RESULTS - The January Financial Experiment - No Shopping

Well, here it is most of the way through February and I'm finally posting the results of this experiment!  Sorry it took me so long.  If you'd like to read about the start of this experiment, scroll down to the next post or click here.

We learned a lot in January as we tried to live off our food storage.  In order for the experiment to be meaningful I did a few things as we went along.

1. I kept a list of everything we ran out of on my kitchen counter so it would be handy when I needed to jot something down.
2. I made notes of what I did when we ran out of something.
3. I planned our meals at the beginning of each week so I wouldn't be stressed and staring into the pantry each night.
4. I allowed myself to go shopping when absolutely neccesary.

Now, I must give you a little disclaimer before I give you the results.  I'm a Bountiful Baskets Volunteer Site Coordinator.  Bountiful Baskets is a produce co-op (for info, go to http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/).  I run the distribution site every other week.  For my work, I recieve a large basket of fruits and vegetables.  That absolutely helps with our budget and since I pay for it with my time, it doesn't count for our "no shopping" experiment.  Additionally, even with that basket of fresh produce, we still run out of fresh fruit before the two weeks is up.

So, what did we run out of and what did I do when we did?  Here is the list in the order we ran out.

• Milk - We used powdered milk.  My kids call it "special milk".  It's all in how you present it to them.
• Fresh Fruit - I have stored dried apples from the LDS Cannery.  We love them and it was nice to still have fruit to put into lunches each morning.
• Canned Corn - We had plenty of other veggie options.
• Diet Coke/Soda - This was a toughie!  We just switched to water and drink mixes like Crystal Light
• Toilet Paper - This was the only thing that I actually had to go buy.  There's just no substitute.  My neighbor saw me post about it on Facebook and was going to run some over but we had already gone to the store.  My SIL was going to ship me some even!  Thanks for your support everyone!
• Orange Juice - I try to keep this on hand because Victor is Diabetic.  Luckily we have things like Gatorade in our storage for low blood sugar emergencies.
• Pancake Syrup - We sometimes substitute applesauce on pancakes.  Plus I was able to make our own.  There's a really good recipe for Pecan Syrup in the Ball Blue Book.  I had a jar of that on hand.  So, we had alternatives.  I haven't even replaced this yet.  Oh, and I found a jar of Huckleberry Syrup my sweet MIL had bought us when we were in Jackson, WY last summer.  Delicious!  Better than the fakey maple stuff anyway!
• Crystal Light - So, with a diabetic in the house, all our drinks are diet drinks.  We aren't big water drinkers (working on that) so Crystal Light is our second favorite beverage after Diet Coke.  The girls like it, too.  I had some packets of Cool Aid that I made up with Splenda to substitute.  Not very cost effective but it worked.
• Napkins - We substituted paper towels but those got pretty low, too.  We could have used free ones from fast food places but remember we were not going to eat out either.
• Aluminum Foil - Not much you can substitute for this. We just went without.
• Qtips - Nothing you can sub for this either.  Went without. 
• Oatmeal Packets - Victor takes one of these to work most days and eats breakfast there.  He was most effected by this one.  You can make your own though and we have lots of canisters of oatmeal stored.
• Creamy Peanut Butter - We still had crunchy.  Poor Samantha was the only one bothered by this one.  She is not fond of lots of texture in her food.
• Shredded Cheese - This is one of the staples in my freezer.  It was a little hard to go without but we managed.
• Yogurt - I forgot to write this on the list but this is another thing Victor takes for work.  I have a yogurt maker and made some yogurt from powdered milk.  He wasn't thilled about it but settled for it.

 It seems like a lot but there was really only the one thing that we absolutely couldn't do without.  So, now I wait patiently for a really good sale on toilet paper to stock up.  It was kind of funny.  We got down to one roll of toilet paper in the morning.  I patiently trekked the roll around the house as people needed it.  My dear sweet hubby stopped and got enough packages of TP to last us the rest of the month.  They were on sale for $1 for a four pack and he bought 6.  So, the $6 that we absolutely had to spend for the month wasn't bad!

How about our bonus challenges we gave ourselves?

Dining Out

We did just fine with this!  We did go out one time, just Victor and I.  We went up to the Phoenix area to visit some friends and go to the temple.  We had planned to go to lunch and use a gift card we'd gotten for Christmas to pay for it.  That would have meant we didn't violate the goal of not spending money on dining out.  Unfortunately we were an hour into the trip when I realized that I'd forgotten the gift card.  We decided that a lunch date out by ourselves was just too good to pass out and went anyway.  But we spent only about $20.

No Gas

We did great on not filling the car up with gas!  We used Victor's work truck for any trips over a few miles.  We would have made it to the end of the month except that a couple of days before the end of the month, Victor decided to be nice and fill my car up and get a car wash.  He forgot about the "no gas" part of our monthly challenge.  I guess technically the debit didn't come through on the card until February though.  :-)  I can't complain, it was awfully nice of him.

Did we save money?  Sure, we didn't spend the $200-$300 that we normally spend on groceries.  That's already pretty low for a family of four.  But, there were some unexpected blessings to come out of the whole thing.  Firstly, we are no longer addicted to Diet Coke!  My dad will be so happy to hear it.  Have I had some since?  Sure, but I'm not drinking it every day.  I've even bought some and have some in the fridge right now.  But, whereas I was drinking 2-3 cans a day before, now I might have 1 a day or 1 every other day.  I can take it or leave it.  I hope I never get back to that addicted point!  Secondly, we had a couple of unexpected medical bills come up that needed to be paid.  Normally the unexpected things are just not in the budget and we have to scramble to figure out what to do.  Not this time! 

So, that was it! We survived the month. It certainly helped that there were no good sales at the grocery stores to tempt me with shopping. There were definitly some hard things but we learned so much. It was totally worth it. We'll definitely be doing this experiment again in the future. Hopefully, not because we HAVE to!

I highly reccomend doing this experiment with your family to see where you are with your Food Storage.  It was a wake up call about a few things we consider important!  If you do, I'd love to hear about it! 

Jan