Ginger the anti-shopper

Some friends and I have taken stock of our respective leanings towards rampant consumerism and decided that we have financial goals that we could meet a lot quicker if we curbed some unnecessary spending. So, that's what we're trying to do. It's so easy to spend smaller amounts day by day - $5.00 on a coffee, $30.00 on a book, that sort of thing - but before you know it, over the course of a salary payment period (for me that's a month - eek!), it actually adds up to quite a lot of money.

So, we've created our own little support group with mandatory absolute honesty in relation to spending. We all have our goals, and we can all do with paying a bit more attention to what comes out of our bank accounts. My motivation is the impending financial doom of fertility treatment. Ouchy.

How am I going so far ...? Well it's only been a couple of days, and everyone can be good for a couple of days, so you're probably better to ask me in a week or so.


A couple of things that I have done already though are these:


My conditioner ran out over the weekend. Rather than doing my usual and buying a new set of shampoo and conditioner (about $60.00 depending on what I buy), and shoving the remaining half empty bottle of shampoo in the cupboard never to be used again, and washed down the drain in due course (it's one of life's little annoyances that shampoo and conditioner never run out at the same time), I extracted a partial bottle of conditioner that I had previously shoved in the cupboard, and continued using the half empty shampoo. So, I'm using up old stuff, and haven't needed to buy new stuff. This should keep me going a while too as I have a further bottle of shampoo and part bottle of conditioner spare, sitting waiting for their turn.

My moisturiser ran out. My usual moisturiser is $77 for a 30ml tube, which is quite a lot. I'm really disinclined to buy cheap stuff from the supermarket as every time I've done this (with the good intention of saving money), I've reacted horribly, and it costs a fortune in expensive face products to fix the mess ... about 2 years ago I used a cheaper system, and, I kid you not, most of the skin peeled off the lower part of my face. Very, very bad. But, I could spend less, so, obviously, I want to. Score!! Someone put me onto http://www.strawberrynet.com/country.aspx and I was able to buy my usual moisturiser in a 119ml salon size for $142.50. It roughly works out to about half the price over all. I think. Fractions aren't my strong point.

Work mornings for me where Al is on his days off (as in, he's not walking in the door at about 6am, ready and willing to make my coffee while I try and get my hair to do something other than stand on end), my very strong temptation is to stop in at Luscious on my way to work and buy my morning coffee ... and usually a treat to have with it. Yesterday and today, I set my alarm for 5 minutes earlier and made it myself before I left. I'd also made a batch of chocolate brownies on Monday, so treats were already sitting on the kitchen bench. So, no money spent at Luscious on coffee.

I've also put some things (clothing) that have been sitting around for a while on Trademe - a little bit of money back on previous rampant consumerism is better than nothing!

That's about it for now. Oh, except for resisting the temptation at the weekend to go book shopping at the Whitcoulls sale. I already had 2 books at home which I hadn't read, so I kept my VISA in my wallet and went home and started in on one of the books I already had (FYI - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Very good read - thanks for the recommendation dp!)

So far so good.