Step #4 (Continued)

Forget The Joneses Project
I am participating in the Forget The Jonses Project (started by the MommySavers Forum), which involves 100 steps to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life. (You can read an outline of Steps 1-50 here.)



Step #4 - Create An Approved Spending List

I wrote about creating an approved spending list here. But now, here's a look at the approved spending list I have created: (I will be the first to admit that everything on this list is a want, not a need. I am clearly cheating on the 21 day spending freeze. When I first learned about the Forget the Joneses project about 6 months ago, I actually did complete a very successful 21 day spending freeze. Even though I am not being as strict this time, I still think this is a worthwhile exercize and I want to move on the the other steps, so, here it is:

Special Outings (already planned) - $350
This includes a lot of activities for me this month, including going to a concert with my husand and some friends ($100), going on a day trip to New York City with some friends ($100), buying tickets to see my daughter in a play ($50).

Halloween candy - I bought this a couple of days ago as I had none to give out to Trick-or-Treaters. $8.00

Meeting a friend for lunch - $20. I haven't seen this friend in a while and we made plans to meet for lunch on Thursday. I will need to pay for my 5 year old daughter also.

Step #4

Forget The Joneses Project
I am participating in the Forget The Jonses Project (started by the MommySavers Forum), which involves 100 steps to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life. (You can read an outline of Steps 1-50 here.)


Step #4 - Create An Approved Spending List

Notebook Assignment

MommySavers says, "Write down all the things you think you will need to purchase in the next three weeks. You are only allowed to purchase the bare-bones minimum, things you cannot get by without. This isn’t the time to hit the Target clearance rack (you can do without gift wrap for next Christmas) or to stock up on kids’ clothing for next fall (chances are they’ll have enough anyway). This is a time for you stay out of the stores and to question what is truly a necessity."

"Now get going… write down everything that is on your “approved” spending list between now and the end of the freeze. As things come up within the 21-day period, decide whether or not they belong on the “approved” spending list. You may unexpectedly run out of deodorant. It’s OK to add it to your approved list when the need arises."

****
I'll get to work on my list . . .

Step #3

Forget The Joneses Project
I am participating in the Forget The Jonses Project (started by the MommySavers Forum), which involves 100 steps to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life. (You can read an outline of Steps 1-50 here.)

Step #3 - Question The Difference Between Wants and Needs

MommySavers says, "During your spending freeze, you will need to question the difference between wants and needs. Some things will be more clear than others. Yes, chances are you need gas to get to work. No, you don’t need a new necklace to match the sweater you got for Christmas."

"… But what about the things that aren’t so obvious? Do you really need to birthday card for you brother-in-law, or can you make one? Do you really need to get your hair colored? Those gray areas (pun intended) are where your challenges lie. Try to anticipate the decisions you’ll have to make in the next three weeks. Are you going to be invited out to lunch? If your child needs money for school lunch, will you have him brown-bag it instead? What will you do?"

***
So, the items I purchased today were: crystals for a pendant order (I think that qualifies as a need as someone ordered and paid for a pendant with a crystal and I didn't have any more of them), some glue for my jewelry business (another need to keep my business going), and some modeling clay for my daughter's school project (I guess the modeling clay isn't technically a need, we could have maybe found something else around the house for her to use for her project).

So, Day 1 of my spending freeze and after a little thought it looks like I already made one purchase that was a want not a need.

This is going to be really hard!

Step #2

Forget The Joneses Project
I am participating in the Forget The Jonses Project (started by the MommySavers Forum), which involves 100 steps to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life. (You can read an outline of Steps 1-50 here.)



Step #2 - Go On A 21 Day Spending Freeze

What is a spending freeze? MommySavers says, "To put it simply, no more spending. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You’re not allowed to spend money on anything but necessities. Use up the food you have in your cupboards. Your grocery budget is now limited to what you must buy (milk and toilet paper, for example). Think of it as “Mommysavers Survivor” except the only prize at the end of the game is the money you’ve saved."

"Why 21 days? Research shows it takes approximately 21 days to make something a habit. During these three weeks, the habit of questioning wants vs. needs will be reinforced."

****
So, today was Day #1 of my 21 Day Spending Freeze. I did buy a few supplies that I needed for my jewelry business. I really wanted an Egg Sandwich from Dunkin Donuts, but I stayed strong and came home and cooked up some eggs and homefries instead.

The freeze for me will last from today, October 28th through November 17th.

This is going to be hard!

Step #1

Forget The Joneses Project
I am participating in the Forget The Jonses Project (started by the MommySavers Forum), which involves 100 steps to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life. (You can read an outline of Steps 1-50 here.)

