I must say my brain kind of hurts. Especially considering the numbers I crunched as I scratched away.
I mentioned in an earlier entry that prior to June 1, I'd been spending, on average, a total of +/- 1,312.50 each month at the grocery store, at the gas station, and on various spontaneous, extraneous items (i.e., movies, school stuff, retail therapy, going out to dinner, etc.) for me and my younguns.
Based on a 30-day month, that's an average of 43.75 every day.
After I wiped the sweat off my brow that had accumulated after I'd digested this nugget of truth, I referenced a bit more data.
I revisited the total amount I'd spent in preparation for this project: 365.87.
Based again on a 30-day month, if we can last 30 days on what we have, we'll have spent 12.20 per day.
That's a savings of 31.55 a day.
So. Can we do it?
Let's take inventory.
At present, I have over a half a tank of gas in my car. We're out of milk. Logan's out of Diet Coke, but he doesn't seem to care. After having printed out volumes of information about how unhealthy Diet Coke can be when consumed in high volumes, he did the typical teenager thing and tuned me out. It wasn't until his dance teacher told him he shouldn't drink it that he stopped.
Information becomes valid to my teenager when someone else tells him the exact same information.
Shocking.
I'm not sure we'll be able to go an entire 30 days without getting a few things at the store. But we're not there quite yet.
Thus far we're not lacking anything essential.
It's interesting how simply stepping back - being creative with what we have, finding ways to navigate around boredom, having people over instead of going out, not driving, not spending - has been relatively effortless.
And today, putting pencil to paper, realizing just how much money I/we piss away on things we don't even notice that we don't really need, makes me more energized to keep this project going.
Every day makes me more convinced that I could live a much more simple, uncomplicated life.
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