Cheshirecat's living beneath her means

Extra money
Our income tax return came. We normally would have spent it “whatever” way and would not have been able to tell you where it went two week later. But this time most of it is in saving with just a little spent on extra food.

Tempted
I was tempted to go buy the groceries on my list and use my debt card, knowing my husband’s check “should” be here today. Then I thought twice asking myself is there anything we need today and the answer was NO! So I will wait until I cash the check and have the cash in my hand.

Loving it
I’m really loving this journey to living beneath our means. It’s like a game that I know I can win and as long as I think twice and remember when in doubt don’t.

Week Two
Again we kept half in cash for the week. We used that money for snowmobile, gas and food……..not going over the cash amount we had kept out. I transferred what was over the $200 in our checking to pay on our Visa.

Appreciation………. I find myself reveling at the heightened appreciation I have for the things I’m choosing to spend my “easy earned “ money on. (I call it “easy earned” money because I have the most wonderful job anyone could have I get paid to play with kids all day . (I am a reading teacher!)
When I was buying tons…… rather I could afford it or not I did not appreciate it anywhere near what I was experiencing now. I did not realize that until now. (Hindsight is 20/20)

Week three
Again we took half out in cash and put the rest in our checking account, transferring everything above the $200 to pay on our Visa. This week we decided to check the miles on our vehicles to see how many we were using and if we could cut back there. We found we could indeed cut back some.

We decided that the first move in our new game was to start living within our means: so we could latter move to living beneath our means. So we took all our credit cards and put them away. In fact I was going to go to Walmart and charge the food I thought we needed. I did not go to Walmart I went home instead and put all our cards away. I had under $20 in my wallet, so we decided that that had to last until my husband’s check came in in a few days.

We sat down and decided what we absolutely had to have between now and when he got his check. We decided all we really had to have was food items that totaled a little over $5 which I had in cash.

We had planned on going snowmobiling that weekend but postponed it until the next weekend when we could use cash. When my husband’s check came I cashed it, taking half out in cash and putting the rest in our checking account because I like to keep $200 padding in our checking account.

I spent most of the cash on food, and gas shopping from a list and only buying what we needed to eat healthy for that week. The week went by very smoothly and I still had a little cash in my wallet from when this journey began just in case. Ok fast forward a week.

This is the beginning of my journey to Living Beneath My Means and Loving it..

And we’re going to approach this like a game because I love games and it will be more fun. I will have to back track a bit to catch you up. For the last few months I have been working on living within my means by watching what I spend………..didn’t work……..everything just stayed sort of the same. Our biggest problem was having to use all my check to pay bills and all the charges on our credit card from the month before. Our situation was not dire but I was tired of always thinking about money.

So I read some on line articles about Living Within and beneath Your means, most talked about the importance of switching to using mostly cash. So we decided that was what we needed to do. This was about February 8, 2008. Hence I will start my journey on that date.