Pledge

So when I was at my Doctor's today I was in the waiting room and they had Oprah playing in the background. The featured guest was Suze Orman. Now, I'm not a huge Oprah fan OR a Suze Orman fan (ever since I heard Suze talk about how I needed to treat my money "with respect" and this meant having it all facing the same way and neat and crisp in my wallet, I've kind of ignored her), but they had a 3 step pledge I thought was interesting. The pledge is as follows:

1. For one day spend nothing
2. Stop using credit cards
3. No going out to eat at restaurants for one month

Now I've already discussed how giving me a credit card is a BAD, BAD, BAD thing because I am a credit card companies dream come to true and as a result I do not carry them... but I found the other two pledges to be not too bad. Sometimes I *think* I'm not spending any money, but I am. A dollar here, a dollar there... it adds up. (My biggest treat is a Boston Creme donut from Dunkin Donuts in the morning... I LOVE Boston Creme donuts!!!!) So this weekend when Jeff and I go grocery shopping I am going to make sure I have plenty of snacks and drinks and all that good stuff so I can start Monday with the "No spending" plan. I would like to go Monday - Friday without spending anything. I'll document it next week so you can all see if I do well or if I fail miserably. I'm the "Queen of the Impulse Buy" and it's VERY hard for me to not spend if I want something, but I'm willing to try.

I am also interested in the "no restaurants" for a month. Though I don't know if we can realistically do that. I mean... We are fairly social (sometimes - this comes in waves where we'll have weekends on end where we have plans.. and then months will go by and we'll say things like "Do we have any friends"?), and being social with friends usually includes going out somewhere to eat, or getting take out. Maybe we could try it for a week? Or 2 weeks? Something like that? I suspect it will be MUCH easier to do this when Nathan decides to make his arrival, but I also think that might be cheating slightly. You know.. we'll be too tired to go out so we won't... not because we're actively trying to change habits.

Anyone else want to join me?