Spending Moratorium

This summer I am planning two relatively big trips. Well, big for me. I'm not going to Europe or anything. These are trips that have been in the works for quite some time now. The first is a trip with a friend to NYC to do things like buy stuff from street vendors in Chinatown, find the cheapest tickets ever to a Broadway show, go to museums and pretend we know what we're looking at, go to a Yankees game wearing Cub gear, and eat pizza from an actual New York pizzeria. The second is a trip to the beach with my sister, a whole passel of my cousins, and my Aunt Debbie.

I'm anticipating that there will be flight costs for both trips, a hotel for the first, a rental car for the second, and, of course, the cost of being somewhere that isn't home for days on end, including food and buying crap from street vendors in Chinatown. This anticipated spending has led me to a careful budget of needing to save a certain amount of money. I haven't figured out what this amount is since I have not yet priced anything, but I've decided that I need to start shoving money in savings.

So, no spending for me. I am going to do my darnedest to not spend money on discretionary purchases. Until April 15 (I picked this randomly because it's tax day and that seems appropriate somehow), I am not allowed to spend money on the following:

1) Clothes - I don't even buy that many items of clothing for myself, but I'm crazy obsessive about buying stuff for other people, particularly if those people are less than three feet tall.

2) Gifts - I dropped a ton of money on President's Day because I just would see something and immediately think that one of my friends needed it. So. No more of that.

3) Kindle books - Okay, fine. No books at all, electronic or paper. Except for a book I promised to send to a friend before this moratorium came up. I will buy that book and that book only. I am still allowed, of course, to download all the free books available for my Kindle.

4) Eating or drinking outside of what is purchased in a grocery store during our weekly trip. It is annoying how the $5 here and $5 there on food purchases for lunch or snacks build up every month.

5) Greeting cards - I am really low on birthday cards. I am now down to sending out the lamest cards on the planet. But, no, I shall persevere. I am going to concentrate on using what cards I have and supplementing special occasion cards with blank cards. Hopefully nobody dies soon because I'm all out of condolence cards and I'd hate to send a cheery little blank card with birds on it (but I totally will do that if my hand is forced). If anyone was worried, I bought some St. Patrick's Day cards last year after St. Patrick's Day, so I already have those. Don't worry for me.

6) Postage stamps - I have 46 regular first class stamps and ten international stamps. If that can't get me through the next 43 days, I seriously should consider therapy for my snail mail addiction.

I am not going to be too harsh on myself. I will allow myself $20 in cash every week for some discretionary purchases, but other than that? I can't spend any money. No more spending!! Hopefully that means I'll be able to put all of the money I make at my part-time job into savings for these trips that I'm so looking forward to!!