Thanksgiving Challenge!

With the holidays just around the corner I have decided to take a cue from several bloggers and join the Thanksgiving Challenge.

The Thanksgiving Challenge is twofold – you limit your grocery spending for one month, flexing your economic muscles and you use the opportunity for reflection. What better month (Thanksgiving) to give thanks to God for what we have?

The "original" challenge is to limit your food budget to $100 for the month of November. I think this is based on a two-person household, so you may want to move this number depending on the size of your own family. I will challenge myself to spend less than $70 on food for the entire month of November.

This includes:

groceries
meals at restaurants
miscellaneous food purchases – including drinks

This does not include:

freebies
purchases made with gift cards
meals paid for by another individual
potlucks

Here are the rules I am following -

Track your food purchases for 1 month, spending no more than $75
Non-food grocery items (toilet paper, shampoo, etc) do not count
You start with whatever you happen to have in the fridge/pantry

Some people choose to donate the money they saved to a charity. I think this is a great idea, and since I'm competitive, I'm definitely up for the challenge!

Let me know if you join. I'd love to hear about it!!!

P.S. November is National Blog Posting Month, so apparently (seeing as though I've posted every day since 11/1), I'm unofficially participating in NaBloPoMo. Everyone participating posts on their blog every single day of November. This could get interesting...wish me luck!