The Bet is Over!

What happens when a girl who has had an American Express Card in her wallet since she was 15 years old goes one month without using it? 

Does she go through withdrawal? 
Do the shakes start as she drives by stores? 
Does AMEX call and find out if she is sick? 
Do any businesses close down from lack of business? 

I can now answer these questions with "No!"

I did it.  I went one month without using the credit card.  It was quite easy really. Anything that needed to be bought, Jeff took care of.  He made the weekly trips to the grocery store.  He made sure my car had gas in it.  It was like I was a kept woman.  hehehehee.  

I am sure Jeff would actually prefer that I got gas.  There were many instances when he went to drive us somewhere and I told him if we wanted to get there, we would need gas first.  Then he'd ask how long I had been driving with my low gas light brightly lit and I could tell he was less than pleased with the answer.  But I refused to use our check card to get gas.  I'd much rather get the reward points for every single one of those $50 dollars to fill my tank.

By the end of the month, we had spent less money on Amex than we had in many, many months prior.  Well, duh!  Of course that would be the case.  Jeff doesn't impulse buy when going grocery shopping.  He sticks to the list.  And all my usual trips to Target was consolidated into one trip, careful to stick to that list.

I showed major restraint when I had to go use my Old Navy "cash" that was issued during our last visit to the store.  I needed to spend $50 to get $20 off.  This was a coupon too good not to use.  Sam and I went in the store and she picked out 3 dresses and a pair of pajamas.  In addition, I picked out 2 shirts for Ian.  I wasn't sure what was on sale and what wasn't.  When we got to the register, I told the cashier that I want to keep it as close to $50 as possible.  The total ended up coming to something like $78.  I turned to Sam and said I only had enough money to keep it in the $50 range and you can pick 2 of the 4 items to take home.  Without any issue or causing a scene, Sam said she'd put back the pajamas and one of the dresses.  My new total, after the coupon, was $31.56.  Yep!  That's the way to do it.

A funny incidence occurred when I finally made it back to the gym.  It was a great work out and I had visions of going back in the mornings before Jeff left for work.  I got all excited until I came home later that day and there was a message from a guy at Gold's asking me to call him.  He said he saw I was back at the gym and wanted to know if I wanted to rejoin.  What?!?!?  Apparently when I went in there last on May 29th (OMG!  How pathetic, right?) to cancel the kids from Gold's kids club, they went ahead and cancelled the whole thing.  I hadn't been in there since then to realize this.

I figured I was in a position to negotiate the terms of my membership and got a sweet deal from the $21.99 every two weeks I was paying to $12.99 every two weeks.  And this will include 3 sessions with a trainer.  Woo-hoo!!   The sales guy was seconds away from putting the charge through (all the information was stored in the computer from before) when I said, "Stop!!  I can't use the credit card this month.  I promised my husband.  We are going to have to wait until October to put through this deal." 

All in all, it was a good month.  I knew that Jeff wasn't even going to come close to wanting to watch another episode of "Breaking Bad" so that he could win this bet.  But that's ok, because every time he logged onto Amex's website and saw where we were at, he was in a very good mood.  And that is a very good thing.

I'm happy to keep going with this.  I am happy for him to keep buying the groceries.  Getting gas in my car (as long as he goes to the gas station I like going to).  Just let me have it once each month to get to Target and stock up on everything we need.  Plus, it really does make me stop and think, "do we really need this?".  And in most cases, the answer is no.