Today marks the second full week of the Savings Pledge. How are you doing? If you haven’t joined yet, either click the button on this blog page, or there is a tab on my Facebook page.

I personally feel like I’ve bombed the past two weeks, after looking at my banking transactions. Yeah, I scored lots of very cheap and free stuff at CVS, Acme, whatever. I stayed away from restaurants and take-out, that was good.

What did me in was little trips to the grocery store. The “Oh, we really could use some fruit and some spinach” trips that suddenly turn into a $40-$60 trip. After realizing that, and my post yesterday about an envelope system, that’s what I’m going to try. I’m even going to leave my check card at home.  I think I’ll see significant savings in just a couple of weeks doing this.

Other things I’m doing, some I’ve mentioned before:

Only running washer on cold water, short cycle, line drying everything but towels.

Setting dishwasher to do short cycle, and I’m pre-programming it to run after 10 pm–I read somewhere after 10 pm, your electric rates are lower.

A/C-only using it when it is super-duper hot, like last week, and keeping it at 78-80.

Concentrating on combining errands and shopping trips to save gas.

Any special outings such as restaurants or recreation–Must be free, or we have a season pass (Sesame Place) or use a Groupon or something. No out of pocket money spent on that until all those other options are exhausted.

Also this week, I’m going to focus on ideas on how to bring more money in to our household. Stay tuned!