September 30 Days of Nothing Challenge

div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”a href=”http://keirajoy07.blogspot.com/”img border=”0″ height=”320″ src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vQidUcJSjaI/Tl2Zu-dtcWI/AAAAAAAAAiI/5YTuTZqMp1A/s320/bpchallenge.jpg” width=”277″ //a/divbr /i{Okay, Peeps, I have been meaning to blog about this for a week, but my life is just chaotic! Between school, practices, cub scouts and drippy noses from allergies, I’m spent! Don’t even get me started about the paperwork that has inundated my home! Might be a Wordless Wednesday one of these weeks!}/ibr /br /My Blogging BFF over at a href=”http://keirajoy07.blogspot.com/”Bushel and a Peck/anbsp;is doing a 30 Days of Nothing challenge for the month of September. nbsp;Eeeeeek!!! I just love this lady and her guts to do this…again.nbsp;i{Honestly I have not met her…byet/b…BUT she did marry one of my hubby’s BFF so by default she is my BFF!} /iChristie and her hubby havenbsp;done this before, but this time she is inviting a crowd to join, watch, blog, whatever, but we are all invited.br /br /Here’s the gist. For the month of September DON’T SPEND ANYTHING. Let me ‘splain. The challenge is to cut out thenbsp;miscellaneous spending and just live off the basics. i{Hello?!? Is this mic on?}/ibr /br /Yes, you can buy gas for your car.br /Yes, you can pay your utilities.br /Yes, you can eat so buy groceries i{We’re cutting our spending not fasting, but if you did fast you sure could save some serious cash!}/ibr /br /What you want to cut out or become more aware of is that Starbucks run or a quick drive through McD’s when the kids-are-whiny-and-I’m-too-tired-to-cook-anyway type spending. She calls it “purging poor spending habits.” Take the month of September to decide to NOT spend money on anything extra and see what, where and when the urge to spend happens.br /br /bBut I don’t spend my money on extra “stuff”!/bbr /br /This is totally me! We don’t live excessively. We live on a budget and use the cash system for all our necessities like purchasing clothes, babysitting, household needs, etc.nbsp;We never spend ball /bthe money in our envelopes during a given month, but what if we didn’t use bany/b of it? How much extra money would we have?br /br /i*wait…let me go add that up…talk amongst yourselves*/ibr /br /div style=”text-align: center;”bspan class=”Apple-style-span” style=”font-size: large;”$840!!!/span/b/divdiv style=”text-align: center;”bspan class=”Apple-style-span” style=”font-size: large;”br //span/b/divWow! That is some serious cash that could go towards our HELOC debt. But can we go an entire month without our once a week i{okay maybe twice weekly}/i out to dinner night?br /br /Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that when she suggested this idea I wanted to go out and start buying Christmas gifts i{curse you holiday catalogs!!}/inbsp;But I am *gulp* gonna try it.br /br /In hernbsp;a href=”http://keirajoy07.blogspot.com/2011/08/two-days-left.html”2 days Left/anbsp;post,nbsp;Christie wrote a great post about how you can do it and what to expect during the challenge. I really love how she gives some options if you want to join in the fun.br /br /For us, I think hubby and I are going to keep our date nights. That means paying a babysitter and going out to eat. We have found that we are better parents to our children when we nurture our relationship i{I’m a happier mommy when I get a break from being mommy and just be a wife.}/ibr /br /I will find ways to lessen that expense. Maybe I’ll find some friends who will babysit for free i{hint, hint friends who follow this blog ;o) } /iOr maybe we’ll get an unexpected gift card or find a great coupon deal. Or an anonymous generous person might buy our dinner for us. Miracles do happen!br /br /I’ll be blogging about my journey when I have a chance. I am a mom after all and family comes first.br /br /If you’d like to join the journey, head on over to a href=”http://keirajoy07.blogspot.com/”Christie’s blog/a and see her thorough explanations. You can email her if you need some spreadsheets that will help you plan meals and inventory your pantry. Send me your blog so I can follow along as well!br /br /September starts tomorrow!! Good luck!br /br /a href=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” target=”_blank”img alt=”Anna” border=”0″ src=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” //a