Lent Challenge

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, so I have decided to make myself and the family a challenge. I have plenty of stores in the cupboards and we have £100 in an envelope. That £100 will be our money for the next 6 and a half weeks until Easter Sunday on April 4th. Whatever is left will be given to church or charity. I will be ashamed if there is nothing left to give!

To explain a little more, the £100 must cover food, toiletries, incidental expenses, etc but will not include fuel, bills, poultry and rabbit food (no chance!) and the FH's activities (art and lunch club - I couldn't do it with those included) and the EFG's band sub is excluded too - those things are non-negotiable and things that we cannot do without. Living where we do, we can't cut back our diesel/petrol bill any more than we have, and the other things are just "must-pay-for" items - the FH's activities are his small extravagances and cost relatively little - and I'm not stopping those. They come to about £5.50 a week and the band sub brings the total to £7, so if I included them in the challenge, too much of the money would go on these things alone.

We CAN be more inventive with our menu plans, we can cut out convenience foods and snacks bought when we are out and about, we can carry water-bottles, we must not buy books and magazines, shoes and clothes. The YFG will wait for a new leotard!

This boils down to just over £14 a week over the time so we will have to keep a strict eye on what has been spent. This will have to be spent mostly on fruit and vegetables, and replenishing items we run out of, and for which we are unable to find an inventive alternative! I think we may lose some weight!!

I'll be keeping a record on here of how we are doing.