Happy New Year! And My January Money Challenge!

Happy New Year to everybody!  I hope you had a great NYE and are fully recovered now.  Towards the end of 2011 I decided to review my finances for the year to get a grasp on where my money had gone and such.  Turns out I should pretty much just sign my paychecks right on over to Wal-Mart.  I spend an ungodly amount of money at that store.  Especially since I'm shopping for just myself and 2 cats.  Wal-Mat is basically where I buy everything.  Like food, supplies, cat food, cat supplies.  But mostly, I just buy a lot of food.  


So, I decided to challenge myself.  In the month of January I'm going to try to limit my food/supply spending to what I would have spent in 1 week last year.  That's a little over $4 per day.  So, I must buy all my food and supplies plus the cats' food and supplies for about $28 per week.  And, of course, I'll be sharing it all with you guys on here.  Lucky for y'all, I've got some of my "normal" posts saved up, so I'll be posting my regular recipe posts as well. 


To make this work, I'm gonna have to do some homework.  I've got a menu planned for this week and I went through the grocery ads.  I have a very strict shopping list that tells me what to buy from each store and how much to spend on it.  My only saving grace is that I will allow myself to use the perishable food I already have on hand, along with staples that people would otherwise have on hand (peanut butter, butter, spices, etc).  And, if things get really tough, I'll bust into the non-perishable food I have in my cupboards. 


So, here goes!  Today I spent $0 on food and supplies. Waaahooo!  Mrs. L-Train fed L-Train and I cheeseburgers and mashed potatoes earlier today.  Then L-Train and I went to the movies and he bought me some popcorn.  With lots of movie-theatre butter, of course (that stuff is like my crack!).  And, I had some celery with peanut butter that I had left over in the fridge. 


So, I have an extra $.66 that I can add to each of the rest of the days this week. . .