January 6, 2010

With the food inventory managed for a least another week, we looked ahead at expenses and found that there was nothing looming that we may need to spend money on. That will change, but for today, we deluded ourselves, which saved us God knows how much. Of course, due to the hair cut debacle, we are still overspent by $1. We’ll survive.

To support your month of austerity, I suggest you enlist some other frugal Fannies in your life to try the practice. Our dear friend, Geleen started the practice, and we have to give her credit. Although around January 27th, we will probably be cursing her name. She’s bold with Five Dollar Days. Her family of three lives on the cash. They use a lot of curry powder in January! As the years have unfolded, we have planned our Christmas presents to them wisely, but this year, we gave them, at no great expense, the “Five Dollar Days of January Survival Kit,” which included a $20 Whole Foods gift card, puzzles and word search books for her eight-year-old son, and a few morsels from the freezer. She loves our pickled green tomatoes. She gave us a bottle of red wine, among other useful consumable such as Brie and apricot jam. Ohh baby!

Our other friend, Consuela, is single and a teacher, so asking her to live on $5 a day is not that big of a deal, until she wants a spa service. However, we gave her a pound of coffee, a Whole Foods gift card, and some frozen delights as well. Her gifts to us were not January themed, but that is okay. Fused glass from her last trip to Israel (you know, because Consuela is so Jewish) is certainly welcomed in our house!

Around the end of the first week, it’s important to check on your comrades. I started with Gaelen, the founder and CEO of the Five Dollar Days of January. I have not reached her yet, so I hope she has not died of starvation.

Consuela was doing okay, as suspected. Being single has its merits when you are monitoring the spending.