Lenten Challenge

No spending on nonessentials. 

If you don't know what Lent is, look it up for yourself.  Essentially it is the 40 days (excluding Sundays) before Easter to reflect on the Lord's suffering and death.  Many give up some "luxury" in order to gain firsthand understanding of the suffering Christ endured leading up to his death.  It also reminds you that Christ gave up his life for yours. 

We're nearing the end of February's challenge, but have decided to take it one step further.  It's rather quite simple: we will not spend money on things we don't need.  Our decision to do this is more on the saving money side but the religious aspects can't be overlooked either.  The idea actually came from another blog we've been reading recently and really liked the idea.

Now why in the world would anyone want to cut out unnecessary purchases?  Other than saving the most you can in a month another reason is to test the waters of your emergency fund.  And no, credit cards are not an emergency fund.  A general rule of thumb is to save 3-6 months of expenses, however is that your current expenses or barebones expenses?  Either way, in order to make the money last as long as possible (and in order to have a safety margin) you have to cut out everything that isn't necessary.  Why not test a barebones budget while you still have an income?  You'll be able to see where you can cut the fat further or can determine that your emergency fund isn't enough. 

Having said that here's our list of essentials (not necessarily barebones, but pretty close):

1. Church offering
2. Mortgage
3. Utilities: We don't need internet, so I guess we're not depriving ourselves as much as we could be. However, we've recently cut our internet cost by 43% just by asking for a cheaper price.  All we had to do was commit to a one-year contract and sign up for auto pay.
4. Food: for people and pets
5. Toiletries: Mostly just toothpaste, we have enough of everything else to last us until Easter. Ah, the joys of cloth diapering.
6. Gasoline: Only to go work, church, maybe a trip or two to the library, and pre-booked travel.
7. Necessary car/home maintenance: Which if gone undone will result in further damage.  At the moment nothing is screaming to be repaired though.

That's means we'll be skipping stock up sales at the grocery store unless we will use that product before Easter.  We're also going to skip any mid-week trips to the store simply because I have a craving for chips or forgot mayonnaise.  No recreation, new clothes, hair cuts, manicures, etc., but since we don't spend money on those things anyway it won't be so challenging.  However, we do enjoy going to the thrift store and finding random stuff at inexpensive prices.  This may seem weird to most, but the thrift store and library are our sources of entertainment. 

The real difficulty will lie in our upcoming trip to Texas for a family wedding.  12 hour drive, three nights in a hotel and four days of eating away from home.  We will be driving instead of flying and renting a car.  Estimated savings of $500.  We are staying in a cheaper hotel than the rest of the guests.  Estimated savings of $100-$150, not sure what the actual negotiated rate is for the suggested hotel.  We will bring sandwich/bagel supplies for the car ride, breakfast is provided by the hotel, dinner is provided at the wedding, leaving three meals to provide ourselves.  Two of those will be lunch, so we can make sandwiches.  For the last meal I'm going to bring our crockpot (Because guess what? There are grocery stores in Texas too.) and let dinner cook itself while we are out enjoying the wonderful March weather.  Estimated savings of $75-$100, including the cost to eat out while traveling.  I'm not sure if the crockpot and sandwiches will go over with the other family we're meeting there so we'll see how that goes.  Total estimated savings of $675-$750.

Share what you plan to include in your essentials only budget.