Walked to the grocery store this morning, arriving just before opening. The lot was nearly full and the street outside lined with parked pickup trucks and SUVs. Unheard of on a Sunday morning. Clerk opened the doors — and out of those vehicles poured guys<\/i>. I’m guessing there were six men for every one woman.<\/p>\n
It’s SuperBowl Sunday in the NorthWest and the local team is playing for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I navigated my cart around shoppers loading up on frozen pizzas, beer, chips, pretzels, and the occasional giant veggie tray. Everybody was decked out in SeaHawks tee-shirts and hats — even Dee, the clerk in the checkout line. Not a football fan, she says, but even she’s excited. Me, too, gotta admit, even though I think it’s silly. After the NFC championship game — in which the ‘Hawks scared their fans to death for 57 minutes and 51 seconds, then spent the next few minutes delivering a delirious, impossible victory — it should be fun to see what they do this afternoon.<\/p>\n
The store is staffed today only by those who volunteered. The owners gave all the football fans (and themselves) the day off.<\/p>\n
I walked home past banners of navy blue, green, and white. Cars are flying sky blue and white “12” flags from their antennas, and on front-yard flagpoles (of which we seem to have a lot), SeaHawks logo flags flutter in the mist.<\/p>\n
Go ‘Hawks. And — as all the “clever” local signs say — deflate the Patriots. <\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
So anyhow, this morning I broke my month-long spending fast. In January I focused on avoiding all but essential purchases. Or at least I did in theory. Reality wasn’t quite that neat and tidy, but I did learn what I set out to learn: how little I could live on and still have a relatively normal month. If you’re interested, read on. If not, see ya later and enjoy SuperBowl Sunday.<\/p>\n
Verdict: $588.19.<\/p>\n
That was the total of this month’s basic spending. Which breaks down as follows:<\/p>\n
Groceries: $135.81
\nVehicle: $189.35 (fuel and insurance)
\nUtilities: $204.65 (water, electric, Internet, Netflix, and a TracFone card)
\nPets: $58.34<\/p>\n
I had also budgeted $45 for small luxuries (mochas, lunches, and thrift-store stops) so I wouldn’t feel deprived. Of that budget I spent just $22.94 and still managed to feel as if I was wildly indulging.<\/p>\n
In reality, the yard guy blew my good intentions by showing up unexpectedly. And even before that I cheated a little. I took some friends out to lunch (owed them a meal and they were about to leave on a two-month trip) and I found several really good pairs of cargo pants on post-Christmas clearance at the local hardware store and Bottom line: Any monthly figure is mutable. January didn’t include quite a few normal expenses (like property taxes, vehicle maintenance, and bi-monthly trips to Costco for groceries and dog food). <\/p>\n And with this old house still needing major updating, there is no “standard” month, these days.<\/p>\n On the other hand, I realized that in a serious pinch — really hard times, an emergency — it would be easy to live on far less than that $588.19. Kill off Comcast and Netflix. Tap into food storage. Park the Xterra and walk most places I need to go. I could probably get by on as little as $400. Wouldn’t be fun. Wouldn’t want to do it any longer than I had to. But wouldn’t starve, freeze, or lose the house, either.<\/p>\n So even with the cheating, it was a worthwhile experiment. Not just regarding spending but regarding money mindset. Regarding where I could cut if I need (or want) to in the near future. Got the year off to a conscious start.<\/p>\n I know Commentariat member Pat mentioned she was doing something similar and I expect that even this resolution-averse bunch might have a few members trying other new year experiments. Anybody care to share how things went for you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Walked to the grocery store this morning, arriving just before opening. The lot was nearly full and the street outside lined with parked pickup trucks and SUVs. Unheard of on a Sunday morning. Clerk opened the doors — and out of those vehicles poured guys. I’m guessing there were six men for every one woman. It’s SuperBowl Sunday in the NorthWest and the local team is playing for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-and-spirit","category-rural-and-small-town-living","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}couldn’t<\/del> didn’t resist.<\/p>\n