The answer to the above question is: nigh on impossible. I failed either miserably or triumphantly, I can’t quite make up my mind.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I figured that I would save on travel costs by cycling to work. My annual travel card costs £3.52 per day. If I didn’t cycle then I would have precisely £2.36 to spend for the entire week. By cycling not only would I be saving money on travel costs, but I would also be getting fit and negating any need to go to my proverbially diamond encrusted yoga classes. One major spanner: due to the season and the length of time it would take me to get to work on a bike I would most definitely need bike lights, and I had no idea where they were.
Sunday night I was being lazy and horizontal, glued to both my telly and twitter manically tweeting about (hashtag) Xfactor. Therefore, I did not do the necessary preparation to get on my bike on Monday morning as originally planned. Monday evening I returned from work and had a look around. No bike lights anywhere. I gingerly stepped into unchartered territory: the shed. This is a foreign place and I have no idea where anything in there lives. It felt a bit like snooping around in someone else’s house. It was no use. I’d just have to wait until Naked Chef Husband came home.
After putting little companion to bed I put on the ‘Life In Balance’ channel and did one of their work outs. It was free and I was feeling smug. I felt I knew that this week would be, if a little quiet, easy. Naked chef husband came home and I enquired about the bike lights. He scratched his head and denied knowledge of their location – he had looked for them though, he assured me... I was beginning to panic now, as the challenge of living off £20 for one week had, in a split second, moved on to trying to live off £2.36 for a week. This was a slightly more daunting prospect, but still in my weirdly positive mind that is clearly no stranger to denial, very much doable.
Tuesday came and went – I had a number of chats with my friends at work about my frugal week. And it became clear that they really didn’t understand why I was doing it.
“Seriously, why?” They asked me.
“Well,” I said,” It’s a challenge, isn’t it?”
“But why?!” they asked again.
I didn’t really have an answer… I was beginning to ask myself the same thing.
Wednesday morning at work the stationary company that I use delivered our stationary order with a free massive tin of Quality Street. I instantly contemplated taking it home and using it as a Christmas present for someone. I found myself fantasising about walking into Sainsbury’s doing a supermarket sweep style dash and walking out without paying. Living cheaply was fast turning me into a wannabe criminal. In the end I shared the Quality Street with my colleagues, but only after having a sharp word with myself in the ladies and putting about 1/3rd of the tin in my handbag.
About three people asked, “where have all the purple ones gone?!”
I shrugged. HA! “No idea.”
Little did they know I had morphed, practically overnight, into a common thief.
During the day I remembered on Saturday I would be taking Little Companion to one of his friend's 3rd birthday party. Thankfully Naked Chef Husband was off work so I asked him nicely to go to the shop and purchase necessary present and card.
One of the colleagues that I’d told about the challenge offered to take me out to lunch on Thursday, so I gratefully accepted and swap the tinned goods lunches for a Byron Burger and French fries. It was triumphant and I don’t know if it was because I’d been having such crappy lunches up to that point, but it tasted like one of the best burgers I’d ever had.
Thursday evening was the turning point in the week in terms of my spending. Sadly, as with most lapses in my will power, there was a lot of alcohol involved. As a company we were taken out by the one of our contractors. It was a free evening and I was still feeling confident that I could get through the rest of this week spending no more than £2.36. Somewhere between the 6th cocktail and the karaoke I decided it was a great idea to go on with the others to an awful West End club which shall remain nameless, as the majority of my friendship group would disown me if they knew where I went.
There were Jager Bombs, there was a bottle vodka at our table – I didn’t bother with the mixer. There was dancing to Rhianna. Well, I say dancing I really mean staggering with my hair over my face. Suddenly it was 3am and I had to get home. There were four of us left and we shared a cab. Somehow this journey took 1.5 hours, and so I got home at 4.30am. I paid around £15 for the cab, but If I’m honest, I can’t really remember the exact amount. Shambolic.
On Friday morning after two hours of sleep I woke up, still heavily pickled in desperate need of carbs and Starbucks. I had both – I think I spent about £7 in starbucks. One saving grace is that I have a starbucks card, which was fully loaded when the week started, so no actual cash was spent and I saved about £1 by using it. At lunch time I had a little lie down in the hidden meeting room at the back of our office whilst being fed Domino’s Pizza by my lovely and helpful colleague. There was a two for one offer on the Domino’s that day, so it only cost me £5 but that brought me to approximately £24.64 over spent. Unsurprisingly on Friday night I was in bed by 9.30pm. Cheap, if nothing else.
Saturday literally could not arrive soon enough. I figured that the challenge finished at around 7pm on Saturday. This is mainly because I had planned ages ago to go out on Saturday night, so in my head, all I had to do was live, for ‘free’ until 7pm on the 26th November. It wasn’t in the rules, but I’d decided that that was how it was going to be, so that how it was.
On Saturday morning Little Companion and I bummed around the house, playing Jesse and Bullseye (Little Companion on my back saying “Giddy up Bullseye!” whilst kicking me in the kidneys). In the afternoon I took Little Companion to the birthday party with the “free” present. He was, unsurprisingly, the most ‘boisterous’ child there.
A list of questionable behaviours:
· running away about 5 times
· getting every cherry tomato on the ‘healthy snack plate’ and squashing them one by one so that he could watch the pips squirt out of them, then leaving them as he doesn’t like tomatoes
· throwing a tantrum
· pushing another child over looking up at me and grinning wildly
· planting a wet kiss on his best male friend’s mouth (cute, but a little inappropriate)
· Thumped the birthday mascot tiger on the head
But, all of this paled into insignificance because the whole thing was free! I felt distracted from Little Companion because I was compelled to shove as much free food down my neck – I didn’t really give a damn that I was essentially food blocking a bunch of bewildered 3 year olds. Thankfully the other parents were impressed with my food stealing ways and happily joined in. This diminished my guilt somewhat.
And then came 7pm. I’d made it, HOORAY and my falling off only really happened because I went out and got very very pissed, and no one really counts anything when they’re sozzled, right? So what did I do to celebrate? I went out for a feed, drink and a dance with my friends.
This week was a lesson in the following:
1. Letting your morals go a little.
2. Asking nicely for things.
3. Being more open to a bit of help - why not let people take you out for lunch?
4. Bending the rules.
5. The fact that boozing it up will ALWAYS result in a failure of will power. Always.
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