how hard can it be? (part 1)

I recently suggested to two friends, one of whom lives in Edinburgh and the other in Prague, after reading this article by Stuart Jeffies that we should take a leaf out of his book and try frugal living for one week. Both ladies are talented bloggers, and so we decided we’d do it and write about it. Natch. We started on Sunday 20^th November.

As preparation for the week ahead I started to look at what I do with £20 on a regular basis. £20 covers 1 Bikram Yoga session with 1 bottle of water and a towel. It covers 2.5 hours of babysitting. It covers 4/5ths of my work lunch spend for the week. It covers 2 weeks’ worth of Starbucks coffee. It covers approx 1.25 bottles of wine in a bar. Before I quit smoking, £20 would cover about 5 days’ worth of death sticks. All in all, it doesn’t cover very much.

I recently had an in depth psychometric profile done at work. At one point in the feedback session it took an unexpected and alarming turn towards my personal life and he hazarded a very well educated guess about my spending habits. My spending habits, by the way, are something that I definitely don’t like to think about at all – I get stabs of fear/guilt when I try to catalogue what I have bought over the course of a month and do the classic: buy it, shove it into the back of the wardrobe, and pretend it never happened with worrying regularity.

The assessor said,

“I hate to think how much money you spend – most probably like water. You love nice things. The money in itself isn’t important, just the end goal of having lots and lots of beautiful things – clothes probably.”

(WOW.)

I laughed nervously. He was spot on. I love nice things – clothes, art, technology, books, restaurants, nights out with friends… the list goes on.

I have what I believe is a natural talent when, in a shop or looking at a beautiful spread of products in a magazine, of homing in on the most expensive possible item & fantasising about how exactly I NEED it, how it would be PERFECT in my house/wardrobe/life. This is only about a million times worse when browsing online, as the purchase, in my (completely incorrect and slightly mad) eyes is only theoretical. No actual money has gone (hate to say this, but yes it has). And don’t get me started on eBay: Internet + value + competition = obsession + poverty. This is the curse of good and insatiable taste, I say. But having said all that, back to the matter at hand: how hard can it really be? It is only one week after all.

The Rules:

£20 has to last one week to cover everything other than rent and bills. Anything that you can forage from your freezer/fridge/cupboards is free and other than that, you have to use your £20. That includes travel from Tooting to Holborn for five of the seven days but it’s OK, I have a master plan – cycle to work for three of the days.

My next post will catalogue Sunday – Saturday worth of no spending…. Unsurprisingly, it is harder than it looks from the start line, mainly because I couldn’t find my effing bike lights.

Stay tuned!