The $100 Challenge
I have noted this in several blogs thus far, but it continues to irritate me how nearly everyone see’s budgeting as starting out with how much you can spend and working backwards. For example, if I have $1500 left after rent and bills, I get to spend $1500 on food, entertainment, etc. This is wrong and in order to show you how to work from the other direction, I present … drum-roll please … the $100 Challenge.
The $100 Challenge is simple. I will ‘Challenge’ myself to only spend $100 per week on all food, entertainment, etc. It essentially includes anything except recurring bills (rent, utilities, mobile phone, gym, etc). It will include food, going out to the bar, eating out, tickets to the cubs game, movies, etc. My point is to expose how cheaply you can live (the harder part), rather than focus on how much you can spend (the easy part).
To keep everyone up to date I will give an end of the week update (Sunday night/Monday morning) along with updates through-out the week. Clearly doing this for 1 week would be a joke - in fact I could probably live off of $10 or less if I had to for 1 week. So, I’ll maintain the challenge for 4 consecutive weeks ($400 to live for 4 weeks) starting today Monday, July 6th and ending Sunday, August 2nd.
What are your thoughts? Think its possible? Do you think its hard? Do you think I can do it? Are others in tune enough with their spending that they can offer up how much they spend on a weekly basis?
i think it’s a good challenge
i’ll do it!
(except that i’m moving apartments, so i’ll just take out any moving costs).
i’ll be interested to see how you do…
I like it!! I can also give you some great recommendations for “plonk” so you don’t blow the challenge at happy hour!
This is incredibly easier to do in Atlanta than Chicago…..
Here’s about this too: Don’t eat fast food. Lets say $100 challenge, but staying healthy as an interesting caveat.
Hmm, this might be hard where you live, but for me it’s pretty simple to live on that if I’m not dieting. Now, if you were on a low gi diet with high protein intake that’s where it gets interesting. My daily bill comes to $8.50 on average for Eggs($.50), i rotisserie chicken from costco (1pd 13oz cooked chicken after skin/bones for $5!), Can of beans($1), various veggies ($2). Now of course this is the lazy man’s cheap high protein diet. If I cooked I’m sure I could shave this down further.
I think if you are going to do this you should definitely break down all your costs for us so we can appreciate the economic climate you’re operating from. You should also be clear if you’re going to “slum it” for some amazing food deals, or work within the places you already go (showing an example of being frugal without changing the status quo). Entertainment is the real dark horse here, as that is the most inidicative part of living frugally. If you have a strong social network it should be a cinch, relying on friends to fill in the off time. Otherwise, filling the gaping void can be expensive. But, judging from the blog, I predict the former, so you should be allright.
Anyways, $400 is a lot of money. I wouldn’t be surprised no matter which route you went to come out with extra.
This is a great idea! Actually, I did this for at least six months when I first graduated from college - not as part of a challenge, but as a natural part of learning to control my finances…and being stingy.
Although I’ve fallen out of the $100/week habit (I blame it on being summer and taking vacation; I’m planning on picking it back up this fall), it’s really not as difficult as it sounds. The key, for me, was learning how to cook, and also learning how to budget for things I wanted to do that would have a monetary cost. It’s amazing how cheaply you can create healthy meals if you plan ahead and invest a little in stockpiling your pantry with some basics (rice, beans, noodles, canned tomatoes, etc). It’s also amazing how many fun things you can do on the cheap.
Best of luck! Looking forward to hearing how you do.