Money Saving Tip Tuesday!

Hello all, I hope the week is treating you well!

In this week's version of "Money Saving Tip Tuesday," I present you with a new challenge. This week, I'm testing it out.

I am not allowing myself to buy any form of food on campus.

I usually spend from 10am to 8pm either on campus or at work, or some combination of the two. Most of my meals are obviously eaten during this time.



So this week anything I eat on campus must be something I've made from ingredients already available at home or bought from the grocery store ahead of time.

The Rules:

• I can only use the groceries that were purchased this past weekend, there will be no extra trips to Wegmans allowed.
• Anything in my refrigerator or food pantry is fair game.
• If something runs out, I must wait until the next grocery shopping trip (Saturday) to replenish. For example, I'm used to bringing an apple to campus each day. If the apples run out, I can't go purchase more. I must wait.
• Coffee purchases are excluded, however I will take those into consideration at a later date. I'm sorry, but a girl's got to have her coffee.

If you're interested in completing this challenge with me, you are going to need to do a few things to prepare.

• Invest in some tupperware. This doesn't have to be anything uber expensive, but make sure you get something durable. You want to be able to re-use this tupperware, throw it in the dishwasher, warm it up in the microwave, etc.
• Make sure you actually have food in your house/apartment. This challenge is impossible if you haven't been grocery shopping for a month.
• Buy a fun lunch box! Okay, I know we aren't in elementary school but I bring a lunch box to campus each day. Not only does it allow me to easily store my meals and snacks, but it makes me smile when I pull it out of my school bag. You don't have to buy anything crazy, I have one like this. Maybe you'll want to get in-touch with your inner child and buy a Batman or Barbie one. No shame.

So if you're ready to go, join me! It's the second day of this week-long challenge for me. So far, so good. I took extra time yesterday to cook up a bunch of food options for the week.  I can easily mix some combination of the prepared foods together, store in tupperware, and bring it to work to eat for dinner. Yesterday I also made a heaping of vegetable-chicken stir-fry. The leftovers will serve as dinner tonight.

I expect this challenge to get difficult around Thursday, when food normally runs out in the Clark household. However, there is no way I will starve based on what I'm sure will be left. I just have to make it work.

In other Textbookless news ... I'm surviving! Yesterday I was doing a little research for my The Congress textbook and I was able to find a printable, free PDF section of the textbook. The only issue is that the actual textbook is 500 pages long and only 70 pages were provided. I'm going to try searching by the chapter titles tomorrow. I was nervous we would have a quiz today based on the reading, but there was none. Relief.

Tomorrow I have my first quiz in Copywriting and Visualization - but it's on the syllabus. Which luckily was provided.

I'll keep you updated - good luck with your week of money saving! Also, don't forget to share a new tip for me to try next week.