Today

Well, most of you know that I am participating in the "Forget The Joneses Project" over at the Mommysavers forum. (You can read about how I have been doing here.)

I am currently working on the "21 Day Spending Freeze" and I think I did my first cheat today. On the way to school my 5th Grade Daughter remembered that today is the one day a month that the school store is open. She asked me if she could have some money to purchase something there. Clearly buying some trinkets from the school store must be classified as a "want" not a "need", but I went ahead and gave her $2 to spend.

As I thought about it later on, it became clear to me that I have much less trouble denying myself "wants" than doing so to my children. For example, a couple of days ago two of my friends e-mailed me and wanted to plan to get together for dinner the last week in March. I really had no problem telling them I was participating in a 21 Day Spending Freeze challenge and asking if we could postpone until April. I wasn't able to, however, tell my daughter that she would need to wait until next month to shop at the school store. This is really an interesting experiment that I'm sure will bring a lot of insight when the 21 days are over.

I also stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few necessities. Here's what I got:

Hot Dog Rolls - $ .69
Bread - $ .69
Bread - $ .69
Ital. Bread - $1.49
Bananas - $1.23
Sour Cream - $ .99
Deli Turkey - $2.69
Trail Mix - $1.49
Trail Mix - $1.49
Rolls - $1.39
Raisins - $ .99
Eggs - $1.99
Milk - $3.99
Total = $19.81

$497.57- Subtotal of March Food