyway let me know if you want to play along. You can email me for the button’s code that you see above or check out Owl Haven’s blog to see her information on the whole wild and crazy idea. September can’t come soon enough for my bank balance – how bout yours.