Step #1 - Grab A Notebook








** Done! (That was easy!) :)

Forget The Joneses Project - Steps 1 thru 50

I am participating in the Forget The Jonses Project, which involves 100 steps to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life. (This project originated at the MommySavers Forum. It is a great site. Feel free to join and participate in the project there.)

Below is an outline of Steps 1 through 50. Follow along and watch my progress in future posts.

PHASE ONE: THE SPENDING FREEZE

#1 Grab a Notebook
#2 Go on a 21-Day Spending Freeze
#3 Question the Difference Between Wants and Needs
#4 Create an "Approved Spending" List
#5 Get Support
#6 Track Your Temptations
#7 Celebrate Your Victories
Step #8: Get a Clear Financial Picture/Calculate Your Net Worth
Step #9: Reflect Upon What You've Learned
Step #10: Track Your Spending
Step #11: The Modified Spending Freeze
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PHASE TWO: DREAMS AND GOALS

Step #12: Dream a Little
Step #13: Analyze Your Dreams
Step #14: Organizing Your Dreams
Step #15: Turning Your Dreams into Goals
Step #16: Supercharging Success
Step #17: Accept Responsibility, Gain Control

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PHASE THREE: BUDGETING

Step #18: Gather Your Records
Step #19: Calculate Your Cost of Living
Step #20: BONUS STEP Create a Vision Board
Step #21: Calculate Your Income
Step #22: Re-Evaluate Expenses
Step #23: Avoid Budgeting Mistakes
Steps #24 & 25: Wrapping Up Your Budget

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PHASE FOUR: PAYING IT DOWN

Step #26: Know Your FICO Score
Step #27: Analyze Your FICO Score
Step #28: Get a Handle on Your Debt
Step #29: Prioritize Paydowns
Step #30: Accelerate Paydowns
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PHASE FIVE: PURGE

Step #31: Create a Vision
Step #32: Plan Your Piles
Step #33: Create Room for What You Want in Life
Step #34: Think About Why You Hang Onto Things
Step #35: Get it Done!
Step #36: Organize
Step #37: Freshen Up!
Step #38: Maintain

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PHASE SIX: MINDFUL SHOPPING

Step #39: Identify Shopping Mistakes, Weaknesses and Triggers
Step #40: Come up with Coping Mechanisms
Step #41: Put Your Money Where Your Priorities Are
Step #42: Be Wary of Spaving
Step #43: Spending with a Purpose
Step #44: Be Wary of Rationalizing Purchases
Step #45: Fun Money

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PHASE SEVEN: KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE

Step #46: First Things First
Step #47: Delay of Gratification
Step #48: Determine Underlying Wants
Step #49: It's About the Feeling
Steps #50 & #51: Energize Your Goals

Forget The Joneses Project - Overview

I have decided to revisit the "Forget The Joneses Project" that is happening over at the MommySavers Forum.

The Forget The Jonses Project is a series of 100 Steps for you to follow to get back on track financially, simplify, and add more meaning to your life! Sounds like a good plan to me!

If you would like to participate in the Project over at MommySavers, you will need to sign up as a registered user (it is a very nice site), or you can just follow along with me.

I have outlined Steps 1-50 in my next post.

I will go into each step in more detail as I go along and share my progress with you.

Wish me luck!

21 Day Spending Freeze Update

Okay. As most of you know I have been participating in the "Forget The Jonses" Project through the MommySavers forum.

Today is Day 18. Things have been going pretty well - but not perfect. Here is a list of the "cheats" that I can remember:

Last Thursday - $24 for pizza when daughter had a friend over for a sleepover
Last Week - $3 to daughter to go to store with friends
Last Week - $3 to daughter to go to store with friends again

Total of Unnecessary Spending - $30

This has been really difficult. There have been so many times that I wanted to stop for lunch or for a coffee. It really got me thinking about how much unnecessary money I do typically spend.

It really does seem to be a lot easier to NOT spend money if you stay at home.

3 days left . . .

Updates

Well, I've been busy getting my new jewelry website up over at Etsy (see sidebar), so I'm a little behind in posting. Here's what's been going on:

21 Day Spending Freeze
Today is my eleventh day of this challenge (more than half way - yeay!). It has been going pretty well. Yesterday was the hardest day yet. I went to Target to get stuff for the girls Easter baskets and I was tempted by a lot of other stuff! I really wanted to get myself something new to wear on Easter. I even tried on a couple of things. I liked them and would have made a purchase if I wasn't participating in this challenge. I knew that I "wanted" them, I did not "need" them. Small victory! As I was out and about doing all my errands, I really wanted to stop at Dunkin Donuts for a coffee. It was cold and rainy out and my urge was strong. I managed to wait until I was done all my errands, and I went home and made myself a cup of coffee at home. This delaying gratification isn't easy!

