Spending, Life, Income and Food Updates…

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. It went by way too quickly. I feel like this whole year has gone by pretty quickly also. I guess that's what happens when you're getting older!

 On Friday, we stayed in and had people over. On Saturday we went out and spent only $20. That is much better than usual! Our friend was a DJ at a new bar in town and it was a good night with all of us couples (even though the boy doesn't dance!) It was a fun and cheap weekend.

I love my food challenge. I cooked every single day last week (as you can see above). I do need to start cooking more things!

School: Classes start this week. I still haven't decided if I want to walk at graduation, but others are telling me I should, so I probably will. It's only a couple of hours and I'd rather just do it instead of regretting it later. I walked for my undergraduate degrees so I still am not sure!

Extra Monthly Income: I can't think of too much income that I made last week. I made around $50 from secret shopping and surveys. Mystery shopping is starting to become extremely tedious for me. I don't know how much longer I can do them, unless they're the shops that I like to get free stuff from (such as the Estee Lauder and food shops). Anyone else feeling this way? Also, what secret shop companies do you use? I use mainly Bestmark but am looking to branch out.

Budget Cutting: I haven't cut anything lately. Since we are adding another roommate, I have decided that we need to increase our internet speed in this house. It would just be too slow for 4 people. However, it'll only go up around $10 or $20 a month.

Spending: I've been really good with not spending. I didn't buy anything last week (not that I can think of at least). We did get an alignment on the Jeep on Saturday which cost $110. We bought an unlimited amount of alignments for 1 year. The boy likes to off-road at his grandmas in his Jeep, so I figured it was needed since just a one-time alignment was $90 and unlimited wasn't much more money.

And I also figure, in order to save money in the long run, sometimes you have to spend money. I'd rather take good care of the Jeep (and the new tires we just bought for it). We were told the alignment was horrible (which we knew), so it was definitely needed.

Food: I went out to eat once last week, but it was for breakfast with my friend before we laid out at her pool. The meal was cheap and I did much better than I usually do.

I'm hoping I can keep all of this up, even though I'm going to have classes 4 days a week for 3 hours each day. And of course I still have work from 8am to 5 pm, so this doesn't leave much time for everything! Thankfully this is for only 8 weeks though.

Working out: I've been doing great with this! I've ran with my dog nearly everyday this week and doing things at home. I just need to keep this up. If you know of any good fitness websites that I need to check out, please let me know!

Me and the boy are thinking of canceling our gym memberships which cost $33 a month altogether for us. We have only gone one time since Halloween. We are thinking of just buying home equipment like a weight bench for him. Now, we just need to get our butts up to the gym to cancel!