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Saturday, October 30, 2010

November's New Year's Resolution Experiment

My change for October was to not use any credit cards and pay for everything in cash.  I have to say, this was probably my most difficult change to make all year long.  The first 3 weeks of the month, I was doing really well and was actually surprised at how far I was able to make $250 a week stretch.  Then I had to go to Costco.  Oy!  This proved to be problematic and ended up charging the $258. I needed to get all the stuff on our list.  In addition, I was caught short driving Jeff's car one afternoon and needed to get gas in his car.  Again, I had to charge that.  I went out for a late dinner with some friends and ended up charging that. And lastly, I walked into CVS for some stuff and the next thing you know, I hadn't planned in advance to be there and was short on cash again.  So October 23rd and 24th was my low point when I crashed and burned on trying to use only cash to pay for things.

Overall, I think this change helped me spend less during the month.  However, I don't think it is realistic to keep this change going beyond this month.  Or, maybe the answer is to do a combination of both and ultimately I should carry more cash in my wallet and not rely on always having a charge card available.  It was an interesting experiment and I am going to tinker with this until I find a good solution that is practical.

Ok, now to announce my change for the November:  Take more video of the kids. 
We used to take tons and tons of footage of the kids.  Then somewhere along the way, the last 6 months or so, we've taken hardly any.  I guess because we have few milestones happening now -- both Sam and Ian walk, talk, etc.  So the changes they go through are subtle.  I generally make sure digital pictures are being taken and Jeff's area is video.  However, I am going to make it a point to start taking more video as we hang out during the day and do our various activities.

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