One thing I have learned is it is a lot easier to avoid buying stuff if you stay home!

I did give in to my daughters though. My oldest wanted to go for a walk with several kids from the neighborhood to a nearby corner store. I gave in and gave her $3 to buy a candy for her and her two sisters. (I'm finding it easier to delay my own gratification than to make my children delay theirs!) I did resist their begging to stop at McDonalds for dinner on Monday night. It was very tempting, but I said no. I even explained about the 21 day spending freeze challenge and explained how it could be good for our family, the environment, and the world, if everyone lowered their rate of consumption. They seemed to "get it". And one of my daughter's even wrote a great story about how not buying stuff could help the earth. :)

Tracking Food Spending:
This has been going pretty well, BUT I need to go to the grocery store today to get food for Easter dinner. And truthfully, in spite of the large (and expensive) last trip to the grocery store (that I thought would last us pretty much through the rest of the month), we do really need more food for lunches and dinners. I'm hoping not to spend too much though. We will surely go over our $500 food budget this month, but a lot of it has been "entertainment food" and I think that would be better budgeted under our "spending money" category. I'll tally it all up and analyze at the end of the month.

Snowflakes: I sold another item on ebay and earned another $7.50 for the debt snowball. I'll have to total up all the snowflakes at the end of the month. I think I did pretty well.

One big "oops" in this category though - we received a check for $460 from our Flexible Spending Account (pre-tax medical). This should be a great big snowflake, but we need to put it into our regular budget as we are falling short this month. Part of the reason is my husband's commission was $250 less than we expected. The rest is for misc. unbudgeted expenses that I'll have to analyze more.

Museum of Science Trip:
We had a lot of fun when we brought the kids to the Museum of Science on Saturday. But we did spend a lot more than we expected. We had one free pass and 4 passes for $5 reduced fee, BUT, it turns out, to use the "free" pass, we needed to pay one full price ticket. So, the basic entrance for my family of 5 cost us $32 (instead of the $20 I was expecting). We had planned to do two "extra" attractions, but because of the high costs we decided to do only one (3d shark movie) - this cost another $17. We checked our coats, which cost another $5. We got ice cream and drinks, which cost us $16.

The trip on the commuter train cost $21 round trip (this was more than I had expected since kids under 11, all of mine, ride free). Then we had to take the subway which cost $8 round trip (also more than I had anticipated since the kids ride free).

Then we stopped for dinner in town (which we had planned) and that cost $60.

So, if I'm adding correctly, this day cost us $158. (I guess that's not sooo bad for a family of 5, but I thought it would be less.)


Anyway, that's where things stand right now.

I am participating in the "Forget The Jonses Project" over at the Mommysavers forum. (You can read about how I have been doing here.) I am also part of the Snowflake Revolution (check it out).

I'm Trying To Forget The Joneses

We have some very close friends that I'll refer to as "The Joneses". Although I am protecting their identity by referring to them as "The Joneses", it is, in fact, a very fitting name for their family (at least in relation to my family).

We have been friends with "The Joneses" since we were all in college, none of us yet married. Unlike my husband and I, "The Jonses" have always been very good with their money. My husband and I got married right after college and purchased a home immediately. Mr. and Mrs. Jones waited to get married for a couple of years, saving money by living with their respective parents during that time. When my husband and I purchased our first home, we put down a down payment of $14,000. This money came from a settlement from a law suit from a car accident that I had been in. It was the only savings we had. "The Joneses" on the other hand, put down $100,000 cash that they had been saving throughout their lives!

As we socialized with them often, I began to realize that they didn't waste their money on knick knacks from the Christmas Tree Shop (like I did), but saved up for big purchases like their heirloom quality bedroom set. We, on the other hand, financed all of the furniture that we purchased.

Anyway, fast forward 17 years and it should be no surprise that we are struggling to get out of debt and "The Joneses" are in excellent financial shape.

In fact, they are going on a three week vacation to Italy this summer. I have known about this for a while and although I would also like to take my family on such a trip, I hadn't really felt jealous about them going. Until today. . .

I just found out that some other friends of "The Joneses" will be going on the Italy trip with them. They would, of course, rather be going with us, but it isn't in our budget this year. It also wasn't in our budget when "The Joneses" and this other family went on two trips to Disney World and another trip to The Bahamas.

