Nothing New/Mindful Spending Week 15

[Ginevra]

The "rules" of this challenge are self-defined. Anyone can join in at any time. The aim of the challenge (for me) is to combat consumerism, wastefulness, mindless buying, and overspending. It is meant to nurture creative problem solving, ecology, frugality, intentionalism, and resourcefulness. To support these goals, I seek to buy nothing new/unnecessary. I aim to use existing resources, borrow, hand-craft, and buy existing second-hand materials to the greatest extent possible. However, I recognize that life is unpredictable, and family life increases this factor exponentially, so I will buy new in the following cases, when a non-buying option does not present:

 

Food, health, and necessary household goods excluded.

Requirements for school, work, or health and well-being which cannot be obtained used.

Gifts, when a creative non-commercial option will not suffice.

Anything animal or gardening related that cannot be obtained used.

Fuel/energy sources.

 

Posts will appear each Saturday, referring to the week that is ending. Post your successes, creative solutions, relapses and weak moments. It doesn't matter if you have a weak moment! Just keep swimming!

Didn't buy much this past week...until today, when I bought an embarrasing amount of yarn. I'm having a ball learning to loom knit and thought, "Well, what I really need is a stash of solid-color yarns that I can just pick up and begin something at any time..." Heehee. I can report that now I do have the requisite stash. Don't tell DH.

 

So, I did have the previously-described outlay of money for DS' cold, which could just as easily been ridden out and would have saved money and time. But whatever. At least his cold is almost gone.

 

The big win for the year is outside of my control: we are getting a tax refund for the first time in a long, long while...basically this just means that I paid too much in Estimated Taxes, which I did figure would be the case. But, this is an enormous relief. With DH and his brother separating their companies, I had simply NO IDEA how the taxes would work out and if we had to pay, it would be a problem.

 

How is everyone else doing?

[Annie G]

Did just ok this week. Bought some mulch to freshen the beds around the house. And ordered pizza tonight because I was too lazy to cook because I've spent the afternoon prepping food for my family to eat next week while I'm visiting grandkids in Florida.  Yeah, I know they can fix their own food but dh has been losing weight and I don't want to derail that too much. 

The concrete guys showed up today to begin tearing out our huge parking area to redo it.  And just a couple hours into the project dh and I realize we're going to have to pay a landscaper too.  My spring project list is growing instead of getting smaller!

 

Quill, I knew we'd get a refund from federal taxes but I waited until today to finalize and mail it.  Glad that's over for this year but not looking forward to next year when we have no more kids to claim.

 

Next week's mindful spending is going to be high. Haven't seen the grands since last July and we're going to have a busy week...beach, Disney, quilt stores....my credit card is going to be smoking. But I'm grateful that dd and sil are Disney season pass holders and are also frugal. That helps a lot!

[SKL]

Made a couple more Amazon purchases.  Books and a DVD for my kids, and a few other minor personal things.  I am definitely overdoing the book thing.  I don't know if we'll ever have time to use all those books.  Hey, isn't there a bumper sticker or something - "so many books, so little time"?

 

I wanted to buy my kids a couple of batons, you know, like all of us girls used to play with as kids?  I figured they could be gotten cheaply, but apparently not any more.  I ordered a couple of the "cheapies" which are not so cheap.  If I hadn't already glibly promised to buy them (without price checking), I would have skipped that.  :/

 

I paid $180 for our TKD belt test, which we passed.

[SKL]

Oh yeah, we all went to the chiropractor again this week, and we have another follow-up next week.  I still haven't learned how to get this covered by insurance.  I should really get on that.

[prairiewindmomma]

We had a very sick kid this week.  We narrowly avoided the ER, but $$ was spent on pedialyte and $$ was spent on takeout and $$$ was spent on easy groceries from Costco, etc. in trying to cope with maintaining a GFCF diet and everything else with dh out of town.  Zofran saved us in the end, and I don't regret spending the money. Then, dh took me out to dinner so I could recover emotionally from week from hell.

 

In the middle of it all, I took some fabric from my stash and used it to make some placemats for our table.  I needed more washable ones. I still need to do the quilting and binding on them, but the tops are pieced. I found it therapeutic to sew since I was up late anyway with sick kid.

 

In an ideal world, I would've pulled pre-made meals from the freezer, sung sweet lullabies 22.5 hours a day to my sick kid, cleaned up the messes with reusable cloth rags, and not lived on diet coke, but I'm keeping it real. 

[MomtoCandJ]

Well we got the new washer and dryer, bought new smoke alarms, fire extinguisher, shelf to put on above washer and dryer and a picnic table. I also bought some new clothes for going to GA next month. Hope not to have to spend much for a while.

[BarbecueMom]

Spent $32 going to the Zoo. Which is free, and we took lunch, but we got there too late for free parking. And we stopped at the gas station for disposable water bottles (bad I know, but I would rather not replace the Contigos when the kids leave them on a bench). And then DH said (in front of the kids), "I'm still hungry after breakfast, I think I'll buy some chips too." And a small chorus of, "Me too!" echoed in the van.

 

And there was much junk fooding to be had. Grrr.

 

DS6 turned the water bottles into low-pressure hand-pump fans. Sort of.

 

Other than that, gas and groceries and cold meds. That's it.

[SKL]

We think we are going to Ukraine and Poland this summer.  Probably not the most expensive international trip we will ever take.  :P

 

We will get back a little earlier than originally planned, so I will figure out something to do stateside.  Who knows, maybe we'll just stay home and rest.  Ha!