Celebration

In our house, Dave says I'm the CEO and CFO and he's the head of security and part-time lawnmower man.

Last year we embarked on a money saving venture that I've talked about a few times in this blog. It was partly to prepare for parenthood and partly to be better stewards of our money. This included carefully examining our expenses and trying to determine where we could cut back and how we could pay down our small, but annoying debt.

Part of the time I felt like I was dragging Dave through this process by his hair. Dave accused me of being too much of a penny pincher; I accused him of letting his "it's only money" philosophy rule his spending habits. We were both wrong: When you don't spend any money for enjoyment, you get discouraged. When you spend it all, it becomes much more than just money because it's causing fights, discomfort, and headaches. Somewhere over the course of the last year, I think we finally met in the middle.

As Oprah would say, we had a big "aha" moment this summer. After our bank started dividing up expenses in a pie chart, we were slapped in the face once again with our perpetual downfall.... the high amount of money we spend on eating out. It's one thing to know and say how much you spend on something. It's quite another thing to see it in black and white in comparison to what else you are spending money on. So, we decided to do something drastic. Starting the day after our anniversary, we made a commitment not to eat out for an entire month.

We had to cook ahead. We had to plan. We grilled a alot. We pre-made lunches. When we moved too fast to fix a lunch or forgot it or plain ran out of food between grocery store day, we ate soup or ramen noodles. We encouraged one another. And we survived.

One disclaimer: we both ate out individually once as a part of a work thing/meeting. We also ate at friend's houses or at parties, which was nice to break up the flow.

When Dave saw he actually had a decent amount in his checking account after bills this month, he finally got it. We applied our extra cash to reducing our debt.

When we celebrated at a nicer restaurant than we would normally patronize, I finally got it. We even ordered dessert, and Jack really wanted some.

Ironically enough, in this month of deprivation, we were given two different gift certificates to restaurants. We spent one last night, meaning our tip, dinner and dessert only cost us $15. And we plan to spend the other one next month, when we celebrate again.