Yes, I am jealous and jealousy is not a pretty emotion. I know that.

I am happy for "The Joneses", they really do deserve these things. They lived like no one else, and now they can live like no one else.

It's just really hard to not want to keep up with "The Joneses".

I am participating in the "Forget The Jonses Project" over at the Mommysavers forum. (You can read about how I have been doing here.)

This article has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance #144 over at Being Frugal.

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

Today

Sold 4 items on ebay today for a total of $38. Hello Snowflakes!

Also earned $20 babysitting today.

Day 5 of the 21 Day Spending Freeze - and I still haven't spent a penny! Yeay!

So today's Food Spending is also $0. (Monthly subtotal for Food = $477.76)

So, I'm feeling pretty good today!

I also finished reading Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin, which was a very powerful book that I will write about later this week.

Today

Well, today is Day 3 of my "Spending Freeze", and so far it has been going well.

Haven't spent a dime!

This has certainly made tracking my food expenses easier too!

Forget The Joneses Project - Phase I (Steps 1-5)

As I noted in my last post, I am participating in the "Forget The Joneses Project" at the Mommysavers Forum. I am a bit behind since the project began in January, but it doesn't matter so long as you follow the steps in order.


PHASE ONE: THE SPENDING FREEZE

#1 Grab a Notebook

I decided to use a word document for this.

#2 Go on a 21-Day Spending Freeze

"What is a spending freeze? To put it simply, no more spending. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You’re not allowed to spend money on anything but necessities. Use up the food you have in your cupboards. Your grocery budget is now limited to what you must buy (milk and toilet paper, for example). Think of it as “Mommysavers Survivor” except the only prize at the end of the game is the money you’ve saved." J

This one is going to be tough. Yes, I have committed to going 21 days without spending money on anything that is not a necessity. I am excited about this challenge though. It is something that I have thought about trying often in the past. So, from March 9th through March 30th I will not spend money on anything but necessities. Luckily I just went grocery shopping and my home is filled with food.

#3 Question the Difference Between Wants and Needs

"During your spending freeze, you will need to question the difference between wants and needs. Try to anticipate the decisions you’ll have to make in the next three weeks. Are you going to be invited out to lunch? If your child needs money for school lunch, will you have him brown-bag it instead? What will you do? "

As I look ahead to the next 21 days I do notice two dates that will be a challenge.

The first is next Saturday. We have planned to take the kids to the Museum of Science for the day. We reserved passes from the library which will allow us to get in the museum for $5 each (instead of the regular price of $17), plus we have one free pass, so the total for our family of 5 will be $20. Plus we will be taking the train in town, which will cost. These things are obviously wants not needs. But since they were planned before we began this challenge, we will keep the plans.

The next is Easter dinner. I will be having Easter dinner for my extended family at my home. Although I did already purchase the ham, there might be other foods for the event that I will buy that won't technically be needs.


#4 Create an "Approved Spending" List

"Write down all the things you think you will need to purchase in the next three weeks. You are only allowed to purchase the bare-bones minimum, things you cannot get by without."

Here's my Approved Spending List for the next 21 days:

- Groceries (fruit, vegetables, milk, bread, eggs, Easter dinner food, NO DIET COKE)
- Gas for the car
- Museum of Science Trip (noted above)
- Easter Baskets for the kids

#5 Get Support

I have been going to the Mommysavers forum for support and the blogosphere for support. :)


(I'll keep you posted as move along through the steps.)

The Forget The Joneses Project

Thanks to commenter Steph O, I am participating in the Mommysavers' "Forget The Joneses Project".

Mommysavers is an on line forum. Their website states:

"Mommysavers.com helps parents make the most of their time and money. We want to give you the tools to live a rich, fulfilled life while on a budget or living on one income. We truly can help you live "more richly" for less!"

The "Forget The Joneses Project" is explained as:

"Each year at Mommysavers we hear from a lot of you who resolve to get out of debt, break the paycheck to paycheck cycle or save more money. We want to help all of you. However, cutting up the credit cards is just the first step in achieving true financial fitness. You also need to change the way you look at money and how you relate to it. You need to redefine your relationship with material possessions, see just how your self-worth may be connected to your net worth and really analyze how you’re using your other greatest resource, your time. It's all about being mindful with your spending and putting your money where your priorities, dreams, and values are. In this year-long project, you’ll learn what you need to know to improve your finances and your life all at the same time. Think of it as a "best you" with a financial twist."

I will list the steps of the project tomorrow. If you want to check it out yourself, click here.