***If you missed the PART 1 of A Week on $20, click here to check it out first.***

$20 is a lot of money. Trust me. You can do a lot more on $20 then you think you can. It takes time and effort to live the good life on $20, but it can be done. After a week of living on $20, I don’t know that I want to keep that up. Let me explain…

I started last Monday on a budget of $20. I had performed a budget similar while in college, but that wasn’t really by choice but necessity. This time, I could focus (so I thought) and accomplish this task with little focus going into a weekend where I needed a lot of focus. Well, I somewhat succeeded and I somewhat failed.

This is how the schedule went for the week of Sept 28th through Oct 4th:

Monday, September 28th: Day’s Starting Budget – $20.00. Day’s / Ending Budget – $18.75.
I spent a total of $1.25 on food this day. I managed to live off what I had already stocked prior to making the budget decision. I was focused at this point as I was mainly home during the day.

Tuesday, September 29th: Day’s Starting Budget – $18.75. Day’s / Ending Budget – $18.75.
This was a penny free day. I managed to eat whatever I had which included stocked away Top Ramen and a lot of frozen chicken and rice. I was really happy to be freeing up another $3 or so for the days to come as my storage was running low. I scored a free burger e-mail from my favorite joint called Burger Hut so that lifted my moods.

Wednesday, September 30th: Day’s Starting Budget – $18.75. Day’s / Ending Budget – $5.81.
This day KILLED me. I forgot I owed $5 for a football pool from the prior week. That was 25% of my budget. Then I realized I was starving. The     second crappy part of this day was that I was lazy and shopped at Safeway. My bill there was 20-30% more than if I would have gone to a cheaper grocery for the same stuff. These two unfortunate budget issues were my own fault. No one to blame but myself. What I did buy at the store lasted until Friday night which was the only positive budget factor.

Thursday, October 1st: Day’s Starting Budget – $5.81. Day’s / Ending Budget – $4.63
The only thing I purchased this day were a few vegetables for dinner which came to $1.18. I had barely anything to last 4 more days, so I was scraping the barrel.

Friday, October 2nd: Day’s Starting Budget – $20.00. Day’s / Ending Budget – $0.00
This is the day I gave up. I realized that with the half marathon on Sunday, I needed to give in and buy necessary nutrients for race preparation.

Saturday, October 3rd: Day’s Starting Budget – $0.00. Day’s / Ending Budget – $0.00
In the negative. Purchased necessary food for race prep. Family made dinner.

Sunday, October 2nd: Day’s Starting Budget – $0.00. Day’s / Ending Budget – $0.00
In the negative. Race provided pre/post-race food. Girlfriend’s mother purchased lunch and dinner.

I, obviously, didn’t succeed at my goal, but I don’t see this past week as a complete failure. Here are the success’ and failure’s to the week:

Success’:

• Focused a few days on limiting my spending
• Cooked at home more
• Learned from my mistakes

Failures:

• Ate shitty, cheap food at home. Tough to find cheap, healthy food on this limited budget. Another $10, I would have had an amazingly healthy week. That extra $10 would have been a huge difference.
  
• Wasted money on unnecessary betting
• Lost focus on important decisions
• Didn’t complete goal

My advice:

• Increasing the budget to about $4-5 a day would have led to an improved diet and not such a stress on lifestyle. You can live on $20, but life can suck at times on $20.
• Try anything in your area for free.
• Plan a strict budget on a week where you are going out of your normal routine. My half marathon didn’t help my success.
• Tag Team: Buying groceries and cooking with another person helps a lot. I split the grocery bill with my girlfriend because my budget only affected me, so splitting was extremely helpful. Especially when deals are ‘Buy 1, Get 1 Free’

In conclusion, you can budget better just as I could budget better. i don’t think it is that tough. I just think it takes focus. I could sit here and say it was everything or everyone’s fault, but this budget was my decision and I failed. Just because I failed doesn’t mean this budget wasn’t a success. Next time I take this challenge on, I will focus on where I shop and what my schedule has planned. I plan on trying this again in the next few weeks, so I hope to bring you a successful story in the near future.

Have a great Monday!!!

Dave
LifeExcursion